Category: Gleaner Jamaica

There is a persona haunting the cubicles of corporate Jamaica. Mr. Crack is a presence in all except the smallest of companies, an obscure figure who quietly slips in for an indefinite stay.

He’s earned the name “Mr. Crack” because anything he’s asked to do falls smartly through the cracks, unknown to others. Only the uninitiated rely on him to get anything done. Everyone else who has been burned knows that he’s only as good as their right arm – an appendage that does what it’s told within just a few milliseconds. It has no working memory, and neither does he.

A foreign friend of mine who lives in Jamaica returned to attend a conference in the United States. Upon meeting a conference organizer she needed to work with, she unconsciously began treating him like Mr. Crack. After a few interactions, he caught on, announcing: “No need to follow-up like that, I’m a professional.”

She almost broke into tears. She realized that there was no need to keep up her habit of incessant follow-up. She could relax. Fortunately, he turned out to be reliable, never once dropped a beat during the entire event.

Here in Jamaica, we have no such luxury. Our local companies are populated with Mr. Cracks because we fear the confrontation required to intervene. Instead, like my friend, we accommodate. Afraid of being accused of being the next Bakra Massa, we drop our standards. Sometimes we avoid Mr. Crack altogether. At other times, we act as his personal external hard drive.

But these tactics don’t work. He often thrives because the best Mr. Cracks are great networkers. Like the perfect barnacle, he knows how to stick around a company for years, even decades. A nice fellow with pleasing manners, he is a good listener who knows how to make others feel good. He can share war stories of times spent with executives before they ascended the corporate ladder. These warm relations represent his job security.

However, his good social skills only make it harder to replace him. He gets nothing done, but he does it in such a pleasing way that no-one can imagine letting him go. With that obstacle in place, how then can a manager make a difference?

Tactic 1 – Direct Coaching
In prior columns, I have reiterated the need to practice tough coaching conversations. Most managers occupy one of two extremes: they either overestimate their skills or avoid developing them altogether. I recommend that a manager improves his/her skills in this area every year until retirement. It’s the only way to deal with Mr. Crack who can anticipate and avoid tough feedback conversations like a pro. He knows how to get sick or go on vacation at just the right time, escaping any unpleasantness. Overcoming Crack’s superior skills takes great capability that isn’t developed by accident.

Tactic 2 – Group Interventions
These meetings resemble those showdowns you may have seen on television when a family confronts an alcoholic. It’s a last ditch attempt to help someone whose destruction is assured. An extreme approach, it requires exquisite preparation. However, at the end of the conversation, next steps are quite clear cut and only the slipperiest of Mr. Cracks are able to get past. Such is the power of a group of close colleagues who sincerely care.

Tactic 3 – Termination
Almost every Jamaican company I have worked with has people who should have left some time ago but are not even aware that a gap exists. They labour in the dark because they have never received simple, accurate feedback. It’s no accident: many companies don’t have a robust process for addressing low performance. Managers find it easier to avoid any friction, kicking the can down the lane, hoping that someone else picks it up. The resulting lack of written records turns sub-par employees like Mr. Crack into permanent fixtures, protected by our stringent labour laws which prevent separation without just cause.

The manager’s avoidance is caused by fear and compounded by incompetence. The fact is, there are skillful, caring ways to coach, confront in groups and terminate but companies just don’t spend the time to find them.

It’s a pity. The net effect is that the high performing 20% eventually learn that mediocrity is the norm. Some leave. Most just give up, sliding into the ranks of the below-average 80%. Both outcomes should be unacceptable to leaders who need to get past their tendency to get stuck, seeing the problem as a dilemma between “being nice” or “being wicked.” This old lens, a carryover from slavery, needs to be abandoned because it stymies progress.

Instead, dealing with Mr. Crack should be seen as a matter of developing the right skills. Companies need to invest their time and effort in giving their managers what they need to address this common performance problem.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160424/francis-wade-how-cope-unreliable-mr-crack

Are personal productivity skills learned once and then used forever? While this may have been true in the past, becoming one of the most effective professionals in today’s world requires you to change your tools and techniques on an ongoing basis.

When I completed my book in late 2014 I thought it captured the state-of-the-art in using To-Do Lists and calendars. Based on the research I did, I thought I did a great job.

