Talent Maximiser

Focus On Productivity, The Extreme Way

How many of you are keeping up with your New Year's resolutions? It can be difficult because we often have to go cold turkey (pun intended) straight after a period of festive enjoyment. 

To help me this year I did some different, prep. Rather than just putting emphasis on creating goals (which are important) I spent time refining my understanding of How to Focus and How to be Productive.   

I talk a lot about the importance of Focus as the starting point to setting goals when working with clients, so when I came across Jack Cranfield, Mark Victor Hanson and Les Hewitt's book entitled The Power of Focus, it was a must read.  In addition, I recently listened to an interesting podcast by Bob Prozen on Extreme Productivity.  So armed with my new knowledge about how to implement Focus, I devised some New Year goals to raise my Productivity (with so many strands to my life, it's always the holy grail).  While most goals played to my existing strengths one was designed to make serious in-roads on a certain little derailer, 'doing that one more thing' (just before I am supposed to be leaving).  I will keep you posted.  In the meantime, let me know how you are getting on with your New Year resolutions and share what has worked and what has not.

Here are 4 proven ways to improve your productivity that I heard Bob talk about:

1. Focus on results and what you want to achieve, not how much time you should spent on something.  For example, think about what you want to get out of an article/chapter before you read it - think first then read - write an outline first then write.  Its not so much about how much time you spend in the office but what you are achieving in that time

2. Focus on your unique value that you bring to an organisation.  Define your comparative advantage, this is not just what you are the best at something, It is also what the organisation needs you to do.  You need to identify where your values to the organisation lies.

3. Focus on your priorities. The night before each day look at your calendar and confirm priorities and what you want to get or of each call/meeting.

4. Focus on making yourself more productive.  Bob has a dip mid afternoon and so takes a power naps of 30mins (he has trained himself to sleep for 30 mins), after which time he is refreshed, revitalised and ready to work some more.  Bob, in his quest to be more productive has selected things to be boring about e.g. his choice of the same breakfast cereal so you can focus your time on those things that are important.

For more information on Bob and to hear his podcast, go to the full HRB article, where Pozen has distilled his knowledge into six principles for a more productive work life.

Turn a trivial pursuit into the serious business of building your talents

Even in a game of trivial pursuits there is the opportunity for us to take a strategic approach to growing and managing our talent. Here's how...

Over the festive period I downloaded the trivial pursuits iPad app as a present for my trivia loving hubby. One evening, my hubby and parents sat down to play.  We all set about with our strategies for winning and in the post analysis (hubby and I had a long car journey home after the xmas break to talk about any and everything), it seemed that those who did better, adopted a strategy that played to their strengths, which also holds true in the real world.

Not unsurprisingly my trivia loving hubby won (not by much, but a win is a win), and as ever I was keen to learn more about what he thought made him successful.  He revealed that apart from spending a lot of time reading trivia, he also stuck close to the (wedge) option he wanted to acquire before moving on.  In order to maximise the number of hits on a wedge, each time he threw the digital dice, he took the question option that ensured he would have the best chance of answering and so getting another shot at the ulitmate (wedge) option. 

This behaviour translates into the real world too.  Staying close to the opportunities you want and playing to your strengths will give you the best chance of success.  It reminded me of a quote by Dave Hirtz in his book 'How To Castrate A Bull', where he talks of how he achieved success.  He said "it's hard to be in the right place at the right time, so perhaps the best alternative is to go the right place and wait there."

What's your strategy for building your strengths?

How will you create opportunities to be waiting near, or in the right place in 2012?

On a side note I was pretty shocked when the history questions were on topics that had occurred in my life time! I know I have just had another birthday but I don't regard myself old enough to be considered historic, maybe the pace of change is such that anything older than a Gen Y, is history!

Simplify your way to success

One of the things I constantly talk with my coaching clients about is how they manage their time, work load, responsibilities, working relationships.  One of the key reasons people are not meeting goals is because they are not focused on the what is important to those who can influence their career, or they are not doing it in a way that meets their expectations.  A key starting point is to get really clear about what is important and how those they report to expect it to be delivered.  This is the start of what I think of as 'role responsibility de-cluttering'. We often carry with us activities we have always done, either because we like them, or no one has told us to stop, despite them not being needed by the organisation anymore.

The first week in August is 'Simplify Your Life Week'.  Onlineorganizing.com, define "simplifying [as] having enough without having too much -- cutting back on unnecessary spending, slowing down, and focusing on your true priorities.

Without realising the significance of this week, I happened to spend a couple of very satisfactory hours de-cluttering my wardrobe this weekend (having been previously trained by the wonderful Julia van den Berg in the art of clothes de-cluttering).  I can now see what summer clothes I have.  I also felt a lot richer without spending any money because I found some little gems of outfits that had got lost at the bottom of the drawers.  Whether it is clothes or work responsibilities, it may seem a daunting task at the beginning, but once you have done it you will find the effort is well worth the investment.  If it feels like too big a task, get some support.  Two of my recent coaching clients both undertook some work responsibility de-cluttering and both have reported some significant benefits to their careers.

So when the sun gets too hot this summer to be outside (or the rain begins to pour) take an hour to think how you can simplify your life/work to get an instance hit of the 'feel good' factor and an important step towards greater success.

The power of an engagement conversation

Here is a comment I found by a women who wrote in response to a blog, detailing 6 reasons employees leave an organisation (@expresspros) that I really wanted to share with you.


