How to – Redesign Your Department Do you ever find yourself wishing you could just destroy your existing department, eliminate the old organizational chart and start out with a fresh, clean piece of paper upon which you could simply start over from scratch?

What stops you if:
• Your department or division is not running as efficiently as it could (or should);
• Folks are in crisis;
• Cuts to people, positions and budgets have left things unrecognizable;
• People are doing more than one job (but for only one paycheck for 40-50 hours/week).

Then you should seriously think about a departmental redesign.
While not something you can do overnight or in a one-day off-site retreat, there are things to do and ways to create a fresh approach. You don’t have to limp into the New Year with tired people and an ineffective methodology and structure for accomplishing departmental/divisional goals.

You will need to pay close attention to:
• Creating senior-level support for a departmental reorganization
• Designing a departmental structure that can meet organizational strategic goals and objectives
• Using departmental policies, procedures, and process to model organizational change
• Developing flexible job descriptions that demand needed skill sets now but can evolve over time
• Building a collaborative team of individual star performers
• Attracting, selecting, hiring, and mentoring key staff
• Identifying similar (and complimentary) teams and skill sets in other departments that will complement and extend the impact of your department
• Evolving toward your ideal departmental structure even if you cannot start from scratch

Creating a department from scratch is not simple or easy so don’t view it as a panacea. You may make mistakes and missteps. Success lies in a departmental structure that is tied tightly to your company's strategic goals and objectives. You will have to walk the talk, but your ability to execute a departmental redesign will build credibility within your organization.  8:25 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Revamp Your Brand Many of us are thinking about 2010 and the changes we hope and need to make professionally. If you find yourself thinking about the best way to reengineer your business, division, department, team, or even your own personal professional brand to bring new clients to your door, now is a great time to consider a few strategies to employ so that you hit the ground running in the New Year.

Listen to an Invested Focus Group – Gather a group of your best customers, prospective customers, coworkers, employees, mentors. Ask them for ideas about how to revamp the brand. Ask for ideas that require little or no money. It can be a nice surprise to hear ideas that are small to implement and garner a huge improvement.

Focus More – Once you have a slew of ideas, focus in on the ones that will result in savings for your customers (internal OR external) or provide the best value to them, and what might bring in new customers.

Add Extras – Look at how you can include "extras" that benefit customers and will bring more old and new clients to your door/website/portal. How about a newsletter, a discount for quantity or a free initial consultation/assessment?

Pair Up – Could you make your brand compatible with another product or service? Can you reduce the time frame if clients are rushed or have a shortened lead time? Make it easy for customers to use you.

Revamp Your Customer Base – A wider customer base can make up for a sluggish market or the need to create new products or services. Are their potential clients out in the marketplace that might use your service/product if you just tweaked your marketing pitch a little bit?

Everyone needs to review and revamp from time to time no matter how perfect or well entrenched the brand, product, or service. Giving some though to it at te end of the year can energize the first few weeks of January. Rather than waiting around for others, you can be actively getting word out.

Nationally recognized consultant, trainer, author, and professional speaker Joni Daniels has helped thousands of people and teams become empowered about accomplishing their professional and personal goals. She is a sought after resource for Fortune 500 clients, professional organizations, higher education, media outlets and business publications. Sign up for her free quarterly newsletter at www.jonidaniels.com/newsletter.html. Follow Joni on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jonid  3:20 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Draw Out Solutions from Others The biggest error managers make, no matter the industry, level, or years in the job is thinking that they need to have all of the answers. If you want to get the job of “getting work done through others” accomplished, you need to engage them so that they feel valued. Sure, you can give them “atta boys” and “atta girls” and provide clear and concise direction, but that isn’t a strategy to engage them. The best way to show people that they are important is to ask for their input when you are problem solving.

The job of the manager is to facilitate their development, not just make decisions and assign work. As the boss, you are not the one to whom all problems should come for solutions. You are one who is supposed to be developing problem solvers. If you think that a great manager is to the person to come up with the best solutions, think again!

Tips for Effective People Management

• Know how your employees differ. Ask them to describe their ideal manager to learn who wants firm direction and who wants more; then treat them accordingly.
• Ask more questions of employees who seek to be more involved. Ask them to come to you with options for solutions, not only problems.
• Ask more questions to find out what they think. Then be quiet and listen to what they have to say.
• Manage expectations by making your role clear. Make sure they understand the benefits of your taking a more facilitative and supportive role. Explain that you want to engage them and foster broader ownership rather than be the “one with all the answers.”
• Hold regular one-to-one meetings and ask them what went well and what didn’t since your last meeting. Encourage them to think of at least 2 things they did that they are pleased about. When you move to what hasn’t gone well, use questions to encourage ideas for improvement from them.
• Think strategically about which decisions you have to make and which decisions need to be drawn out of others.
• Don’t keep all the “fun and ‘sexy” stuff for yourself - delegate real developmental challenges.

