Office Annual Review

Before working as a professional organizer, I spent several decades in a corporate environment.  Those of us who have ever worked for someone are familiar with the annual review process.  But have you ever considered applying this concept to the organization of your office?  If you were giving your office an annual review, how would it fare?

• Are the position description and expectations clear and understood?
• Are there annual goals and objectives that are in line with the company's (yours) strategic objectives for the year?
• Do the annual goals and objectives meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited)?
• Did your office meet all its performance targets for the year?
• Did you office meet all its goals and objectives for the year?
• What recommendations do you have to offer?

Try this out on your office space whether your run a home office or a corporate environment.  And remember - there should be no surprises at performance review time.  Regular feedback on adjustment to performance of your office will ensure that those goals are met by the end of the year.

First Quarter Review

How it happened I hardly know but here we are at the beginning of April. That means first quarter is over. How are those goals coming?

Have you checked your progress recently?
Do you know where you filed them?
Are they still valid?
Are they still realistic?
Did you implement the tools to measure them?
Were they measurable to begin with?
Are you happy with the progress?
Are you ready to celebrate your successes?

Where are your targets and goals for second quarter?
Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited? (SMART)
Have you set up the tools to measure your progress?
Have you set up a review date?
Have you planned your celebration?
Have you shared the goals and your progress with your staff?
Is everyone focusing on the same organizational goals?

See you next quarter!

Keeping to the Agenda

This post is going to make everyone else happy and give you some more work. "Oh great!", I can hear you say. But remember, when your organization makes everyone else happy, you look good.

It's not about goals - its about agendas. Do you use them for your meetings? Do you send them out ahead of time? Are they clear and concise and related to the previous meeting's minutes (if there was one)?

There is almost nothing worse for meeting attendees, even the virtual kind, than a meeting that doesn't stay focused, runs overtime and doesn't accomplish the goals for which it was set up. Your agenda, sent out in advance, will notify everyone of the purpose of the meeting, the time commitment, who will attend, what they are expected to contribute and what they can expect to get out of it.

Set up your meeting agenda. Send it out ahead of time. Stick to the agenda when you meet. Everyone will be happy to attend your meetings.

Organizing to Maintain your Sanity - 5 Ignore Criticism and Enjoy Bonus

You've heard it. I've heard it. We all know what it sounds like.

"Getting a little anal aren't you? Turning into the next Martha S. here at the office?"

Here comes the criticism from those people, usually one person in particular, who can't stand to let you reach a higher level of organization in your work. It might even be your boss. Who knows, maybe that person is jealous, envious or afraid that you might be more productive, more effective and receive the accompanying accolades that eludes them due to their disorganization.

They have every reason to be very, very afraid. Clutter gone, priorities shift and here you come with productivity in hand. Using the 15 to 45 minutes of routine, organizing maintenance that I have outlined in items 1 through 4 of this series, you will have freed up your mind away from the clutter and what you "should" be doing about it, to whatever your boss, organization or business really wants you to focus on.

If the naysayers want to focus on criticising you, let them do whatever. You've got product to sell, clients to support and staff to lead. You rock!

Quiet Hour for Executives

How often do you book a meeting with yourself in order to get time alone to work on a priority item? All too often, we feel guilty for booking time to ourselves rather than making ourselves available to the people in our business world. Consider, however, whether or not those priority items are in fact getting done on a timely basis with the number of distractions coming into your workspace during your regular work day.

Booking a quiet hour whether for a project, a task, or to think can be a very effective organizing tool for managers and executives. It is especially effective for planning time at the end of the day. The best time to plan for tomorrow's agenda is at the end of today. Taking a quiet hour to review your priorities, plan out your day and block in your activities will increase your effectiveness as a leader and as an employee.

It may take a couple of times before the people around you realize that you really do mean to be left alone. Don't answer the phone, email or door. Pretend that no one is in the office. Concentrate for that quiet hour on the task at hand. Pretty soon other people will learn to respect your time and need to work alone. Especially when they see the productivity that results!

Going Slow to Get Fast

They all want to race down the hill as fast as possible at the age of 7. With no fear of dying, and only 3 feet to fall if they catch an edge, the young skiers head from top to bottom at mach schnell (made up word from KLR) if unchecked. KLR, their ski instructor, patiently and firmly reinforces the basics; you have to slow down in order to get fast.

