10 Resolutions For managers and Employees

Now is the perfect time to reflect on the past year, especially as it relates to your job.


1) Pay attention in class.

Treat every day at work like a school day. Be sure you learn something and make yourself more productive by what you've learned. It doesn't have to be skill-set related. It may be as simple as understanding how to work with specific peers (emotional intelligence). Whatever you do, take mental notes. Don't go through the day like a sleepy zombie.

2) Look for the next rung.

You need to excel at your job. This is how you gain credibility. But the key to career happiness is to understand your next step. Career patching is critical if you're to remain engaged on the job. Be sure to schedule discussions with your manager to get clarity on the next challenge. If it's not going to happen for you on your specific team or in your company.

3) Understand company goals.

Make sure you understand how your job contributes to your company's business objectives. Are you in a revenue-generating role? A brand awareness role? Is your mission to delight the customer? Clarity on how your job fits into the big picture will give you inspiration and a sense of accomplishment -- and will make your "small successes" feel like you're making much more of an impact.

4) Be ethical.

Bring integrity to your job. Whether you're running the company or cleaning the bathrooms, be honest in all you do. Don't call in sick just to get a day off. That's stealing. Put in an honest day's work. Be accountable. If you're working remotely, be sure you're working. Do what you say you're going to do. Be on time. Honesty and reliability mean a lot to your team members.

5) Stay fit.

Try to break a sweat for 20 minutes, three days a week. Go for a walk at lunch. Join a gym. Lift weights. Go for a run. A healthy body makes a healthy mind. Exercising increases blood flow to the brain. It gives you ideas. You'll be more productive at work. Best of all, you'll feel great.

6) Stretch your role.

From time to time, think how you can go above and beyond. Are there projects outside of your defined role that you could help with? Be proactive and ask to join. Better yet, come up with your own ideas and work with your manager to implement them. If you're a hamster, step off the wheel and poke your head out of the top of the cage. Stretch a little. This won't go unnoticed.

7) Manage up.

Make sure you and your manager are in firm agreement on what you're doing. Be proactive and get on his or her calendar to ensure you're meeting or exceeding expectations. Don't assume your manager is paying close attention. There are bad & good managers. If there's a disconnect between what you're doing and your manager's expectations, you're part of the blame. Don't wait until review time. Why take this chance?

8) Manage Across.

Your colleagues are important. Even if you're in a role where you work primarily alone, be sure to make time to understand your peer's roles and how they go about their job. Show an interest. Don't just choose a few friends and become part of a clique. High school is over. Be friendly and courteous to all workers in your organization. You never know when you may need them. Or be reporting to them.

9) Communicate.

Don't leave people waiting for answers. If you're in an e-mail environment, return e-mails promptly. Let people know what you're doing. If you're working on a project, always ask yourself who needs to know about this. Then tell them. Talk to people. Give people the heads up. And when someone helps you out, be sure to thank them. It's amazing that this even needs to be on a list but bad communicators are everywhere. Don't be one of them.

10) Make time for play.

Have fun. Work hard, but smile while you're doing it. No one likes a Grinch (especially this time of year). This doesn't mean disrupting the workplace by acting like an eighth-grader. Instead, approach each day with a positive spirit and stay loose. When you leave the office or workplace , have some fun. Enjoy you friends. Make time for them. Make time for you. It's called work-life balance. All work and no play makes ... well, you know.

Is Your Company Striving for OK?

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But it happens every day in food service operations around the world. It is a pet peeve of mine when a manager comes striding to my table and asks the insane question, "Is everything OK?"


What's wrong with this picture, you ask? Let's break it down:

Everything? Is the manager asking if I am satisfied with the political, economic, ecological and sociological status of humanity? Or maybe the manager thought that I was about to burst out crying and was attempting to offer help?

What about the word OK?

By definition OK means the minimum acceptable level. I doubt seriously if the mission of any company is to strive for the minimum level of customer service! So when the eager manager excitedly receives the expected "yes", knee-jerk answer to the knee-jerk question, the manager goes away pleased. But should the manager be pleased?

I think not.

I don't blame the manager. He or she was trained that way. Indeed, it was probably pounded into him or her to visit every table. 100% table visitation. Asking everyone in the restaurant if "Everything is OK" is like a prime directive in most restaurant chains.

What's so wrong with wanting to get the opinions of all your customers?

First of all, when you ask 'Is everything OK', you're not giving the customer an opening to respond. Instead, it becomes a formality, like the greeting of "How are you?" You don't really expect an answer, except for the polite "Fine".

Of course, visiting every table in most restaurants doesn't give you any time to actually stop and listen to the customers! By running around and asking "Is Everything OK?" you can quantify the experience, and give yourself a false sense of accomplishment by making your 100% table visitations.

It is like the owner of a hotel demanding that the hotel manager keep the hotel full. All the hotel manager has to do is keep reducing the price of the room until the owner's results are accomplished. Never mind that the hotel is losing money. It may be full now, but it sure won't be around for long.

