The operational leader of front-line workers is one of the busiest roles in an organisation. Managing your time, and the tasks you will complete and your approach to them is an essential part of your success. Investing in the ‘core’ activities (your operating rhythm): Your operating rhythm. There are key activities that improve your effectiveness as a team manager. There… Read More »Manage YOURSELF FIRST
Introduction High performance for your business is about more than just making the right decisions. It’s about having the right KPIs in place to measure success, and rewarding employees for doing their job well. The key to building high-performing teams isn’t merely having good people on board – it’s understanding how KPIs work, what drives them and how to use… Read More »Building great KPIs
The business impacts from the coronavirus lockdowns represent a huge opportunity for organisations who are willing to adapt and view the challenges in a positive, long-term way.
There’s no over-stating it, excellent communication is vital to the performance of teams, and this is even more important when working remotely. Even for the most administrative of roles, daily communication is essential. When staff (including us managers) are accustomed to face-to-face communication, working remotely can cause significant disruption to the ‘normal’ flow of information. There are 2… Read More »Remote Working Series: Excelling at remote communications
The current Coronavirus pandemic is cause for concern for many businesses. Pandemic response plans are being established and staff are being prepared for changes to the workplace that may (or may not) be implemented. What will happen to your team’s productivity if health agencies implement biosecurity measures and force your staff to stay at home? The availability of remote IT… Read More »Maintaining productivity in uncertain times
Business inefficiencies may seem to creep in over time, but they are actually ‘designed by default’. That is, inefficiencies are created (but are not always apparent) by not designing work systems properly at the right points in time. Inefficiencies wouldn’t creep in if the right design was in place (and being followed – which is a result of having a… Read More »Business inefficiencies
A well-developed Action Plan is primarily a communications tool (and only secondarily a project management tool). It sets expectations. Once improvements are identified, everyone wants to do them all straight away, but this is unrealistic. Given the rigors of daily workload and the fact that robust change takes time, the action plan shows a realistic pathway to delivering improvements –… Read More »An Action Plan is more important than planning tasks
Part 2: Switch the Story. Setting Continuous Improvement targets is misguided. The concept of CI targets implies that these are different and distinct from real business outcomes, and therefore it pits these 2 areas against each other. People mistakenly believe that if they focus on their CI target, then the business outcomes will suffer, and vice versa. Business outcomes are… Read More »CI Programs – Switch the Story
… if there is no burning platform Part 1: Continuous Improvement programs can come in all shapes and sizes. But there are commonalities between the successful ones that anyone responsible for CI cannot afford to ignore. Too often, the CI Program is seen as someone’s job. But continuous improvement can’t be delivered by one person, or even a group… Read More »Continuous Improvement Programs are doomed to fail…
Community Aged Care is undergoing significant reform. With an increasingly open and competitive market where the consumer choice is at the centre, providers can no longer assume the safety of a guaranteed steady level of income. Customers having the choice to select their provider and switch if not happy with the service (along with providers no longer restricted to allocated… Read More »Sales is No Longer a Dirty Word, in Community Aged Care
Now that you are over the hump of submitting all your ACFI voluntary uplifts and admissions prior to the 1st Jan changes and engaged your team on the new guidelines, one would think now is the time to take a well-earned break. With the changes reducing residential aged care margins, unfortunately now is not the time. Now is the time… Read More »ACFI Voluntary Appraisals – The risk of taking a well-earned break
E-I, E-I-O! goes the familiar refrain from the nursery rhyme. It’s very close to the mantra we use for process improvement…. EIAO: Eliminate, Improve, Automate, Outsource Delivering Efficiency and Effectiveness gains in a business process generally uses one of these approaches Eliminate: Critically look at a process (and then each process step) to see what value it is creating. Ask… Read More »Old MacDonald nearly had it right
It’s a fact of life that, as a leader, you will be interrupted throughout every working day. No matter how much you empower your staff to make decisions autonomously, you will always have interruptions. And, there is plenty of research to show that much time is wasted in ‘mental set up time’ as you subconsciously deal with the cognitive shift… Read More »Don’t bother with complex tasks