Make plans for the year in the spring, plans for the day - in the morning
Chinese proverb
to whom: owners, top managers, executives
When you don't have a plan, your actions are chaotic
Each of us, managers, thinks: how much can productivity be increased? Data obtained empirically in my company showed that after the introduction of daily planning and reporting, the efficiency of the team increased by ~ 40%.
It is no secret that in an average Russian company, employees spend on work at best 3-4 hours a day out of 8. However, everyone pretends that this is how it should be. The leader is content with performances in the form of violent activity as soon as he looks into someone's office.
And the subordinates... And what about the subordinates? They are more than satisfied with this state of affairs: during working hours, you can solve a bunch of personal problems, place orders in online stores, chat on the phone and on social networks with friends and family. No wonder they say that 80% of people work as efficiently as they are competently led.
The conclusion is banal and at the same time terrible in its simplicity: in order to increase the efficiency of the company by 40%, it is enough to make employees work at least 6.5 - 7 hours a day(yes, eight is already aerobatics!).
Daily plan and report - continuous aptitude test for employees
But how to understand: which of the employees is chatting in social networks, and who is continuously producing results? Stay behind you all the time? Impossible! Here, daily plans and reports on the work done, which are mandatory for each employee, come to the rescue.
If very briefly, the meaning of daily plans and reports is as follows: an employee draws up a work plan for each day based on an 8-hour day and reports at the end of the working day for each completed task (time spent, result, etc.).
Any good technology has benefits for both parties. Let's talk about it.
Benefits of a daily plan for a company
- Tasks are solved by employees according to accepted priorities (taking into account the company's business requirements), and not according to the principle of “want”, “easier” and “more interesting”.
- The probability of “downtime” of an employee tends to zero. There are always tasks in reserve. If “simple” occurs, then it is visible in advance.
- Having looked at the plans, you can immediately remove the “sucked out of your finger” tasks and replace them with useful, topical and relevant ones.
- When a person plans things based on 8 working hours and knows that there will be demand during this time, the likelihood of “wasting time” is noticeably reduced.
Benefits of a daily plan for an employee
- The manager will be pleased with you, because all the highest priority technology tasks fall into your daily plan. And “being in good standing” opens up additional opportunities in a vertical career.
- The abolition of “slavery”, when a person sits at work until “night” (now 8 hours are allocated for completing tasks, therefore, the manager will no longer plan them for twelve hours).
A major personal and professional upgrade: The skill of planning is essential in all areas, and life outside of work is no exception.
Agenda
In the future, we will only talk about the principles of daily and weekly planning and requirements for plans. Separate articles are devoted to:
- The technology of analysis by the head of the daily and weekly plans of subordinates - an article in development.
- Requirements for working reports, the methodology for their creation - an article in development.
- The technology of analysis by the head of the daily and weekly reports of subordinates. See the article "".
Leader's personal effectiveness
I also use daily planning and reporting technology in my work. I report to myself - take it into service if you have no one to report to. Thereby my personal efficiency has doubled(Is it a joke!). Including due to the implementation of higher priority tasks, because before I took on those that first came to mind.
And a very useful insight. When you start planning, it’s much easier to think at the planning stage: is this your task, isn’t it better to delegate it? When I have already started the task, and in the middle of its implementation I realized that it would be nice to delegate, it is already much more difficult to “let go” of it from oneself.
Technology for the implementation and implementation of daily plans
I draw your attention to the fact that it is necessary to control the implementation of the plan, the timing of the tasks completed and the quality of the results.
A lot of leaders have broken their teeth when trying to implement daily plans and reports, and here's why:
- The introduction will meet fierce resistance from office workers. Humble yourself, this is natural, but you need to prepare for this. Perhaps the article "" will be useful to you.
- The implementation of daily plans and reports, as well as further work to keep the technology in operation, requires an investment of time, money, managerial effort and the will of the leader. And most importantly, a lightning-fast reaction to any violation by employees.
- Implementation will additionally bring total transparency of plans and reports. The head of any higher level should be able to view the report of any lower head and his subordinates. The immediate supervisor is responsible for the plans of his subordinates. Why won't employees like it? Not every middle manager is interested in having an “all-seeing eye” on top management.
