Category Archives: leaders. leadership

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A Better Way To Manage Your Task List

Most effective people who I know use a task list to help them to stay focused throughout the day. Some randomly work their way through their list, while others start at the top and work their way down.

Gary RyanA better way to manage your task list and to improve your daily effectiveness is to follow these simple steps.

1. Prepare your list

This is a classic brainstorm of all the tasks that you need to complete today. Given it is a brainstorm your list will be in a random order in terms of priority.

2. Identify your high value tasks

Rate each task in the context of value that you receive from completing the task. A ‘High’ rating means that the completed task gives you a lot of value in the context of what your role requires you to do, a ‘Medium’ rating gives you medium value and a ‘Low’ rating gives you low value.

3. Identify your hard-to-do tasks

Rate each task for how hard you find it to complete the task. A ‘High’ rating means that you find this task difficult to do (such as having that ‘important’ conversation with your colleague about her ability to meet deadlines). A ‘Medium’ rating is a task that is moderately difficult for you to do and a ‘Low’ rating is a task that you find relatively easy to do.

4. Identify how long it takes you to complete each task

Rate each task in terms of how long it will take you to complete the task. a ‘High’ rating means that the task will take you a long time to complete (you decide your time scale for yourself as it will depend on the type of work that you do), a ‘Medium’ rating means that it will take a reasonable amount of time, and a ‘Low’ rating means that you can complete the task quickly.

5. Complete your tasks in the following order

A. High Value, Hard To Do Tasks That Can Be Done Quickly (H/H/L Task Rating)

In his book Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy refers to these tasks as your frog. If you were to eat a frog at the start of each day, nothing you do for the rest of the day will be as bad as eating that frog! In this context, your High Leverage, Hard-To-Do Tasks that can be done relatively quickly are your ‘frogs’. When you do these tasks first, you clear your mind for the rest of the day. This is a terrific habit to form. When you know that at some stage during the day you are going to have to eat a frog, it clouds your mind until you do it. So you might as well get it over and done with at the start of the day! You won’t regret it!

B. High Value, Easy To Do Tasks That Can Be Done Quickly (H/L/L Task Rating)

Getting these tasks completed creates a sense of accomplishment and shortens your to-do list in the process!

C. High Value, Easy To Do Tasks That Have a Medium and/or High Time Rating

These tasks take longer for your to complete them, but they provide high value in the context of your role.

D. High Value, Hard To Do Tasks That Take a Long Time To Complete (H/H/H Task Rating)

In my world these are my proposals. Each one needs to be tailored to my clients specific needs, so they tend to take a fair amount of time to create. I require decent chunks of dedicated time to complete this task. Knowing that I have already completed other high value tasks before getting to these provides me with the clear ‘mental space‘ that I need to get on with completing this task.

E. Everything else on your list

All these tasks are the things that provide a level of value but aren’t the most important tasks that you need to get done. Sometimes you may find that these tasks can change in value if they are time related. As a deadline nears the value in completing the task may rise. If you find yourself moving these tasks across to your new task list each day (because they aren’t being completed), make sure that you continue to rate them just in case their value has changed. Another option is to set aside an hour or two every week that is dedicated to completing these tasks.

If you follow the five steps that I have outlined above you will discover that you get more high value work done than you do today. Give it a try and let me know how you go!

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

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Project Matrix For Learning

My first permanent job was to commercialise a fitness centre for Monash University in the early 1990s. I was the only permanent employee and had a strong team of casual employees with whom I worked. I quickly learned that there was too much that needed to be done in a short period and that I needed to better use the full suite of talents of the members in the team.

Projects For LearningI was aware of the various interests and strengths of the team members that went beyond their skills and ability as Gym Instructors. One team member was studying Information Technology and had a clear passion for it, another was highly officious and had a passion for consistency among the team, and yet another loved to organise things.

I knew that somehow that I had to find a way to tap into their talents that would benefit the Fitness Centre and themselves, and not break my budget!

I drew up a list of the tasks that needed to be completed. I then rated each of those tasks from a Risk perspective. A Low rating meant that the outcome was a ‘nice to have‘. If it got completed it was a ‘Bonus‘. A Medium rating meant that the outcome was important and the performance of the Fitness Centre would be reduced or slowed if it wasn’t completed in a timely manner. A High rating meant that the task was extremely important to the performance of the Fitness Centre and if it wasn’t completed properly the Fitness Centre would suffer serious consequences which meant that I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly.

