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Making sure you get the message across

12/21/2010

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To get the message across you need a receptive environment. This means an environment:

Where the message will be believed
Where the recipients are prepared to hear the message
Where there is credibility, trust & openness

To achieve this you could:

Have open-plan office to ensure there are no ivory towers
Walk-the-talk and ensure that if you say “will do it” then you do
Communicate what you can so you limit the secrets
Get people involved and make the communication 2-way
Ensure you are seen to be reasonable and non-aggressive

You also need to be tailor to the communication method to the audience. To do this you need to consider:

What the message is for - direction, action or information only
Who will the message impact - personal to one person, specific to a group or general in nature
Peoples reactions – will it be good, bad, mixed or indifferent
How long you want the message remembered for – short, medium or long-term

If it is bad news for one person, tell them privately. Even if it is good news tell them privately and then get their agreement to a broader announcement.

If you want to make sure everyone gets the communication then putting it on a noticeboard is not enough. Email it to them or place a copy on everyone’s desk.

If people need to remember what you have told them accept you will have to communicate it more than once and in multiple ways.

So to improve communication, do the basics:

Make it clear
Make sure everyone understands
Ensure expectations are known
Walk it around
Get people to meet
Email is good but don’t over use it if a quick phone call will do
Follow up

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Internal communication is more important than external communication

12/12/2010

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A common problem area for managers is communication, or the lack thereof in most cases. Which is a shame as communication helps people management.

What a lot of managers do not realise is that it is estimated that 70% of the internal communication an employees receive is informal, ie: is from the “grape vine”. This is not an ideal because:

Your control over what is communicated is limited
You have the problem with the message getting distorted as it passes from one person to another

Managers need to appreciate that internal communication is more strategic than external communication so they should spend more time on it.

External communication is used to inform, advise, market and sell a product or service.
Internal communication is used to inform, advise, market and sell a concept, strategy or objective. It is used to motivate, encourage, guide and direct, and to build the team and a shared culture.

Internal communication is far more important yet gets less attention.

It is also harder. There may be different units within the organisation, with people with different needs, styles, cultures and reactions. So to get the message across consistently and make it personal to gain buy-in is hard.

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Complete any justifiable outstanding system configuration

12/5/2010

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When organisations implement computer systems they usually end up with a list of issues and outstanding configuration / enhancements which they plan to get around to at some point. You can visit an organisation years after they went live and find items on their “to do” list which date back to the original implementation.

What you can do

Review your issues and wish lists
Cross off anything which is not practical or you know will not be economic to do
Explain to people the reasoning for crossing items off the list
For what is left create an action plan for fixing or completing the configuration – find the budget, set a timeframe and ensure it's done
If you made poor configuration choices on implementation, fix them if you can

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Focus people on clearly defined tasks

11/28/2010

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It is a common complaint / excuse: “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do”.

People need clear direction to perform their job roles correctly. This includes the areas they are responsible for, the tasks they need to complete and what the output / result from these tasks should be. You need to:

Make job roles clear
Make good / bad performance clear
Reduce duplication / wasted effort
Ensure skills / knowledge gaps are identified and filled

What you can do

Part 1

Review job roles and the skills / knowledge required for each
Then review the job descriptions you have for each role
Update them if necessary
Now look at the people in the job roles
Do they have the skills and knowledge you think is required for the role?
If they do, great, move on
If they do not – how can you up-skill them to meet the requirements of the job role?

It is important that you give people a chance to up-skill. Remember, how you handle this type of situation sends a message to everyone in the organisation.

If you take the time to up-skill someone people will be see you as an organisation that values its people and provides opportunities. This improves the culture of your organisation.
The person you up-skill will be better at their job, will have increased loyalty to the organisation and will have a great story to tell others within your organisation and to those who may potentially join it.
You will have retained valuable corporate knowledge and saved yourself time and money. It is far more expensive to recruit and train a new employee than it is to up-skill a current one

To up-skill someone you can you:

Provide mentoring (either yourself or from someone else) to give them guidance in the role to improve their skills and knowledge
Arrange training (as discussed in the previous section)

Part 2
Review the key performance measures for the job roles

Do they focus on the important aspects of the role?
Are they kept to a minimum?
Are they measureable, measured and achievable?

KPI’s focus people on what is important and should be used as a fair way of proving:

If a person can not be up-skilled that they can not do the job
If a person can be up-skilled that this is happening
That a person is under or over performing, so this can be either rectified or acknowledged
Pay rises / bonuses are justified

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Train your people

11/21/2010

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Many organisations play lip service to training, they say they will do it but never follow through. Managers need to realise it is an investment and a must do.