How often could we all profit from KLR's sage advice? Are you moving too fast, wound up in the day to day tornado of life at the office, that you can't get to the end result fast enough?

Try slowing down and reviewing the basics. Is my company clearly focussed on where I want it to go? Have I reviewed and revised the firm's strategic goals to reflect the marketplace and our relative position in it? Do all my employees understand their role in the strategic goals? Do they understand the firm's expectations of them?

Do I demonstrate in my behaviour the professional behaviour I expect from my staff? Do my actions reflect the goals I hold for myself and my firm? Do I demonstrate the priorities and focus my attention and resources clearly on their importance?

Slow down. You'll finish faster.

Focus - and Refocus

I first published this post in 2007. The women at iLash Girls have reminded me that we are wise to revisit our focus on a regular basis. Thus I have chosen to republish in the hopes that you will find it helpful to refocus your view of the work to be accomplished this year.

Focus – with a camera? A noun or a verb? And what makes me think it has anything to do with business anyway? Ever try creating something without it?

Probably the single biggest reason employees fail to reach their goals and business fail to succeed is lack of focus. Do you have a mission? Do you know where you are going? Do you know what it will look like when you get there? Do you have a road map? Have you shared the map with anyone else? Have you shared it with everyone else?

If you or your employees are not focused on the goals of the company, they are messing around with what I call corporate clutter; All the stuff that gets in the way of your business, project, division, board of directors or _____________ succeeding (you fill in the blank). It is no different than in your home where clutter takes time, energy and money to manage, and manage around. If your day is cluttered with unnessary and unfocused activity, you are messing with clutter and wasting energy that would otherwise help your business succeed.

Focus: think about it.

Someday Syndrome

You may be business owner, a senior executive or staff. The beginning of the year finds most of us looking ahead, planning for our next round of accomplishments. How often do you find yourself saying "Someday I will..."? Occassionally? Frequently? Procrastination is a syndrome that gets to us all at some point or another. Can you however, say "never again"?

Alex Fayle has done just that. His Someday Syndrome site lists three components to the syndrome:

1. Someday My Ship Will Come In
   Waiting for, instead of pursuing, your dreams
2. I'll Get Around To It Someday
   Wasting your life with navel-gazing and other procrastination games
3. I Might Need It Someday
   Filling your life with stuff instead of achievements.

Whether you occassionally defer your goals or chronically meet the year end with disappointment, I recommend a visit to his site. There was never a better time than the beginning of a fresh new year to set your sites on a set of dreams to turn to realities.

Top 5 Series - Indicators of Disorganization Revisited

It has been over a year since I last published this post on Indicators of disorganization. At a time of the year when many people are looking forward to the next year and planning out goals and targets, this seemed like a good time to review why some people never meet their goals. Add to the season a little economic turmoil and organized, clear about your direction and on track to reach it, was never so important.

You think you run a great company. Maybe you do. You’ve studied the books, taken the courses, run the retreats. At the same time, you admit to yourself when no one else is looking that something isn’t quite right. You, and your company, may be suffering from a basic lack of organization. Here are the top five indicators I find when companies are swimming in corporate clutter and stuck in the land of corporate disorganization.

1. Targets are not being met.This is the indicator that keeps you awake at night. As we scream through the third quarter you are already sweating. You didn’t meet first quarter or second and here you are behind the eight ball for third.
2. Employees don’t understand the mission and/or strategic goals.You have the mission memorized. You’ve agonized over your strategic goals. Every word is perfect. You’ve done the retreat and handed out copies. Why is it then, that no one remembers? Why don’t your employees remember what the company is trying to accomplish this year?
3. Employees are unhappy.You have a sense that there are just too many good bye lunch parties. Meanwhile you’re soaking up your training and development budget with new hire orientation rather than development of your existing and loyal employees. At the same time, you’ve hearing complaint after complaint from employees about this, that and the other thing. They never bring it up to the team meetings, (do you have them?) they just grumble.
4. Offices, work spaces are cluttered.Starting with yours; Do you, or your staff, keep asking for another copy of ____________ because they can’t find it? Do you, or your employees spend too much time looking for things and not enough time acting on goals? Sure, you know exactly where that proposal is, right? If I said you had 10 seconds to find it, could you? What is under, behind or beside your desk? Your employees desks? Check it out.
5. Someone, or ones, is (are) working longer hours than they should. i.e. outside of the normal ebb and flow of business and seasonal cycles, you have one employee, maybe its you, that is always there later than everyone else, comes in on weekends, and probably still is not meeting their performance objectives.

