In this article I contrasted the few who are reliable with the greater number who are simply flaky.

The Stress of Being One of a Reliable Few

Executives, managers and board members are always on the lookout for the special handful of employees who are completely reliable. Once they identify them, they come to depend on them, giving them greater responsibilities while shunning those who are seen as flaky. Is this the best company strategy in the long-term, especially if you are one of the reliable few?

The flood of information and time demands employees experience in Jamaican companies has not been matched by an increase in their skill. Most firms are staffed by too many flakes: “harem-scarem,” scatterbrained colleagues who cannot be trusted to complete future tasks. They may be quite likable and well-intended, perhaps even a favorite in some ways. However, at the end of the day they disappoint: their promised actions are rarely fulfilled.

The experienced professional eventually learns to tell the difference between the reliable and their counterparts, but only after being burnt. Past, negative experience is one reason reliable people are never let go, once they have been found.

If you happen to be one of these people, how should you react to increased workload and responsibilities? Here are some positive tactics to employ.

Tactic 1 – Grow Your Own Skills

Even if you happen to be the most reliable, productive person in your office, the chances are good that you are a big fish in a small pond: still far from world-class standards.

Data gathered in hundreds of self-evaluations in my training tells the truth. Even weak executives think they are highly accomplished in managing time demands. The truth is, they are not: instead, they are strong at thinking on their feet, learning how to fast-talk their way out of trouble without actually improving a single behaviour. Few around them have the knowledge or courage to show them otherwise.

Your movement to the next level of performance means giving up these tricks. It also means sacrificing the false comfort of being only better than the small circle of people around you.

Tactic 2 – Identify and Rely on Others

If you are someone who is reliable you may have come to believe that no-one else can be trusted, so you do everything yourself. You see delegation, which is the same as asking for help, as a weakness. As a result, you end up being stressed.

There is some justification. In the past, you tried to rely on colleagues, only to have them let you down. Time demands fell through the cracks, causing you to work overtime to prevent a disaster from happening. You decided to never again have someone determine your fate, resolving to do everything yourself.

In the beginning, this tactic worked, but no-one can escape the fact that there is a limit to the number of time demands even a competent worker can execute. Instead of throwing up your hands in despair, there’s another option: rely on others.

This tactic may fly in the face of your experience, but here’s a way to mitigate the risk.

First, weed out those who are completely flaky from those who are only sometime flakes. Start to work with the more capable few with a view to building a trusted network of reliable colleagues. Help them experience a sense of autonomy, purpose and mastery, which are the key to deep motivation. Leverage this network to get the best work done, enhancing your reputation. It’s what the best civil servants have learned to do. Within government ministries, skillful Permanent Secretaries do this by working closely with each other, sometimes over several years, from different positions.

Tactic 3 – Train Others

Having a network of “lesser flakes” is just a start. Coach them along by showing them the cost of being unreliable. Ask them to paint a picture of what their life would be like if they were to become more reliable. Then, persuade them to seek out world-class examples of high productivity. Offer yourself as a living example (without telling them to copy you,) sharing the high standards you aspire to in your daily work.

Most will have never read a book on the topic. Doing so is a great place to start for many, who simply don’t know what it’s like to work in an ultra high-performing team. Show them how to seize opportunities to improve by working with, and learning from, others with superior skills.

Unfortunately, many people won’t be interested in this kind of improvement right away, so prepare yourself for a process that may take many months. However, at the end, you’ll be surrounded by more than the ordinary incompetence that runs rampant. You’ll have a networked team that you can rely on, even if none of its members report directly to you. It can make all the difference to your company and your daily work experience.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20150201/business/business6.html

You may believe that you are either the exception, or have no choice.

Regardless of the rationale, you are a manager who spends most of his/her time hovering over employees who are barely competent.

In this article, I look at what it takes to break out of this behavior, which enslaves both manager and employee.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20150118/business/business7.html

Email management has become a sign of competence, but we are slow to realize that our own personal habits get us into trouble. We need to start viewing our email inboxes as if they are no more than kitchen sinks, as I say in this column for the Jamaica Gleaner.

Here’s the article.

Within moments of lying face-down on the ground, King Alarm arrived, followed three hours later by the police. Why? My parents and I had just been held up and immobilised at home by three gunmen.

Little was taken and no-one was physically harmed, but I asked: “Why three hours? Why not three minutes?”

Earlier this year, as the host of CaribHR.Radio (an Internet radio show), I put a tough question to a minister of government from Trinidad and Tobago and also to the head of Antigua’s public sector transformation unit: “Why is it so hard to transform the public sector where so much is at stake?”

There are a myriad of reasons, but here’s one I discovered in these two episodes: Caribbean countries are stuck with a form of government that makes it hard to effect change.

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You can find the rest of the article here – Managing a Change in the Public Sector.

Left to their own devices, employees who become accustomed to giving a minimal effort forget what it’s like to work hard. How can you, as a Jamaican manager, turn their performance around before it’s too late?

While the employee who leaves work everyday at 4:59 PM on the dot may be doing so to make an appointment, it’s more likely he has developed the habit of doing as little as possible. Here’s a tip: when staff members are only on time for one, single appointment each day – “Quitting Time” – you may have a problem.

It means that significant effort is being put toward doing the minimum. At this point, staff are doing just enough to keep their jobs, staying one half-step ahead of trouble. It’s probably not the mindset they came to the workplace with, but it’s one that with the encouragement of others, they have developed. The stampede out the door at the end of the day is sad: people who enjoy what they are doing don’t try to escape from it as fast as they can.

How do you, as a manager, break the deadlock?

As you may have noticed, preaching, scolding and cajoling won’t work. In fact, they push workers into passive resistance. Here are some of the approaches that do work based in part on recent research.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Is Your Company Engaging or Entertaining Employees?

Employee engagement means more than just hiring comedians, handing out balloons and renting the island’s biggest Bounce-About for Family Day. Instead, it has to do with addressing staff’s key concerns in a way that builds a firm’s capacity for dealing with problems in the future.

Human Resource professionals are often seen as the “feel-good” squad of corporate life. When employees feel bad, as revealed by lunchroom complaints and internal surveys, HR’s job is to make them feel better. In these recessionary times, this job has become harder to do. Only longtime staff-members can recall famous Christmas Parties from the past: they have now been reduced to portion-controlled buffet luncheons held on Thursdays in late November… all to reduce costs.

Few are surprised when, a week later, the “intervention” has worn off and the complaints resume, revealing that the feel-good activity only offered a bit of entertainment. Even when it’s enhanced by the inclusion of families, expensive hotel rooms and fun add-ons like rafting, the effect is still the same. Authentic engagement takes more than titillation. Here’s why.

To read the rest of the article click here.

Are You Suffering from the 6 Modern Symptoms of Ineffective Time Management?

In the past, the signs of ‘poor time management’ were obvious, but in today’s age of the “always on” mobile Internet, you could be suffering from the modern symptoms afflicting Jamaican employees.

Many years ago, time management problems were easy to detect: arriving late and missing deadlines were clear red flags. In today’s world, however, things are different – the old symptoms remain, but a number of new ones have appeared, including the following six you may be experiencing today:

1. An Exploded Inbox
Perhaps the best indicator of a productivity problem is the state of your email Inbox. If you have 200 or more read and unread messages, you may believe that you simply get too much email. For you, the fault lies with your company and/or the people in your life; they are the reason you feel guilty and overwhelmed. The numbers don’t lie, however. If your Inbox is in trouble, it’s because your daily practices have made it so.

To read the rest of the article click here.