The CELEBRATION news"E"letter

Number 13, June 2000

by Laura M. Stack, MBA

Published by Celebration Presentations

…your Personal and Professional Development Resource

The CELEBRATION news"E"letter is a monthly electronic newsletter distributed to our clients, human resource personnel, and colleagues. Celebration Presentations works with organizations that want more productive people and individuals who want to lead more fulfilling lives. Our programs provide the personal productivity, communication, and professional development skills needed to improve performance on the job and create organizational growth.

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NEWS: Celebration Presentations is experiencing more positive changes! My husband, John Stack, has left his 6-year position at the US Postal Service to join me as the Director of Operations and Marketing. With an education in business and a sales background, I think he’s perfect for the position!

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IN THIS ISSUE:

* Article: "Looking at Time Through the Lens of Leadership, Part I"

* Time Tips and Traps

* Words of Wisdom

* Featured Program: "The New TeleWork: Working Effectively From Home"

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ARTICLE: "Looking at Time Through the Lens of Leadership, Part I"

(Excerpted from a chapter I’m contributing to a new anthology written by 14 professional speakers entitled, "Motivational Leadership.")

Good leaders in the year 2000 and beyond understand that time management is not about squeezing more into their days. As a leader in your organization, you must do two things well with regard to time management. First, you must help your folks spend their time productively in the accomplishment of organizational goals. Second, you must manage your time to accomplish your most important objectives.

This chapter will help you realize these objectives by discussing three key time management principles for leaders: (1) keep employees from burning out, (2) be a good time role model, and (3) eliminate activities that waste time. With these principles, you can lead yourself and others to use time more wisely. To make changes in the way you manage your time, you must first change the way you think about it.

When you have key employees who work hard, long, and effectively, you naturally delegate important projects and tasks to them—lots of them. It’s understandable, because you trust those people. "Give it to Judy, and it will get done." Unfortunately, your over-zealousness and confidence in your superstars can burn them out if left unchecked. Satisfaction, quality of work, and effectiveness decrease as the workload increases beyond the point of manageability.

Many employees will take on an increased workload temporarily to meet a key project deadline or launch an IPO for a new dotcom in which they have stock options. However, if that level of work goes unabated for too long, an employee’s effectiveness will diminish. If employees don’t take care of themselves, they will have no energy to devote to work.

For example, a colleague shared with me his experience consulting with a startup organization. The leader was a fairly new manager, there were critical deadlines looming, and the organization was having a hard time staffing vital positions. The leader kept delegating project after project to the existing employees, forcing many of them to work until 1:00 a.m. each day to meet the deadlines. They burned out, left the company, and the entire launch went belly-up without these key personnel. If building instant fortunes means treating people like machines—bringing in next year’s models when they burn out—the best and the brightest will eventually look elsewhere and trade paper options for real options.

Watch for the warning signs of burnout in your employees:

• Excessively long working hours for extended periods of time,
• Fatigue,
• Withdrawing from social relationships,
• Clock watching,
• Distractedness,
• Acting like a broken record,
• Problems in their personal lives,
• Depression,
• Substance abuse, or
• A strong desire to head off to the South Seas with a paintbrush in hand.

Don’t be responsible for putting somebody over the edge! Listening to your folks will provide a great return on your investment of time and energy. Find out what’s working, where they are overloaded, and when they have too much in their plates. Don’t allow them to wear "no sleep" like a badge of honor.

Action Items:

• Make sure that you’re sharing the load with your other employees. Many large consulting firms, for example, get assignments from a number of different partners. It’s often hard to determine how much work people have on their plates at any one time. Employees just accept most projects, because billable hours tend to equate to value in the firm. The result was unlimited work and burnout. So Ernst & Young established committees to review time sheets to ensure that no one person was overburdened. "There are a lot of type-A personalities who will work themselves to frustration and then quit," said Jeffrey Calvello, 33, a senior audit manager. In 1999 alone, the committees reduced the workloads of 48 people, sometimes without their knowledge. E&Y knew that ultimately this was simply good for business.

• One of the best retention strategies today is to recognize an employee’s need for flexible scheduling, working arrangements, and work sites. You must help employees juggle the family balance issues they struggle with daily. By doing so, you gain their focus while on the job and dedication to the company. In addition, many of the younger "Generation X" workers today highly value their personal time and private family life, so workload becomes a retention factor. It’s not enough to offer your employees free coffee and stock options. There has to be a human side to working at a company, or else people won’t stay. You could allow telecommuting, implement compressed work weeks, add satellite offices for people with long commutes, offer paid time off for volunteer or charitable work, or provide leaves of absence for employees who need a break.

• Work with your clients on creative ways to get the job done in a less harried fashion. If someone must be on-site at all times, you can stagger the work schedules, so that one person works Monday through Thursday, taking Friday off, and another works Tuesday through Friday, taking Monday off. Convince clients to change their mindsets. Turnover in your firm is their problem too.

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TIME TIPS AND TRAPS

• Stephen Covey says, "Time management is not the ability to squeeze more hours into the day. It is not the capacity to triple-book oneself in an effort to get more things done. It’s not about getting more things done at all. It’s about accomplishing the important."

• Buy two of each of your favorite cosmetics (three if you travel frequently). Keep one in your bathroom for your morning routine, one set stashed in your office for touchups (or in case you don’t have time to apply it at home), and one in your suitcase, always ready to go. This will eliminate the time and hassle to transport makeup back and forward between these locations.

• Pay a responsible high school or college student to provide transportation and care for your children for a few hours a day, a couple times a week. Ask friends and neighbors for recommendations and check with local colleges, especially in the elementary education department.

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WORDS OF WISDOM

• "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." ---Albert Einstein

• The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes." ---Marcel Proust

• "All serious daring starts from within." ---Eudora Welty

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FEATURED PROGRAM: "The New TeleWork: Working Effectively from Home."

Course description: How many hours of your day are spent commuting? Do you ever wish you could go to work without having to go through the aggravation of actually getting there? Would you like to devote more time to your family? If so, telecommuting could be for you. Get out of bed, walk down the hall, and switch on the computer. Your commute to work is now over!

One of the major trends in corporate America today is telecommuting, which is an off-site work arrangement that permits employees to work in their homes for all or part of the workweek. The main focus of this program is the employee--who is best suited for telecommuting, benefits to the employee, likely psychological and work-management problems and solutions, and organizational and interpersonal challenges.

Course Objectives:

• Understand the Benefits of Telecommuting
• Determine if Your Job and Personality Are Suited for Working at Home
• Negotiate an Arrangement with Your Employer
• Design Your Office for Optimal Productivity
• Set Up Effective Organizational Systems
• Avoid Distractions and Procrastination
• Establish Personal Rules for Telecommuting
• Overcome Isolation and Challenges of Working Alone
• Set Boundaries with Family and Friends
• Avoid Burnout and the "Do-It-All" Syndrome
• Preserve Your Professional Image and Maintain Visibility

"For more information about "The New TeleWork: Working Effectively from Home," please call 303-471-7401. Mention this newsletter and receive a 20% discount on this program when brought on-site to your organization.

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CONTACT US

Visit Celebration Presentations on-line!

http://www.LauraStack.com

On-line information includes: Program Descriptions, Articles, Laura's Schedule, Live Video Demonstration, Client Testimonials, and Pricing

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to interested associates. If they would like to continue to receive it, ask them to send us their email address. Thank You!

Contact info:

Mailing address: 9948 S. Cottoncreek Drive, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130

Phone: 303-471-7401

Fax: 303-471-7402

Website: www.LauraStack.com