Many business leaders think technology can give them a productivity boost.  

They may well be right.  Addressed properly, changes in technology can transform processes and make them more efficient.

However,. the gains are  not easy to unlock - and they certainly take time.

There may even be a temporary drop in productivity while new technology or a new software system is being implemented.

Often firms under prepare for, or under-resource, the changeover.  They fail to ensure they have customised the technology or system to their specific needs. Then they fail to adequately monitor the changing situation, making sure they are aware of what is working properly and what is not, what parts of the organisation need help during thew changeover process, what needs to be redone, and so on. 

Managers have four simple tasks to carry out: Organising, Planning, Monitoring and Controlling..  Managers must take the time to get all of these right.

This might delay benefits for a little time - but those benefits will come if the project is properly managed.

As the heading to this post says …. Be patient  But while being patient, Manage Well!

If you hate Monday mornings, you are probably in the wrong job … but so many of you, I know, cannot simply change your job at this time.

Perhaps one reason so many people hate Mondays is that they have to move from the freedom of being able to choose what to do to a situation where their day is mapped out for them.

Some people in senior jobs have the luxury of mapping out their own working days - though they are, of course, guided by priorities, emergencies and so on. 

The rest of us do what we are told.  But perhaps there is something we can do.  

We can think about our week and decide not what we are going to do, but what we are going to think about while doing the tasks set out for us (assuming our job does not preclude thought).

We can plan our next holiday.

We can try to write a song.

We can plan a blog post.

We can think about an apology to someone we’ve offended.

Give  yourself a bit of freedom - and plan/create something connected with one of your interests or current problems.

Mondays might then seem quite different.  You will probably find the work easier too and you might be significantly more productive.

When I was learning about management and productivity, one important exercise was the in-tray exercise where the student is faced with a pile of documents from an in-tray and has to work through the pile dealing with them if possible or prioritising them for later handling if that is more appropriate.  Some could perhaps be delegated to others and a small number could be ignored (such snd those where the recipient  is simply copied in to a wider-circulated note).

This was, for me, a very useful exercise where I learnt that, wherever possible, a message should be handled only once.  When at the end of the exercise, if the pile left for later handling is nearly as big as the original pile, the student has failed in this aim (of handling each paper only once).

Now things are even worse for managers.  The existence of email, internal messaging systems and social media sites such vas LinkedIn make the pile of things to deal with much bigger than it used to be in ‘paper days’

But the principle remains.

Whether a message arrives on paper or electronically, you should aim to ‘touch it’ only once.

To keep it simple, remember that you only have to decide to do one of three things:

File it, discard it (ignore it) or take action.

Often this is a simple decision.  If it isn’t, make it so.

I read quite a lot of studies that suggest that remote working did not and does not, negatively impact productivity.

However, I am sceptical.

The studies are generally of 2 types.

The first set are studies that essentially consist of questionnaires asking employees if they have been less productive whilst working from home.  Not surprisingly, they say ‘No’.

The other set are ‘technical studies’ which purport to show that remote employees spend as much time on their computers, make as many keystrokes and so on.

Neither of these measure outputs or achievements …. surely the only thing that really matter.

So where you look at such studies, read them carefully to see what was measured.

Many employees claim they spend too much time coordinating their activity with others instead of driving forward their primary activities.

Working from home has made this worse.  Employees are forever on Zoom or Teams calls, talking about that they have done or what they are scheduled to do..  This means they are not carrying out their primary task.

Coordination is essential, of course, but managers have to find ways of making it more effective and more efficient.  Meetings should be shorter and more focused, preferably using g pictorial representations of progress that can be easily assimilated. Similarly goals, and progress towards them should be easily communicated and assessed.  Wherever possible, coordination should be part of the primary task, rather than a second order activity superimposed on top. 

This requires modified, not new, management skills and managerial processes.  Managers themselves need preparing for this new paradigm - one where communication between individual and teams automatically ensures coordination.

Are you ready for this?