So now you are going to spend the day acutely aware of these indicators in your company. That’s ok. Remember, the first step to change is recognizing when there is a problem.

Top 5 Series - Actions to Meet your Goals

Your picking up a theme here? That's right; end of the year and its time to make sure this time next year you have completed your goals for 2009. Here are strategies to make your success more likely:

1. Keep your eye on the end result. Whatever your goal is, make sure you can see it, taste it, feel it, hear it. Make sure you can articulate it, really, really well. The more real it becomes for you the more likely it is you will make it a reality.
2. Break your goal into steps. Regardless of how long it will take to meet your goal, break it down into bite size steps along the way. This will give you more chances to recognize your success and celebrate.
3. Write the goal(s) down. Write it or them as clearly and concisely as possible making sure they meet the SMART criteria of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited.
4. Get your intention to level 10 on a scale of 1 - 10 (with 1 the lowest level). If your intention is not up at the 10 level, you may be inclined to give up or back away from your goal everytime you meet with adversity. What does it take to get to level 10? You decide. Often it includes getting support and help to keep you accountable to yourself e.g. a coach. It might be sharing your goal with a boss or friend who will help to keep you accountable.
5. Celebrate your successes! Everytime you meet a milestone, celebrate. You are on your path to success.

Countdown to January 1, 2009

It's coming - no matter how you try and stave it off, the new year will be here in 27 days.

That means a number of things to a number of people; budgets, performance appraisals, sales targets are just some of the items that are lurking just beyond that January 1 holiday. How to get on top of it?

Start by listing all the items you know are due in the first weeks of the new year. Now start to plan when you will get them accomplished. Take out the calendar, look at the weeks ahead. Wow, already pretty packed right? That's the problem with trying to get much of anything done during the month of December.

Nevertheless push on. Book in 2 - 3 hour blocks to accomplish those tasks due in the first couple of weeks. On your list of things to do, make a note of all the bits that need to be accomplished in addition to just getting the work done. Is there information you need to gather? Book time with your staff for performance appraisals? Pull together the sales reports? Now get these items booked in the calendar.

Smile and look forward to the New Year knowing your new year tasks are booked and ready to be tackled.

Organize Without the But

For today's post, I'm sending you over to millionairemummynextdoor to read about removing buts from our lives i.e all the reasons why we think we will not, should not or could not be successful. Check it out.

Strategic Goals Revisited - The Links

To review development of your goals click here.

To review measurement of your goals click here.

Clutter on the Calendar

Having trouble managing your time?
Are you feeling as if you are always busy but get nothing done?

Check out your daytimer and see what is scheduled. Now take a look and notice what is not scheduled.

Time management is a challenge most of us face most of the time. Organizing time can be harder than the paper!

Too often we book time for those things in our business which is urgent but at the end of the day not very important to the goals and objectives of our organization.

Manage your time - don't let time clutter manage you. Try this time management tip: allocate at least 50% of your day for those things which are most important, but not urgent, and directly target achievement with the goals and objectives of your organization.

Now watch your productivity soar and your business take off.

Tracking Progress

Last post we looked at goal statements and how they meet SMART criteria. Now let’s keep track of the results.

The first rule is to keep things simple. Start with the number of goals. Too many and you will spend all your time managing them and no time actually working on them. Too few and you will fail to reach you objectives. The number and complexity will depend on your business/department/project. There is no magic number. If you have none, try starting with the Shakespearean magic number of 3.

