Time Management Tips

Improve Your Time Management Skills

Do you often feel like you have more things to do than you have time to do them? Here are tips to help you improve your time management skills both at work and at home.

• Keep Prioritized "to do" Lists: List tasks you must complete in order of priority (most important to least important). Cross off items as you complete them.
• Schedule Breaks: Schedule breaks at regular times. You'll be less likely to goof off when you should be working.
• Learn to Delegate: Don't try to do it all yourself. Assign jobs to others.
• Get Organized: It's much easier to accomplish tasks if your work area is organized.
• Learn to Say "No": This tip of course works better in your personal life than on your job.
• However, if you think your other work will suffer, try to explain it to your boss.
• Get Enough Sleep: Although it's tempting to work long hours, in the end you're actually less efficient when you're tired.

How to Deal With the Unexpected

The saying, "Nothing ever goes as planned," is as true at work as it is anywhere. Things don't always happen the way we intend them to. Being prepared for these difficulties is important both to the well-being of your employer and to your job success. The employee who solves a problem that threatens productivity, and ultimately the bottom line, will certainly be looked upon favorably. Next are several situations that are potentially harmful to a company's health. Along with each one, there is a plan that could help ease the crisis. These plans are not intended to prevent the unpredictable, but rather to make it less dangerous.

Situation #1

There is a big conference scheduled for mid-morning. The afternoon before the conference you discover the caterer has skipped town with your employer's deposit.
Uh-oh. The conference invitation clearly says that a light lunch will be served. While everyone else is in a panic, you calmly walk to your desk and return with a list of caterers who have told you they could cater a luncheon with several hours' notice. Your boss thanks you. You smile smuggly to yourself, as you remember how your boss insisted on using his caterer rather than the one you suggested.

Situation #2

It's the same conference. The company receptionist, who was to greet those attending the conference, has called in sick with the flu. Everyone else has been assigned another function to ensure this conference, which has been in the works for months, goes off as planned. No one else is available to cover the receptionist's duties.

Should the attendees just wander into the office with no one there to greet them? Luckily you have planned in advance and you know your employer will not need to be embarrassed. You have put together a list of temporary employment agencies and contacted each one to find out their fees. You have gotten your boss's approval to hire a temp if necessary. As soon as you find out you need someone to meet and greet guests, you call the agency and arrange for someone to work for the day. He will arrive ASAP.

Situation #3

Your company is in the midst of a big publicity campaign for a new product about to hit the market next week. The cost conscious powers-that-be have decided to print press releases in house, using a usually reliable copier. The copier, however, has decided to be difficult and is producing streaky copies. The repairperson has informed you that she can't come until tomorrow afternoon. Waiting until then to run off the press releases will mean that they will be sent out late, which is completely unacceptable. Being the brilliant person you are, you anticipated this problem. You contacted several nearby copy shops, whose prices are reasonable and whose turnaround is fast. You rush the documents to them and before the day is over, you have your copies and your boss's gratitude.

Situation #4

You are quietly sitting in your cubicle when you hear a horrified scream come from your boss's office. You run inside half expecting to find him injured or worse. Instead he is sitting in front of computer staring at a blue screen — his computer has crashed. You reboot the computer, hoping to revive it, but still nothing appears on the monitor. You try to calm him down, while you inquire about the location of the backup disks. He stares at you blankly, unable to comprehend what you are saying. Then he says, "backup disk? — I was planning to do that this afternoon." He then begins to realize that the report he has spent the last week working on may be gone forever. Well, maybe not. You search through your address file, and pull out three cards, each containing the name of a computer consultant that specializes in data recovery. You have done your homework — not only did you find these consultants, you obtained rates and references for each one in advance. As an added bonus, all make house calls. You make a quick phone call and set up an appointment for later that afternoon. Your boss takes you to lunch to celebrate your infinite wisdom

Effective Writing

An Important Skill

Of all the classes I took in college and graduate school, the two that have helped me most in my career have been English Composition and Business English. In these classes I learned effective writing skills, which I have used in every job I have ever had. No other job but my work on this site included writing as part of my job description. In spite of this, I was required to write in every job, and it was taken for granted that I would be able to do this. This is the case with most jobs -- whether you must write internal memos, correspond with clients, or help design sales materials. Writing beautiful prose and poetry is a talent. Writing effectively, however, is a skill that can be learned.

