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Senior Management Communication with Employees Inadequate
| As a project manager, you depend on senior management to create an environment where your project can succeed. A major part of this environment is created by communication. Good communication. So how are your senior managers doing?
When HR executives were asked to rate their senior management’s communications with employees, about half gave a grade of C or less. Not good. What’s the problem? HR executives said that, among other problems, there was too much reliance on
Hardly anyone complained of too much communication.
It’s difficult for me to see why, in this day and time, senior manager continue to bungle their communication. But if you are having the same problem, it is worth your time and effort to get more high quality communication from senior management into your project. Perhaps getting help from HR is in order. They seem to be miffed.
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Posted on: August 30, 2007 10:45 AM
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How Would You Invest $500,000?
| After I posted the last item regarding the living dead workforce, I came across this case study. This manager got a very large ROI by investing in people, mainly getting them into the right jobs.
He couldn't figure out why some dealerships in his company performed better than others. He looked at business statistics, but they didn’t help. He looked at organization charts, but they didn’t provide a clue. The managers of the other dealerships did not know either. So he read some books that told him that people have an innate talent to perform certain jobs.
That started him on a years-long quest to get the right people in the right jobs - so that they were fully engaged. He originally found that 16% of his workers were not engaged. His change effort was effected by targeted communications and management skill development. There was resistance to change, of course, but they kept at it until everyone could not deny it was working. And, boy, was there clear evidence: a 600% ROI!
Be sure to get the point here. His massive improvement did not depend upon new, better software or equipment, but upon the identification of strengths of existing workers and the full engagement of those strengths in the business. It can work for you. |
Posted on: August 28, 2007 10:58 AM
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Getting More Out of The Living Dead Workforce
| Wonder why your workers appear like a bunch of zombies trudging through the day and giving you zombie-level results?
One reason may be just a small part of their brains have been activated at their job. The rest may have been deactivated in the parking lot – or even at home. Their apathetic and careless attitude is a natural result of unused skills and experience. The work processes they follow minimize the importance of their abilities. They get repetition rather than real discussion; constraints rather than collaboration; monotony rather than meaningful impact.
In one survey workers said they used 5-10% of their knowledge at work. Is that how your organization is going to innovate its way to success against the competition? Is that how your project will beat expectations? Is that how your career will meet its goals? No, it is not.
You must find ways to put this untapped expertise to use. Bring people into meetings who are usually excluded, but have special insight. When requesting document reviews, enlarge the pool of reviewers. Be more proactive and, during training and motivation activities, tell workers you are interested in their honest opinion and will request in during the project. Elimination of zombies can even start during hiring where you find diverse expertise that can be utilized in multiple project areas. You can think of many more ways that work for you, and you should start as soon as possible. Perhaps you will have much les of a problem 28 weeks later. |
Posted on: August 23, 2007 09:03 AM
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Leadership is Theater
| We are talking about leadership at gantthead this month, and our treatment would not be complete unless we cover an alternate line of thinking. Jeffrey Pfeffer started studying leadership 30 years ago and concluded then that the importance of leadership was vastly overstated. What does he think today? The same!
Pfeffer believes that human leaders are expected to act out a role. Great leaders are those who excel at acting out that role. Witness today’s presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who rose to national fame on images associated with his response to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Former Intel CEO Andy Grove once said about leadership: “Well, part of it is self-discipline and part is deception – deception in the sense that you pump yourself up and put a better face on things than you start off feeling. But after a while, if you act confident, you become more confident. So the deception becomes less of a deception.”
I don’t think leadership is as low a priority as Pfeffer, but there is something to learn from him. My bottom line for you is to avoid underestimating the power of “theater.” That includes your appearance, images of yourself that are distributed, the way you make announcements, how you respond to difficult situations and so on. Improve your use of theater to improve your leadership.
You can read more about Pfeffer’s views here. |
Posted on: August 20, 2007 01:09 PM
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The Coming "Worker Shortage" & You
| There is a widely-held belief in HR that a worker shortage is coming in the next ten years. It will be due to the retirement of millions of Baby Boomers. The question is: Do you really have to worry about this?
Well, others say that it is not going to be a problem, because Boomers will not all retire at the classic retirement age. Perhaps you can guess why from these choices:
Sure, they like to annoy you, but the real reason is more practical. It’s because they are too poor! They need more money and health care benefits.
So: You do not have to worry about a worker shortage. Instead, you have to worry about the increasing intergenerational conflicts! I'm glad I could clear that up for you. Don’t worry, we’ll help you with the skills you’ll need to weather this. This recent article, for exanple. |
Posted on: August 17, 2007 09:44 AM
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