Recommendations for organizing daily planning: ready-made regulations for implementation
Organization of the process of processing the incoming flow of tasks on the part of the employee
- As soon as a task appears, it is entered into the work plan for the current or subsequent days (regardless of the form in which it was set) with an estimated date of planned completion.
- If the task belongs to the category of cases “non-urgent and unimportant”, it is entered into the so-called STACK (storage) of tasks. An employee turns to STACK when planning for the next week, or when he has a downtime at work.
- For each task, a priority is selected and set from the standard list
The set task, which takes more than 3 hours (except for participation in events and meetings), is divided into smaller ones, to which the initial one is assigned as the base one.
Bonus: Employee Priority Table Example
For an example of a priority table that helps employees manage their own planning, follow 2 simple steps:
1) Write a detailed comment on the article(the comment form is located at the very bottom of the article, see screenshot https://yadi.sk/i/QHQ2_R4oiWjkV). Share your experience of implementing subordinate planning (not necessarily successful).
2) Submit an inquiry to receive an example of a priority table through my personal social media accounts:
Requirements for the format of entering tasks into the plan
- Each employee adds an indicative list of his tasks to the plan (a brief description of the task + planned time for completion). The plan includes the following tasks:
- Planned within the projects;
- Previously received in the form of individual assignments (orally, by mail, skype, etc.). If the task is in an external task setting system, then you need to add a url link to this task; upon receipt of the task (orally, by mail, skype), it must be entered into your work plan yourself. At the same time, all requirements for the format of entering tasks apply.
- Planned by the employee for implementation on his own initiative.
- For each task, you must specify:
- Task name. It should reflect what actions need to be performed and with which object. For this purpose, it is advisable to use the nominative case and the imperative mood of the verb for nouns. This greatly facilitates the subsequent search among all tasks. Example: Develop regulations: planning (“develop” - imperative; “regulation: planning” - nominative case).
- Estimated time to complete. Example: Make a commercial offer: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Deadline(the deadline by which the task must be completed). If you cannot determine the deadline for a task, contact your immediate supervisor.
- Brief plan for completing this task. Add links to the algorithms you plan to act on and / or a short plan of action. The absence of a short plan in the body of the task creates a lot of questions when discussing the work plan and the risk that the task will be done in an inefficient / non-optimal way or not done 100% and / or require rework.
- A priority. The contractor determines it independently according to separately formalized rules. If you cannot determine, you must contact your immediate supervisor.
- If an employee sees the “insufficiency” of his resource for the assigned task, he is obliged to immediately inform the task manager and his immediate supervisor about this.
Daily work plan
- The plan must be created based on the weekly plan and incoming operational tasks (before the introduction of weekly planning: based on the tasks known for that day).
- The plan for the next day is drawn up before the end of the current working day.
- Scheduled time for daily tasks is calculated:
- for office employees based on 8 hours minus the usual time for solving operational and force majeure tasks (for project managers: 7 hours - planned; 1 hour - for solving incoming tasks). Scheduled time for tasks may vary depending on the day of the week and other conditions.
- for freelance specialists - the daily time limit agreed upon when discussing the terms of cooperation.
- The plan for the new day is placed on top of the plan for the previous day (if text documents are used for plans).
- If more than 4 hours per day are spent on unscheduled (in relation to project plans) tasks, or it becomes clear that project plans can NOT be fulfilled at the current load, management is immediately notified of this (no later than the next day).
An example of a daily plan (screenshot from Bitrix24)
The example shows a plan that an employee creates in the Bitrix24 system. The screenshot shows only the first six tasks, the rest did not fit on the screen. Selected columns: 1 - task name; 2 - deadline; 3 - planned execution time.
Transition to weekly planning
After mastering the daily plans, employees are transferred to weekly planning. At the same time, daily planning is preserved, but greatly simplified, because. in the weekly plan, tasks are divided by day. If you are not doing daily planning with your subordinates, they may be planning their week like in the picture below.
Key benefits of weekly planning:
- longer planning horizon compared to one day
- saving time for the employee and significant time saving for the manager
Weekly work plan
- How to make a plan?
- Go through all the monthly project plans, take from them a list of tasks with a deadline until the end of the week + 5 days.
- Open your monthly work plan and write out part of the work from there.
- Enter operational tasks (previously known or set by the manager) into the weekly plan.
- The plan for the new week must be made in last working day of the previous week(usually Friday).