Organize Your Writing

Whether you are writing a memo to your co-worker or a report for your boss, you should decide what information you want to convey.
Here is how to do this:

1. List each item you need to discuss in your memo or report.
2. Put them in order -- from most to least important
3. Write a brief summary of your entire memo -- this will be your first paragraph.
4. Expand on each item listed in step 1.
5. If any action needs to be taken by the recipient, state that in your closing paragraph.

Some Tips

Avoid wordiness. Say out loud what you are trying to write. Listen to how the words sound. For example, the sentence, "I found out that I should take a look at our past sales figures in order to come up with a plan to help us re-evaluate our sales technique" could be more simply stated as "I must take a look at our past sales figures to re-evaluate our sales technique."

Write for your audience. Use simple language. You don't want the reader to need a dictionary to decipher what you are trying to say. You should not try to impress your reader with your huge vocabulary. Chances are you will frustrate your reader instead. Most people are juggling several tasks at the same time, and are interested in receiving only necessary information. You are responsible for making this happen. Instead of saying, "His gregarious nature credentials him as a superlative candidate for the job," say "His friendliness makes him a top candidate for the job."

Stay away from jargon your reader may not understand. If your work is very technical, but the person you are writing to is not well versed in that field, stick to words that person will understand. For example, if you are a Web site designer, this sentence in a memo to your client, a psychologist, will make no sense: "What would you like me to use as the BGCOLOR for your site: #ADD8E6 or #FFFFFF?" Anyone proficient in Web page design knows that this question can be translated to "What would you like the background color of your site to be: Light Blue or White?" However, don't expect your client to be more familiar with this technical jargon than you would be with her discussion of a psychological term such as trichotillomania.

A cliche a day keeps the reader away -- or at least it does not make him or her remember what you are saying. You want your writing to be memorable. Because we hear cliches often, we become desensitized to them. The words, then, are not uniquely associated with your writing. Rather than saying "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today" in a memo to a subordinate you are trying to motivate. Simply say, "Stop procrastinating. Get the job done now."

When possible, use the active voice. The active voice makes your sentence stronger and usually shorter. Let's try these examples. Passive voice: "Sales increased due to the networking I did." Active voice: "My networking increased sales."

Don't be redundant. It is not necessary to say "2 p.m. in the afternoon" or "the expectant pregnant woman." Saying "2 p.m." or "2 in the afternoon" or "the expectant woman" or "the pregnant woman" all convey what you want to say and are less wordy.

Of course pay attention to grammar. Use Strunk and White's Elements of Style, available on the Web. A good dictionary should be nearby, along with a thesaurus. A thesaurus will allow you to keep your writing fresh by helping you find a variety of words to use. Many of these resources are available online.

Proofreading is one of the most important things you can do. Since you probably do most of your writing on a computer, you have access to automated spelling and grammar checkers. Beware though -- some words, used in the wrong context may be missed by computerized spell checkers. For example the sentence "To employees attended too meetings two learn about the gnu software," would pass through the spell check without any misspellings being detected. Have someone else proofread your document, if possible. If time allows, put your composition away, and proofread it later, or even better, the next day.

Good Listening Skills

Here's Why You Need Good Listening Skills

Several years back there was a public service announcement that ran on television. It talked about the importance of good listening skills and the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physical ability while listening is a skill. Listening skills allow one to make sense of and understand what another person is saying. In other words, listening skills allow you to understand what someone is "talking about".

In 1991 the United States Department of Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified five competencies and three foundation skills that are essential for those entering the workforce. Listening skills were among the foundation skills SCANS identified.

Why You Need Good Listening Skills

Good listening skills make workers more productive.

The ability to listen carefully will allow you to:

• better understand assignments and what is expected of you;
• build rapport with co-workers, bosses, and clients;
• show support;
• work better in a team-based environment;
• resolve problems with customers, co-workers, and bosses;
• answer questions; and
• find underlying meanings in what others say.

How to Listen Well

The following tips will help you listen well. Doing these things will also demonstrate to the speaker that you are paying attention. While you may in fact be able to listen while looking down at the floor, doing so may imply that you are not.