Then I discovered a programme called SkedPal, introduced to me by a colleague’s post on her website. In the past year, it’s forced me to declare two chapters of my book obsolete. They have to be rewritten to catch up with my new daily habit of using the application. What makes it remarkable?

As I have explained in prior columns, unless you are nearing retirement, it’s important to keep expanding your capacity to manage more tasks. I have also argued that you must migrate from the use of memory, early in your career, to the use of digital To-Do Lists and calendars. In fact, research shows that the most productive people put almost all their tasks in their calendars, even though adopting this technique requires an arduous journey. It means learning some intricate habits, practices, and rituals.

The curve is so steep, I planned to write an addendum to my book on “How to Schedule Every Task Effectively.” I was convinced it would be popular because most people who try to schedule everything usually fail. It’s especially true in those manic moments when they must re-juggle their calendars multiple times.

SkedPal replaces this manual, tedious job that would take up hours of my time each week. Now, several times per day, I’m able to click a button and watch as the programme reaches into my Outlook or Google calendars to optimize the placement of tasks. It’s not as scary as it may sound – SkedPal is designed to leave the user’s fixed appointments in place and only reorder the ones that are flexible.

While the details of its patented Artificial Intelligence is beyond me, it’s easier to see how the programme operates as a super-secretary. Just like the best administrative assistants, it has the ability to interpret my needs and perfect my calendar in a matter of seconds.

To say I am a fan would be an understatement – in fact, after long interactions with the inventors, I joined the company’s Advisory Board.

But the sad truth is that my enthusiasm didn’t start out that way. While I was writing my book I dimly remember visiting the programme’s website. Back then, I just didn’t believe that the software could deliver what it promised and dismissed it. Fortunately, my arrogance didn’t get in the way several months later when my colleague’s post caught my attention. But I came quite close to missing the boat, a mishap I’m not keen to repeat. If you’re also interested in continuously expanding your productivity, here is some advice.

1. Understand the need to seek out regular upgrades
Your self-taught methods might already be better than most people around you, but that’s no guarantee of future success. The only way to deal with an increasingly greater number of tasks is to proactively evolve your methods, picking up new practices and shedding old ones.

Your grandparents had the luxury of a world that changed slowly, but you don’t. Now, you should assume that the tools and techniques you are currently using are already becoming obsolete. Keeping up means becoming a diligent student of your own productive limits.

2. Experiment
As I learned from experience, it’s better to download and test a new app you don’t understand than to dismiss it out of hand, the way I did. Sometimes, the thing that might benefit you the most is one you simply don’t understand well enough. It doesn’t into your world-view. Constant experimentation and a willingness to try new stuff are now critical skills to have.

3. Look for Best-in-Class Behaviors
To discover what these might be, you must tune into world-class practices. I use sites like Lifehack.org, Lifehacker.com, and Quora.com to ferret out leading-edge tips. Also, I seek advice from high-performers to understand what they do and why. Sometimes, it can be translated into what I should be doing.

Arguably, as Jamaicans, the journey to our present-day success on the track started when athletes left our shores to train abroad. There, they learned the best techniques in the world, customized and imported them home. There is no reason you cannot do the same, surpassing the popular excuses we tell each other about lateness, missed deadlines, and low productivity.

SkedPal is available as a free download in its current Beta phase at www.skedpal.net
Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

(Click here for the online version. http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160408/francis-wade-how-keep-your-productivity-amid-change)

What if the key to having a productive day has less to do with how hard you work during the average work hour, but everything to do with a focused activity that takes no more than 30-minutes? In this article I describe the power of a daily technique used by the most productive people.

If you ask these people what they do to be effective, you’d find it’s not the kind of question you can pose directly. I liken it to querying a centurion – “What’s the secret to a long life?” Oftentimes the answers you receive are just as confusing as those given by the most productive. To find the truth behind their anecdotes, you must turn to research involving large numbers of people.

In my book, I share a key finding: a person performs better when they make a detailed, daily plan. In these modern times, what is the nature of this plan and how is it made?

To explain, let’s start with the definition of a “time demand.” It’s something you create each day in your mind – a commitment to complete an action in the future. At some point in your adolescent or teen years, you quietly discovered that reaching your goals meant keeping time demands alive. Seeing one slip through the cracks was awful, especially if it was part of an important plan.

Yet, that is exactly what happens when we enter college. Or get married. Or get a promotion. All of a sudden, the number of time demands increases and we can’t keep up. Some get “forgotten” in the rush and we suffer the consequences.

