When my parents died, their wills suggested an onerous process for dividing belongings among 5 siblings. But at least they provided a process! They also indicated we were welcome to come up with a better process, if we so desired. My parents, who probably had something to do with my clarity(!), clearly knew the importance of having a process! As executrix, I gladly proposed a better process. Being me, I’m pretty sure I would have done so regardless of whether or not it was my responsibility. So I wrote up a simple process, explained it to all siblings, asked for opinions, and then got their signatures to confirm agreement before anyone began claiming anything. The process worked smoothly. Success depended only on the thought invested by each sibling into their desires and needs. Everyone left with a combination of cherished and practical items. There was one opportunity for dissension, however.
Most well-run organizations are pretty good at creating what I call “Organizational Clarity.” They have strategic priorities and annual goals. They have job descriptions, policies, rules, and training programs. They have well-defined and documented production processes. They also have well-defined management systems that control things like performance reviews, budgeting, approval processes, and projects. All told, these constitute a yeoman’s effort to create: Clear purpose, Clear roles, and Clear process – the three keys to productive, effective, committed employees. The resulting structure and controls are essential for allowing growing and shifting numbers of people to work together effectively. But there’s a problem with this: It doesn’t help employees get through their average workday.
In last month’s Clear Thoughts, I suggested an exercise that I hope you tried. The exercise was to pick a typical item off a meeting agenda and then compete in pairs for two minutes to see who can brainstorm the longest list of possible directions the conversation could go given that topic. When I do this exercise in workshops, the idea is initially met with bewilderment, but it doesn’t last. The winning pair usually comes up with about twenty different directions. By the time we collect all the non-overlapping ideas from the other pairs, the total is typically three dozen topics. So what is the point of this exercise? Before you read on, maybe you want to stop and draw your own conclusions. If you come up with conclusions I don’t list, I’d love to hear about them. Ready For My List?
Did you know that almost no one made the word ‘priority’ plural before the 1950s? Having multiple priorities probably made about as much sense as describing something as ‘very unique.’ Something is either unique or it isn’t. And something is either the priority or it isn’t. Makes sense to me! Once you have two priorities, what is the priority? And once you have two, why can’t you have three? How about four? Where is the line?
If you increase clarity, you absolutely will increase productivity. You will also increase engagement, commitment, and determination. You will make smarter decisions, better plans, and solve problems more readily. It’s true and I can prove it. Furthermore, the potential gains are enormous. However, you can’t improve anything if you can’t see it. Thus, in November I proposed the 1st Quarterly Clarity Week and my first suggestion for exposing opportunities to increase productivity with clarity. If you participated, your team consciously kept their eyes out for bandaids and workarounds over the course of the week. This should have been relatively easy since bandaids and workarounds are familiar concepts. I hope you found some great opportunities for improvement. Now it is time for the 2nd Quarterly Clarity Week. This time my goal is to raise awareness of a far less familiar, but incredibly important, opportunity. Here is what you do. At the beginning of each meeting in the week ahead:
Happy February to you! Last month I shared my 10 most popular Forbes posts. Today I want to share some of my least popular posts. But not just my least popular. My least popular but very important posts. These are articles that should have been popular, and probably would have been had I given them better titles! Some of these titles are so bad you probably won’t click on them even though I’m telling you they are important!
American companies spend billions on employee training and development each year and most of it is wasted. The hoped for changes just don’t materialize. Why? Here are eight reasons: 1. Training isn’t what employees need. Training develops skills. At the end of a training course, employees should be able to do something they couldn’t do or couldn’t do well before the class. If you don’t know what skill your employees need that they don’t have, you are wasting your money. 2. You are training the wrong people. Too often one employee screws up and the solution is to train everyone rather than deal with the miscreant. If-he-needs-it, they-probably-all-need-it thinking leads to training lots of employees who already know what to do and have been performing acceptably.
I’ve been an expert blogger for Forbes for 16 months now and I thought you might be interested in my 10 most popular posts at this point. The first one has been read by over 64,000 people – that’s a happy record for me! 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 9 Reasons You And Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hours Of Work In 40 Hours – And What To Do About It Three Traits of Top Notch Leaders 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company The Holy Grail of Productivity Are You Ready For The Next Big Innovation In Workplace Productivity? 5 Reasons Meetings Never Improve One Incredibly Costly Mistake You Make Over And Over Again 21 Games People Play With To Do Lists 12 Reasons Why How You Make Decisions Is More Important Than What You Decide
For those of you who appreciated the books I mentioned a year ago, I thought I would share my favorites from 2016: The Autobiography of Henry VIII with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins The Hills of Home by T L Greylock (my daughter – I could be biased!) Tahoe Dark by Todd Borg (my brother – no bias; just ask the fan base he has built with 13 previous books) Quite an eclectic list this year. I hope you enjoy any you try! Feel free to send me your favorites. Readers with similar tastes gave me some great recommendations after seeing my favorites from 2015. (I apologize for linking to Amazon, since some of you may resent the way they treat suppliers. I just wanted to add links so you could learn more about each book easily and Amazon comes up first when I search for book titles. Please support your favorite book store!)
My top wish for you this year is Clarity of Purpose. Because everything hinges on that. Clarity of Purpose shrinks your list of priorities to real priorities, improves your ability to focus, reveals the shortest path to your destination, boosts your sense of commitment, and increases the odds that you will accomplish the tasks most essential to your success. Clarity of Purpose starts with big goals for a New Year. What top few accomplishments will have the greatest impact on your future?