Be A Good Manager

What is planning and why you need to plan

Planning is one of the most important time management techniques. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If you do it effectively, you can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal.

A plan is like a map. When following a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your goal and how far you are from your destination. Knowing where you are is essential for making good decisions on where to go or what to do next.

One more reason why you need planning is again the 80/20 Rule. It is well established that for unstructured activities 80 percent of the effort give less than 20 percent of the valuable outcome. You either spend much time on deciding what to do next, or you are taking many unnecessary, unfocused, and inefficient steps.

Planning is also crucial for meeting your needs during each action step with your time, money, or other resources. With careful planning you often can see if at some point you are likely to face a problem. It is much easier to adjust your plan to avoid or smoothen a coming crisis, rather than to deal with the crisis when it comes unexpected.

How to write an action plan

When writing an action plan to achieve a particular goal or outcome, you can get much help from the following steps:

  • Clarify your goal. Can you get a visual picture of the expected outcome? How can you see if you have reached your destination? What does make your goal measurable? What constraints do you have, like the limits on time, money, or other resources.
  • Write a list of actions. Write down all actions you may need to take to achieve your goal. At this step focus on generating and writing as many different options and ideas as possible. Take a sheet of paper and write more and more ideas, just as they come to your mind. While you are doing this, try not to judge or analyze. (Try my best working idea generating tool.)
  • Analyze, prioritize, and prune. Look at your list of actions. What are the absolutely necessary and effective steps to achieve your goal? Mark them somehow. After that, what action items can be dropped from in the plan without significant consequences for the outcome. Cross them out.
  • Organize your list into a plan. Decide on the order of your action steps. Start from looking at your marked key actions. For each action, what other steps should be completed before that action? Rearrange your actions and ideas into a sequence of ordered action steps. Finally, look at your plan once again. Are there any ways to simplify it even more?
  • Monitor the execution of your plan and review the plan regularly. How much have you progressed towards your goal by now? What new information you have got? Use this information to further adjust and optimize your plan.

When you review and update your plans regularly (which is very desirable), maintenance of your system of written plans and goals often requires quite some time.

Effective delegation skill

Delegation skill is the ability to effectively assign task responsibility and authority to others. Or, in other words, delegation skill is your ability to get things done by using work and time of other people.

Effective delegation is a critical survival skill for managers and supervisors, and this is what many delegation training resources are about. Yet, what is less often emphasized is that understanding delegation skill and knowing how to use it right is an important personal time management skill. No matter if you have subordinates or bosses, if it is at work or at home.

Do you have to do everything yourself?

The delegation process normally starts from asking yourself if you are the right person to do the task, and then who is the right person for this task. A common trap here is thinking like "If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself". Such thinking is a sure way to stay overloaded with the same kind of work. It is a severe limit on how far you can go and how much you can grow in your job, business, or personal life.

Who should do it then?

The first important component of the delegation skill is choosing the right person to delegate the task to (delegate). You can use the following simple strategies. First, if you have subordinates, can any of them do the task at lower cost than you? If you are concerned with that they do it worse than you, can they do it at least 80 percent as good as you would, or could you train them to do it so?

If the task requires making decisions you are not authorized to make, when it is very right to delegate it to your boss.

Find a win-win deal

Outside the standard boss-subordinate situation, a key component of the delegation skill is the ability to find a win-win deal, and still delegate the task to someone. A common win-win situation is when delegating the task saves your time and gives a valuable learning experience, skill training, or an interesting opportunity for the delegate.

One more situation is task or service exchange, when someone does a task for you in exchange for that you do another task for her/him. Finally, it may be more effective just to buy some particular service from outside, or delegate the task to technologies, for example, to some special software.

You still have responsibilities

For your delegation skill to work, make sure that you will be able to monitor the progress of task execution and know if the task is actually completed. When you delegate, normally you are still responsible for that the task is completed. Avoid delegation when you are unable to monitor the completion status.

delegate the whole task

What you leave to the delegate is the responsibility for how the task is to be executed, the method of execution. When you do this, for the delegation to be effective it is important that you delegate the whole task. You need to effectively and clearly communicate to the delegate what outcome is expected and what requirement are for the task results. This is very important for the delegate's motivation and performance, as well as for your satisfaction with the task results.

Time management skills and techniques

Time management skills are your abilities to recognize and solve personal time management problems. The goal of these time management lessons is to show you what you can do to improve those skills.

With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, of your stress and energy levels. You make progress at work. You are able to maintain balance between your work, personal, and family lives. You have enough flexibility to respond to surprises or new opportunities.

All time management skills are learnable. More than likely you will see much improvement from simply becoming aware of the essence and causes of common personal time management problems. With these time management lessons, you can see better which time management techniques are most relevant for your situation. Just get started with them. Many of your problems gradually disappear.

If you already know how you should be managing your time, but you still don't do it, don't give up. What you may be overlooking is the psychological side of your time management skills, psychological obstacles hidden behind your personality.

Depending on your personal situation, such obstacles may be the primary reason why you procrastinate, have difficulties saying no, delegating, or making time management decisions.

The psychological component of your time management skills can also be dealt with. The time management skills information below will point at a relevant solution for your situation.

Decision making skills and techniques

We use our decision making skills to solve problems by selecting one course of action from several possible alternatives. Decision making skills are also a key component of time management skills.

Decision making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution where the positive outcome can outweigh possible losses. Avoiding decisions often seems easier. Yet, making your own decisions and accepting the consequences is the only way to stay in control of your time, your success, and your life.

A significant part of decision making skills is in knowing and practicing good decision making techniques. Main decision making techniques can be summarized in those simple decision making steps:

  • Identify the purpose of your decision. What is exactly the problem to be solved? Why it should be solved?
  • Gather information. What factors does the problem involve?
  • Identify the principles to judge the alternatives. What standards and criteria should the solution meet?
  • Brainstorm and list different possible choices. Generate ideas for possible solutions. Brainstorming works best if you have a way to get your ideas out of your head. (Write them down on paper!) And if you just keep writing as many as possible without judging them yet.
  • Evaluate each choice in terms of its consequences. Use your standards and criteria to determine the cons and pros of each alternative.
  • Determine the best alternative. This is much easier after you go through the above preparation steps.
  • Put the decision into action. Transform your decision into specific plan of action steps. Execute your plan.
  • Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps. What lessons can be learnt? This is an important step for further development of your decision making skills.

Final remark. In everyday life we often have to make decisions fast, without enough time to systematically go through the above action and thinking steps. In such situations the most effective decision making strategy is to keep an eye on your goals and then let your intuition suggest you the right choice. Having clear goals is the best preparation.