- Tasks must be planned for the entire working week, taking into account the time reserve for introductory tasks (determined for each position individually).
- The drawn up plan for the week needs to be clarified (based on information received over the weekend and in the morning on the first working day) on the first working day of the week, until 12:00(usually Monday)
- For specialists who have a small level of “unforeseen” work (site maintenance work, promotion project management), the week should be planned without taking into account unforeseen work.
- after all, the tasks and “unforeseen” ones may be, or they may NOT be.
- if the plan is not fulfilled due to the fact that the “newly” received tasks were completed, then part of the tasks from the plan can be transferred to the next week.
Automation of daily and weekly plans
Most popular question: “In what form should subordinates make plans?” Ideally, you need to make plans in the form of tasks in the system, where in the future they will be kept track of the execution time and reports will be generated. In my opinion, today the Bitrix24 system is most suitable for this.
What if your company has a different system for setting tasks? Think about how to organize planning with its help based on the requirements for plans that I have formulated. And even if you don’t have a system for setting and accounting for tasks at all, it doesn’t matter. In my company, for a long time, plans for the day and for the week were made in separate text files in the GoogleDocs format (very convenient to edit and discuss). And only after some time we switched completely to work in Bitrix24.
Answers to frequently asked questions about daily plans
How to set tasks if the executive officer is not a direct subordinate of the manager?
Either get the authority to set such tasks within the framework of project subordination, or agree on the addition of a task with the immediate supervisor of the contractor.
It is important to remember: time is not rubber. When a new task arrives, it “pushes” another task out of the plan. Priorities in the assignment of tasks are a matter of competence of the immediate supervisor.
It turns out that this system introduces “total control” over the work of a subordinate? This should be done by his leader. And this leader should be controlled by his leader?
The manager controls the planning of his immediate subordinates (example: the head of the department analyzes the plans of the employees of the department), but not necessarily every day. For loyal employees (1 year after the start of the implementation of regular management, there will be no others left in your company) the frequency of verification can be 1 time in 3 days, 1 time per week.
A lot depends on the position and experience of a particular employee. And also on the type of planning that is used in addition to daily and weekly plans: monthly planning for projects, strategic plans for projects. If one of the employees needs constant “total control”, ask yourself the question: “Do you need such an employee?”
Some leaders themselves do not want to control daily. it takes time and attention
Planning work for their subordinates and monitoring its implementation are the direct responsibilities of the leader. In order to master this function, I recommend engaging in “pumping” your managerial competencies. To help the article "".
It is important to assess whether your company has a “skew” for managers in working towards “production”. First of all, the leader must allocate time to manage subordinates., the production of results - in the second place and according to the residual principle of time. If you allocate sufficient time to the manager for management, and at the same time he still strives to produce results with his own hands, while his subordinates are chilling, this is a good specialist, but a bad leader.
Readers of this article also read
How to evaluate the performance of employees at the end of the working day using daily reports: the method of "analysis and comments"
How to implement regular management in your company (part 1): goals, basic principles, pre-launch preparation
In the world of people around us, there are more successful and less successful. There are those who have realized themselves in many areas, and understand what they want to achieve in the future. And there are those who And all this is our own choice.
Meanwhile, you can learn to control your own destiny. To do this, you need to master the art of correctly prioritizing and realizing yourself in all areas of life that we need to be happy and move forward. How to learn this?
Secret one: there are no universal recipes suitable for everyone! But this does not mean that it is impossible to use the experience accumulated and tested by other people. On the contrary, you need to start with this. And you can correct and adapt the advice of coaches, business coaches and psychologists to your needs later.
Primary and Secondary Goals
Do you have the most important, main goal in life? And the most important goal this year? Surprisingly, the English word Priority, which originated in the 15th century, did not have a plural for more than five hundred years of its existence! It seemed right and normal for people to have a single, most important goal. This situation continued until the 20th century. Now, in any company and at any meeting, employees are given ten or more priority tasks just for the current day.
If you let this principle into your life, then the feeling of being a squirrel running on a wheel will remain with you until retirement. Learn to reduce the number of priorities and clearly understand what your main task is - for starters, at least for today.
At the same time, immediately try to understand whether this is your goal, or imposed on you from the outside - by friends, relatives, management, and so on. In our society, the volume of contacts with other people is so great that it is difficult to distinguish between what we want to do ourselves and what society imposes on us. Therefore, often more than half of the time is spent on things that are not important for ourselves, but urgent and important for others.