• maintain eye contact;
• don't interrupt the speaker;
• sit still;
• nod your head;
• lean toward the speaker;
• repeat instructions and ask appropriate questions when the speaker has finished.

A good listener knows that being attentive to what the speaker doesn't say is as important as being attentive to what he does say. Look for non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and posture to get the full gist of what the speaker is telling you.

Barriers to Listening

Beware of the following things that may get in the way of listening.

• bias or prejudice;
• language differences or accents;
• noise;
• worry, fear, or anger; and
• lack of attention span.

Listening Starts Early

If you have children you know what it's like to feel like you're talking to a wall. Kids have an uncanny ability to appear to be listening to you while actually paying no attention at all. While this is something that may pass with age it is important to help children develop good listening skills early. They will do better in school and you will keep your sanity. As the SCANS report points out, good listening skills will prepare children to eventually succeed in the workforce.

• When you tell your child to do something, ask him to repeat your instructions;
• Teach your child to maintain eye contact when talking to or listening to someone;
• Read out loud to your child and then engage her in a conversation about what you have read; and
• Engage your child in age-appropriate activities that promote good listening skills.

Give Yourself the Competitive Edge

How to Be Competitive in Today's Workplace

Today's work place is very competitive. You will need to have a variety of skills that will give you the competitive edge you need to succeed.

To be competitive in today's work place you must be able to:

• Listen Well: Good listening skills make you more productive, help you get along better with others, and allow you to work better in a team-based environment.
• Know How to Use a Computer: No matter what your job is, it's likely you will need to use a computer. It's important to make sure your computer skills are up-to-date.
• Write Effectively: Whether your job requires you to write short memos or lengthy reports, you must be able to communicate well in writing.
• Deal With Crises at Work Being able to solve problems quickly and seamlessly can set you apart from others.
• Manage Your Time: Learning how to manage your time effectively will allow you to complete projects in a timely fashion.

Does Your Boss Engage in Electronic Monitoring?

If your boss is engaging in electronic monitoring, using equipment to monitor your Internet and telephone use, you are probably not even aware of it. You think no one will notice if you just take a few minutes of your work day to do your online shopping. And those phone calls you make from the office -- who cares about that? Let's not forget those jokes your buddies email to you. Your email is private -- or is it?

According to the 2000 AMA Survey on Workplace Testing: Monitoring and Surveillance^* ( American Management Association ) if you work for about 78% of the survey respondents, your activities at work are not private.

This number has doubled since the survey was first conducted in 1997 and has increased significantly from the 1999 survey.

If you are like many people, you surf the net at work at least occasionally. You may have thought nobody noticed, but employers are engaging in electronic monitoring of your Internet use and so much more. Your phone calls, voice mail messages, computer use, email messages, Internet activity, and even your job performance are subject to electronic monitoring and surveillance. You may not even know you're being watched. According to the survey, only 88% of those companies who engage in monitoring and surveillance tell their employees. That's a little scary!

So, is it right? Should employers use electronic monitoring to watch what you're doing? Well, let's look at it from your boss's point of view. The AMA Survey says that employers monitor workers for the following purposes:

• Performance Review: Employers tape customer service and consumer relations personnel so they may evaluate and improve performance.

• Legal Compliance: Provides legal protection for employers in regulated industries.

• Legal Liability: Protects employers from charges by employers who are offended by what co-workers have on their computer screens.

• Productivity: Non-business related activities on company time is costly.

Okay. You got caught. Now what? More than half the respondents to the AMA survey “have disciplined employees for misuse or personal use of office telecommunications equipment, and 28% have dismissed individuals for...” misuse of telephone, email, or Internet. So, before you log on or pick up and dial, think about what you're about to do. Is it more important than your job?

Self Assessment

What Is a Self Assessment?

Self assessment is the process of gathering information about yourself in order to make an informed career decision. It is the first step of the Career Planning Process and is often conducted with the help of a career development professional.

Anatomy of a Self AssessmentWhat should a self assessment look at? A self assessment should include a look at your values, interests, personality, and skills. Here is an overview of the tools you can use to accomplish this. Value Inventories

• Value inventories measure how important different values are to you. Examples of these values, which play an important role in one's job satisfaction, include autonomy, prestige, security, interpersonal relations, helping others, flexible work schedule, outdoor work, leisure time, and high salary.
  