Don't get me wrong; The concept of customer feedback is right, but the execution and results are dangerously wrong. By getting a stock response from a hastily asked question, you've learned nothing about the customer's experience that night. And what if everything actually WAS just "OK"? In today's market, will a so-so "OK" experience guarantee that the customer will come back? Of course not.

Here are four rules to follow when asking about your customer's perceptions of your service:

1. Allow time to listen, don't just go through the formality of asking.

2. Ask specific questions, not general, sweeping statements.

3. Use a superlative that you want to be identified with to the customer. Was your service excellent? Fantastic? Outrageous? Set your sights high not low. Never OK.

4. The quality of the effort is worth far more than the quantity of effort.

It's time that the hallowed expression "Is everything OK?" was finally laid to rest.

Manage Profitability

Profits are essential for any business. Unless there is a sufficient profit margin, the business cannot exist. The jobs it provides, the products and services it delivers, and the contributions it makes to the community would cease.

All managers play a role in an organization's overall profitability. Some managers are responsible for generating revenues, others are responsible for making products or delivering services, and still others are responsible for helping the line functions do their jobs.

To be a successful manager, you need to manage your financial responsibilities. This is much more complex than just increasing revenues and keeping cost low - it also means managing assets and liabilities.

To manage profitability, you need to understand how the organization makes money and your department's role in that process. You may need to set financial goals, work with sales and marketing to determine pricing and volume, determine whether and when to make capital expenditures, identify ways to reduce costs, justify investments, and so on.

Here are some guidelines and suggestions for effectively managing profitability, including:

Understanding Financial Management: Sometimes the biggest obstacle to effective financial management is simply a manager's lack of understanding of financial terms and processes. Often just learning the basic financial principles allows managers to use financial processes and reports thus improve their work unit's profitability.

Setting Challenging Financial Goals: The first step in managing for profitability is establishing financial goals and a budget that is realistic, yet challenging, in its profits objectives. You may have the responsibility of actually setting goals, or you may input to others for goal setting and budgeting.

Managing Against Your Financial Goals: Once you have establish your financial goals, your next responsibility is to manage effectively so that you stay on course and come as close as possible to achieving them, to help you do this, follow this process:

• Identify the three to five key cost and revenue areas that will make or break your financial goal. Get to know the operations of the areas that make up your costs and provide revenues. Talk with the people who know how these areas operate, the impacts they have, and the ways in which they are affected by other forces.
• Ask your manager, your employees and, if appropriate, your peers for their opinions on which of your budget items are the key ones.
• Determine how frequently you need to see reports comparing budget projections and actual.
• When you receive the reports, monitor them carefully to see how your budget is working.
• Plan in advance how you will handle significant changes in your budget projections.
• Conduct formal monthly reviews. Use the reviews totrack status and progress against goals, understand what is happening, and make changes in assumptions and forecasts if necessary.

Looking for Ways to Reduce Costs: Becoming cost-conscious and continually looking for ways to   to reduce costs is one way that you can manage for greater profitability. Although you are undoubtedly aware that long-term goals and strategies sometimes require expenditures that won't contribute to short-term profits, for the most part it is helpful to look for ways to reduce costs wherever you can.

Pursuing Ways to Increase Revenue: as you know, you can increase revenue by increasing sales or by increasing the price of your products or services. however, increasing sales without concern for profit margins or increasing prices without knowing the impact on sales is both shortsighted and naive.
The primary responsibility for sales and pricing belongs to the sales and marketing departments. It is important to understand this process and monitor what you are getting, especially if you have overall responsibility for the business unit.
In addition, managers these days also are concerned with internal suppliers and customers. many managers are internal suppliers and, in turn, are also customers. You sell to your internal customers and set prices. many of the same principles of selling and pricing are involved internally as well as externally.

Analyzing and Justifying Capital Expenditures: managing profitability includes spending money wisely. When you or your employees have identified capital expenditures that are believed necessary, conduct a through analysis of actual total costs and expect benefits. Include the following in your analysis:

• Cost of identifying vendors and suppliers
• Actual capital cost itself
• cost of implementation or change, including training needed
• Intangible costs, including stress and inconvenience
• Expected benefits, both tangible and intangible
• Cost or impact of not making the expenditure

Ask your staff to make this kind of analysis for all capital expenditures, so you can make more informed decisions.

Involving Employees in Financial Management: Your employees can be your best allies in increasing the profitability of your department or area for which you are financially responsible. Involving your staff members in every aspect of the budgeting process to which they can contribute can yield many ideas for improving profitability.

Managing the Perception of Your Profitability Management: Some managers believe that they already are managing aggressive financial goals, but others may not share that perception. If this situation occurs, first collect additional information by answering these questions:

• How do your goals compare with others in the organization?
• How aware are others of your attention to the organization's bottom line?
• What's the perception of the opportunities available to you for contributing to profitability?
• How does what you do in your area compare to how other managers approach their financial responsibilities?

This analysis will identify the areas of discrepancy between you and others. Then you can determine a plan of action that may include:

• Stretching your group more
• Educating others
• Providing more financial information
• Becoming more comfortable holding people accountable for aggressive numbers.