Before you ask, the option to hire more permanent staff was not available. First I had to generate the revenue that would eventually pay for more full-time staff. It was a great challenge!

I spoke with each team member and asked if they were interested in leading a project to help us create the performance we desired. All team members said ‘Yes‘. I arranged their schedules so that they had time during their normal shifts to work on their projects. I knew that this meant that they wouldn’t be ‘on the floor‘ as much as normal but I was prepared to take a half step backward to take five steps forward. We also agreed that the projects would have a six-week timeframe within which they needed to be completed.

I took responsibility for all the High rated projects. It was my head that was on the ‘chopping block‘ if we failed so it was only fair that I took responsibility for those projects. I ‘parked‘ the Medium rated projects. I decided to wait until after the first round of projects had been completed and then use that experience to assign the medium rated projects. I needed to have confidence that the medium rated projects would be done properly. I also knew that I would have to coach the team members through those projects which meant that I would need to have more time available to provide that assistance.

I could not have been happier with the results of the first round of projects. The team member who had a passion for I.T. completed an important project that related to setting up ‘norms‘ as comparative data for our fitness tests. The ‘officious’ team member completed a project that set clear standards for the fitness testing procedures and protocols that the team was using. The ‘organised’ team member completed a project that involved re-organising the equipment to improve the ‘flow’ in and around the equipment. I managed to complete the High rated projects as well.

This experience taught me at a very young age the power of projects for learning. Projects create real outcomes. By assigning low risk projects to my team members I was able to tap into their passion and skill. If they ‘failed‘ I wasn’t going to ‘lose‘ anything. By tapping into their passions I also increased the likelihood that their first projects would be a success – which they were! That success built confidence and provided energy for the Medium rated projects which were also embraced and successfully completed by the team with great enthusiasm.

Best of all our success drove the performance results that we were seeking which meant that the following year I was able to engage a number of the team in permanent roles.

I also learnt a great lesson. A lesson that I continue to use to this day. Projects are a powerful tool for creating results, building confidence and assessing team member capabilities. They allow you to learn a great deal about your team members. They also allow your team members to learn that they can produce results themselves.

I created the Projects For Learning Matrix above and have used it many times throughout my career. I assign Low risk projects to inexperienced team members, Medium risk projects to team members who have ‘proven’ themselves and High risk projects to highly experienced, energetic and motivated team members. I avoid giving too many low risk projects to highly experienced and motivated team members – it is better to use those projects to developed inexperienced people.

I have found this simple matrix to be useful and highly effective over many years. I am confident that you will too!

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

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Please, Don’t Kick The Cat!

There used to be a saying that when you’d had a hard day at work, when you got home you should ‘kick the cat‘ before you went in the house. This theory was based on the idea that if you ‘kicked the cat‘ then you could let out your aggression and everything would be okay when you went inside.

Thankfully such thinking is long gone! Not only would it be politically incorrect to take such action, it would be morally and legally inappropriate! So please, don’t kick your cat.

iStock_000003616381SmallUnfortunately, however, this metaphor is alive and well in ‘Organisation Land’. Maybe some of you have been the ‘cat‘ who has been ‘kicked‘ (metaphorically speaking).

A case in point. A client of mine has a national sales role. In 2012, prior to her taking on the role the sales team failed to achieve their prescribed 2012 targets. When she took over leading the team in 2013, despite missing the 2012 target their new targets were arbitrarily raised by 20% and they just achieved them. Celebrations followed. The ‘cat‘ was patted.

In 2014 (their financial year finishes in October) another 20% was added to their target. They just missed their prescribed targets after having been ahead of them for most of the year. Ultimately the team’s performance was 113% better than it was in 2013, but 7% short of the 2014 target. What do you think is happening now? Yes, you guessed it, the ‘cat‘ is being ‘kicked‘. Apparently in ‘Organisation Land’ kicking the cat inspires the cat to higher performance. What do you think?

Personally I have never found getting kicked motivating. Unfortunately I am hearing more and more stories like this.

In this specific example my client was informed by senior managers that she and her team would be trusted to contribute to the targets process once they could be trusted to achieve them. Interesting logic!