This does not mean that we should refuse to help other people. But it is important to realize that these are not your tasks, and you are engaged in them, willingly postponing your own affairs for later.
Five steps to manage your time
The principles of time management are extremely popular now, which allow you to make life more meaningful, organized and harmonious. Volumes have been written about time management, and yet a huge number of psychologists and coaches continue to teach people how to properly manage their time.
Keep in mind that it is much more important not to talk about it, but to start implementing at least some of the principles of time management into your own life, and you yourself will understand which techniques are suitable for you and which are not. These principles are quite simple, but it is important to systematically implement them.
First What needs to be done is to highlight the very priorities that have already been discussed. In practice, this is difficult, so you need to make a list of the most important, global goals. And then filter it by importance and urgency. It is necessary to do this. Here is what psychologist-consultant Victoria Timofeeva said about this to the correspondent of Mir 24:
“If you don’t plan for your future, if you don’t have a goal or a plan, then you are like a boat that drifts aimlessly in the ocean, hoping to be somewhere good. Agree, it's stupid to wait for this. Just like GPS guides you to your destination, you need your own internal GPS to guide you.”
Second step is to break down big big plans into a list of smaller tasks that can actually be done. Don't delay the start of the great work! When the idea is voluminous, it scares you, but as soon as you start doing the first of the points, the path to the final is already presented as a list of quite feasible tasks.
Third step is the refusal to do secondary things. Focus only on the essentials! This is called the Pareto principle. It says that 80% of the positive results we get by applying only 20% of the effort. And all the rest of our forces go to the execution of the remaining small list of cases. Therefore, we need to do only what we can be effective in. And what remains is better to outsource, outsource, or even dismiss as not the most important thing.
Fourth- by all means bring to the end the implementation of one or two pending tasks per day.
And finally fifth- Evaluate your efficiency, improve it all the time. Do not leave long-term affairs halfway, but bring them to their logical conclusion and set new goals.
That's all. Although each of the points can be deployed in several lectures. But instead of endlessly studying the theory, it is better to take the methods invented by other people and try to apply them yourself. You will quickly understand what suits you and what does not. After all, managing your time is just a skill. But it makes our life much more meaningful and structured.
Plans for the year, for the week, for the month
In parallel with long-term planning, which still needs to mature, it is worth starting to create more understandable and realistic plans for the day and for the week. Ideally, you should have related plans for the year, for the month, for the week, for the day.
It is best to write plans for the next year at the end of the previous one, but in January, of course, it is not too late to think about it. First, formulate the main goals and note the main events. When will they happen? Now start planning your vacation! Include in the annual plan the vacation and where you will spend it, as well as all vacations, trips and travels. Now decide when you should organize them in order to buy the best and cheapest tickets and book hotels.
Your annual plan should also include something new that you plan to do, whether it's learning a language, losing weight or training, changing jobs or renovating an apartment. Designate important dates, and not only related to work or study, but also with hobbies and personal life.
Plans for the month are also written, but with a more detailed study of the deadlines. You need to write them at the end of the previous month, and then you can adjust them, as well as annual plans, by the way - this is normal!
Make sure that the first monthly plan reflects those global goals that are in the annual one. The sooner you start implementing them, the better! It is better to immediately assess the “scale of the disaster” and understand what about a tenth of which needs to be done in the first month is. It is the tenth, not the twelfth, because there will be more vacations and vacations, during which you will be busy with rest, and not with business.
Don't forget friends' birthdays, visits to relatives, and other visits. Record all plans on the calendar. Find out which planning apps you are comfortable using. Try several electronic and paper organizers or other planning tools.
Plans for the week are made on Sunday evening, or, if you prefer, on Friday. Here it is necessary to clearly filter out unimportant things! How to fill your week is not a question. But how to find time for the main thing? Therefore, start with the main thing. Write in the plan what moves you towards those priority goals that you formulated in the annual plan.
Decisively enter into the weekly plan and what you were going to start, but put off or were afraid of. Would you like to exercise three times a week? It's time to set the days and times of training!
It is better to reflect in the weekly plan everything that will require your time and mental resources in order to properly distribute them and weed out everything unnecessary or unnecessary. Do not forget to leave in the plan time for communication with children and family, for meetings with friends, pleasures and relaxation!