Second rule is to work backwards. If you want 70 new active clients by December 31, 2008, how many do you need each month/week/day to meet that goal. Tracking daily for this goal is probably too small a time frame and will produce data that takes time to process for very little return. Tracking weekly on this goal will give you information before the end of the month on whether or not any progress is being made. Tracking monthly may leave you fretting after month 3 that the goal is not being met and 25% of the year is up – the cycle time from identification to correction to results may be too long to permit timely correction when necessary

Thirdly, ensure that progress feedback gets to the people trying to meet the goal. If your sales staff are reporting weekly the number of new active clients, publish the aggregate data to all the staff each week. Meanwhile, you have an opportunity for intervention with any individual sales staff who is not meeting targets. At the same time, celebrate monthly accomplishments!

Checking Progress on those Goals

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Now six weeks into the calendar year is a good time to review the progress you have made on your strategic goals. Having established the goals, you will need to ensure tracking, monitoring and evaluating systems are in place to manage your progress.

We will start by reviewing the goal statements themselves. Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited (otherwise known as SMART goals)? If you have established an annual goal, it is time limited by the end of the year in question, say December 31 or whichever year end you have chosen for your review.

To be specific, your goals must state exactly what you wish to accomplish and, to be measurable, in quantifiable terms.

For example:
We will increase our active client roster.

Versus:
We will increase our active client roster by 50% to a total of 210 active clients, by December 31, 2008.

On December 31, you will either have 210 active clients or you won’t. Your degree of success will be relatively easy to identify.

The criterion of attainable refers to the ability of anyone to reach the goal given the same circumstances under which you are working. If it takes a month’s time on average for each sales person to develop each new lead to an active client, and you have 2 sales staff, assuming they have 100% conversion from leads to active clients, you could only reach 21 new clients by year’s end. The example I gave required 70 new clients.

By comparison, the realistic criterion refers to the likelihood that the goal will be attained under the same circumstances. If you have 5 sales staff regularly securing 1 new active client each month, after 12 months, you will have 60 new active clients. Can that same staff increase their conversion rate to achieve the required 70 new active clients by year’s end?

OK. You have reviewed your goals and you are satisfied that they meet the SMART criteria. Next post we will look at tracking your progress.

New Year's, New Goals

As the first one-twelth of the year comes to a close, have you planned your results for the year yet?

What would you like to accomplish by the end of 2008?

What would you like to be remembered for?

What would you like to stop doing?

What will you do more of, how much and when.

Enjoy, preparing this next chapter of your accomplishments.

Top 5 Series - Indicators of Disorganization

You think you run a great company. Maybe you do. You’ve studied the books, taken the courses, run the retreats. At the same time, you admit to yourself when no one else is looking that something isn’t quite right. You, and your company, may be suffering from a basic lack of organization. Here are the top five indicators I find when companies are swimming in corporate clutter and stuck in the land of corporate disorganization.

1. Targets are not being met.
This is the indicator that keeps you awake at night. As we scream through the third quarter you are already sweating. You didn’t meet first quarter or second and here you are behind the eight ball for third.

2. Employees don’t understand the mission and/or strategic goals.
You have the mission memorized. You’ve agonized over your strategic goals. Every word is perfect. You’ve done the retreat and handed out copies. Why is it then, that no one remembers? Why don’t your employees remember what the company is trying to accomplish this year?

3. Employees are unhappy.
You have a sense that there are just too many good bye lunch parties. Meanwhile you’re soaking up your training and development budget with new hire orientation rather than development of your existing and loyal employees. At the same time, you’ve hearing complaint after complaint from employees about this, that and the other thing. They never bring it up to the team meetings, (do you have them?) they just grumble.

4. Offices, work spaces are cluttered.
Starting with yours; Do you, or your staff, keep asking for another copy of ____________ because they can’t find it? Do you, or your employees spend too much time looking for things and not enough time acting on goals? Sure, you know exactly where that proposal is, right? If I said you had 10 seconds to find it, could you? What about 5? What is under, behind or beside your desk? Your employees desks? Check it out.

5. Someone, or ones, is (are) working longer hours than they should. i.e. outside of the normal ebb and flow of business and seasonal cycles, you have one employee, maybe its you, that is always there later than everyone else, comes in on weekends, and probably still is not meeting their performance objectives.

So now you are going to spend the day acutely aware of these indicators in your company. That’s ok. Remember, the first step to change is recognizing when there is a problem. I’ll continue the Top 5 Series this week. Tomorrow – Top 5 Reasons why Companies are Disorganized.