Personal | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

Focus on Your Commitments – A New Way to Work

Jul 092011

Do you start the day opening your email and looking at the hundreds or thousands of messages in your Inbox? How does that make you feel? Overwhelmed, stressed and feeling like you are always behind on your commitments?

Do you have days where you know you worked very hard but somehow have nothing to show what you accomplished? How does that make you feel? Unproductive, overworked and stressed?

Do you feel that everyday you are at the beck and call of everyone else and do not have any control of what new crisis will hit you next? How does that make you feel? Dis-empowered, helpless and always wondering what the next crisis is?

These three symptoms typified my work life since I became a manager almost four years ago. I often said to my fellow managers:

“I am working really hard but it is not sustainable to do 10 and 12 hour days. I have to find a way to work smart so that my hard work really pays off!”

I attended a training course on using Outlook 2010 in May that has fundamentally changed how I approach my work. The course was offered by Priority Management Systems Inc and called Working Sm@rt with Microsoft Outlook. The course focused on using Outlook as a real productivity tool instead of using it just for email and calendaring. The instructor calls this “using Outlook with a business planning approach”.

The premise of the course is that in order to be productive, you need to focus on your commitments. To do this, you have to stop using your email Inbox as your To Do list. Face it, who puts things in your Inbox? You or other people.

As long as you start your day working in your Inbox, you will always be reactive in your efforts and working to someone else’s agenda.

To change this approach, the instructor helped us configure out Outlook client to open in our calendar and task list view. This is revolutionary for me. Previous to this, I used my Inbox, a paper based Day Timer journal, a Notepad document, a OneNote page and an Excel spreadsheet to try to keep To Do lists. None actually suited how I worked and I always found that I missed something or got distracted by conflicting priorities due to using multiple lists. Read more...

Finding Time …

leadership, management, personal 2 Responses »

May 122011

I found two great articles in my Twitter feed this week that really struck home for me.

Over the past decade, I have prided myself on how busy I am multi-tasking and having a calendar booked solid. My hard work has paid off as I successfully progressed in my career, learned many new things and served my team and customers to the best of my ability.

But … with this self imposed hectic/chaotic pace, I have seen my commitment to fitness deteriorate, my personal and family life being compromised all for the sake of working harder (not necessarily smarter).

The first article I came across was retweeted by the American Management Association (@AMAnet):

#Leadership & White Space. (RT @mikemyatt) #Management | http://ow.ly/4Rn8i

Mike Myatt (@MikeMyatt) started the article Leadership and Whitespace with a great quote:

I don’t care how busy you are, but I do care about what you accomplish – the former doesn’t always lead to the latter.

After reading the article about creating “white space” in my calendar, I took some time to think about how I could go about doing this. It’s not easy when you have grown up in a management culture of “do more with less” and “deliver, deliver, deliver”. When I started the management role of my team of 22 analysts, I deliberately chose to take a “servant leadership” approach that focused on setting direction, empowering my team and then managing the inevitable roadblocks, politics and priority changes that come along the way. So do I have an answer today … no but I am committed to work on it.

The first reader comment on Mike’s post was from Tanveer Naseer (@TanveerNaseer) who wrote the second article I mentioned – Learning to Appreciate the White Spaces. Tanveer provided four reasons to create white spaces:

Provides opportunities for contemplation and review

Shifts our decision making from reflexive reactions to measured, deliberate responses

Allows you to address those unanticipated issues without penalizing other tasks

Even machines need maintenance/repair

These are great guides and really challenge me to rethink my approach to work. Thank you @MikeMyatt and @TanveerNaseer, you both have given me new insights on how to be a better leader and manager.

ps: For the social media naysayers, this is yet another powerful reason that I believe Twitter is an essential part of my professional and personal development!

Building Intrinsic Motivation Using Personal Learning Plans for High Technology Workers

leadership, management, personal 2 Responses »

Apr 222011

This is a paper I wrote for a course I took as part of my Masters of Science program at Syracuse University. I believe that the only way we can succeed as leaders is to empower and motivate the people we work with. This paper describes a process that I use with my team … I look forward to your comments and feedback.

Abstract

This paper explores an approach to build intrinsic motivation in High Technology Workers which motivates them to work on their personal learning plans to earn rewards in their personal, educational and career objectives in a work environment governed by a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Topics covered are (a) Definition of Key Terms, (b), Background, (c) An Approach for Motivating Unionized Employees, (d) Review of Supporting Motivational Theories and (e) Conclusions. After reading this paper, the reader should have a clear understanding of the key terms, background, discussion of motivational theories and an approach to develop intrinsic motivation for employees to work towards rewards in their personal, educational and career objectives.

Definitions

Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA): A written contract between an employer and a labor union, for a definitive period of time, spelling out conditions of employment, wages, hours of work, rights of employees and the union, and procedures to be followed in settling disputes.

Personal Learning Plan (PLP): A structured and collaborative process between an employee and their manager with goal of creating a plan for the employee’s personal, educational and career development.

SMART Objectives: A mnemonic used in performance management to describe the goals and targets set for employees. SMART stands for : Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound.

Total Compensation: A Human Resources term used to describe the complete compensation an employer provides to employee including salary, benefits, pension, health care and government benefits.

Background

I lead a team of 22 unionized, Systems Analysts in the Information Technology Services department at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) (www.bcit.ca). BCIT is a provincially chartered and publically funded higher education institution. My team has responsibility for all the applications delivered centrally to our community. My team members’ total compensation is governed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the BCIT Faculty and Staff Association (FSA) (www.bcitfsa.ca) and BCIT. The CBA (BCIT FSA, 2007) prescribes the specifics of the employee compensation items: Read more...