Daily planning is the most responsible. After all, our life is made up of days. This means that it is at this stage that we project all our future successes and failures. It is best to plan your day in the evening of the previous day. So you already give yourself the installation in advance that you will cope with everything and have time for everything planned, and you wake up immediately with this knowledge.
Photo: Alan Katsiev (MTRK Mir)
Arrange the tasks in the list in order of priority and do only the most urgent and important first. If you leave the most difficult for later, then it will plunge you into a state of stress. It is better to quickly deal with everything difficult or unpleasant and exhale.
True, some psychologists argue that such a strategy is not suitable for everyone. After all, we must take into account our own biorhythms too. If you are a “night owl” and your peak activity is in the afternoon, then perhaps the tactic of gradually increasing the complexity of the tasks performed will be more effective for you. One way or another, the list of your tasks for the day should always be at your fingertips. If at the end of the day all the cases turned out to be crossed out, then your efficiency was at its best!
SMART - a technique that works wonders?
Life-coach from Rostov-on-Don Dana Doronina shares her secrets with the readers of Mir 24. She considers the SMART methodology, which is used in management, goal setting and, of course, in planning, to be one of the most effective, and at the same time simple, in its practical application. Here's what it is: once you start managing your time and prioritizing, it's important to follow the five things behind SMART.
S (Specific) . When making plans, you must have a clear idea of \u200b\u200bwhat the end result you want to achieve will look like. For example, the goal to “lose weight this month” is a blurry goal. A more correct wording is “lose weight this month by 5 kg.”
M (Measurable) . You must define for yourself the criteria by which you will judge the implementation of your plan. Additionally, you can designate for yourself the lower and upper bars - the minimum indicators (below which you cannot go down in the implementation of the plan) and the maximum (your best result).
A (Attainable) - reachability . At the stage of determining achievability, it is necessary to answer the question: “Is the task set realistic for me?”. If, for example, you are overweight and have set yourself the goal of losing 20 kg in a month. - then this goal belongs to the category of unattainable. In this case, it is necessary to carry out its adjustment and replace it with a more achievable and realistic one. For example, to lose weight by 8 kg.
When working through the point of attainability of the goal, you also need to identify the tools and methods by which you can achieve this goal. In the weight loss example, these options could be: visit a nutritionist, start jogging in the morning, change your diet, take certain drugs, sign up for a massage. Your task is to evaluate all the resources that you can theoretically use to achieve the goal. After you analyze them, you will need to choose those that you can actually put into practice.
R (Relevant) - significance . When determining the significance of a goal, ask yourself: “Do I really want to achieve this result?”. Maybe this is not your goal and you will only waste your time and energy. Also analyze how this goal is consistent with your other plans, those that were set before. Does it conflict with them, will it violate the spiritual comfort of your loved ones?
T (Time bound) - time indicator. The difference between a project and a dream and a simple desire is that the project has a clearly defined period of time in which you will implement it. So it is necessary to register the start date of work on the project and the date of its completion.
According to Life-coach Dana Doronina, her clients who applied this technique in a short time received results that led them to a new round of personal growth.
Tatyana Rubleva
"A good plan today is better than a very good plan tomorrow"
Plato
Time only improves us..
Properly planned work or other type of activity is the key to the successful completion of the task and is a tool for self-organization. To help you learn how to manage your time and activities on your own, here are a few specific steps to help you. However, first, you need to understand the terminology and understand why it is so important to properly plan your time and work. Surely, you know that successful people are very good at planning tools.
Activity planning is one of the secrets of a successful person..
Below are the reasons why planning is an important tool in the matter of self-organization and self-improvement.
Activity planning is the map of your day.
If you learn to plan your time and affairs in the evening, with the advent of a new day, you will win at least an hour of active time. In the evening, you are able to plan not only the time of awakening and getting up, but also make a work plan for every hour of the next day. Typically, a person who has not made a plan of action for the day spends from one to five minutes to determine the field of activity. But during this period it is impossible to correctly determine the priority and secondary tasks, it is impossible to take into account everything that needs your attention. Deciding to draw up an effective plan of action, a person who is not used to it will spend at least an hour of working time. Realizing that time will be wasted, a person, as a rule, decides not to draw up any plan, but to act on a whim: "I do what I remember". But this approach is completely devoid of efficiency. Having started one task, a person suddenly remembers another, even more important task, switches his attention to it. In the process, he gets distracted as his thoughts switch from one thing to another. As a result, neither one nor the second task was completed. Most often, a person is in a hurry to complete urgent matters. But urgent does not mean really important and significant for the person himself. It is unlikely that an urgent matter will have a positive impact on a person’s subsequent life.
