This is the first post in a series of posts about management. It will be about tools that can quickly increase the productivity of your departments
Content:
First, let's look at the abbreviation:
1. S – Specific: the task must be clear and understandable, without the “figure it out yourself” principle
2. M – Measurable: measurability of the task. The “we dig from here until lunchtime” principle cannot be allowed here. We talk about how much needs to be done
3. A - Achievable: the task must be achievable
4. R – Relevant: the task must be subordinated to the main goals of the work.
5. T – Time bound: you must indicate the deadline for completing the task.
A huge number of managers neglect this last point. And then they ask their subordinates for the results. As a result, the principle of fairness is violated, which immediately demotivates.
In our personal experience, using this tool alone increases productivity by 50-200%. It all depends on the coherence of the team, the maturity level of the employees, and the structure of the current work.
One of the mechanisms of operation of this tool is very well described in the book by Maxim Dorofeev “Jedi Techniques” .
The bottom line is that a person can use rational and “smart” thinking for about 2 hours a day. If he is forced to spend this resource on “deciphering” tasks, then the work will proceed more slowly and will be of lower quality.
As a result, to set SMART goals you need to use approximately the following algorithm
the results to be achieved are specified (S);
the necessity and relevance of goals (R) are justified;
the degree of achievability of the result (A) is assessed and predicted;
target indicators are determined and criteria for
grades (M);
the time frame for achieving a fully formed goal (T) is determined.
It is important that the deadlines are set achievable; it is better to establish upward and informal communication . This way you will learn from people how feasible it really is and what the risks are. But to do this, you need to get rid of the directive management style.
The next tool for easily and quickly increasing productivity is the use of the MBO principle (management by objectives) and Kanban.
In fact, all this is a continuation of the Smart concept: you set clear goals in your work and conduct visualized intermediate control.
Initially, the Kanban principle was born in Toyota , but is now actively used in IT , and allows us to identify problem areas.
The classic approach to creating a Kanban board is listed below
The most common service for implementing this tool is Trello .
There are many analogues, but here are the capabilities of this service:
board format flexibility. You can do the same as above or place the names of employees in columns and below a list of tasks for each, and use color labels to display the status of tasks. Example below.
assigning deadlines and reminders for each card;
creating checklists (and in a paid subscription, each item has its own responsible person and deadline);
attaching files;
leading discussions;
attaching co-executors;
full digital log - who did what with the card. Below is an example from one of my boards (where only I work)
Using this approach and tool makes it possible to get away from daily micromanagement, create a team remotely and not overload people with control.
At the same time, you see who actually does what and how much, where problems arise and do not miss the deadline for completing tasks
The use of such services is precisely digitalization. The key rule here is transparency of the rules. To do this, we recommend posting a list of rules on the main board in the leftmost column, which everyone can see.
Now let's talk about the situational leadership of Hersey and Blanchard.
I will have a separate series about working with motivation and microclimate, but this psychological theory is an excellent tool for quickly getting high-quality results.
Its essence is simple, and the effect is extremely noticeable.
There are 4 categories of employee maturity:
1. Can’t and won’t (R1)
2. Wants, but can’t (R2)
3. He can, but he doesn’t want to (R3)
4. Wants and can (R4)
Determining the level is not so difficult 😁
They correspond to 4 management styles:
1. Authoritarian (S1)
2. Mentoring (S2)
3. Selling ideas (S3)
4. Delegation (S4)
Remember in the post about Smart tasks that I wrote that their effect depends on the maturity of the staff?
For maturity categories 1 and 2, this is a must-have; the tool will give extremely high growth. At 3 and 4, it would seem that the effect is not so obvious, but even the most mature employee needs to understand what is expected of him. Otherwise, as I said, he will spend a huge amount of energy on “deciphering.”
IMPORTANT. The same employee may be at different levels of maturity in different situations.
Also, if you understand your management style (soft leader, authoritarian, charismatic), this will help you choose employees for your team. That is, if you are a rather gentle person with good expertise in the field, then it is better for you to recruit interns/young and at the same time strong, motivated specialists. Then you will be able to delegate tasks and act as mentors for young people. It will be comfortable for both you and the team, and there will be results.