A small number of people adjust their methods quickly. A few never do. Failed exams, divorces, firings – they happen when we don’t keep up. Even your children’s GSAT performance isn’t immune: wise heads tell us their performance is correlated with quality time spent with them. They don’t pass or fail, you do.

Add to this not-so-subtle pressure is the increased data that flows at you. You see more information in a day than your grandparents saw in a month. Is that a blessing or a curse? It depends on what you do in that 30-minute time-slot I mentioned before.

This time-slot should be used for setting the stage for your day in what I call “Emptying.” It’s the critical opportunity to consider all the inflows of information in which you decide which time demands to execute, and when.

Early in your career, you got by with haphazard Emptying skills. In these modern times, doing your Emptying casually is an impediment. Now, it’s a battleground where you juggle priorities, urgencies, time limits, expectations, personal goals and more. The output should be an optimized schedule that meets your specific needs today and for the future.

Given the importance of this short slice of time, how can we make the most of it?

1. “Emptying” means leaving things empty

The term “Emptying” implies that all decisions regarding incoming information have been made. When you are done, you leave behind completely vacant Inboxes, whether they be digital, voice or paper-based. Their pristine state gives you the peace of mind knowing that you don’t need to return to them until tomorrow to repeat the act.

2. Schedule Emptying for the start of the day

It’s a grand mistake to jump into the first task of the day without conducting your daily session of Emptying. As you do so, check your email Inbox, voicemail, text messages, Instant Messages, notes or any other possible source of triggers for new time demands. Even if the number you currently face is small, prepare yourself now for the inevitable: a potentially crippling, spike in communication.

3. When you Empty, do it at a time when you won’t be interrupted

Employees wonder why the best executives often come in early. Sometimes, it’s to beat traffic, but often it’s because they crave the uninterrupted time it takes to do high-volume, high-stakes Emptying. They realize that their entire day depends on how well they do this intense activity, so closing off their world to interruptions is a requirement. This is far easier to implement at 6:00 AM than at 10:00 AM, long before others have arrived. To enhance the effect, they turn off all devices and notifications on all platforms, the better to focus the activity.

In today’s world in which you must process a lot of inbound information, your skills at Emptying must improve if you are interested in climbing the corporate ladder. There is simply no escape from a job that is yours and yours alone to complete and no excuse if you fail to make the necessary, ongoing improvements.

Blaming your environment, as some do, is not an option. Instead, it’s a sign of incompetence in one area of corporate life where personal mastery is essential to your success.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160327/how-protect-your-daily-productivity-peace-mind

It’s a dilemma common to executives. What should they do when they realize their company is staffed with mediocre performers? The immediate instinct is to go out and recruit superstars, but there’s new research indicating that there’s a better approach: remove or transform your toxic employees.

If you recently joined a new company or just received a new promotion you may have discovered that your staff isn’t effective. Whether by grand epiphany or slow discovery, you see the problem clearly and desperately want to solve it. You envy departments filled with high potentials brimming with vibrant energy, wishing you had the kind of people whose work ethic and intelligence you could admire.

Your secret wish is to somehow attract a few good ones, who would, in turn, bring in others, but there is new evidence to show that you should focus your efforts elsewhere.

In a recent working paper from the Harvard Business School, Michael Housman, and Dylan Minor start by sharing the obvious: toxic employees are costly. In addition, their study of over 50,000 employees shows that they also detract from the performance of others. They take a toll on morale, customer service, and turnover. They note that an employee who is surrounded by toxic colleagues is likely to fall into similar behaviors. In other words, toxicity is contagious.

Furthermore, the study also showed that it’s better to replace a toxic employee than hire a great one. Doing so has twice the impact.

But even with these facts in hand, the typical company often can’t take action. If you are an executive, consider the following reasons why your organization is unable to easily remove these employees.

Reason 1 – Toxic workers often appear productive
They know what to do to generate a lot of activity. But in the end, their presence is a negative one. For example, the rogue trader who cost Grace Kennedy some US$20m in profits in 2010 was, from all prior appearances, a high performer. Earlier removal would have made a gigantic difference.