Let me just walk through that logic again. Once the team regularly achieve budgets that they had no input in creating, that’s when they will be trusted to put forward budgets in the future. Oh, by the way I should mention that I’m not talking about junior staff here. I’m talking about staff with a minimum of seven years’ experience. There’s a lesson in how to de-motivate people right there!

‘Kicking the cat‘ creates demotivated and disengaged staff. Seriously, if you think that such behaviour really motivates people to perform at a higher standard, you probably also believe that if you go outside and yell at your grass to grow that it will! I’m sorry to let you down but both strategies don’t work.

Folks, growth doesn’t happen in straight lines, not in the short-term that’s for sure. Linear growth expectations are flawed and ultimately cause senior managers to behave in a ‘kick the cat-like‘ manner.

My client is a wonderful, high performing person. She did amazingly well to achieve her result in 2013 and did amazingly well given local economic conditions to achieve what she did in 2014. I doubt that any other team could have matched her team’s performance. Yet do you think she is feeling valued right now?

You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? This high performer will leave and will end up serving another organisation more worthy of her commitment. It is an interesting thought experiment to consider whether your organisation is worthy of the commitment of the people who serve it?

‘Kicking the cat‘ doesn’t work so if you’re one of the guilty ones who does this behaviour, please stop! Treat your people like human beings – you may just be surprised by how well they shine.

If targets aren’t achieved by experienced, engaged people, then sit down with them and work together to work out what can be done. Maybe achieving the 2012 target in 2013 would be, in reality, a success. Just giving people bigger numbers to achieve because it is a new budget cycle is seriously flawed and lacks using the knowledge, talent and expertise that exists within organisational teams. People don’t want to fail. People don’t try to fail. Not most people. Work with people so success over the long-term can be achieved. It is possible.

What’s your experience of being ‘kicked’?

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

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Positive Self Talk Is Not Enough

Throughout your career there are many times when you will doubt yourself. Am I worthy of a promotion? Will my boss laugh at me when I ask for a pay rise? Can I really do this project that I have never done before? Will the audience really want to listen to what I have to say? Can I manage people who are older and more experienced than me?

For over 12 years I have coached leaders and developing leaders about the power of positive self talk. In simple terms, the words that you say to yourself in your head promote an image of success or failure in your mind. This image influences your performance.

Imagine that you were asked to do a presentation to senior management on a project that you had worked on. Throughout your university degree and career you have done your best to avoid presentations because you think that you ‘suck‘ at them.

In this example you are cornered. You can’t ‘run away‘ from this presentation. You have to do it. Imagine your self talk. “I’m going to be terrible doing this presentation. The senior management team are all going to know that I’m a terrible presenter. My future here is going to be damaged. Oh my god why did this have to happen to me!“.

No matter how much practice you did, if you maintained this type of self talk you will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moments in to your presentation your mind will go blank. Then it will fill with the words, “See, I knew I wasn’t any good at presenting and now look at what has happened! My mind has gone blank and the senior management team now thinks that I am useless!“

When your performance matches your self talk it re-enforces it which in turn re-enforces the image that you have of yourself either succeeding or failing. This can result in either a virtuous or vicious cycle that affects your performance.

The point of leverage is your self talk. You don’t have to create ‘fake‘ self talk. This is the type of self talk that even you don’t really believe. In the above example, ‘fake‘ self talk would be something like, “I’m going to be the best presenter the senior management team have ever experienced. I’m going to have them eating out of the palm of my hands.“

You might have this type of self talk if you were already an accomplished presenter, but if you were coming off a low base then this type of self talk will be ‘fake’ and actually won’t help you (because you won’t really believe it!).

A more effective form of self talk is something like, “I’ll be the best presenter that I can be today. Period.” This type of self talk is believable and gives you the opportunity to see yourself as a ‘learner‘ rather than an expert. When you see yourself as a learner and you make a mistake it is far easier to recover than if you have used ‘fake‘ self talk.

However, self talk is not enough. It must be balanced with doing the right work and focus. The right work in this example relates to learning how to do an effective presentation and putting what you learn in to practice before you do your presentation to the senior management team. Focus refers to the skills and structure that support the action that you are taking. In this example your focus would relate to the core message that you want to convey, the key supporting arguments that you have for your message and the call to action that you want the senior management team to adopt.

These self talk principles can be applied to any situation.

If you aren’t doing the right work and don’t have focus, then all the positive self talk in the world will amount to nought.

How do you manage your self talk?

