2

Getting things done

What you will learn in this chapter

• How to set objectives and prioritise
• How to monitor progress towards objectives
• How to accept ownership of tasks and responsibilities, and own up to mistakes
• How to make decisions and communicate them

As a manager, regardless of your style, you need to accomplish things through yourself and others. In this chapter, we discuss getting things done: how to set goals, plan your time, make decisions, and cope when it all goes wrong – as it will from time to time. Your ability to do all of these things lies in the degree to which you are willing and able to take responsibility for your actions.

Getting things done

We all struggle with this one. It’s a universal part of being human, let alone being a manager. A useful three-word reminder is: ‘Do, Don’t Stew!’ – spend less time mulling over your burden, and more time reducing it. The classic scenario is when you wake up in the middle of the night worried about a big presentation, meeting or project. The task looms large, but there is nothing you can do about it at 3.00 a.m. However, if you do have important insights as to how you might tackle the issue, it can help to jot them down. So keep a pad and pen by the bed.

Even if you have achieved a calm mental state and have planned everything, something unexpected may happen. But by better planning, and anticipating that things may misfire, you can achieve better management of tasks and of time. This reduces work pressures so that you will feel more relaxed; moreover, others will be more likely to perceive you as calm and well-organised.

Consider how you currently use your time. An analysis of your activities could reveal that a significant proportion of your working day is being ‘wasted’ on unimportant tasks. An analysis could include some of the following:

• Be clear about how you spend your time Keep a log of your activities and compare how it maps versus the Priority Grid (p. 21).
• Be clear about your objectives and priorities Understand what is required of you and when you are expected to deliver.
• Ascertain what your potential problem areas may be What is making you use time inefficiently? What is getting in the way of getting things done?
• Tackle the enemy without Those external factors that are outside your control such as the work of other departments, constant phone ringing, emails arriving, etc.
• Tackle the enemy within Personal inefficiency such as lack of planning and prioritising the less urgent work; tendency to waste time surfing favourite websites, checking emails, etc.
• Make time to play Decrease pressure and stress by aiming to allocate some time to relax.
• Make time to think Allocate time to yourself where you won’t be interrupted so that you can think and plan with a clear head.¹

Manage energy as well as time

You might also think about managing your energy levels as well as your time. If you are feeling low, no amount of time management will inspire you to produce a winning presentation. Similarly, should you find yourself in full flow on that important presentation when lunchtime beckons, try to finish the task while your energy is high and eat lunch a little later; maybe treat yourself to something special as a reward. Most of us have body clocks and know our peak and low times. Try to fit in tasks accordingly.

Deadlines

Deadlines help get things done by setting an agreed timescale and sharing this with those involved in the task. They should be realistic, however, to reduce unnecessary pressure. Instinctively, most of us will focus on the task with the closest deadline and tackle this first. However, don’t be guided by dates alone. Rather, consider how long each task is estimated to take. Establish if there is any leeway with the deadline set. Avoid the temptation to prioritise easy or enjoyable tasks at the expense of complex or less favourable ones.

As well as considering a deadline date, take into account the start date too,² estimating how long a task will take to complete so it can be started in plenty of time. When many deadlines loom at once, workloads can become insurmountable. Prioritising tasks in advance and creating a clear plan for time management will lower stress and make tasks more manageable, and enjoyable. Remember to build in some contingency time to allow for unexpected events.

Setting objectives

Objectives help you to steer individuals and teams in the right direction for the collective good of the organisation. They ensure that everyone in the organisation understands what they are working towards and the responsibility each has in meeting expectations. They also clearly highlight how results will be measured, providing a framework for feedback and performance.

Objectives should provide challenge and clarity, motivating employees to realise their potential and promote positive impact. Setting unrealistic objectives can have the negative effect of disengaging people; setting vague ones can lead to confusion. It is important that individual, team or departmental objectives are set in the wider context of the organisation’s goals.

A common framework for goal-setting follows the SMART acronym. Objectives should be: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Results-focused; and Time-bound:³

1. Specific – objectives should clearly describe and define the required result.
2. Measurable – an agreed process, system or method for identifying when an objective has been met.
3. Achievable – challenging but achievable in terms of resources, funding, skills, time, and so on.
4. Results-focused and Relevant – goals should have outcomes that will make a positive and lasting impact to the organisation and contribute to its strategy.
5. Time-bound – a timeframe for accomplishing the objectives should be set.

Keep your objectives simple, using 250 words or fewer. Avoid jargon, or going into the micro-detail of your individual or departmental tasks, and the macro detail of the overall organisational mission. Under- or over-shooting objectives is a common mistake.