Remember that one size will not fit all. To manage people effectively, broaden your role to include being a catalyst, and flex your style for the needs of different employees.  7:51 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Plan to Lead At its most basic, leading is setting direction and guiding others to follow that direction. A critical skill for leaders is the ability to manage their own learning. If you are a highly motivated and self-directed professional, you learn by reading, listening to mentors, asking questions and being a good observer of people and your organizational culture. If you are responsible for the development of your organization’s future leaders, you have some guiding to think about.
Leadership Development in your Organization:

• What is your impression of the areas of knowledge and skills recommended for effective leadership? Does your organization have a list of core competencies for leaders?
• Is training and development for leaders informal, formal, other-directed or self-directed?
• How does your organization handle the short life span of useful knowledge that can result in training?
• How is the passing down of acquired competencies to succeeding employees dealt with?
• Can your firm accommodate the demands of productivity while providing for the continuity of learning?
• Does your organization pursue activities that correspond to different learning styles and needs or is it “one size fits all?”
• Does your organization have a formal mentoring program, or does it allow for leaders to obtain professional support in the way of coaches, consultants or counselors?

Without a well thought out and developed plan for leaders, employee growth will be haphazard at best and a waste of time at it’s worst. If you want your future leaders to learn how to set direction, influence others, provide guidance and feedback, develop persistence, initiative and risk – ask them if they see these leadership characteristics in you.  1:58 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Lead the Best

You know that list of qualities you use as a leader in your organization? Creating and exporting your vision, confidence in yourself and others, a unique charisma that inspires followers as well as your experience, skills, expertise, or your network of associates and colleagues. Other leaders share some or maybe all of these qualities with you.

The potential contribution of the leaders who work for you is critical, but the opportunity for friction is even better if you don’t manage these relationships carefully. How do you leverage the assets of these talented and powerful employees while making sure that their egos remain intact?

You may be aware that the following behaviors are critical to people who are leading the leaders. The exceptional leader knows that these skills need to be attended to on a daily basis in an observable way.

To lead your organization’s leaders well:

§ Unite your leaders into a cohesive group and make your stars a team.

§ Provide direction and negotiate a vision for the organization that other leaders will buy into.

§ Mediate and resolve conflicts over turf and power among other leaders so the organization can move forward.

§ Develop other leaders, providing education for people who think they are already knowledgeable.

§ Motivate leaders and figure out how to move those who already seem “to have everything” to do the right thing for the organization.

§ Trust creativity by obtaining and keeping other leaders’ trust, the vital capital that your own leadership depends on.

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How to – Be the Best Manager

Everyone has a different idea about what makes a great manager and most people can tell me what their boss does wrong. The Manager has to communicate Executive Management’s objectives to employees and convey their employees concerns to upper management. It’s a squeeze play that can leave even the best of us anxious, vulnerable and lonely. If you are unable to manage these feelings, you can end up dumping on your employees. That may get you the results you want in the short term, and turnover and dissatisfaction in the long run.

Some Managers are more concerned with the content of their work than in developing and coordinating the work of others. Employees run around getting minimal management support while the boss is doing what they think is more interesting or more important.

The best managers can absorb the pressure from above; and they enjoy and get satisfaction from seeing employees growing, developing, succeeding and having fun at work.

Want to be the Best Manager you can be?

• Control your emotions: handle the pressure from above without jumping all over your employees.

• Manage the expectations of your boss so you can minimize the stress being placed on you in the first place.

• Spend 80% of your time managing, training, coaching, delegating, training, facilitating and motivating your team. The other 20% should be spent dealing with the strategic matters that you find most interesting.

• Spend time each week with individual employees, learning about what they are doing, how they are doing, and listening to what they are saying.

• Get the input of the people who are doing the work. You show them they are a valuable resource when you ask them to contribute their opinions and ideas.

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How to – Lead Leaders One thing that defines Leaders is that they have Followers. For organizations that want to grow and thrive, that just isn’t enough. Leaders also need to be able to find and develop Leaders. Granted, not everyone can be a Leader and not everyone should be a Leader.

There are certain things Leaders do to produce Leaders:

Talk – tell others about the experiences you’ve had and what you’ve learned from the successes and non-successes.

Coach – provide feedback and opportunities for guidance and direction so others can learn with someone helping rather than waiting.

Train – review the strategy planning required and the skills needed to insure strategy success. Provide opportunities for management development programs where they develop critical skills and you support the application of what they’ve learned.

Mentor – be the touchstone for potential leaders and provide the support they need to risk successfully.

Above all else, this requires the most precious commodity: Time. To grow Leaders actual time must be set aside to teach, show by example, and discuss how leading is actually done. Few people learn leadership well by being tossed into the leadership waters to see who can swim. The best leaders spent a significant amount of their time developing the leadership skills of others rather than looking how best to develop their own career.

Think about if you are a true Leader, or simply a person who is eager for followers. Your employees already know which you are.  3:29 PM •  0 Comments •