Briefly, it is necessary to limit the flow of tasks that go to your subordinates. You can't just be a peradast.
Everything that is “above the limit” is waiting in line in the sump.
By the way, a similar limitation is the essence of the Kanban approach.
For whom is it relevant - first of all, middle managers, for whom only performers are lower. But in fact, I have seen many leaders who have not yet matured to manage, and they themselves need to be managed.
The gist: Eliahu Goldratt discovered an interesting pattern while working with the Israeli Air Force.
When each of the “smartest” engineers had 50 problems, the average time to solve 1 problem was 135 days. After the inbox list was set to a limit of 3 tasks, the time limit for solving 1 problem became 30 days.
There is a similar example in the Estonian police.
Investigators in one Estonian police station (as in many others) were overworked: for each investigator there were twenty cases that they were trying to handle simultaneously, jumping from one case to another. A month after the number of cases per investigator was limited to five, the following miraculous changes occurred:
The number of completed cases per month per investigator has doubled.
The backlog of cases awaiting investigation has been reduced by 50%.
The quality of work has improved: returns from the prosecutor's office for further investigation have disappeared, 50% of cases began to be closed pre-trial.
The stress is gone.
Yes, the use of modern digital tools allows you to track tasks better and easier, minimize the risks of missing deadlines, and switch between them faster.
But how many people do you know who are capable of masterfully and accurately organizing everything? And the main thing is to be so psychologically stable that you don’t start doing “everything at once” or start switching between them in a chaotic manner.
Personally, I have caught myself making this mistake more than once.
I continue the series about simple tools that allow you to increase productivity many times over 😉
And this time we will talk about one of the main enemies of productivity - perfectionism.
We all know the phrase that the devil is in the details.
Many people believe that attention to detail is the difference between good and great.
But let's ask ourselves, how many great things do we do every day?
I won’t open America to you if I tell you that 80% of your work ends up in the trash.
At the same time, it is no secret to anyone that the higher the result is needed, the more effort and resources are needed. Moreover, the dependence is not linear; sometimes the last interest can eat up to half of the resources.
Now imagine how much effort you waste when you force your subordinates to do everything perfectly.
Personally, I was very demotivated by the situation when I tried, looked for mistakes, prepared justifications, and in the end 90% of this work went into the trash. I think this situation is familiar to many.
What is the solution?
Highlight that 20% of important work and demand that it be done perfectly. The rest can be done at 90%, the result will be the same, and you will have more time.
Max Dorofeev also has a very good approach. It divides tasks into red and green. Below are a few pictures from hismarathon and excerpts on this topic.
In life, it is important not just whether a task is completed or not, but also to what extent it is completed. It happens:
"not done at all"
"done, but somehow not very well"
"done mediocre"
“it’s almost well done, but...” “it’s done well, beautifully and even perfectly”
It happens that tasks done perfectly can, on a global scale, be inferior to situations where everything planned was done acceptable, or even haphazardly.
But be careful! We don’t want to say: “Do it through your ass and everything will be fine.” In no case! If you do everything through your ass, then the result will be like this. But if you try to do everything perfectly, then with a high degree of probability it will turn out badly or nothing will work out at all.
How then is it correct? And the right thing is when you clearly understand what can be done mediocrely, stepping on the throat of the inner perfectionist, so that you can do the right things - or, in other words, “green” tasks. This is not hand-in-hand for the sake of hand-in-hand, but hand-in-hand where possible, for the sake of what we really need.
As I wrote earlier, 80-90% of “red” tasks (those that must be closed, but they do not bring benefit for the future) make no sense to perform perfectly. It is necessary to free up resources from routine work for useful work.
Standardization of processes and development of ready-made templates will help us with this.
The standardization of operations is also emphasized in the 5S methodology (hello, lean manufacturing). Through this tool you get a starting point for consolidating experience and further improvement, reducing losses.
Templates will allow you to perform the turnover required for success by 90% and reduce labor costs by 2 times. The result is an acceptable result with a minimum of effort.
From my own experience, I can give 2 examples of how, by standardizing a task, translating it into a standard template and automating calculations, in one case it was possible to reduce labor costs from 4-8 hours per month to 30 minutes, and in the second from 4-5 hours daily to 1- 10 minutes.