Unless you measure progress towards objectives you will never know whether you are on the way to achieving them. I am amazed by how few managers actually routinely measure progress towards objectives and projects they set themselves and their teams – except for the week right before the annual performance appraisal. It may be that the objectives set aren’t the right ones, or the measurements are too complicated, or inappropriate, or too vague. Make sure when you set objectives for yourself with your boss and then with your team, that you agree on the measurements and how often you will review progress towards these. Do it at least once a month.

Later I will share more formal ways of evaluating and measuring performance objectives, programmes and initiatives (in Parts 3 and 4).

Clear priorities

Once your objectives are set, you will need to prioritise which things to do when. There will be many interruptions and other features of your working day which don’t directly contribute or relate to your objectives. A simple ‘urgent versus important’ grid can help prioritising.

Important tasks are those which contribute to your long-term goals and objectives. If you are not clear about what your aims are, establishing these should be your starting point. Tasks which are urgent and important might include: emergencies, customer complaints, meetings and appointments or reports that need to be delivered within a specific time frame. These must to be carried out straight away or delegated to someone else if appropriate. It is vital to plan time slots in advance for tasks which are important but not urgent. This will ensure you will have time to give them the attention they deserve and to complete them successfully.

If you judge that tasks are urgent but not important – requests from others, interruptions and distractions, for example – you should assess them carefully and try to avoid them if you can. You may be able to delegate them or to explain sensitively why you are unable to complete them.

Figure 2.1 A simple urgent versus important grid

Source: Chartered Management Institute.

Tasks which are neither important nor urgent are ones which you should try to exclude whenever possible. Cross them off your task list, and keep that list so you know what’s been crossed off. If, in six months’ time, you or someone else feels an impact from you not having done those things, then you may want to revisit.

The importance of ownership and responsibility

Taking ownership for your areas of responsibility will help others to see that you operate with integrity and can be trusted to follow through on your commitments. The opposite is also true. Lack of ownership, or ‘passing the buck’, is a management scourge. Just think about how many managers passed the buck when it came to the major scandals. The flip side of taking the glory when things go right is taking the flak when things go wrong.

Taking ownership of tasks and responsibilities gives your role clarity. It enhances your credibility and lends a degree of authority, as you are perceived as the ‘go-to’ person for a given task or problem. For collaborative working, the RACI Matrix is an effective way of clarifying roles. RACI represents: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.⁴ Such tools can prevent blurring the lines of responsibility, ensuring that everyone knows what areas they are personally accountable for and what is expected of them. I explore this tool further in Chapter 8.

It is also important to understand what you can and cannot reasonably influence. The power to influence others may be key to being a successful manager, but it is important that you understand your own sphere of influence. The time-honoured Serenity Prayer is helpful: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’⁵

However careful and conscientious we are, we all make mistakes. What matters is our response. If you want to gain the respect of your employees, your peers and your superiors then you have to take ownership of any mistakes made. This could sometimes even mean having the responsibility of dealing with mistakes made by others if they work for you, or if you are part of a team or division that has missed an important milestone. Blaming others for a bad outcome is a sure-fire way to create a toxic atmosphere. So always own up to your mistakes. If you have made a mistake, apologise to all affected. Devise a plan to rectify the mistake and endeavour to resolve it swiftly and to the satisfaction of everyone involved. Saying sorry can be a very liberating experience, and it is amazing how it can take the heat out of situations with others.

Making mistakes is often a spur to innovating better products or services.⁶ MIX, the Management Innovation Exchange, rates submissions which recount mistakes and what was learned as far more valuable than those that share glowing accounts of individual and corporate heroism.⁷

Similarly, responding to a setback in a positive way may force you to consider how you might tackle a particular issue differently, which could lead to a more favourable outcome in the longer term. Sometimes, it’s best to take a break. You can recover, regain perspective and bounce back. I guarantee you that every good manager has experienced many failures. Try asking your mentor or someone you admire what their greatest setback was and what they learned from it. You’ll be surprised how open people will be in sharing their ‘failure’ stories. Also, by asking others what they learned from their setbacks, you will gain more insight into how to learn from your own.

Making good decisions

Management is all about taking decisions, and yet many people struggle with this. Sometimes the issue seems too complex, or the decision is spread across many different areas. Sometimes we are afraid to take decisions for fear of reprisal, either from our bosses, our reports, or external stakeholders such as customers. But chronic indecisiveness is a key reason for poor results. Decisions can be rational, or ‘gut’, simple or complex, or a combination. They can be made individually, or as a group, consensually, consultatively or autocratically. They require you to identify issues, weigh up the problems and consequences, and to use the best information available, knowing that it will never be perfect. You will also need to identify who will be affected by your decision and the risks involved, in order to assess whom to consult or include in the process.

So how can you become more decisive? Here are six simple steps:

1. Identify the issue: Understand what it is you are trying to decide.
2. Decide how to decide.
3. Decide: Use an evidence-based approach, plus your own judgement and experience.
4. Communicate what you’ve decided.
5. Implement your decision.
6. Monitor the impact and results and adjust as required.