One minute of time spent planning your activities saves ten minutes spent on the task at hand. Thus, by learning to plan your activities, you can get a 200 percent return on your energy investment.
For someone who is used to planning work for tomorrow, it does not take more than twelve minutes to write down all the necessary tasks, distributing them in priority order. Twelve minutes spent the day before will give you the opportunity to save two hours of productivity, which will certainly increase the level of productivity of your work. If you multiply this time by the number of days in a calendar month, it turns out that you can save up to five working days per month. It's great, isn't it!
Planning activities teaches you to correctly prioritize.
The ability to correctly identify priority areas of activity helps to identify the most important, promising and significant places. It often happens that a person spends time on what he likes, on what gives him pleasure. However, priority should be given to what needs to be done. The unwillingness to concentrate and give preference to the main thing leads to the fact that a person fails to achieve his goal.
Activity planning programs the human mind.
You, for sure, have repeatedly come across such a situation when, depending on how clearly your desire is formulated, it is more or less easily realized. Planning is a unique process that helps a person to realize what he really aspires to and, as a result, embodies these aspirations.
Sometimes a person just thinks that he needs to do something. But in reality, he can easily do without it. Such cases, which have far-fetched importance, are of low priority and, over time, completely disappear from the list of mandatory ones.
Let's look at specific planning methods.
Set aside time each evening to make a plan that lists all the things you need to do in order of importance. With the advent of a new day, proceed to the task written under paragraph 1. Do not move on to the next task until you complete the first one. Follow the order in which you have to do all the things you have written down. Don't move on to the next one without completing the previous one. You can stop and not finish it only if circumstances intervene, which you cannot change. But even in this case, make every effort to complete what you started as soon as possible. Once you've completed one task, move on to the next.
Methods and ways of planning.
- Planning for Beginners
In order to learn how to plan your work, at the initial stage, you only need a pen and a piece of paper. Write down all the tasks and plans that you will need to complete tomorrow. Tasks should be ranked according to their importance. As you complete each item, cross it off the list. There is nothing complicated in this method, but once you try to follow your plan, you will be surprised at how effective this method is. This method allows you to plan the development of events for one coming day. Over time, you realize that you can plan your life for a much longer period. - Improving planning conditions
In order to improve the conditions in which you plan your upcoming business, you will need to purchase: a diary, a diary and a planning calendar. Let's take a closer look.
diary- a special notebook in which your meetings and necessary things are recorded for each upcoming day. You can also use the diary to record the most important points of the upcoming day, week or month. The diary gives you the opportunity to write down important thoughts that come to mind. You should treat the diary as a place where the most important and significant information regarding the events of the upcoming day is concentrated. Every evening, you need to set aside time to write down upcoming events and tasks that you will be doing the next day. One rule applies here: Don't start a new day without finishing planning.". Thanks to this rule, you will eventually realize that it is in your power to plan not only the events of the upcoming day, but also monitor your health, improve your well-being, and improve the quality of life. When you don't plan for the day ahead, the smallest loss is one hour of wasted time, the largest is the entire day. Having not defined priorities, a person proceeds to perform secondary tasks. As a result, he comes to the end of the day with the thought that the whole day was spent for no one knows what, but there is no result.
Conclusions related to the need to use the diary:
- Bring order into your life. Make a detailed plan of upcoming tasks and events that need to be completed for the next day.
- Analyze what you have written. Sort things in order of importance. Before you start doing things, clear priorities should be set.
- Accustom yourself to spend energy only on doing important and meaningful things that will lead you to the desired result. Having managed to develop the habit of planning the upcoming day, you can increase your productivity by an order of magnitude.
Diary- a written (electronic) medium containing those wise and significant thoughts that you have ever met in your life. A wise idea can come from almost anyone. A priceless thought can come to you at any moment. In order not to lose and not forget it, you need a diary. Don't let a good idea slip away from you. A great thought can radically change a person's life. A diary is such a thing that should always be next to a person.