At the same time, after standardization and preparation of standard templates (especially regarding reporting information), you receive structured data that can subsequently be decomposed, analyzed and compared.
PS very often I hear the opinion that work is creative, it is impossible to standardize and structure it. In 90% of cases this is not the case, and either there is a lack of desire, or knowledge, or both.
In order not to be distracted by useless things and not to put off important ones, you need to set your priorities correctly. This is one of the main rules of time management. The Eisenhower Matrix helps with this.
It divides all your tasks into 2 characteristics: urgency and importance.
Square 1 - urgent and important
Promptly picking up a project while a colleague is on sick leave, completing a task that arrived three hours before the deadline, treating a tooth with acute pain—these are urgent and important matters. They require a quick response. These tasks usually have tangible deadlines and consequences for not completing them on time. This includes cases that arose due to crises or force majeure.
If there are a majority of such tasks. You may have problems. Tasks in this square are inevitable, because situations and events that cannot be controlled will always happen. But if you focus only on urgent and important matters, you can “earn” chronic stress, emotional burnout and a feeling of loss of control over life. This will lead to “internal migration” - matters from the fourth square.
What to do. Try to leave as few things to do here as possible. Develop a plan to achieve current goals. Set deadlines, make a schedule. Check at the end of the week what you managed to do, what results you got and what you will do next week. If urgent and important tasks come from outside, think about how to prevent this. For example, talk to your boss, colleagues, or client about redistributing your workload or changing your work plan.
Square 2 - non-urgent and important
Working out in the gym, learning languages, taking educational courses - these are tasks related not to solving problems, but to personal growth. These activities help you move towards long-term goals with the most valuable results. They may not have a deadline or end date, so we often replace non-urgent important tasks with tasks from the urgent list.
An education podcast won't help you earn more tomorrow, but it will help you plan your educational path to earn more in the future. This is not urgent, but important.
If there are a majority of such tasks. You spend your resources on what you consider important. Your stress levels are reduced and you will feel even better when you see the first results of your investments.
What to do. This is an ideal situation. Maintain and preserve it for as long as possible.
Square 3 - urgent and unimportant
This includes checking email and instant messengers, sending documents, washing dishes and other household chores. These are routine tasks, other people are waiting for their results, but this brings you almost no closer to your own goals. Do It Tomorrow author Marc Forster calls this being busy. Busyness gets in the way of doing “real work.”
If there are a majority of such tasks. In this square, you can see the effect of urgency: you can feel the drive of checking off boxes on your to-do list that mean almost nothing to you. But at the same time there is a feeling that you are doing the wrong thing. Dissatisfaction with oneself and one's life is growing.
What to do. Stephen Covey advises delegating the following tasks: to delivery services, personal assistants, cleaning services, and contractors. If delegation is not possible, reduce their impact on the schedule. For example, turn off messenger notifications, clearly indicate to others how much time you need for a task, and say “no” if such tasks become too much. Another way is to deal with the tasks of the third square, when there is nothing left in the first and second.
Square 4 - non-urgent and unimportant
This includes watching TV series, scrolling through your social media feed, and sorting emails instead of answering them. These are “time killers”: we spend hours doing these activities, but do not get any practical benefit from them in the long run. Of course, the desire to be distracted, to relax, to be lazy is natural. Eisenhower himself was criticized for playing golf during work hours. But golf and bridge created a balance between personal time and the president's stressful job.
In the long term, time killers prevent you from achieving important goals. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology proves this. Scientists have found a relationship between employee leisure time and their productivity the next day. Researchers found that workers who spent a long time watching TV shows the day before came to work in a good mood. But by the end of the week, their mood worsened and their motivation dropped. At the same time, employees who played sports, yoga, meditation, listened to music and helped others felt calmer and more motivated.
If there are a majority of such tasks. You may get stuck in a rut. Because of this, stress and a feeling of escapism, escape from problems will appear.
What to do. Record the time. This will help identify the main time killers. When you find them, think about how to replace or limit them.
It's time to talk about delegating tasks.
This is not the easiest tool to use in life, but it is very effective.
