Getting the To Do's to Done

Third quarter is over and your heading into the final stretch of your financial year. How are you doing on those business goals for your (your choice) a) portfolio b) directorate c) division d) company e) small business?

Getting things done, the old to do list, and making goals are all activities with which we are very familiar. Many of you have even been on courses to try and figure out how to get those goals accomplished so you can meet your targets.

One of the most powerful tools is merely the language that we use to tell ourselves what to do. Try rewriting that list of To Do's using action verbs that clearly lead to a result rather than vague sentencing of outstanding items to be done. For example:

"Follow up with Jill regarding Great Project implementation" becomes
"Talk to Jill - Confirm implementation and target dates for Great Project have been met."


Put some power into your To Do's and watch the Got it Done's add up.

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 Five Series - Reasons for Procrastination

And you thought you could duck under the radar screen! Sorry my friend, upon review of the posts this year I realized it has been a long time since I confronted the big, ugly enemy of procrastination.

Are you a procrastinator? ("Oh yeah" - I can hear you whisper under your breath.) You are wondering why and what you can do about it? The following list is an adaptation from the book Making Time Work for You, by the Time Guru himself, Harold L. Taylor.

1. A procrastinator's view of time is distorted. With 2 weeks before the due date, you think yo have lots of time to get that report finished. The reality is, no where in those two weeks do you have the 9 hours of time free to actually finish the report. The solution: as soon as you know the report is due - book in the time to complete it. Now book in extra time since we both know it will take twice as long as you think it will.
2. A procrastinator is often a perfectionist. The perfectionist is often afraid to start something for fear it won't be perfect. The solution: get started to that you have lots of time to make it good enough which is much closer to perfect than not done at all.
3. A procrastinator often sees tasks as overwhelming. Solution: just do it. Start with any small piece of the project even if it is just five minutes. Break the rest of the project down into bite size pieces that you can manage.
4. A procrastinator is often someone who thrives on the adrenaline of crisis and deadlines. If you work in the publishing industry you likely have a busy, rewarding life. For the rest of us, it is important to understand that always running late is inefficient, disorganized and often problematic for everyone else around you. Solution: learn to get your adrenaline kick by getting the project done early.
5. A procrastinator is often just plain disorganized. Some individuals avoid starting projects because they are too disorganized to arrange the information and material they need to get it done. In the meantime, they are still scrambling to find the information and material for the previous project or report which is late. Solution: plan ahead. Plan your year, months, weeks and days by blocking time to accomplish your goals and projects.

Strategic Goals Revisited - The Links

To review development of your goals click here.

To review measurement of your goals click here.

Organizing out of Procrastination

Are you a procrastinator? Are you overwhelmed with the tasks at hand and would rather just avoid them?

Here is an excellent, short discussion around procrastination at the office and what to do about it:
http://www.lifeorganizers.com/office/procrastination-at-work.htm

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.

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.