Leadership - The three Cs - action focus part 2
The three Cs - action focus part 2
Staff management
In terms of chaos, complexity and confusion this is a recognition of the differences amongst the people working within your teams and departments.
They will differ in age, gender, physical appearance, abilities and disabilities. They will have a variety of life experiences and prejudices.
At one time you may well have considered that such diversity only existed if you had business in a foreign country with cultural differences, interpretation problems, personality issues and so on. However, we now live in a multiracial and multicultural world and companies contain a cross section of the world population. They are a microcosm of the global view. We need to manage this diversity.
Many companies find it easy to manage improvements and increase efficiencies in technology and management processes.
Once this is done, it is only then that many companies consider an investment in the people. If companies could only release an extra 10% from their staff the efficiency would increase dramatically.
There is a simple 6 stage process, recognised by the European Institute for Managing Diversity.
Step 1 – EvaluateCarry out an assessment of your diverse personnel. These will be many.
For example, gender, where you live, age, religion, disabilities etc.
What is your strategy for integration?
Step 3 - CommunicationWhat is your plan to achieve this?
Step 4 – TrainingWhat is needed for you, the team and individuals to give support for diversity development and recognition?
Step 5 – Measurement and evaluationTo see performance you will need to measure your progress in some fashion.
Step 6 – Auditing and accountabilityWhat processes will you put in place to guarantee continuity.
Self management
Chaos may exist in your inability to make a clear decision where direction or options are vague.
If you don’t give yourself the time to think you will not be able to solve these problems.
A good leader will always make space in their diary for strategic thinking.
Identify the problem
Once you have the space to think you can then try to define the problem as accurately as possible.
Generate ideas around the issue
What are the issues surrounding the problem? To ascertain these you must look at the problem through the eyes of a Brain Storm. Let your ideas fly and write down all of your thoughts on the matter no matter how trivial.
Identify not only factual ideas, for example, ‘need to check the budget figures’ but also write down how you are feeling, for example, ‘too tired to think’, ‘don’t want to confront the person’ etc.
From this list of ideas relating to the issues it is a good idea to group similar ones together.
You can do this most easily using the ‘mind mapping’ technique of Tony Buzan [see Influence - who?].
In essence, you begin with identifying the key issue at the centre of a piece of paper in a circle.
Once you think of a main idea associated with it you label a line (or spoke of a wheel) drawn from the central circle.
If you have any subordinate ideas you can add these as lines from the main spoke so that you end up with a fishbone effect.
There is no reason, other than trying to avoid too much detail. Not to go to a third tier of ideas.
Beware of negative effects
One problem with identifying a lot of issues is that the problem might now seem magnified. There are suddenly far more issues than you had at first supposed. You might observe all of the issues and think that your performance hasn’t been as good as it should be for a leader. In fact, the very fact that you are carrying out such an exercise indicates your leadership credentials.
The next step is to consider the issues carefully and not to rush in blindly. All problems will have issues attached and any event or project will have plenty of ups and downs to worry about.
Benefit and action
In order to be able to move forward and solve the problem it is good to think of the benefit to yourself in achieving success.
How will you feel? What will be the effect on the people around you?
Examine all of the issues and ideas closely. If you can identify one that is the most important this is the one you should tackle first.
It could be most important on several levels.
Will it give you the biggest boost to your morale?
Is it the easiest to do, and important, so that you can get at least one item out of the way?
Will its solution have the biggest effect on the issue itself?
If you solve one problem is it likely to have a positive knock on effect on another issue?
What will have the biggest impact as defined by you?
Once you have decided on what issue you wish to tackle first set a time frame.
Set yourself some criteria for recognising success.