January 2nd, 2008 — Credibility, Team Building, Tips
First day back at work after the holiday season and I realize I’ve been slacking in terms of fresh content for DGM. This looming sense of slacker-dom has inspired me though. By neglecting my blog I was reminded about the golden rule of not neglecting your employees. It’s one of the worst things you can do. We all get pulled in a number of directions on a daily basis, but we have to remember that without our team, many of us couldn’t do the jobs we do.
Like most things, it’s all pretty logical:
Keep Them In The Loop - You don’t need to tell them every gruesome detail of every single situation, but one of the best things you can do is making it a habit to keep your team in the loop around timely events. Not only does it give people a sense of inclusion, but it’s an easy way to open the door to questions, clarification, and gives the eager ones in the group a chance to step up and be noticed if it’s a topic they’re passionate about.
Get Good At HR - There’s nothing worse than managers who are bad at following through on HR related issues. HR issues are the kind of thing that can cause mass amounts of stress, turmoil and paranoia for many employees. You don’t need to be an HR guru to be good at this stuff. As simple as it sounds, just going over and making friends with your HR counterparts makes this all a lot easier.
Communicate - Whatever you do, do your best to not be a black hole when it comes to communicating with your team members. You should make it a habit to try and manage by “walking the shop floor” and interacting with as many people as you can on any given day. Consider this your daily recon mission to gather new information and add some context to the daily activities. You’d be surprised how much useful information you can garner just by being friendly and taking a second to chat.
Follow Through - If you commit to trying to “make something happen” you better be ready to put your money where your mouth is. Nothing makes an employee feel more neglected than a manager who promises to do something and never finds the time to actually do it. On the flip side, if you do actually try and follow through, but hit a roadblock, make sure you refer back the first points above and keep your employees in the loop regarding the roadblock. An active and attentive management style tends to go a long way for many people.
At the end of the day your job as a Damn Good Manager is to facilitate awesomeness from your team and you’ll never do a truly good job of that if you have a habit of neglecting people.
December 19th, 2007 — People, Stress
Over the years, I’ve found that people don’t take enough vacation. It’s been estimated that American’s leave an average of 4 vacation days un-used per year. When you consider that workplace stress and pressure is at an all time high and only creeping higher, this is a worrisome problem. Exhausted and burned out resources are not ideal for long term productivity.
As a manager it’s important to be on the lookout for folks in need of a vacation. Being able to sense when your top performers need a few days out of the office can be an invaluable skill. Despite the short term perception of lost productivity, the long term benefits are huge. It can be as simple as bookending a weekend with a couple vacation days to have a magical effect on many people.
The benefits of vacation are pretty obvious…
Stress reduction
Creativity booster
Morale reviver
Mental and physical replenishment
Personal satisfaction and happiness
With benefits like that, who wouldn’t want to take a vacation?
When thinking about vacation and making it a part of your team’s working environment, it’s important to remember that taking vacation and focusing on remaining fresh and motivated is a big part of being a damn good manager. If you are it can be very stressful and pressure filled. Don’t make the mistake of burying yourself unnecessarily. A big part of being a damn good manager is knowing when to take a break so you can remain on game.
December 7th, 2007 — Stress, Team Building, Time Management
Tim Berry over at Planning Startup Stories reminded me of one of my (many) golden rules that focuses on employees maximizing their quality work time and avoiding the pitfalls associated with pure quantity of work time.
Remember the debate about quality time vs. quantity time? It was a popular topic a few years ago, but back then it was about parenting. I think we should consider applying that same concept to the workplace in business. As an employer, do you want people staying late working? Is that productivity? I don’t think so. In fact I’m thinking we should be talking more about “quality time” in the workplace, and make sure we don’t substitute quantity time instead.
Over the last few years I’ve gone so far as to quantify quality work time as somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5 hours out of an 8 hour day. That translates into 5 hours of focused, concentrated work with the other 3 hours being taken up by distractions like email, meetings, socializing, and the general realities of any work place.
Once you get outside of the 5 hour sweet spot I’ve found that you tend to have diminishing returns on the work output. For example, a developer who tries to code for 8, 10, 12 hours straight is much more likely to make mistakes and get sloppy over that time. I’m sure they don’t do it intentionally, but the human mind and body just can’t sustain that much hyper focus for that long. On the flip side, there are lots of people who may spend vast amounts of time “working” on a task but waste a lot of that time procrastinating and never really getting anything done. With that in mind, quality work time is really just another spin on the mantra of “work smart… not hard”.
If you can make the 5 hour work day part of your corporate culture, you’ll start to see the benefits pretty quickly. You should hopefully see fewer errors and “silly mistakes”. Your resources should feel less stressed which should allow them to focus on the tasks at hand more easily. Deadlines and deliverables that take the 5 hour rule into account should also be much more attainable. In the rare occasion that your team might need to push beyond the 5 hour sweet spot (eg. work some overtime or come in on a weekend) they’ll be much more motivated and willing to put in the extra effort since it’s an exception to the norm. From what I’ve seen in real life, the 5 hour rule tends to be a great morale sustainer over the long term.
To date, the 5 hour work day has served me and my teams very well and I’d encourage anyone out there to give it a try.