"The above are all reasons that I am walking after 18 years - particularly the immediate supervisor. I have been rated in the high 90s consistently, receive national recognition and ignored recruitment attempts until this past year. I never thought I would leave my home but I can hardly wait."

She sounds like a talented individual who will be missed by her organisation.  Harvard Business Review's article (May 2010) 'how to keep your top talent' identified regular and open dialogues as being one critical component of a talent development programme, in order to monitor star employees' development and satisfaction. 

In the many years of working with managers on how they engage with their talent, I believe that many managers know the importance of having regular and open dialogue with their employees, but many don't.  Why not?

A key challenge is having a credible and purposeful reason for meeting with talent on a regular basis to discuss their engagement without it simply degenerating into a 'how are you getting on conversation' or worse 'what training do you want/need'.  Enquiring about the wellbeing of an individual and their development needs is important and needs to be asked, but not to the exclusion of a broader set of questions.  Such as the areas an individual rates as important for their workplace satisfaction vs how well the business is delivering them.  Managers often need the core skills, some hand holding, and a little push before they fully embraces the subtleties of holding an engagement conversation.  If not, then their employees are much more tempted to listen to the recruiters. 

Providing your managers with the skills and focal points to have an 'engagement' conversation with your employees is a simple process that is often underrated and under used but provides a real opportunity to maximise value from the managing of your talent.

Everyone can benefit:

• The act of having an engagement conversations in itself, helps an individual to feel more engaged
• Employees are waiting (and wanting) to have these conversations and once done they will be willing to give more of their discretionary effort
• Managers will be given insights that only come from showing a genuine interest and focusing on areas that the individual flags as important
• Employees feel valued and are more likely to stay, which frees everyone from the grind and expense of constantly recruiting

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 4

Following on from my previous posts, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here is the fourth and final 2.5 areas to consider:

Confirm the development delivers - does the development initiatives stretch or cosset? Tip - give identified talent real business issues to address and or put into critical roles, even if they are operating in a shadow capacity.  Often the talent pool are given additional responsibilities or projects to help them grow and profile their talent, but they are overly engineered to ensure very little chance of failure.  They need to experience a challenge first hand and embed the learning to carry the lesson.  It is a fine and difficult tight rope to walk, in terms of getting the right amount of feedback and on-going coaching and mentoring support.  But if they are given too much when they come off the 'spoon fed' programme, if it is not replaced with something else they feel abandoned and they are actually not able to think for themselves in any significantly different way, leading to demotivation and probably departure.  If the development is not up to the job then it is unlikely that internal talent will be promoted.

Define measures of success - are there clearly defined measures of success?  Tip - measures of success can be simple, such as the level of recruitment spending, the number of internal promotions, the size of the talent pool for future leadership positions, the levels of talent engagement and the number of talented employees departing over the past year.  Setting goals will keep the focus on what is important and ensure tracking against the strategic objectives.

Bonus thought - Deliver value over complexity - is the process more complicated than it needs to be?  Tip - At each stage of the process consider what value will be delivered to the business from the implementation of choosen models, tools, technology etc.  Often we can get caught up with creating a (perfect) process that is does not meet the business needs.

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 3

Following on from my first and second post, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here are the third 2 areas to consider:

Identify the owners - who is running the show?  Tip - there are a number of key stakeholder and they all have an important role to play.  It is important to define the responsibilities of each.  Typically the role of HR/Talent Manager is to tease out the objectives, provide the framework to achieve the desired outcomes, oversee the process and support implementation. The leaders' role is to reinforce the importance of the process, to act as the role models for the behaviours they want and need the rest of the organisation to demonstrate, while the line have the vital role of helping to deliver the talent management initiatives and manage the talent on a day to day basis.  Whatever the final allocation of roles and responsibilities, the most important thing to maximise the value from your talent management process is to ensure that everyone is clear about their role and the critical part they play in engaging, developing and retain talent.

Ensure useable technology -  is there useful intelligence being produced?  Tip - consider your needs, how complex is your process going to be in the outset?  As you evolve your talent management process you will undoubtably need more technology.  Technology can enhance the process but too much technology is likely to remove richness from the insight and make it a tick book activity that simply has to get done. In the first instance, many companies can still get by using the basics such as a spreadsheet to gather and display the information they need to make decisions. Beware of wasting valuable resources on creating a 'white elephant' that the business does not want to use.

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 2

Following on from my first post, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here are the second 2 areas to consider:

Determine eligibility for inclusion - is it open to everyone and can people put themselves, others forward, or is it shrouded in secrecy?  Tip - open nomination sends out more positive messages, is preferred by talent and acts as safety net for picking up potentials.  Not everyone wants or is ready to put themselves forward for a talent programme, so it is unlikely that you will be inundated, but employees report that it is important for them to know that it could be open to them.  If you go down the open route, then having a clear selection and participation criteria is critical for helping people to decide their eligibility. And for those who make it into the talent pool it is also important that they know they have been selected.  Talent often report to being told they are part of the succession plan only when they depart.  Note - participation criteria for being in a talent pool can make clear it is not a life committment.  If employees do not feel they are being given a fair chance to develop and be recognised they are more likely to leave to pursue a career elsewhere.

Decide on the implementation - is it 'done to' employees and are they told what to do and expect, with little opportunity to say whether they actual want to be included?  Tip - engaging all stakeholders in the creation process and putting talent at the heart of the process will ensure it is not just a 'best in class model' but is something that is embraced and made to successfully work within the organisation's culture.  Otherwise it becomes a costly investment that goes nowwhere.