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

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Structures Drive Poor Financial Adviser Behaviour

A recent ASIC Report that identified an “Unacceptable level of failure” by the life insurance industry was caused by conscious or unconscious systemic structures that drove the behaviour of the Financial Advisers.

Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter, Yes For SuccessThe report goes on to say, “Our surveillance results indicate that many advisers . . . may prioritise their own interests in earning commission income ahead of the interests of the client in getting good quality advice.”

Systems Thinking teaches us that organisational structures (rules, policies, procedures and physical structures such as office layouts) influence the behaviour of the humans who operate in that system. The concept is known as Structures Drive Behaviour.

The ASIC Report found that the system provides upfront commissions for Financial Advisers in 82% of cases. The commissions could amount to around 100% of the annual premium and are therefore very lucrative. Unfortunately ASIC has discovered that 96% of the poor advice provided by Financial Advisers was when the adviser was being paid an upfront commission. There appears to be a direct link between the structure of upfront commissions and the provision of poor advice.

Leaders have a responsibility for understanding the behaviours that their structures will drive. I am not saying the leaders in the life insurance industry here in Australia understood the consequences of the structures they put in place because I don’t know.

However, as part of the characteristic of foresight, a leader should consider the intended and unintended consequences of the rules, policies and procedures that they put in place. If you work in a sales environment and you want your sales team members to share information with each other, a commission structures that is 100% based on individual performance is unlikely to drive the sort of information sharing behaviour that you desire. Instead you need to create a system (with input from your sales team members) that provides commissions for both individual and team based behaviours and performance.

Creating a service counter that is only wide enough for one person will create queues. In turn these can block thoroughfares. If you don’t want these consequences then you have to consider how you can physically design and staff your service counter to minimise queues, or you need to design a queuing system that will reduce the clogging of your thoroughfare.

A common error that leaders make is when their team members behave or perform in ways that the leader doesn’t like, the leader blames their people. Systems Thinking teaches a different perspective.

First review the structures that might be causing the behaviours and/or performance results that you don’t like. You can identify when a systemic structure is operating when you have different people come in and out of a system but the behaviours and/or performance outcomes remain the same. Often (but not always) changes to your rules, policies, procedures and/or physical structures will change the behaviours and poor performance results that you are seeing.

Of course, humans are humans and it is possible to have the best possible structures in place and humans can choose to ignore them and do their own thing. But this is a rarity compared to a norm.

If you are experiencing poor behaviour and/or performance results from your team, consider assessing the systemic structures that may be influencing these outcomes before blaming your people. After all, who wants to end up being named in a government report for leading an industry that generates poor outcomes for its customers?

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Discover how to prepare powerful Questions That Matter®

Preparing powerful questions can be one of the most important practices that a leader can include in their repertoire of leadership skills. Powerful questions have the following four characteristics:

  • They are genuine, meaning that we are open to whatever answers are provided
  • They are thought provoking
  • They invite another’s contribution
  • They act as a call to create

It is relatively easy to identify whether or not a powerful question has been used because the five outcomes from powerful questions include:

  • New thinking
  • New solutions
  • New partnerships
  • New products and services
  • Action that would not have otherwise occurred

On the surface creating powerful questions may seem easy. My experience has taught me otherwise. Just like any skill, the ability to develop powerful questions takes time and effort. In programs where we teach people about the importance of developing their questioning skills, the participants often experience difficulty in generating questions. People often say, “I’m really good at answering questions, I’m just not very good at creating them!”

We encourage people to adopt a practice whereby any meeting that you are about to attend, you spend some time thinking about the types of questions that you could consider asking. When adopting this practice there are at least two levels of questions that should be considered. These are the ‘Big Picture’ or strategic questions, and the second level is the action or event level questions. Most people have a tendency toward the action questions which often create a cycle of problems, questions and actions that may not be connected with the strategic possibilities that may exist.

Developing your questioning skills will enable your to develop the capability to catalyse and conduct more Conversations That Matter®.

For example I recently conducted a program where a team of participants were helping another participant (Dan) to prepare a list of powerful questions for a meeting that he was about to conduct with a team member Judith, the following week. Dan was an experienced manager and had authorised leave for Judith who had been with the organisation for about four months and had just completed a training program for her role. Judith had proven herself to be highly competent in her short time with the organisation. Two other staff were to share Judith’s duties while she was on leave. Dan had asked Judith if she was happy to train the two people to do her work and she had agreed to do so.