Reason 2 – Toxic workers are confident, plus they follow the rules
Their outward personality makes it difficult to see them as anything other than strong people who never do much wrong, according to written company policy. Furthermore, they are bold in asserting their high productivity, doing a good job of those things that can easily be measured. It’s harder to document the damage they do in other areas.

Reason 3 – Companies keep bad records
Jack Welch is a huge proponent of forced ranking. While its overall benefit is disputed, the system does make it clear where weaknesses lie. Most companies in the Caribbean possess no such clarity. Instead, one manager after another dodges the bullet, giving toxic employees passing grades simply because it’s the path of least resistance. Over time, reality becomes separated from the written record. The executive who finally decides to do the right thing finds that the laws in the Caribbean are quite strict: no employee who has a record of adequate performance can be summarily dismissed.

The researchers didn’t specifically go into the effect toxic employees have on high performers but we can imagine. A high potential who believes she’s being rewarded exactly the same as a toxic colleague is likely to depart for a saner environment. She may say it’s “for more money”, but that’s sometimes a cover-up. The truth is, she’s gotten to the point where the company’s lunacy has become unbearable.

What then should your company do to prevent itself from filling the ranks with toxic employees?

Step 1 – Analyze your human resource records to see whether there is a separation between high and low performers. Compare your company’s performance with the story told by these records.

Step 2 – If there’s a mismatch, move to identify toxic employees. Work to remedy the skills of their managers in giving feedback and hold them to account so that the separation becomes clear.

Step 3 – Monitor the gap between high and low performers over time, using company performance as a guide. It’s better to do this long before there’s a crunch so that the right adjustments can be made.

Think of a top football club. There is universal recognition that players come and go: it’s a requirement of their system which is different from a family with its life-long blood relationships. Instead, a club is actually a temporary coalition of high performers striving towards the same goal. So is your company.

Attracting star performers may be a more sexy solution than dealing with toxic workers, but you have a higher obligation to keep your company healthy. It’s not the easy path to take, but it’s the one that pays off in the long-term.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

The original article on the Gleaner website can be found here.

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160228/francis-wade-why-you-arent-able-motivate-your-workershttps://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160228/francis-wade-why-you-arent-able-motivate-your-workers

Here’s the link to the article in the Gleaner.

Why “Acceptance” is an Essential First Step in Transforming Your Company

Most organizations are led by executives who see the world differently from their employees. They can envision a particular future, anxiously acting to grasp hold of it. How can companies make sure that executive impatience doesn’t produce a reckless rush to failure?

We live in a world in which changing one’s computer, smart-phone or automobile is as easy as completing an online order. The hard work to ensure technical interoperability has been done elsewhere, by someone else. It’s so easy; it seduces corporate leaders into thinking that all changes are simple.

However, the most complex corporate transformations involve far more: behaviour changes implemented by lots of people, sustained over time. These are by far the most difficult transitions to implement.

The proof can be found in what we see at the individual level. We know how hard it is to change a personal habit, even when we are motivated. Case in point: more than 25% of cardiac patients are unable to implement an exercise program after their heart attack.

Getting employees to change their behaviour is just as difficult. One reason is that new practices suggested to them are disconnected from their needs. To remedy this problem, many executives try these two tactics.

– Using Force – Some attempt to scare employees with threats of losses or layoffs that are intended to make them afraid. For example, they may put in place a new Jack Welchian performance management system that annually rids the company of its lowest performers. Predictably, people resist these efforts.

– Using Deception – Some companies try to slip changes in when employees aren’t paying attention. For example, a new system is announced, but the need to make difficult behaviour changes is downplayed. This approach ultimately fails when employees must get involved to make the system work.

These techniques militate against the end-result the company needs – a sustainable solution. Fortunately, the best practice is simple. Instead of trying to sell, motivate or convince employees they need to change, engage them honestly in solving the problem at hand.

One way is to include them in conducting a ruthless inventory of current reality. It may sound paradoxical, but leaders who resist or deny the status quo generate suspicion. They put themselves in an unnecessary war with “what is” which saps and blinds them, giving employees good reason to doubt their competence and trustworthiness.

Embracing reality, in examples of Business Process Improvements (BPI), is a more enduring strategy. Here are three steps to take that rely on engaging knowledgeable employees working in cross-functional teams.

1. Accept What Is Not Working
Oftentimes, I run into corporate clients who are in a rush to change. They dismiss the way things are, already picturing  the perfect solution. As they fixate on the future, they fail to understand the precise causes of the problems they have today.

