Everything
Decays
One of the things we've
noticed
is that managers like having a solution which solves their problem
forever. We suspect you've felt this way. In the rare instance you've
found the solution you thought would solve the problem forever, you've
probably also discovered it's not true. The problem has come back
because the situation changes. The people change. The knowledge
changes. The need changes.
The fact is, everything
decays.
For our technical readers, it's just entropy. At work, every problem,
every meeting and every relationship is decaying, right now. Now matter
how good a meeting is now, in six months, left to its own devices, it
won't exist (the ultimate decay) or it will be a lot less effective.
The process that you've been working so hard on, and finally got just
right, in six months will either be OBE (Overcome By Events) or will
need significant rework. You may not have understood, up till now, why
good processes that worked before begin not to work. The answer is, the
situation, systems or people changed and the process didn't. Entropy.
Everything decays. It's not just YOUR stuff that decays, because you're
not a good manager. EVERYBODY'S stuff decays. Always.
Mark used to teach
interview
candidates that all interviewees remember their highest point of energy
in an interview, which is in the first two minutes. He taught, as well,
that interviewers remember the energy at the end of the interview. Even
our energy in an interview decays! The solution is not to try to spike
the energy at the end of the interview. Rather, the solution was for
the candidate to remind themselves every five to ten minutes to keep
their energy up. If you were to graph the energy, it would look like a
sawtooth.
The
solution to the decay of all things is to manage them.
Assess the status of processes and change them regularly. Assess the
effectiveness of the meeting periodically (as we recommend in our Effective Meeting
protocol) and adjust accordingly. Reach out to your
friends (ctl+shift+K) more regularly than you do.
Did
we just create more work for you? In the long term, we think not.
The amount of work required to fix a broken process or a destroyed
relationship is much bigger than the little work required to maintain
those things along the way.
If you've ever tried to get a referral for a job from an old old friend
who you haven't kept in touch with, you'll know the regret of not
keeping in touch, as there will be no energy in your relationship for
him to help you solve the problem.
And
if you want to feel regal as you "manage", consider this part of the
statement made at the coronation for the king or queen of the United
Kingdom: "...help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things
that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored..."
[PS:
the Queen of England does One on Ones with her Prime Minister. ;-) ]
Midyear
Reviews Part 2
In the last newsletter
we
encouraged you all to carry out a midyear review. For the managers who
need to write and deliver midyear reviews, we'd like to remind you
about two casts that will help. First the preparation:
Part
1 and Part
2 and then delivery:
Part
1 and Part
2.
We said last time that
carrying out your own performance review, even if it's not required, is
incredibly useful. Similarly, even if a review of your directs is not
required, consider giving them a midyear review. It might save some of
those projects which otherwise would not be completed by the end of the
year.
Distribution
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