Practical Developmental Ideas December 2003
This issue is about "Eliminating
Work". People seem to be getting busier and
busier with very little time to think and even less to "be".
This is very odd as we have more labour saving devices and much better and
easier communications than ever before. I don't have "the answer" to
this but I do have a few practical ideas that may be helpful.
A further request for your stories
This is the eighth issue of these ezines. I
have had some feedback saying they are helpful, and their circulation is
expanding, so thank you. I would still be very interested indeed
to hear of your stories of using any of the stuff in the
ezines. I would also be interested in your experience or ideas of
working with the themes in your way. If you wish and
you give me permission, I could add a story to each edition, with your
name and contact details if you want. I am sure this would enhance
the ezine and develop the ideas too.
So, if you have had an interesting experience with
these themes, will you email
me a two or three paragraph story?
Some problems and benefits
of eliminating work
You need some slack to improve the way you do anything.
You need time to look at what happens now, time to think about how to make it
better and time to put those improvements into practice. Many organisations
have got smaller while doing the same amount or even more work. This can squeeze
out time to think. Of course, some of this has been necessary. Most people
would agree that some organisations have been very inefficient and that, in my
field, week long training courses may not be the best way to deliver training
and development.
If you can invest time to think and improve, then the
returns can be staggering. ICI did some Coverdale training at a factory
some years ago. A minor, but visible, outcome of the training was that meetings
were more efficient. The minimum estimate for time saved was 10%. This led
directly to a return on the investment in training of 42% a year compound.
Eliminating less valuable work can help people
concentrate on higher value work that is more useful and more satisfying too.
People grow and the organisation does too. I often find it helps to ask people
at developmental events I run to think about what they might stop doing to make
the space for the new ideas and plans that follow from such events. Otherwise,
"Oh no, not more work!" can get in the way of good things happening.
Some solutions
Talk about it!
I once ran a whole series of short "Time
management" courses in an organisation. The heart of these was for the
people who attended to make a list of the issues that concerned them. We wrote
these up as How to... So some might be "How to cope with interruptions? or
How to set priorities?" Then the people shared their own best practice for
managing these things and watched a film with some other ideas. This was very
popular and worked well. It gave everyone permission to admit there was an
issue in the organisation and that everyone had something to learn about
handling it.
We got even more value when we did the same work with
teams of people who worked together every day. Then they talked about how they
made work for each other and decided how to do less of this.
Talk to your customers
In almost all jobs we provide a service or a product to
an internal or external customer. You can waste a lot of time and effort if you
don't do enough or well enough and have to do it again. Even more time gets
wasted when you do too much or too well to "impress". I have seen
very senior people make a casual request for some information that has set many
people running around and doing "good" work. When the beautiful
report finally got back to the requestor, he or she had forgotten why he or she
asked for it. This is a complete waste. In one organisation a request form for
a capital project went through 17 drafts before being put forward and the 17th
draft was very close to the first one.
The "moral" from these tales is to discuss and
agree what your customer wants or needs and how and the appropriate amount
of effort before you start work. Thinking and planning time are really
cheap compared to doing time.
All organisations have systems for doing things. These
usually require quite junior people to be suppliers and customers to each
other. If you get all the people involved in a room to talk about what they are
doing, what the system is for and what they need from each other, you will find
that whole chunks of work just disappear. Marks and Spencer did an
exercise where they looked at all their systems and asked if they needed
them. One of the criteria was "Does this give us more benefit than it
costs to run?" As a result, they eliminated whole systems and their
associated work.
Avoid making work for other people
We all get mounds of spam email everyday. The people who
send it think of it as a very cheap and easy way of selling. It is cheap to
send, but it costs us all to receive it. The same is true inside organisations.
There are many ways to make work for each other. Email is an obvious one.
I have one client who has suggested that all internal emails be no more than
three lines long. I am not sure about that, but as 80% (?) of non-spam
emails in organisations are internal, you could ask if they are all necessary?
How about putting "How to avoid making work for
people?" on the agenda of a team meeting or in part of a
developmental workshop?
Seek and give feedback
A head office employee gathers information
from regional offices about the uptake of a service. The purpose of the work is
for everyone to know what is going on across the country. The regional managers
have asked for this.
However, he has to chase them for the information. He
has no direct evidence about how his work is used. It seems possible is
not useful because, if it was, would he have to chase it? This has been
going on for years. You can imagine the regional people saying "Another
one of those reports" and then filing it in the bin.
In this and similar cases, the provider of the information could
ask for feedback about the present value of the work, and how to make it more
valuable. The receiver could say that he or she likes the reports and finds
them useful, make suggestions for simplifying them or say "I am sorry but
I would like you to stop sending these as they are a waste of my time and
yours". This is more polite than the US Company who issued all it's
employees with a rubber stamp with "Bullshit" on it and instructions
that, if you don't find what you are being sent useful, use the stamp and send
it back!
Encourage good work to drive out bad
Another approach might be to encourage people to talk
about the work they do that they know is the most valuable, enjoyable, and
stretching and life enhancing that they do. We could then ask them how they can
find a way to do more of this. This might lead to the "dross" falling
out naturally. I haven't tried this as it has only just occurred to me while
writing this issue. It as another example of an appreciative approach to
managing change and might work. Do you think this is worth a try?
More information
There is more information about eliminating work on my website. The articles Work Laundry ,
Managing Time and
Eliminating
Work are directly relevant.
Feedback please
So, I hope you have found the information in this issue interesting and
useful. The subjects I might cover in the next issues are: -
Conflict resolution
Developing your people
Improving working relationships
Removing emotional blocks
Stimulating creative thinking
Thinking tools and processes
Are these important to you?
I am sure there are many ways to make this more useful
to you. Please let me know what you think of it, if you have time. If
you have any particular developmental interests you would like me to cover,
please let me know. I will try and respond if I can and if I don't know
anything about the subject, I will tell you.
Commercial
I enjoy helping clients think through real issues
involving people. I sometimes stay in the background as coach or consultant and
sometimes work directly designing and delivering developmental
events. I am getting more and more interested in working in a
appreciative way. This seems to release energy and get results easily and I
enjoy it a lot. If you need to know more please refer to www.nickheap.co.uk
,email info@nickheap.co.uk or give me a
call on +44 (0)1707 886553.
Many of the readers of this newsletter are
consultants themselves. I learned a great deal from other consultants over the
years so I am glad to have this opportunity to do the same
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Using these materials
I am entirely happy for you to use or draw on
any these materials in any way you think will be helpful. I am keen to have my
work, and the work of the people I have learned from, used.
Please will you say where you found them? One way might be to give a link back to the web site, www.nickheap.co.uk or email info@nickheap.co.uk. This will help these positive ideas to spread, and help my business, too.
Best wishes,
Nick
Heap
43 Roe Green Close
Hatfield
Herts AL10 9PD
UK
01707 886553
Web, with many resources: www.nickheap.co.uk
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