Unfortunately, these reasons usually aren’t simplistic. They are hidden from the executive suite, where complexity is often understated in favour of a bombastic “Get on with it!” It also helps bypass the embarrassment of poor performance.

Solution: Engage day-to-day, expert employees in understanding the root causes of problems.

2. Accept What Is Working
Many employees who perform steps in a corporate process quickly learn how to become “unconsciously competent”. That is, they develop critical skills which become so matter of fact they don’t think about them overtly.

When asked, they fail to mention these habits because they no longer remember learning and using them. As a result, without help, they aren’t surfaced. They get lost.

Solution: Use a skilled facilitator and team members to reveal obscure elements of the process.

3. Accept that “Solutions” Cause New Problems
In complex systems, solutions often cause unforeseen difficulties. For example, as wonderful as smart-phones are, everyone who possesses a device has the challenge of keeping the battery charged. This particular habit is rarely anticipated by new users who cannot foresee why they need to own multiple chargers.

Solution: Bring a critical eye to proposed solutions, especially if they originate from outside the company.

At one level, acceptance implies commonsense corrections in judgement. However, these three points reflect tactics that engage essential employees who are often excluded. They are the ones who will actually be executing the improved process, so companies must win their hearts and mind up front.

When leaders fail to accept reality they lose the followership of their employees who sometimes even question their sanity. By contrast, actively involving employees at all stages turns them into advocates. It’s one way to incorporate different points of view that must be included to tap into the best information possible. Also, it’s good change management.

Companies who accept the need to build on the wisdom and involvement of their employees are doing more than being nice. They are ensuring the success of their transformation efforts.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160214/francis-wade-acceptance-essential-first-step-transforming-company

How to Stop People From Grabbing Your Valuable Time Away – Part 2

Have you ever been in a meeting when, after only a few minutes, you realize that your precious time is about to be wasted? Social pressure may keep you rooted to your chair until it’s safe to leave, but how should your organization prevent valuable hours from being lost from the outset?

In my last column, I addressed the problem of email abuse in organizations while offering immediate solutions, plus a few from the future. In this article, I turn to another problem that’s similar. Meetings have the potential to waste thousands of hours but the average company does little to prevent the loss. Here are three suggestions.

1. Use technology to focus meetings
You may know what it’s like to see a meeting start off on the right foot before veering off into a vast, random wasteland. To help keep your team on track, download an app that displays the running, total meeting cost. Most apps measure it by multiplying the average cost of an attendee by the total number attending. The results are shown in real time on a laptop or mobile device.

Try Meeting Cost Meter, available via the Android platform. It’s simple, but it amplifies the thoughts everyone has at these moments: “How much are we wasting?” and “What else could I be doing?”

2. Use technology to assess meetings
After the meeting ends, most people shy away from giving the facilitator direct feedback. This website, accessible via smartphone, takes away the social challenge – http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/625708/f29cbacc0c28

It offers a straightforward opportunity. At the meeting’s end, attendees fill out a form, then the program tabulates the facilitator’s results. The fact that the feedback is anonymous and the app is easy to use should make it an irresistible tool. However, few organizations demonstrate the will needed to implement it. “Too controversial” they may say as they continue to flush precious time down the drain.

3. Use future technology to preventing wasted meetings
Steve Jobs was famous for keeping meetings as small as possible.  According to Ken Segall, author of Insanely Simple – The Obsession that Drives Apple’s Success, Jobs openly (and sometimes abruptly) dismissed people who weren’t needed. Today, in most organizations, anyone can call a meeting without ever declaring its purpose with clarity. Furthermore, anyone is allowed to attend, even if their added value is questionable.

In the future, to keep meetings tight, I imagine that each employee will receive a meeting budget, measured by time units. Whoever sets up a meeting would see a subtraction from their annual budget, modified by the meeting’s duration and the number/level of the invitees.

Also, a meeting called without defining its purpose, agenda and logistics would incur a greater deduction. At year end, employees would review their budget vs. actual expenditures with managers, in order to make adjustments and receive direct coaching.

