Don't worry about how a new process or a new system will be maintained -- it's enough to get it up and running.
How to be a great boss: pay attention to the follow through. Make sure your project's future is staffed and funded.
How many times have you seen systems put in place that, two years later, have fallen into complete disrepair?
I could write volumes on this one. Sometimes the project plan is so ambitious that it is only completed through phase 1 or 2, with the rest of the plan left for a future date. However, oftentimes the project is over-engineered in anticipation of the future implementation of phases 3-7, but no one ever gets budget to go beyond phase 2. As a result, all of the overhead has to be maintained, with no payoff.
Worse still, a project is implemented with a variety of workarounds and manual steps in order to get the thing done on time. However, no one ever has the time subsequently to complete it properly and replace those temporary fixes with solid repairs. The process is so painful to follow that the investment of time required to make it work outweighs the benefits.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Delay your decisions as much as possible
Fine tune and revise your communications so much and go through so many review phases that you miss the opportunity to have an impact.
How to be a great boss: "it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done."
Whoever said that first was brilliant. In contrast, I once had a boss who had to craft a simple reply to a customer (a user of our industrial software package) who had written in to complain about something. My boss started on the reply and then revised it and revised it. He sent it to me and to others in our department to add comments. Days passed, weeks passed, months... well you get the picture. He never sent the reply. Not only did he miss a golden opportunity to set things right with this customer, he came off looking like he didn't care what the customer had to say.
The same circumstance can happen with internal communications. Face it: you are never going to please everyone. Some employees will be peeved at you no matter what you say. Most people will barely read what you send them. Keep your written communications to the point and honest.
How to be a great boss: "it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done."
Whoever said that first was brilliant. In contrast, I once had a boss who had to craft a simple reply to a customer (a user of our industrial software package) who had written in to complain about something. My boss started on the reply and then revised it and revised it. He sent it to me and to others in our department to add comments. Days passed, weeks passed, months... well you get the picture. He never sent the reply. Not only did he miss a golden opportunity to set things right with this customer, he came off looking like he didn't care what the customer had to say.
The same circumstance can happen with internal communications. Face it: you are never going to please everyone. Some employees will be peeved at you no matter what you say. Most people will barely read what you send them. Keep your written communications to the point and honest.
Cut people, not work
Lay off your workers but don't reduce the amount of work that still has to be done by the people left behind.
How to be a great boss: Have the courage to cut work, not just people.
The only legitimate reason to lay off workers is because you have determined that the work they are doing should not or cannot be done anymore. This could be because you need to cut costs to reach a specific budget figure or because you've evaluated the work that's being done by your department and realized that certain areas of work are not contributing to your bottom line either directly or indirectly. Don't just cut staff and expect the same amount of work to get done.
Be very explicit in your internal communications. Say that you have identified x, y and z chunks of work that your department will no longer be doing, and explain why. Don't dump a fresh load of work on the employees who remain. This is also a good opportunity to set priorities for the categories of work that your people are doing: "If you do nothing else, make sure that 'a' and 'b' always get done. After that, your next priorities are 'c' and 'd' " and so forth. Remember, focusing on core competencies is a good thing.
If, instead, you want to lay people off because you believe that your workers are not productive enough and therefore need to have more work piled on them, that's a completely different problem. Address that specifically with the employees who should be doing more work. Don't address it by reducing your staff.
Nobody likes to hear about layoffs. They'll like it even less if you pussyfoot around and don't explain why it's happening.
How to be a great boss: Have the courage to cut work, not just people.
The only legitimate reason to lay off workers is because you have determined that the work they are doing should not or cannot be done anymore. This could be because you need to cut costs to reach a specific budget figure or because you've evaluated the work that's being done by your department and realized that certain areas of work are not contributing to your bottom line either directly or indirectly. Don't just cut staff and expect the same amount of work to get done.
Be very explicit in your internal communications. Say that you have identified x, y and z chunks of work that your department will no longer be doing, and explain why. Don't dump a fresh load of work on the employees who remain. This is also a good opportunity to set priorities for the categories of work that your people are doing: "If you do nothing else, make sure that 'a' and 'b' always get done. After that, your next priorities are 'c' and 'd' " and so forth. Remember, focusing on core competencies is a good thing.
If, instead, you want to lay people off because you believe that your workers are not productive enough and therefore need to have more work piled on them, that's a completely different problem. Address that specifically with the employees who should be doing more work. Don't address it by reducing your staff.
Nobody likes to hear about layoffs. They'll like it even less if you pussyfoot around and don't explain why it's happening.
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