• Interest Inventories
  The questions in an interest inventory ask about your likes and dislikes regarding various activities. The premise of this self assessment tool is that people who share similar interests will also enjoy the same type of work. Examples of interests are reading, running, playing golf, and knitting.
• Personality Inventories
  A personality inventory looks at one's individual traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes. The most frequently used personality inventory is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI).
• Skills Assessment
  In addition to determining what you're good at, a skills assessment also helps you figure out what you enjoy doing. The skills you use in your career should combine both characteristics. You can use the results of the skills assessment to make some changes by acquiring the skills you need for a particular career.

How to Respond to a Bad Review

Here's How:

1. Read your review very carefully. Don't respond immediately.
2. Take time to determine if the negative review is really unjust or if you're just taking offense at being criticised. If you still feel the review is unjust go to Step 3. If you realize the review is correct go to Step 6.
3. If you can honestly say that you've received an unfair review, make an appointment to meet with the person who wrote it.
4. First, acknowledge any points that are correct.
5. Then use clear examples to contradict those points you feel are untrue. Use a paper trail to back yourself up.
6. You've realized your reviewer was fair. The truth hurts, but you can use a bad review as a learning experience.
7. Make an appointment to meet with your boss so you can find out how to improve your performance.
8. Keep a paper trail of everything you do, beginning with that meeting. You'll want to have evidence of the effort you've made to improve your performance.
9. If you follow your boss's suggestions, next year's review should be much better.
   

Tips:

You must be very objective in determining whether your evaluation is unjust. Take some time to think things through.

Give yourself at least a day to calm down. Nothing gets handled well in the heat of the moment.

Keep in mind that the boss usually wins. It may be worth a shot, but your next step may be job hunting.

Why Annual Performance Reviews Are A Waste Of Time

Why Annual Performance Reviews Are A Waste Of Time

How many times have you had to stop doing something important just to fill out an employee's annual performance evaluation? How often was that because somebody from Human Resources was bugging you for it? Or the employee was reminding you, because their raise depended on it?

Wrong Reasons
Those are certainly the most common reasons why we make time for them. Sometimes a sense of obligation or a good secretary's reminder triggers it. None of those are valid reasons for doing an annual performance evaluation, yet that's why most of us do them.

Right Reasons
Did you ever think, "If I don't get all of my employees' annual reviews done on time this year my boss may hold it against me on MY annual review" ? That is a better reason, but I'll bet it never happened.

How about doing it because "I may be able to help an employee improve his or her performance"? I'll bet that doesn't happen as often as hauling someone into your office and chewing them out or walking out to somebody's cubicle and congratulating them on getting the project done ahead of time.

And that is my point.

ANNUAL performance reviews are a waste of time because they are too infrequent.

You see it yourself in your own review. Your boss doesn't mention whether or not you got all of your employees' annual reviews done on time, because. usually, it happened so long ago he doesn't remember. And neither do you for that matter.

So What's Better
Well, more frequent is better. And less formal is better. Better for both you and the employee.

If you have to do formal reviews, do them quarterly. Most of us can actually remember what has happened over the last three months. Be sure to spend less than a quarter of the time doing them that you would have for an annual review. Then when you have to do an annual review you can just review the past three months and tack on the three previous quarterly reviews.

The best performance review is the ongoing review. Work with your employees on how they are doing on a task by task basis - daily or weekly. Let them know right away what they are doing wrong so they can correct it now, not twelve months from now when it has become an ingrained habit.

Be sure to also point out the things they are doing well. Remember, we all like praise. Remember too that if you neglect to tell them that something they are doing is right, they may not realize it and they may change it.

Skip the Formality
The other benefit to doing frequent (continual) performance evaluations is that they become less formal. Neither you nor the employee feels stressed about it. This can eliminate the kinds of extreme behavior that we read about when an employee, who has been reprimanded, goes home gets his gun and comes back to the office and shoots his boss, several coworkers, and himself.