These technologies may work because they reverse some of the same problems companies have with email usage. Here is a shortened list:
– Once you are invited, it is hard to ignore or dismiss the meeting without incurring a social cost. Politically, it’s often easier to go along with a bad meeting that serves no purpose than it is to put up a fight.
– The cost of bad meetings is hidden and shared, so no single person is ever held accountable. Imagine if there were a public scorecard showing your performance as a meeting convenor.
– People who hold bad meetings are never coached to become better. They suffer along, never knowing that it’s a skill that can be dramatically improved.

But you don’t have to wait for all these technologies to be ready. Start by implementing these three suggestions right away.

1. Include meeting management as a component of performance review. Implement the after-meeting app/feedback tool, using it as a measure of individual performance.

2. Make it clear that meetings have a cost. Encourage employees to download the meeting cost app and help them use it every time. Periodically, advertise the total time spent in meetings to promote a new level of vigilance.

3. Train all employees in the best practices for leading meetings, including top executives. (They are guilty of calling some of the worst meetings I have ever attended.) Never assume that successfully managing meetings is just common sense.

In my November 22nd article on the Japanese post-War turnaround, I explained that the country’s factories succeeded by cutting operational waste. It was a novel technique  that helped Japan became a world leader, partly because the approach could be used in so many ways, in so many industries. Jamaican companies use meetings and email inefficiently, but we can adopt available technologies to make them better. Perhaps it would lead to other improvements that are hard to imagine, such as a renaissance in productivity plus an impact on GDP. Let’s find out by paying attention to a cost that’s fully within our control.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

Click here to access the original article from the Gleaner website – http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20160103/how-stop-people-grabbing-your-valuable-time-away-part-2

How to Stop People From Grabbing Your Valuable Time Away – Part 1

Email and meetings have become two of the biggest productivity killers in Jamaican corporate life. In this first article in a two-part series, we will focus on the cost of bad email.

You are in your office after 6 PM with the door closed. Unfortunately, you are struggling to catch up while, at that moment, the Time Grabbers who wasted your attention all day are at home, relaxing. Even if happen to be the rare person who can’t stand to leave with important work unfinished, you probably still think it’s not fair. How did you reach this point?

Fact: earlier that day, Time Grabbers cc’d and bcc’d you on unproductive email threads. Sometimes, you were only peripherally involved. But most of the time you were included in order to help achieve some unspoken political purpose.

What the offenders don’t know (or don’t care to know) is the amount of time it takes others to process their messages. It only takes a few of these emails bouncing from one department to another to decimate an hour of your best time. It’s the reason you are still there after hours and why you may be one of the 74% of workers who report that they are more productive outside the office.

How can this problem be overcome?

The challenge is that Time Grabbers are unaware of the social chaos they are causing, having never received factual, quality, feedback. While it’s true “they know not what they do,” they shouldn’t be forgiven too readily. Instead, here is an idea for a software app that would help everyone connect the cause (ineffective email) with its effect (wasted time/costs).

In companies that share the same email system, an “Email Budget Allocator” is a programme that could be used to make a difference. As a plug-in designed for use inside your current system, (such as Outlook) it would automatically display the cost of an email even as you are drafting it. How would this be calculated?

It’s easy. The app would compute the cost by taking into account the amount of words, plus the number and level of the recipients. Furthermore, this sum could be modified by a programme like Hemingway, which instantly reports the complexity of an article. For example, this column registers at a reading level of “Grade 9.”

But that would be just the beginning. To help change actual behaviour, you and your colleagues would receive an internal email budget depending on your respective roles. Each message you send would debit your budget, much in the same way that a prepaid call debits a mobile phone’s credit. At the end of the quarter, your manager would review your expenditure and together you’d make the necessary adjustments.

The final feature I can imagine would be a private feedback mechanism for individual messages. Once an email is sent, the system would take note of the number of times it is deleted without being read. Also, a recipient would be able to anonymously indicate when an email is a waste of time by forwarding it to a special address. There, the programme would aggregate all wasted email, compute the total cost, and further debit the sender’s account.

This app might work because it brings a hidden, pernicious cost out in the open. By contrast, we are acutely aware of our expenditure on cell-phone calls because each one reduces our hard-earned credit. While this system does not involve any loss of dollars and cents, it would raise the profile of wasted attention. As it is, the average professional spends 1-2 hours per day on email; an ever-increasing number. Even then, most companies don’t offer any training on email productivity, resulting in not only lost time but frayed nerves.

But here’s the good news. You don’t need to wait for this app to be invented to use these ideas in your organization.