In the past, you measured how hard people were working by such things as noting who was at their desk or who spoke up in meetings, and who had extended breaks or too many days off sick.

In these days of remote and hybrid working, you’ll have to find a new way. Those simple observations are  no longer possible;.

They were not effective measures anyway. Highly productive employees probably spend less time completing their tasks than sub-standard workers.

We need to measure achievements and accomplishments rather than hours worked.

This means we have to have clear objectives and targets and measure completion or progress towards them.

Make sure employees know what is expected of them this week or month.and let them know whether this is what you got from them.

Work should be a series of journeys where employees know their destination of each, and know when they’ve reached it, not a relentless hamster wheel of repetition with no end in sight.

Managers need to know their staff, their strengths and weaknesses. their level of motivation and commitment and the level of monitoring and intervention necessary.  This could be regarded as Management 2.0 but is just Management 1.0 done properly.

In the past, you measured how hard people were working by such things as noting who was at their desk or who spoke up in meetings, and who had extended breaks or too many days off sick.

In these days of remote and hybrid working, you’ll have to find a new way. Those simple observations are  no longer possible;.

They were not effective measures anyway. Highly productive employees probably spend less time completing their tasks than sub-standard workers.

We need to measure achievements and accomplishments rather than hours worked.

This means we have to have clear objectives and targets and measure completion or progress towards them.

Make sure employees know what is expected of them this week or month.and let them know whether this is what you got from them.

Work should be a series of journeys where employees know their destination of each, and know when they’ve reached it, not a relentless hamster wheel of repetition with no end in sight.

Managers need to know their staff, their strengths and weaknesses. their level of motivation and commitment and the level of monitoring and intervention necessary.  This could be regarded as Management 2.0 but is just Management 1.0 done properly.

Teamwork is essential in any organisation. Each team must have clear goals and targets and must be capable of working collaboratively to achieve them.

Until a couple of years ago,. team building and team development followed well-established patterns based on a thorough understanding  of team building and associated problems.

Then pandemic and the move to working from home changed much of this established thinking.  It is not clear how remote, technology-based teams develop, and whether their development needs are the same as physically co-located teams.

We need more research sand a better understanding before we can be sure of how best to change our team development practises.

In the meantime, don’t simply assume that current practises will work.  They might. … but they might not.

Certainly the need for clear goals and targets is likely to remain.    The measurement of performance and contribution to those goals and targets may change but if this helps us develop measures that are more suitable for outputs and achievements rather than inputs, so much the better.

We hear quite a lot these days about work-life balance.  But how do you know your own balance is wrong?

Well, burnout is man obvious sign. If you are exhausted, physically or mentally, you need to re-evaluate your priorities.

But it is not always so obvious.

Another possible sign is that your health is OK  but you’re just generally running slower than you used to.  This might be a symptom of age but it might also mean you need to build more rest into your schedule to make sure that when you are at work, you are fully engaged at high power.

This also, of course, applies to your employees. If performance is inexplicably falling off, it might be the work has changed, motivation has changed for some reason, or they are just tired.  Talk to them. Find out - and do something about it (or help them do something about it).

For some time I was a member of the governing Council of a UK professional body.  We had regular meetings about the forward direction and strategy for the organisation, which at its peak had abut 25,000 members.  We Council members talked, pontificated, debated important issues.  As ever, on such bodies, everybody thought they should make some contribution to the debate or discussion, whether they had something relevant and important to say or not.  The discussions went on for quite a while until the chairman remembered his role and brought discussion to an end.

The executive officer, who was the paid professional who would be responsible for implementing whatever was decided by the Council, then often had to utter the words, “So what do I do on Monday morning?” reminding Council members that grand strategy has to be translated into tactical steps and detailed action plans.

It is a sentence I have never forgotten.  Try asking it after your next management meeting. Do you have a new target, a new responsibility, a new project?  If, as a result of the meeting, there is nothing different for you to do on Monday morning, what was the point of the meeting?

Similarly, if you have a meeting with your staff, make sure they know what they have to do on  Monday morning as a result of the meeting.