Setting your priorities straight

Photo by ➨ Redvers

When I was an instructor in the Israeli Air-force I used to give a workshop about time-management. The concept “time-management” is a little misleading. It gives us the illusion that time can actually be managed, when in fact, it can’t. Time is given. It will pass if we want it or not. And it will do it at the same pace it always did, no matter what will do. So, we need to manage our decisions given that time.

Every time I gave that workshop there was a least one person who would come up to me and tell me: “Look, I am swamped. I just have too many things to do and not enough time”. I always gave those people the same response: “You don’t have a time problem, you have a priorities problem”.

Because time-management is about choosing your priorities, being consistent with them over time and accepting that this process will inherently include some tradeoffs. There will be things you will not be able to do. But until you get your priorities straight you will face problems.

I like to take principals like the time-management-priorities one and see where I can apply them in other facets of life. Now, after almost completing two session of my MBA program, I think that I can confidently say that “getting your priorities straight” is the key concept that describes my learning this session. Because all the courses I studied this session, had this one concept in common. You have to make choices. And you have to be consistent about them. Or in other words, you have to set your priorities straight.

In finance you can see it in the choice between risks and returns. Do you want higher risk or higher possible returns? What is the level of returns you are seeking for? You have to make a choice. And until you set your priorities, your goals, your preferences, be them as they may, you cannot make the right choice. And in order to deliver real value, you need to make consistent decision over time.

Operations management – does my company need to cooperate with others in the supply chain or not? Do I need a pull or a push based production line? Is responsiveness or effectiveness more important? Well, it depends on your priorities. But whatever you do – you have to make sure, that all other parts of your organization and even you suppliers and buyers, are in tune with the same priorities and are consistent with the same decision.

How do you determine your IMC (integrated marketing communication)? Or how do you decide if you are going to concentrate on growth or retaining current customers? You guessed it – decide what your priorities are and make consistent decisions about them. And most importantly – as in time-management – you make choices that lead to tradeoffs that are inherent to the decision making process.

Finally strategy, the mother of all priory decision disciplines. To quote our strategy professor:

“Strategy is Making choices… since you have limited resources, you cannot do everything (and expect to do them well)… that are genuine… ‘real choices’ that are ‘difficult’ and consistent. A ’set of choices’ that different elements strengthen and reinforce each other”

And for me, all of this is the essence of another great idea I believe in. The idea of the comparative advantage. Because comparative advantage is not only about actual competition, but it is more about recognizing what is more important, where can I make the biggest contribution – to myself and to society – and going with it all the way. That is why I try, once in a while, to assess what my priorities are and what my comparative advantage is.

When is the last time you sat with yourself and asked your self – in a personal or professional setting – what are your priorities?

Elad

The right side of the graph

In the last few days in class, we have been going through a phase of self reflection. This phase included surveys, inventories and questioners, as well as group discussions and self reflection, both written and mental.

The last day, our facilitator presented us with the following graph:

 

The basic idea is to think about our parts in teams and later about our jobs and pinpoint actions we employ daily to their respective places on the graph. I think this is a very simple but usable tool in order to self reflect.

But looking at it, made me think about how managers can use this. Because of this simplicity, managers can use this simple tool to know a lot more about their employees.

I believe good managers should focus almost all their efforts on helping people find their strengths and concentrate on them, because this is the way to help people truly excel. As I elaborate in my e-book, I believe people can achieve remarkable accomplishments if they focus on their comparative advantages and use them constantly.

 Thus, great managers should focus their time on their employees’ strengths instead of focusing it on their weaknesses and areas of improvement. That said it is important to understand that there are different kinds of weakness and different kinds of strengths.

If the weakness is a result of insufficient knowledge or skill, then the manager role is to supply the knowledge, teach the skill or get the employee to learn the skill from an outside source. This is true in a limited number of cases. Sometime people feel incompetent and dislike certain actions, because they don’t know enough about them and never had proper training although they truly have a talent for it. In addition, most skills can be learned to a certain degree.

But in order to excel in certain skills you need talent. And different people have different talents.  And with talent I mean not only to quality of being good at something, but actually having the right mental state and the natural inclination for certain skills. And most of time, this talent, if used correctly, can help overcome any weakness much more efficiently then dealing directly with the weakness. Therefore, when a manager recognizes a weakness he should explore which kind of weakness it is and if training or knowledge will help the employee overcome it.

On the other hand, many times as managers, we perceive strengths of people but forget to ask them an important question: do you enjoy doing that role/action? Because some people are really good at something, but they hate doing it. if they don’t feel good when they are doing it, when they don’t reach a state of flow, than they would not be able to that for a long time and they would not be able to truly excel. And what great managers do is find ways to make their employees excel.

So, where are your employees’ actions, skills and talents on this graph and how can you move them to right side of the graph?

Elad

Different Perspectives

In this blog I write a lot about strengths thinking. You know, as the name of the blog suggests, and as I write in my e-book, that I a firm believer in the concept of using your comparative advantage. These are things I think about a lot and try to locate in different situations and aspects of my life.