What you can do

Ensure training manuals are up-to-date
Set training cycles -e nsure key training is completed on a regularly basis. Every 6 months or at least annually

The training should cover:

Procedures / processes
Process controls
Customer service
Tax / regulatory updates
Site / customer visits
Train managers on how to manage

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Appoint a single process owner

11/21/2010

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You need someone to take the organisation wide view of the process and do what is best for all.

What you can do
Appoint a single process owner (not just a scape-goat)

Someone with an interest in the process and with, at least, a degree of authority.
Someone able to take an organisation wide view with no personal agendas.
Task this person with ensuring on-going process improvement.

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Fully train users on system functionality

11/14/2010

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Common practice when implementing new computer systems is to train the minimum required with the intention of undertaking more training later. Unfortunately more often than not, does not happen.

What you can do

Step 1
Look at job roles and determine the system functionality required. Then ask or assess how well the functionality is used. If it is not used well undertake training to improve it.

Step 2
Ask people if there is other functionality within the system which they would like to know more about. You may need to explain what functionality there is. Prioritise the list and agree the priority with them. Then arrange for someone who knows how to use the functionality to train them, working your way down the list.

The training resulting from the above steps should should be done either on a 1-1 basis or in small groups of 2 or 3, anymore people and you will need a fully structured training session.

Even if you believe the requested functionality is outside a person's job role considering training them on it, as long as there are no security issues. The more comfortable people are with the system the better users they will be.

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Demonstrate the process is a key part of the business

11/14/2010

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If a manager acts as though a process does not matter, others will do the same.

What you can do

Tell people why the process is important
Show it by attitude and actions
Reinforce the need for all areas to cooperate to make sure the process performs well
Improve communication between areas of the organisation – make them meet in person
Demonstrate that the people performing the process are important

Everything comes from the top and relationships across functions are a reflection of the attitudes of management. Many people forget that it is what is good for the organisation that matters.

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Improve people's knowledge of the process

11/7/2010

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What to do and why
Never assume that people know what they need to do or understand the consequences of their actions. How many times have you heard "if only I'd known". This applies equally to what they need to do and to the impact if the task is done incorrectly.

What you can do
List the key areas of the process that people must understand. This should include their own and down/up stream activities. These key areas could relate to:

Process steps
Tax or legal considerations
Product, service, customer, vendor, country or site knowledge

Now list the names of the people within your organisation who are involved in the process.

Then list against these names the areas of the process you think they should know about.

Now develop a short quiz on these areas to test people’s knowledge:

No more than 20 questions, multi-choice if you wish – it is not intended as a major exam, just something you can use to judge the extent of people’s knowledge.
You can test them verbally if you want.

Test the people and use the results to determine if they have the knowledge you expect them to have. Make it clear you are doing this to assess training needs. People are wary of managers who test their abilities - they will always ask why.

If you are happy with the results, great, move on. If not, then:

Ensure your process documentation is up-to-date
Arrange for some training

Training can consist of:

Getting someone in to give a short overview of the areas where knowledge is required. This person could be Internal – from another part of the organisation (ie: from the warehouse, a site, sales, finance or somewhere), External – from outside the organisation (ie: a customer, vendor, a specialist, I've even had the taxman in)
Giving people something appropriate to review - process documentation, a book or manual
Visiting a customer, vendor, branch, another department or somewhere appropriate. It is amazing how a day out of the office can energise a team. It also has the addedd benefit of building relationships
Sending them on an appropriate training course

Once the training is completed quiz them again to check that they now have the knowledge they need.

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Non-technology process improvements are independent of scale

10/29/2010

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Non-technology improvements are independent of scale (anyone can do them), are potential DIY initiatives and are worth the effort. You can improve a process by as much as 10%-25% by focusing on the non-technology aspects of the process and the people:

For the process you need to look at its steps, controls, paper flows, etc, and how current technology is used. For the people you need to look at their skills and knowledge, ie: what they do, how they do it. And for a process improvement to be effective it needs to achieve at least one of the following:

Allow the organisation (or parts thereof) to focus on its core activities
Enhance the skills and knowledge of the people within the organisation/process
Provide information useful for managing the organisation/process
Improve the responsiveness of the process (eg. turnaround time, accuracy)
Help to define roles, responsibilities and accountabilities within the organisation/process
Enable the process or the people to be monitored and measured for performance
Reduce headcount, related expenses, systems costs or overheads
Leverage buying power for the organisation
Improve the utilisation of current technology
Enhance or leverage capabilities for smaller units within the organisation
Improve service levels for the organisation/process
Eliminate activities that add no value within the process
Eliminate organisational layers and thereby reducing the cost and improving the responsiveness of the process
Establish a foundation to support the organisations growth

Remember, most organisations don't get the most out of the technology they use. So why would new technology be any different? Before thinking about changing something make sure you are getting the best out of what you have by taking the time to do non-technology process improvements

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