The Annual Performance Review

How to maximize the benefits from this required time waster

There are three key things to remember about annual performance reviews:

1. They are a waste of time.
2. They are required at many companies.
3. They should contain no surprises.

A Waste of Time

Annual performance reviews usually are a waste of time. They are too infrequent and too formal to be of any value for the person being reviewed. They are something managers feel they have to do, not something they see as a tool to improve the performance of their group. In Why Annual Performance Reviews Are A Waste Of Time I provide specific suggestions on how to improve them.

Required

Most companies require an annual performance review be completed for every employee.
The Human Resources department provides a standard form and a required grading scale. Every manager dutifully fills out the inane form, or has the employee do it, then spends as little time as possible discussing it. Whatever discussion does take place is usually combative, because the employee knows this one document will determine the amount of their raise for the next year.

Since you can't get out of doing an annual performance review, do what you can to make them as useful as possible.

No Surprises

The best way to get value out of a performance review is to make sure it contains no surprises. You shouldn't put anything in an annual performance review that you haven't already told the employee. This includes your overall evaluation of their performance and how that compares to others in the group.

The main reason companies require annual performance reviews is to have a method for distributing annual raises. If each employee is given a grade, raises can be distributed based on that grade. As a result, when you do an annual performance review, the only thing the employee listens to is their grade. They want to know what their raise will be.

Using employee grades to apportion raises is fundamentally flawed. It doesn't effectively tie raises to what an employee did during the year to help the company achieve its goals. It is just a mathematical distribution. However, you have to use it if it is the company system. Just make sure you use it in the way that is most helpful in getting your group to produce at peak levels.

Assuming you have been doing continual performance reviews as things happen, and more formal reviews every quarter, each of your employees will know how they are doing. Therefore, assembling their annual performance review is simply a matter of pulling material from their previous three quarterly reviews and adding the fourth quarter items. Make sure the employee understands that this is just a quarterly review so they can concentrate on what you are telling them, rather than worry about their grade.

When complete their fourth quarter review, you have completed the performance review part of the annual review. You and the employee should have a clear and identical perspective on their performance and, more importantly, their goals for the coming review period. You should both be able to select the same appropriate grade from whatever list the company has compiled (A, B, C 1, 2, 3, etc.). If there is a difference of opinion, it's usually from the employee not understanding how their performance compares to others in the group. So if the employee selects a grade higher than you select, make sure you clarify why.

At the end of this process, you have:

• Given the employee feedback on how their performance is helping the group achieve its goals,
• Clarified for them how their performance compares to others in the group,
• Motivated them to continue to improve their performance,
• Selected with them the appropriate grade from the company list, and
• Completed the annual review that is required.

Now comes the hard part of ensuring that the realistic performance grades you gave your employees are commensurate with their peers; making sure that what you label as average is not called superior by another manager. For that, you will need to work closely with your boss.

How To Give Negative Feedback Properly

“Jane, you ignorant slut.” No one who heard Dan Ackroyd make that statement on the early Saturday Night Live shows had any doubt that he was about to strongly disagree with whatever Jane Curtin had just said. The problem was he was going to disagree not with what was said, but with who said it. That’s not the way to give negative feedback.

Difficulty: Average

Time Required: varies

Here's How:

1. Get your emotions under control. You don't want to critique someone else's actions when you are angry or upset. You are likely to say something you don't really mean or to react poorly to something that is said to you.
2. Find a private place. No one wants to receive negative feedback in front of others. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but that should be a last resort. Take a meeting in your office, call the person into a vacant conference room, step into the lunch room if it is vacant.
3. Focus on their actions, not on the person. You create an immediate barrier when you criticize the person. Focus instead on what you want to change. Focus on their performance.
4. Be specific. It does no good to tell someone 'you have a bad attitude'. You need to identify specific actions the person took or specific things they said if you want them to understand.
5. Be timely. Negative feedback should be given as soon as possible after the event. If you see an employee being rude to a customer, don't wait until their annual performance review to tell them. How many other customers will they have angered in the meantime? Call them into your office right away.
6. Be calm. Don't yell and scream. The other person will become defensive and won't hear what you are trying to tell them.
7. Reaffirm your faith in the person. This reinforces step three, but here you tell them that you still have faith in them as a person and in their abilities; it's just their performance you want them to change. Say something like "you're a good customer service rep, so I'm sure you see the need to be more patient with customers".
8. Stop talking. After you have told the person what specific, recent actions were inappropriate, and why, stop talking. Give the other person a chance to respond to or refute your statements. Listen to what they have to say.
9. Define positive steps. Agree on what future performance is appropriate for the employee. If there are specific things the employee needs to start doing or needs to stop doing, be sure they are clearly identified. If there is something you need to do, perhaps additional training for the employee, agree on that as well.
10. Get over it. After you have given the negative feedback and agreed on a resolution, move on with the job. Don't harbor ill will toward the employee because they made a mistake. Don't hover over them out of fear that they may make another mistake. Monitor their performance as you do all employees, but don't obsess.