It allows you to relieve the manager, unlock the potential of employees (one of the types of losses in Toyota's lean production) and form a strong team.
We will talk about long-term effects and their mechanisms (unloading of the manager to increase competencies and build a management system, increasing one’s value for the organization) in another collection.
Previously, we discussed tools such as SMART goals, employee maturity categories, templates and standards, and building control and management points based on goals.
All this is very important when delegating, but there are 3 fundamental conditions, without which the tool will not work:
Authority
Resources
Responsibility
Meskon wrote about this truism about 40 years ago. However, there are very few companies and managers who comply with these rules.
This is a separate point that we pay special attention to in our projects. In practice, most meetings are useless and can be canceled by using digital tools such as a Kanban board. But it is impossible to completely abandon meetings; they create a working rhythm, especially for key projects, and allow maintaining a common vision for these projects. But you need to understand that meetings are the working time of your employees, which means you pay for all this with payroll. And any expenses must bring results.
In the article at the link, we examined in detail the economics of working with meetings and how we managed to achieve savings of 550 thousand per year with zero costs.
As a result, based on our experience and that of our partners, we can recommend the following universal algorithm.
1. Preparation
Before each meeting there should be a clear agenda and the answer “why is this?” for each participant. And it is advisable to take an inventory of your meetings to eliminate overlap of topics when the same thing is discussed at different meetings.
In addition, evaluate whether it is necessary at all, or whether it is possible to prepare an automatic report or the same Kanban board, where everything will be clear, and you can take more breaks between meetings. Of course, I understand that as a manager you don’t want to look at the board and tasks, you want to listen to people, but then just remember that for this you are paying for your employees’ time, and therefore your profit.
The meeting should be held at a predetermined time, according to a predetermined structure
Each participant must clearly know what he must tell, what numbers to show, that is, each speaker must have a checklist for preparation. And even though the agenda will always be the same, a person may forget about something during preparation and operational routine.
If the meeting is a “one-time” meeting, then it is necessary to send out an agenda a few days in advance and collect feedback from people, what issues are they interested in, what is important to them?
2. Conducting a meeting
Stick to a predetermined agenda
Everyone should have the right to vote, one by one. That is, a person must clearly know that he will have the opportunity to express his opinion, and that he does not have to rush in and say something.
Use a moderator to guide the discussion
I recommend the following discussion structure:
· Results of the previous stage/week/month, in general, of any reporting period. Reasons for failure to meet targets.
· Plan for the stage/week, including what the key risks are, what is missing, what you will do preventively, and what if a negative event occurs.
· Answers to questions, additional news or force majeure tasks.
· Completion
3. After the meeting
There should always be a short summary of the meeting. It can be just a small reminder, or a full-fledged protocol. It must contain:
· what you decided on each issue, what actions you are taking;
· who is responsible;
· in what time frame?
This is consolidation, so that later there will be no “but I misunderstood”, but “I didn’t know or didn’t hear.” The resume is sent to ALL interested and responsible persons.
If this is a project meeting, then it is better for the manager to keep a diary of the meeting, which will describe what happened, what risks were realized, what new ones appeared, what were removed, what was done during the period, and what is planned for the next one.
Now it’s time to close a series of posts about tools for increasing productivity that can be applied without special preparation, and the result will be digitized and obtained in the short term.
Final list:
SMART tasks;
Management by goals, use of Kanban methodology and digital services;
Situational management based on the maturity level of employees;
Limiting the number of tasks;
Imperfect execution of “red tasks”;
Standardization and templates
Dividing tasks by importance and urgency using the Eisenhower matrix
Delegation.
Holding meetings
The implementation of these tools can increase productivity by 50-300%, depending on the initial level of sophistication of the management system.
Why is this? To either do more useful things and advance in your career, or to go home on time and devote time to your hobbies and family. Or both.
As you can see, there is no discovery of America here, everything would seem logical and understandable. And it’s even sadder that 80-90% of managers in our country ignore these tools.
In the future there will be a discussion of long-term changes: work with motivation, team building and team microclimate, the basics of “lean production”, etc.
The effect of their implementation is very difficult to digitize, there are too many interdependencies, so they are owned by a vanishingly small number of managers.
But it is on them that management systems in the world's top companies are based.