Leadership Archives

Make Time for the Work That Matters (Post 2 of 4)

Since we all have the same number of hours in a day, working as efficiently as possible is no brainer. But how? Business productivity experts Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen in the September issue of Harvard Business Review provide a self-assessment score card for identifying low-value tasks. I’ve replicated it below for discussion purposes. Check back for my next post to learn how it’s helping some organizations win the race against the clock.

Self-Assessment: Identifying Low-Value Tasks

Developed by Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen (HBR, 9/13)

Make a list of everything you did yesterday or the day before, divided into 30- or 60-minute chunks. For each task, ask yourself four questions:

How valuable is this activity to the firm?

Suppose you’re updating your boss or a senior executive on your performance. Would you mention this task? Would you be able to justify spending time on it?

It contributes in a significant way towards the company’s overall objectives	4
It contributes in a small way	3
It has no impact, positive or negative	2
It has a negative impact	1

To what extent could I let this go?

Imagine that because of a family emergency, you arrive at work two hours late and have to prioritize the day’s activities. Which category would this activity fall in?

Essential: This takes top priority	4
Important: I need to get this done today	3
Discretionary: I’ll get to it if time allows	2
Unimportant/optional: I can cut this immediately	1

How much personal value do I get from doing it?

Imagine that you’re financially independent and creating your dream job. Would you keep this task or jettison it?

Definitely keep: it’s one of the best parts of my job	5
Probably keep: I enjoy this activity	4
Not sure: This task has good and bad points	3
Probably drop: I find this activity somewhat tiresome	2
Definitely jettison: I dislike doing it	1

To what extent could someone else do it on my behalf?

Suppose you’ve been tapped to handle a critical, fast-track initiative and have to assign some of your work to colleagues for three months. Would you drop, delegate or keep this task?

Only I (or someone senior to me) can handle this task	5
This task is best done by me because of my particular skill set and other, linked responsibilities	4
If structured properly, this task could be handled satisfactorily by someone junior me	3
This task could easily be handled by a junior employee or outsourced to a third party	2
This task could be dropped altogether	1

Now tally your score. A low total score (10 or lower) reflects a task that is a likely candidate for delegation or elimination. If you subscribe to Harvard Business Review, go to “hbr.org/assessments/work-that-matters” for an interactive assessment tool to see how you stack up and to get advice for improved productivity.

Make Time for the Work that Matters

How much work can you get done before shifting your attention to the other parts of your day? How many tasks can you mark off your “to do” list before 5 or 6 p.m.? How do you know if you’re even focusing on the right stuff?

If you manage others, it also can be tough to know if your employees are using their time efficiently. “A manager may suspect that an employee is spending his time inefficiently but be hard-pressed to diagnose the problem, let alone come up with a solution,” writes London Business School strategy professor Julian Birkinshaw and productivity expert Jordan Cohen in the September edition of Harvard Business Review.

These guys know a thing or two about work productivity. Birkinshaw is the author of “Becoming a Better Boss” and Cohen is the recipient of the 2010 grand prize from the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) for his employee productivity work with Pfizer.

They describe a process that knowledge workers can use to “make time for the work that matters.” It’s a topic worth thinking about, considering the research showing that by their own admission “knowledge workers spend a great deal of their time—an average of 41 percent—on discretionary activities that offer little personal satisfaction and could be handled competently by others.”

It’s puzzling. If workers understand that much of the work they’re doing can be better handled by someone, presumably less skilled, than themselves, why do they keep doing it?

The authors hypothesize that people instinctively “cling to tasks that make (them) feel busy and thus important, while (their) bosses, constantly striving to do more with less, pile on as many responsibilities as (employees) are willing to accept.”

They also assign some of the blame for less than optimal productivity to lean-to-the-bone organizations that expect higher level employees to take on some low-value tasks that distract them from more important work.

