Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola

Productivity Case Histories | Productivity improvement articles | Time Tips Articles
 

Productivity Knowledge Base: Beware Quick Fixes

Managers are often tempted to throw money at productivity problems, rather than invest in real solutions. They are also tempted to jump into a "solution" they heard about at a seminar or golf game, without analyzing it thoroughly first. Either approach can actually make things worse. Let's look at a couple of examples, then talk about the right approach.

Example one

Ron, the president of a small and growing firm realized his accounting group could not keep up with the rapid growth. This group consisted of two book keepers, one person who administered payroll and accounts payable, one person who administered invoicing and accounts receivable, and a hands-on unit manager. None of these people had formal training in accounting.

After hearing countless complaints about working late nights and weekends, Ron decided to install an accounting system. Unfortunately, this simply automated the inefficient accounting processes already being used. Consequently, problems appeared more often and required even more hours to resolve. On top of that, the system was very expensive and took four weeks to install. This installation at staff time like termites on wet wood.

Example two

Dave was an operations manager with P&L responsibilities for an electrical contracting firm. The firm had three such managers, each with their own staffing and area of specialty--forming three arms of the company: telecom, industrial maintenance, and industrial construction. They shared some common resources, such as administrative and back office support.

Dave was concerned about shrinking margins, and decided productivity improvement would bring those margins back up. So far, so good. Dave instituted a Best Practices program. Unfortunately, the program took a cookie cutter approach. If someone submitted an idea as a Best Practice idea and the Best Practices Committee agreed it was a Best Practice, then that approach became mandatory for any task of that nature.

Those on the committee were managers--people not actually doing the work. When someone from the telecom arm of the company got an idea into Best Practices, that dictated policy in the industrial maintenance and industrial construction arms. But, those three areas operate under different rules and serve different customers with different standards and different expectations.

Callbacks started increasing, and complaints of confusion in the field soared. Productivity plummeted, due to a combination of work stoppages and rework.

Replacing quick fixes with real solutions

You must do some things before adding a productivity fix. Otherwise, you are likely to go backwards. Here's a brief overview--for a more developed approach, consider one of our productivity seminars.

  1. Define the problem. What is causing productivity to suffer? Be as specific as possible, looking for root causes.
  2. Characterize all causes. For example, determine if they are cultural, educational, tool-related, deficit of technology related, procedural, organizational, communication-related, managerial, and so on.
  3. Look for a solution to fit the problem, not a problem to fit a solution.
  4. Test. If you can deploy a solution on a trial basis, or small scale first, that is usually the best way to go.
  5. Work with the team. Don't shove a fix down the throats of your workers, unless you want it to fail.
  6. Monitor and adjust. Productivity improvements that would otherwise be great successes can fail due to a minor problem that proper monitoring will catch. Go in with eyes open, mouth shut, and ears on full alert--in other words, don't listen only to what you want to hear or see only what you want to see. You can improve only that which you can accurately measure.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do. And, paradoxically, many common "time management" techniques and practices are timewasters because they divert limited resources (such as time) to the wrong things.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.