For the most part, your colleagues have no idea of the cost related to clicking the <SEND> button. You can remedy this by actually determining a dollar value and sharing it widely. Compute the time it takes people to process email of different kinds, depending on their level in the hierarchy. Use estimates to teach them how much the average email costs the organization. For the first time, Time Grabbers could understand the impact of their behaviour on other people. Their behavioural changes, according to my calculations, would more than pay for the price of the training.

Most organizations are far too willing to let their employees work long hours for reasons they can control. Cutting the expense of wasted email could free them from having to do unnecessary work that keeps them from their families.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

How to Stop People from Grabbing Away Your Valuable Time Part 1

How Leaders Save Followers From Being Professional Victims

Many executives are relatively strong at taking responsibility, especially in areas where others don’t. They stand up to be counted, assuming risks that others won’t.  However, they are often baffled when their followers show an excessive and inexplicable fear of victimization. What should leaders do to eradicate this bad habit that makes good people slip into dependency and turns potential future leaders into weaklings?

Case: A corporate leader who I work with scratches his head in dismay. His followers, who he hopes to grow into a new cadre of leaders have devolved into victims-in-waiting. That is, they have learned an infantile, super-sensitivity to perceived slights and imagined disrespect. He has discovered that even his best attempts to make a difference are taken as personal attacks. They have become professional victims.

According to the Urban Dictionary “professional victims” claim victimization when things don’t go their way. They continually believe someone is taking advantage of them. In his case, workers have taken to attend meetings in a silent boycott, refusing to contribute anything more than a minimum.

Truth be told, there is a certain kind of power to be gained from convincing your (perceived) oppressors that you are their victim. At best, it invites them to take responsibility in a new way as a result of seeing the truth for the first time. When this happens, transformation can result as it did in countries like the USA, India and South Africa.

However, at worst, being a victim can be just a form of hostage-taking. Then, it becomes a nasty blame-game where the self-described weak gain a scrap of leverage, usually by bullying those in power into feeling guilty.

Unfortunately, in some companies there are a frighteningly large number of staff members who act as professional victims. In your company, you may know exactly who I am talking about. If you do, then go a step further and ask yourself: “Is the diseased thinking spreading or shrinking?”

Use your answer to gauge how effectively your people are being led. Ineffective leaders merely join the pity party, engaging in their own version of professional victimhood. They may, for example, compare their current job against prior roles they held in better companies, with better colleagues who served better customers. This just makes the situation worse.

Effective leaders respond quite differently by taking the following three steps.

1. Demonstrate By Example
Real leaders take responsibility at extraordinary levels, far beyond the boundaries of space and time. For example, they may even take ownership for what people do to each other. Or, they may assume responsibility for what has happened in the past, under prior leadership, as if they were in charge when it happened.

While others may think this is crazy behavior, it is actually self-empowerment at its finest.

Leaders who are powerfully self-aware are not blind to what they are doing and they don’t do it in secret. They actively create a context in which they locate themselves as the cause of important results, positive or negative. As they do so, one public step at a time, it’s noticeable that something is different. This magic ingredient may be hard for others to articulate, but leaders seize vacuums of responsibility to inspire others to act.

2. Educate Followers
A few top leaders don’t just act differently, they teach this exceptional behaviour to others at every opportunity. Sometimes, they have developed their own language for what they do, using homegrown phrases such as “taking one for the team.” Developing responsibility in others is a critical part of their job and the key to a cultural transformation.

3. Share the struggle
A tiny handful go even further than teaching others. They take the risk of sharing their personal struggle with new areas of responsibility. By doing so, they show that it’s OK to be imperfect, giving staff real-time insight behind the scenes of a leader’s transformation.

Unfortunately, most top executives are clueless about these three steps. With low awareness, they are stunned when people avoid interacting with them for fear of being victimized. They witness employees acting as responsible adults in other areas of their lives (family, church and community) and can’t understand why the workplace is so different. Professional victims are perfectly capable of this dualism.

They can also be quite effective at converting others to their cause: misery loves company. This means that leaders cannot just sit back and wait for people’s mindsets to change – they won’t.

The solution is to be aware and active. If you are a leader, work on the three skills listed above and make them part of your everyday way of being. Leaders are only called forth when the stakes are high and success will be impossible if you avoid this particular duty. It is hard, but necessary.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free summary of links to his past articles, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com