Management Software

This is the second blog on factors critical to the successful deployment of  a performance management system across a large or small business. In the first blog, the first critical question was, “What’s the objective?”

2. WHAT’S IT WORTH TO YOU? This question, along with your response is the 2^nd key predictor of your success. Especially when deploying performance management software across your organization to deliver… well, exactly what are you delivering?

• will keep you on track and motivated by the desired outcome,
• will help you avoid under-spending on resources to deploy the solution and
• will keep you out of the 2/3’s group that doesn’t succeed at deploying software.

When deploying a performance management system across a small or large business, there are many variables and issues to address. But I’ve found that there are two questions that are critical to your success, regardless of the size or nature of your business. I’m writing this to not only expose those questions, but help you get very clear on your answers.

In order to get other people clear and buy-into (”your”) objectives, you need to make time for interaction in which they have the opportunity to see, agree and support your decision. If you get initial push-back, plan on additional interaction time in which you hear and acknowledge their perceptions, BUT don’t leave until you have dismantled their objections. Stop. Before we go any further, let’s talk about how to manage objections. Objections are usually based in a different world view that is constructed on a different set of facts or interpretation of facts than you might wish. The best way to deal with objections is to first listen and acknowledge, and then present reality based performance facts. It’s only human to minimize performance gaps, so you may need to dredge facts up to the surface. Facts that inevitably, and unmistakably point out the reality that something about how business is currently managed is not OK, is not good enough, doesn’t fit with where you all want the business to go. In essence, you are providing data to back up your objective and why it’s worthwhile to pursue it.

The truth is, utilizing performance technology, like ManagePro software, is a statement that you want/need/require things to change. If that’s the case, you might as well say it point blank. Change and performance improvement is not something to dance around… or perhaps it might be better said that if change is a dance – you want to take the lead.

Check out my next blog (link below) for the second question you should be asking that is critical to your success.

Continued to article ”Two Questions that are Key to Your Deployment Success (2 of 2)“

I wanted to follow-up my blog on working smart, and not let the week go by without providing some tips on working smart.

Let’s get a definition going to start. Here’s my working definition:
Working smart is a style of working based on the decisions you make and how you manage information in the process.

This blog is going to be short and to the point, but conceptual – and I’m aiming it at those of you who would would like to get more done with less. It is not for those who reframe working smart as making money without working… there’s plenty written about that already.

Sometimes you just need some practical tips. There are some great blogs and web pages out there that cover practical tips that I don’t want to duplicate. Click the following links for some examples:

Working Smart with teams,  General life choices, Saving an hour a day, Working Smart at the office

So let’s get to it.  From my vantage point, working smart and managing information converge on three basic practices I use.  Strengthen any one and you work smarter.  But why just do one, do all three.

1. Use information (and time) with intentionality.    Do it at the start of the day, do it all day long.  Think about your outcome and manage the information that will help you get there and let go of the rest.  This is essentially a take-off on the idea of think before you act, but it has huge implications when it comes to managing information, since information overload is something we all deal with.

Here’s what this doesn’t look like – going through the paces,  whether that is working as usual, putting your time in, dutifully reading through your email.  Be intentional with how you manage life and information. And yes, that requires that you think and ask yourself (”What’s most important to accomplish today in terms of outcomes?”) not just work, which leads to the next key.

2. Prioritize your focus.  There’s not enough time to do everything. You don’t have time to put everything neatly away, there’s not enough time to stay up on all the topics of interest, not enough time to read all the email and blogs coming in.    Manage information based upon what’s important – which is defined by the first step.  Identify and live with intentionality.    That brings a relatively narrow focus, or as the movie “City Slickers” defined it, “know what’s number 1″ – and I would add to it, know what’s number 1, and how you plan to get closer to it today.

Your job is probably not to be the “library of congress.” To have everything neatly in its place or to please everyone.  It is, for the purpose of this blog, to work smart, to live smart, and when that comes to managing information, it means narrowing the focus based upon your priorities and desired outcomes.   That’s where you want to spend your time, that’s where it’s most important to track and manage information. That’s also where you will realize your best results.

I don’t need to get everything done, just the “priority 1″  items. And on the priority 1 items, I need a system that allows everyone who touches that to work in a coordinated, collaborative, up-to-date manner. Anything short of that isn’t working smart.

3.  Get green with information – recycle it! People that work smart recycle critical information.  What do I mean by that?  Think of working smart as documenting and tracking that high priority information in a way that is useful over and over – by numerous people. One input, multiple outputs.  It’s capturing and storing information in a way that makes it available at your finger tips, but also capturing it in a way that it helps you and others plan, track, adjust priorities, allocate resources, review results… and the list goes on.

Not getting green with information looks consistently like storing information in a means that is easiest at the moment – but unavailable without a lot of work to anyone else who might need it.  Not being green means managing information in a way that requires little effort on your part, but is unavailable to anyone else who needs to collaborate or coordinate with you.  Not being green means managing critical information in places like your personal todo list, your brain, in a spoken conversation, on a piece of paper.    I can’t read it from over here, neither will the other people your team, nor can I pull it up in a couple of clicks.

You can see why we put such an emphasis upon using the information management and work smart capabilities of ManagePro, because most of us have far better results when we take advantage of technology tools to work smarter – it has such large potential payoffs.

Bottom Line:

You can affect how much you and others work smart, especially as it interfaces with managing information. This can be accomplished by focusing on the following keys:

1.  Use information with intentionality, with ongoing reference to outcomes and time remaining.
2. Use the focus of priority and apply it to every time you touch information.  Carefully manage priority one, let go of most of the rest.
3. Get green with information.  Information that fits the first two criteria, needs to be documented in a manner (in a database) that is re-useable and very accessible to whom-ever you are collaborating and coordinating with.  This is partly a personal information management discipline and partly a using the right technology.

Link:

Working Smart and the Comfort of Habit

Working Strategically – the Missing 4th Step

ManagePro and Management – Creating High Performance in your Work group.

High Performance Management - Basic Performance Drivers

1. Drivers:

· One input – multiple use; workgroup task planning and management

· Automation of the routine; from voice to digital, from report preparation to immediate information retrieval

· Organizing work around the GAP+ model; from task lists to projects to a system of Goals – Action Plans + plus feedback and course correction

· Elevating People’s use of Tools; practicing solution based leadership in the management of transition

a. Review each driver dynamic and the relevant costs

b. Understand ManagePro related features

c. Evaluate current work practices

d. Establish preliminary go-forward design

2. Working in a ManagePro-centric manner

· Challenges and benefits

· Launching a solution

· Managing Resistance

· Roll-out primer

Goal Setting: Using the “DORIP+” model (Defined Outcome, Requirements, Issues/obstacles, People, plus dates, resources, priority, customers…) - How’s that for a name?

1. Over-view of the differing use/function of “goals” in ManagePro

· Goals as a focusing of organized effort, versus traditional business focusing drivers (lists, deadlines, meetings…)

· Smart project goals

· Smart strategic goals

· Headings and business function categories

· Thought/Knowledge containers

2. Goal mechanical structure in ManagePro

· Cascading dependencies

· Assignment to individuals versus teams

· Status function

· Customizing the Goal details view

· Designing custom goal screens (Balanced Score Card, Head’s up view,)

· Date functions, Original Due Date, and Date Completed

· Understand how goals are assigned to the Person/Team level

· When should goals be Top Level and when should they be local to a P/T entity

· Use of the Priority and Schedule date functions

· Use of the Goal Wizard

3. Successful Goal development and management as a solution process

· Who to involve

· What to expect

· How to prepare

· How to facilitate

· Tips and traps