How can knowledge workers be more productive? How can managers be more strategic in encouraging employee productivity? Check back for my next few posts to find out what productivity experts Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen recommend. I’ll also share how Intertech manages the time-task-value conundrum.

When Helping You is Hurting Me: How to Encourage Healthy Teamwork

In the article, “In the Company of Givers and Takers” by Wharton management professor Adam Grant in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, three attributes are identified as common among many employees who are considered “givers” in the workplace: timidity, availability and empathy. Professor Grant describes it this way:

Timidity: “Generous people tend not to ask for help, but they will do so if they are acting as agents on behalf of others.” He proposes encouraging this type of employee to “act as agents—to advocate for others while negotiating for themselves.”

My take: In practical terms, this may mean the giver learns to say something along the lines of, “I would like to help you, but my customer is expecting my project tomorrow. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

We also make sure employees understand that we expect them to act like adults and take ownership for their own productivity. At the very least, they need to create awareness of the business impact of their daily heroics so management can provide support as necessary.

Availability: If givers drop everything when anyone asks for a favor, their own productivity suffers. The key is to carve out time and space for uninterrupted work.

My take: Leaders can assist by helping employees set boundaries. We have financially compensated employees who have agreed to help others. Along with the compensation comes strict guidelines about when that help can occur. We need to ensure that helping does not interfere with the helper’s primary work responsibilities. We also require that the help only consist of mentoring, not actually “doing” the other employees’ work.

Empathy: Givers can be easily swayed by emotional appeals for their assistance, but they can make choices about helping when they are taught to consider others’ perspectives in addition to their feelings.

My take: Helping givers see the big picture, such as how the company is performing against goals on a quarterly basis, connects their individual choices to the company’s mission. Discussions about meeting client’s expectations also can be helpful.

The bottom line:

If the work environment doesn’t support supporting, I believe the results will be a company culture where people are more concerned about holding their own position versus helping others. At the end of the day, most bright, hard-working people want to be part of a firm that recognizes success of the business is more important than any single individual. Or, to put it more simply, when we all succeed, we all succeed!

‘Cost-center’ thinking hobbles IT power published in Star Tribune

Leaders must harness the power of IT. In my Star Tribune article, I share the potential power of IT as an investment (not expense).

When Helping You is Hurting Me: How to Encourage Healthy Teamwork

As noted last time, it’s a good thing when employees help each other. But there are some potential negative consequences too. An article, “In the Company of Givers and Takers” by Wharton management professor Adam Grant in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, explores this topic in detail. I’m sharing highlights, starting with my first two posts in this series that explained the benefits of employee generosity.

Today we’ll turn our attention to the potential “dark side” of employees who help each other. Specifically, the costs of excessive helping to the employee doing the helping, as well as the company as a whole.

Does your organization use a forced-ranking performance evaluation? This is a system that requires for every employee who earns a five another must be given a one. An obvious conclusion under this type of system would be that employees who spend a lot of time helping others might be less productive in terms of completing their own work assignments and pay the price at review time.

In other companies, there are competitive bonus pools. More money for stars equals less for everyone else. Again, this type of system “pits employees against one another, encouraging them to undercut rather than support their colleagues’ efforts.”

Even without a dog-eat-dog scoring system, “strict delineation of responsibilities and a focus on individual performance metrics can cause a ‘not my job’ mentality to take hold,” writes professor Grant. He then poses the following questions:

How can managers promote generosity without cutting into productivity and undermining fairness? How can they avoid creating situations where already-generous people give away too much of their attention while selfish coworkers feel they have even more license to take. In short, can they protect good people from being treated like doormats?

Grant goes on to suggest that part of the solution must “involve targeting the takers in the organization—providing incentives for them to collaborate and establishing repercussions for refusing reasonable requests.”

But much of the responsibility must be assigned to the givers themselves, with management “helping the givers act on their generous impulses more productively.”

Next post: Practical tips for helping good people to not become “doormats” and protecting work objectives in the process!