        

Leadership Skills - Foster Teamwork

The synergy that comes from putting employees together to form teams to solve problems, make decisions, and take actions is power that organizations can harness for greater success. I n these increasingly complex, changing times for business and industry, teams can supply more creative solutions and more powerful support for the organization. With an effective team, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

Whether the team is a permanent work group or a temporary task force, however, creating such teams and leading them to success requires skill and finesse on the part of the team leader.

This section I have divided in three parts, providing suggestions to help managers foster successful teamwork.

Part 1: Creating an Environment Conductive to Teamwork

• Recognizing Management's Impact on Teamwork:  how successful an organization is at effectively utilizing teamwork largely depends on the attitudes, directives, and policies that come from the management team. Your actions and the policies you develop affect teamwork both within your work unit as well as throughout your organization.
• Building a Team Environment:Just as plants need a certain environment for maximum growth ( an appropriate amount of sun and water, proper pruning, enough soil), teams need certain "ingredients" in their environment to function in the best way possible. Building an environment conductive to maximum team functioning is not a one-time event; rather it involves an ongoing effort and process on your and your team's part.

Part 2: Building Your Team Leader Skills

• Building a Team: it's important that the employees in your unit, division, and functional area work together with team spirit to maximize the ultimate success of your team. Building a team attitude means managing your employees in a way that fosters teamwork instead of individual gain. Teamwork takes time to build and requires practice and effort on the part of both the manager and the employees. However, once you start the process, it gains momentum, like a ball rolling down the hill. For your team members to work well together, your team needs a clear idea of why it is a team and must agree about how to work together.
• Valuing the Contributions of All Team Members: All members of the team - those who have more complex and highly compensated jobs as well as those whose  responsibilities are more straightforward- are important to the success of the organization. For all members of the team to feel valued and worthwhile, there must be a pervasive attitude that everyone's work is important.
• Encouraging Interaction among Group Members:Interactions in group meetings typically take one of three forms:
• The group is largely silent, with the leader doing most of the talking.
• Group members interact with the leader
• Group members interact with one another.

The third form represents the most effective type of interaction. When group members interact, the resources of all members are used most fully, and problem solving is promoted.

• Increasing Interdependence Within Your Team: Interdependence involves the concept that you and your team can accomplish more by working together than you could by working individually (in other words, the concept of "one plus one equals three")
• Discouraging "We versus They" Thinking: Promoting teamwork among groups across an organization is essential to create an environment where people pursue common goals.
• Involving Others in Shaping Plans and Decisions:People who assist in the planning and decision making are likely to be ore invested in the successful execution of those plans and decisions. Engage all your team members in the development of your team's mission, strategy and goals. When working on projects involving other functions, involve representatives from all affected areas.
• Acknowledging and Celebrating Team Aaccomplishments: Acknowledging and celebrating team accomplishments is a powerful way to recognize your team efforts and to keep motivation and momentum going.
• Evaluating Your Effectiveness as a Team Member: Part of being an effective team leader involves being an effective team member. How effective are you in team situations? Do you contribute too much? Too little? Does  the impact you have on a team depend on the circumstances? In developing a plan for improving your team skills, sharpen your awareness of how you currently function as a team member.

Part 3: Developing Team Problem-Solving and decision-Making Skills

• Deciding When to use a Team Approach: Team leaders need to decide when and what degree to use a team approach for decision making and problem solving. In general, the higher the level of commitment and buy-in your team members show, and the more creative, varied, and informative the input and opinions they offer, the more important a team approach for solving problems becomes. When  team members are involved the problem solving and decision making, they are more likely to accept the final decision and to feel ownership and shared responsibility for the success of the overall goal. Furthermore, the quality of decisions and problem solutions is greater because the group process generates a variety of perspectives and opinions that lead to more creative, effective results.
• Improving Your Team Decision-Making Process: When a group has problems making decisions, it is usually because its members are confused or in disagreement about one or more of the following:
• What decision they are trying to make\
• Who should be involved in making the decision
• How individuals should be involved (as information sources or decision makers, for instance)
• When the decision must be made.
• Seeking Appropriate Input before Making Decisions:Rarely can important decisions be made without input from others. Managers need to solicit input before making decisions for a variety of reasons: to obtain critical input, to build commitment in others, to develop others, to show respect for others' opinions, and to foster open communication and problem sharing.
• Improving Your Group Facilitation Skills: To develop skills that will enable you to move more effectively facilitate group problem-solving sessions, follow these suggestions when you lead such sessions during the next few months. Watch the groups you lead for signs of increased participation and the generation of more and better solution alternatives.
• As the group leader, facilitate, rather than direct, the group discussion.
• Use active listening skills to draw out ideas and creativity of others
• Protect minority opinion. The most obvious or popular suggestions are not always the best.
• Encourage sessions that are problem-oriented rather than solution-oriented
• Use brainstorming techniques to generate alternate solutions.
• Look for a second solution after a first solution is arrived at to encourage additional creative approaches.