Planning calendar. Using the planning calendar (planner) allows you to make plans for a period longer than one day. When you understand that planning for one day is effective, it means that you can plan things for a longer period - a week. A similar rule applies: Do not start the upcoming week until you have completed its planning».
Having mastered the planning of the week, proceed to the next stage - start planning your actions for a month in advance. And here the rule also applies: Do not start the upcoming month until you have planned it».
After that, you will be able to form goals for the upcoming day in accordance with those that you have set for a longer period: three months, six months and a year. Perhaps you are thinking now that planning activities takes time, causes some stress. But, having learned to plan your life, you can achieve a much more serious and significant result than if you do not master this science. Every action you take will be more meaningful and effective than unplanned work. Yes, you must approach planning with a sense of responsibility and discipline. But once you learn to plan, you become the master of time. Planning itself helps to more clearly and clearly articulate the upcoming business, which helps to achieve the goal more quickly. The ability to constantly plan your time makes it possible to determine the type of activity that has more significant priorities. This also leads to an increase in the efficiency of the work done.
1. Strategic planning This is the most important job of a leader.
- know and understand the goals of the company;
- be able to extract the goals of the unit from the goals of the company;
- create plans so that the activities of the unit bring the entire company closer to the realization of its goals.
2. Coordination with senior management.
At such coordinations, the head just coordinates the activities of his unit with the goals of the company and reports on the results. Set aside time for this with a margin to calmly discuss everything.
3. Coordination with subordinates is working with one subordinate and agreeing that What he will do When And How , and when he is ready to report on the result. At the same time, it is important to understand that not only the leader sets tasks for the subordinate, but the subordinate also tells the leader what and how he will do - and you coordinate these actions together. Of course, the subordinate must be able to plan, think, understand the consequences of their actions. But only the manager is fully responsible for what his subordinate is doing and what results he produces. Therefore, the leader must be able to lead his subordinate to the right decision, what is the best way to spend working time - to perform many routine tasks or several important ones. At each coordination, the leader must answer himself the following questions:
- What tasks are on the subordinate's list?
- What will the accomplishment of these tasks lead to?
- How to orient your subordinate to get results?
By the way, the manager should have no more than 7 people in direct subordination, and only 5 are better. Therefore, if you have more people under your supervision, create a structure in which only five will personally report to you, who will be responsible not only for their own job, but also 2-4 other people.
4. Control is one of the main functions of a leader. If during coordination the manager agrees with his subordinates what will be done, then during the control he receives a brief report on the results and corrects the action plan on the spot, if necessary. Agree with the subordinates in what form they provide this report to you: by e-mail on a common form filled out on the corporate network or on a report and bulletin board. Or you will go up to each one and see if he is doing or not doing his tasks. It all depends on the specifics of the work, and this can take from 50 to 70% of the total working time of the manager. Be an effective lazy leader, do not try to produce the result yourself, but force other people to do it.
5. Analysis (ancient Greek. division into parts). It is important for the manager to regularly collect data in order to see how things are going - right or wrong - and take action in time. Analysis should be carried out at least once a week, and in difficult conditions for the company, as often as possible. For this you need:
- a perfect picture of the result that the unit should get, with an exact indication of the amount.
- a list of successful actions that are guaranteed to lead to this result.
- the amount of the result obtained and the list of work performed that led to this result, by the entire unit
- and the amount of the result obtained and the list of work performed that led to this result, by each of the employees of the unit separately.
And now you can do a comparative analysis. What they wanted? What did you get? How did you get it? And what should be done differently now? Or vice versa, what successful actions should be followed in the future?
6. Corrections– amending the work plans of your team. Correction also occurs during the control of the work of employees, but only after analyzing the results of the work of employees for a period of at least 1 week, you can see what changes are needed in the schedule and work methods, and possibly the staff.
7. Joint coordination activities of the entire department. Once a week, set aside time for a meeting or meeting to summarize the results of the week, announce the results and agree on plans for the next week. There is a mandatory rule for such meetings - talk about everything only in a positive way and keep the focus on goals and achievements, and leave failures for a conversation alone with those who are responsible for them. Only then will the team move towards a common goal, when people understand what goal they should reach and what contribution each employee should make to the common cause, i.e. How the activities of each are reflected in the activities of the group.
Elena Alexandrova
executive director and business coach and consultant at BogushTime