Tips:

1. Giving negative feedback is never easy, but if done properly it isn't unpleasant.

What You Need:

• A private place.
• A calm mind.
• Patience.
• Your sense of humor.

Flatten The Pyramid

Somebody has to do it
Employees are often promoted to their level of incompetence. Often, those employees would like to step back to a position where they were successful but can't. Their ego may get in the way, the position may have already been given to someone else, or the company may not know how to handle such a request. Smart companies recognize the damage done to their organization by leaving people in a position at which they are incompetent. They use Performance Management to move them sideways, if possible, or back down. If Performance Management doesn't work for you, or if you want out-of-the-box thinking, consider self-directed teams as an alternative.

Self-directed teams
Self-directed, or self-managed, teams are not new.
heir utility in business situations is well documented. One aspect of the value of such teams that is often overlooked, however, is their ability to effectively manage the competency levels of the team members.

Self-directed teams are frequently created within traditional business organizations either to address cross-functional issues or to promote employee empowerment. They also are found in non-profit companies and in non-business organizations, such as social clubs. One of the more recent appearances of self-directed teams is in "virtual" corporations.

"Virtual" corporations
"Virtual" corporations are formed when several individuals, or small companies, band together to pursue a business opportunity. Usually it is an opportunity for which that the individual or small company could not successfully compete on their own. This can be due to lack of specialized expertise or simply lack of size. By teaming with others, they can overcome their handicap.

These virtual corporations are a prime example of how self-directed teams manage incompetence. The teamings are usually short-term, like the business opportunities they pursue, but are often repeated frequently. A group of 10 individuals may have a long term understanding, which allows them all to work together smoothly. On any given team, a smaller number of group members may participate based on the opportunity. Which members participate changes frequently, depending on the needs of the group.

In cases like this, an individual or small company simply will not be included in those opportunities for which they are not qualified. The group self-selects the best members for the opportunity. Incompetents just are not selected.

If the team continues to select an incompetent, perhaps because he is the only one in the group with a specific area of knowledge, the group will not be able to compete as effectively. In time, they will either cease to exist or they will replace the incompetent with another individual with the level of expertise needed. Self-directed teams can function in this same manner within a company.

Flexibility required
There are many requirements for a self-directed team to be successful. In terms of managing the competence levels of their members, however, the key requirement is flexibility. The team has to be given authority to add or remove team members. This does not have to be total authority. The company can, and should, place guidelines around the process. However, the team must be given sufficient latitude to adjust the composition of the team that they can achieve their objective. If they have this latitude, and if they are committed to achieving their objective, they will either exclude incompetent members or they will move them to a position where they can contribute.

Flatten the pyramid
Self-directed teams are one way to flatten the pyramid. Others should be explored. The more we can remove the hierarchy from the organization structure, the less pressure there is on an individual to continue to seek promotion to "higher" levels, even to levels for which they doubt they are qualified. We also provide an opportunity for individuals to move laterally in their search for challenging, fulfilling work rather than always having to move "up". Finally, there is less resistance on the part of the individual to moving back down, and there are a greater number of options for the company that needs to move someone to a different position.

Manage This Issue
The flatter the pyramid, the greater the flexibility you have to manage. Don't create organizational levels that are not required. Take full advantage of self-directed and matrix teams in your efforts to flatten the pyramid. Not only will you get a more responsive organization, you will be able to limit the number of individuals who rise to their level of incompetence, only to get stuck there.