It's Resolution Time, Even at Work
Posted January 2, 2017 01:05 pm | Op-Ed
By
Quint Studer
While most of the most popular New Year’s resolutions - eat right, work out more, learn a new language – might be personal, there are always attainable resolutions in the workplace.
Through the years I have seen many organizations and leaders make large commitments to achieve ambitious goals. With that came progress. But all too often, after a few years, the progress is lost. Just like humans who struggle to hold the gains, organizations can struggle to hold gains.
That’s the thing about resolutions, everyone wants to improve and keep it going. So it’s not a lack of want-to. But here are seven things to watch for, and with those, seven tips to make your work-related resolutions successful in 2017:
1.
The goals are too aggressive. It can feel good to
set lofty goals. But if they are too aggressive, it
quickly proves too hard to ramp up that much change fast
enough to achieve the goal. The energy can't be
sustained. Building a great company is a marathon, not a
sprint. So after a burst of energy, the pace crashes.
Don’t sell yourself short on your goals, just make sure
there are steps and you give yourself the ability to
transition to new steps when needed.
2. The timeline is too short. Much like
goals, the time to achieve milestones is often too
short. The intensity can't be kept up. Set realistic
timelines.
3. Not accounting for actions that can be
stopped. Most employees and leaders know the feeling
of having items added to their plate without anything
taken off. Take a deep view of actions that can be
reduced or stopped.
4. Managers and staff do not have skills to
achieve desired results. Identify the skills that
need to be improved or introduced to attain the
identified goals. It’s easy to glaze over this saying
“let’s work smarter, not harder.” I feel that everyone
is already trying to do that. It is vital to take time
to identify those skills that managers and employees
will need to improve your organization’s performance.
Provide time for new skills to be acquired before any
goals are ramped up. Allow goals to me moved up as the
year progresses.
5. Processes not improved. You know what
you get when you use the same processes? Similar
results. You can’t expect bigger gains without taking a
hard look at your processes. A key skill needed in an
organization is process improvement methods to make work
more efficient.
6. Employee issues are present. Want to
achieve bigger goals? They will require change, so it’s
smart to measure employee satisfaction to assess
readiness for those new goals. Taking the temperature of
the employees before setting new goals provides
strengths to build upon and introduces items that need
to be addressed. This is a critical factor for setting
the company up for success.
7. The “why” is not understood. The
employees need to work harder to reach bigger goals. But
do they know the “why” behind the changes? The more the
why is understood and connected to the new goal, the
more committed everyone can be to the company’s success.
The “why” could be because it’s needed to stay in
business. It could be job security; it could be better
pay; or it may just be that these new goals will make
life better.
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Quint Studer is the "founder and faculty" of the STUDER Community Institute. Quint can be reached at quint@quintstuder.com
Image added by the Observer
This piece was reprinted by the Columbia County Observer with permission or license.