What you can’t learn from reading this blog is that I am an enthusiastic epic fantasy reader. In almost any given time, I am in the middle of some epic fantasy book (usually a trilogy, that’s how they come in this genre).

This is why I was so thrilled to find such an accurate description of the basic ideas of   comparative advantage and strengths thinking while reading Brent weeks’ “The Way of Shadows“. Just read this bit from the book. I think any additional explanation is redundant:

“Take it this way: some people can add long lists of numbers in their heads, right? And some can speak a dozen languages. To do that, they have to be smart, right?”

“Right.”

“But just because you can learn to add lists of numbers doesn’t mean you will. But a woman who handles account books and has a gift for numbers can. Or a diplomat might have a gift for languages, but if he never learns another one, he’ll still only know one.”

Kylar nodded.

“The woman with the head for numbers could probably learn another language if she worked hard enough, but she’ll never be fluent in a dozen, and the man will never be able to add columns of numbers mentally. Do you see where this is going?”

Kylar thought, and Master Blint waited. “We know that I’m Talented but no how much, so you can’t tell what I’ll be able to do.”

 

Just Wow!

Elad

Connecting Ideas

Photo by seier+seier+seier

Seth Godin writes in his blog today about the problems of selling ideas. His claim, In short, is that selling ideas is a different skill than coming up with them. Most importantly, as he puts it:

The quality of ideas is not a factor in whether or not you will be in a position to have a chance to sell those ideas

Seth advice to those who are not able to sell their ideas is to blog abut them so they can have bragging rights later.

That made me think, in our age, of conceptual economy, where everything is free and we need to look for ways to sell things that are free, shouldn’t  there be people who are proficient  idea sellers? It is just a “comparative advantage” thinking or a “partnership thinking” or a “strengths” thinking.

If I have the idea but don’t know how to sell it, I do need to find someone to sell it for me. Someone who, like Godin puts it: “invest heavily in the skills and status to do that”.

If there are so many ideas out there looking to be connected, should there be a market for it?

Elad

How do you decide how to measure other people performance?

Photo by Leo Reynolds

Yesterday I read this very interesting manifesto tilted: “Redeeming Sisyphus – Get Out of Control! Get More Done!” by I. Barry Goldberg of Entelechy Partners. Goldberg describes a very interesting thesis. In a nutshell, he claims that most managers deal so much with micromanagement due to their inability trust their employees that they create an atmosphere that reduces creativity and productivity. Goldberg claims managers need to stop delegating (a “I say – you do” thinking behavior) and start passing responsibility and accountability (a “you do – I listen” thinking behavior). He claims that when employees are held accountable for their work, they become much more engaged with they work, thus becoming more creative and productive.

I really like this manifesto and I recommended it with all my heart. I think, at the heart of it, you can see two of the concepts I talk about in my E-book, “Playing It to Excellence and Happiness in Real Life – Five Concepts I Learned by Playing Basketball, Working and just Living”. One, is communicating. Goldberg claims that a manager’s role should be limited to listening to his employees and helping them reach their solutions by themselves. In order to do that, you need to create a very open and productive relationship with your employees – a relationship of trust. This can only be created by communicating a lot with your employees and by adhering to a nuber of simple communication rules. Second, I think the idea is to let your employees do what they are best at and focus on what the manager is best at – managing. When you are trying to be involved in every decision your employees make you sterilize their advantages. A manager today can’t know everything and can’t be an expert in everything. If you are involved in all the decisions, you immediately doom the work of your team to the sad lie of mediocrity, which is a grave danger it today’s world.

But I think the most intriguing part of the manifesto is this:

“The first step in delegating accountability is to understand the vital signs of your business… Be rigorous and clear. Do not get tempted to ooze into soft measures. Not all of a business or project can be measured quantitatively; however, the discipline of defining the critical measures of your business’ health is worth the effort. Refine this down to a set of vital signs that are every bit as indicative of overall health as those your doctor takes at your annual physical. Remember, a vital sign is a numeric value and your vital signs must take in the overall health of the whole body of the business. If the sales levels are positive but turnover in the sales organization is out of control, you will not know about the soon-to-emerge higher recruiting costs and risk. Turnover should be on your list of reportable vital signs”.

Everybody knows saying by Peter Drucker that what isn’t measured does not get managed. But modern economics and behavioral economics, also shows us that if you decide on the wrong measures (or in Goldberg name: “vital signs”) you can create negative incentives. Books like “The Goal” by Eli Goldratt have been saying this for years. So, I believe the challenge of managers in the next few years, especially in the more subtle fields that are hard to measure will be to create the right vital signs. How do you go about doing that? I don’t know. Goldberg doesn’t exactly say either, although he does offer a thinking model to try and locate them. I think if someone will create a good process to identify the vital signs of organizations, he could transform the field of management…

Elad