1. Identify the issue

What is it that you are trying to decide? Are you sure you are tackling the right issue? Being clear on the problems that require solving is valuable. Try asking, ‘Why?’ until you get to the nub of the issue. This is analogous to tackling the disease rather than the symptom; it’s also called root cause analysis.

2. Decide how to decide

In order to decide how simple or complex your decision process should be, try asking yourself the following questions:

1. How much information do you need?
2. What are the risks of getting it wrong?
3. Who will be affected by the decision?

If the decision is not that important, you can probably decide it yourself. On the other hand if it is going to have an impact on others, needs others to help in its implementation or has high consequences, you will need to involve others in the decision-making process, if only to get their input and information.

1. How urgent is it? How much time do you have?

If you don’t have a lot of time, you may need to involve fewer people or settle for less information, or consider fewer alternatives.

3. Use an appropriate process

The fundamental process for decision-making involves:

• Involve the right people and information Try to include all those who have good information and/or are affected by the decision.
• Generate alternatives Weigh up different ways of solving the problem. Be sure to consider things from a variety of functional and stakeholder perspectives.
• Evaluate the alternatives Which best meets the objective? What is the impact? Is the outcome ethical? Agree a framework for evaluating alternatives that is objective and transparent, and uses evidence wherever possible. Be sure to include the risks as well as the rewards. Frequently, costs versus benefits or high/low impact and effort frameworks can help here. You can also assign rating scores based on the degree to which alternatives meet key needs. When evaluating alternatives, try to avoid ‘groupthink’, and bias.
• Choose the best alternative Ultimately, you have to select your preferred option. Too often managers will present papers that weigh up all the options but never set out any clear decisions, or they attempt to combine too many options into a combined decision. I call this last bit a ‘kitchen sink’ decision. Avoid it! It’s muddled and won’t work.
• Check it against your original objective and the impact.
• Check it against your judgement and experience.

4. Communicate your decision

This step is sometimes overlooked. It is essential that you communicate your decision to all who are affected. If you forget this, you may create confusion or disengagement, and encourage behaviours that will undermine the effectiveness of your decision.

5. Implement

Now that you’ve invested all the time and effort in taking the decision, don’t forget to do it! This will almost always be the hardest part to get right.

6. Monitor the results and impact

Rational decision-making has its limits. It can be very time-consuming and resource intensive, and it can lead to paralysis. No decision will ever have perfect information. Counter-intuitively, it can lead to the wrong decision, particularly if it contravenes the ‘gut’ feel of any number of participants. Therefore, increasingly, ‘gut’ methods such as that advocated by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, as well as more collaborative, agile, iterative trial and error methods are gaining in popularity. These will be explored further in Chapter 15.

Top tips for making decisions

1. Know what you are deciding.
2. Separate gut from evidence in decision-making.
3. Be clear in your decision. Can you explain why you took it?
4. It’s OK to decide not to decide – for a time. But not forever.

Top pitfalls in decision-making

1. Don’t let your preconceived preferences influence the process.
2. Don’t cut corners, especially if the decision has far-reaching implications.
3. Don’t cherry pick from too many options, or try to solve too many things at once, or you may end up in a muddle.
4. Don’t ignore your gut.

Additional resources: http://productivemuslim.com/productivity-ninja/

Top tips, pitfalls and takeaways

Top tips

• Use SMART objectives. Make sure you revisit your progress against these at least once a month.
• Manage your energy as well as your time. Do the big stuff when you have the most energy.
• Learn from failures.

Top pitfalls

• Vague objectives and decisions, kitchen sink decisions and non-decisions all lead to underperformance of individuals and organisations.
• Forgetting to apologise when you have made a mistake. If you do things you will make mistakes. Get over it.

Top takeaways

• Prioritise. Focus on what’s important and urgent, and make time to do what is important but not urgent. Do or delegate the urgent but not important and avoid the not urgent and not important.
• To get things done, you and your employees need clarity. Clarity of objectives, responsibilities and decisions.

¹ Managing Your Time Effectively, CMI Checklist Series, no. 16, 2011.

² Bittel, Lester R., Right on Time! The Complete Guide for Time-Pressured Managers, McGraw-Hill, 1991, p. 63.

³ SMART Objectives, CMI Management Models Series.

⁴ RACI Matrix, CMI Management Models Series.

⁵ http://www.thefix.com/content/serenity-prayers-desperate-origins-Niehbur-Bonhoeffer-Tillich9965

⁶ Pearn, Michael, Mulrooney, Chris and Payne, Tim, Ending the Blame Culture, Gower, 1998, p. 106.

⁷ http://www.managementexchange.com