Dan was happy that he’d been able to allow Judith to go on leave and was pleased that two other staff had been trained to do her work. However, on the first day that Judith was on leave he discovered that while the two staff had been ‘shown’ what to do, neither of them had actually been given the opportunity to ‘do’ the work in their ‘training’ and therefore had little idea about how to do Judith’s work.

As a participant in our program Dan was preparing his list of questions with the help of the rest of the participants in his group. Initially, the questions that the group generated included:
o Did you know that the two staff didn’t really know what to do when you were on leave?
o What did you expect would happen on the first day of your leave?
o Why didn’t you train them properly?

To me, these questions were very much at the action/event level because they are focused on the detail that is ‘right in front of our eyes’. In this example it was clear that the staff had not been trained properly because their performance was lower than expected. Action-event level questions are like zooming in on an issue with a video camera. The problem with starting at action-event level questions is that if you are looking at the wrong picture you will zoom in on the wrong details!

Such responses are quite normal from our program participants because, once again, most of us are used to answering questions rather than designing them. When I asked the group how they would have responded to the questions themselves if they had been Judith, the group (including Dan) reported that they would probably feel like they were being attacked. I then asked Dan if Judith was a specialist in the field of training. He said “No.”
Dan had a sudden ‘a-ha’ moment and then said, “…yet I expected Judith to know exactly how to train someone in her job. Just because she could do her job doesn’t mean that she’d be able or competent to train someone else to do it. I have assumed for years that people could train others to do their job. Some people probably can, but not everybody.”

I then asked, “What performance outcome does your organisation desire when staff are ‘back-filled’ while on leave?” This was a strategic question, a ‘Big Picture’ question. “The same level of performance.” was Dan’s answer. “What system has the organisation created to ensure that the performance outcome that you desire will occur?” I continued.

“Well, other than staff training other staff to back-fill them, there really isn’t one. And come to think of it, we regularly have performance issues when staff go on leave, which then leads us to be reluctant to approve leave in the first place.”

Strategic questions enable us to zoom out, to take in the whole picture and to see how the system is contributing to the issue, not just a single individual.

We then focused back on the questions that Dan was preparing for his meeting with Judith. When generating the questions a member of the group then said, “Maybe it isn’t a meeting between Dan and Judith that we should be preparing these questions for. Maybe it is a meeting with between Dan and the rest of the organisation’s leadership team?”.

Dan had another ‘a-ha’ moment. “You’re right! That’s exactly who we should be preparing this list of questions for. My focus was in the wrong spot. It was very easy to blame Judith, but actually those of us leading the organisation need to take responsibility for this issue. Under-performance when people have gone on leave has been a problem for years.”

For the first time Dan’s thinking on this issue had shifted. Nothing more than a shift in focus from creating answers to creating questions and a couple of strategic questions had enabled Dan to think differently.

Finally after generating a list of questions for the Leadership Team (including both Strategic and action-event level questions), Dan was asked by another group member what his intentions regarding meeting with Judith would be. He answered, “I’ll ask her about her holiday and fill her in about what’s been going on while she was away. I’m not going to focus on the training, not yet, anyway. I was blaming her but it wasn’t her fault. It was ‘our’ fault, including mine. When the time is right I’ll seek her input to the new system that we clearly need to create.”

In conclusion I asked Dan and his group how they would feel if they were Judith when she had the ‘new’ conversation that Dan now had planned to have with her. “Great! I’d feel like Dan actually cared about me and was interested in my holiday.”

Think about the different outcomes that the two potential conversations with Judith would most likely create. Which outcome do you think is more likely to enhance Judith’s engagement with the organisation, and which one do you think is more likely to reduce her engagement? Clearly the new conversation that Dan was planning to have with Judith is more likely to enhance Judith’s engagement with the organisation.

Preparing questions before meetings is a very powerful practice to include in your repertoire of leadership behaviours. Remember to prepare some strategic questions, and as soon as possible to introduce them to your conversation. A simple, yet effective action-event level question to be asked after discussing your strategic questions is, “What will we do next?”.

If you are trying this practice for the first time, please let us know how you go. In addition, please share the questions that you used that seemed to be effective in helping the people with whom you are working to shift their focus to a more strategic level.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Enabling organisations to be worthy of the commitment of employees