SUMMER OF ORGANIZATION - WEEK #1

SUMMER OF

 ORGANIZATION

WEEK #1

Good morning and welcome to Week #1 of the F.O.R. You Summer of Organization series.  This week there are two things we are going to accomplish:  getting your head right and moving forward.

Organization begins in your head.  Are you spinning around trying to remember where you should be right now or what the name of that person you were supposed to follow up was and where did you write it down?  The numbers vary on how much is actually lost by disorganization but even the lowest numbers are astounding.  According to one Neat as a Pin white paper, dysfunctional systems and disorganization are the biggest expense in a company.  Great organization and systems start with you whether you are leading a company, working in a company, an entrepreneur out on your own or whatever working (and even family) situation you find yourself in. 

Where do you start?  There are piles all over your house of things that need to get done and your office looks the same.
This leads us to Task #1:

TASK #1 – Put all piles of the same stuff in the same place.

This week you will spend your time putting all the “like” things together. If you are anything like me, you have many projects, paperwork streams, and opportunities that divide your time. Each of these need to be separated.  You might also have business cards all over your briefcase, desk and in various files/folders.  At home you still haven’t mailed out last year’s Christmas cards because you couldn’t find all the addresses you needed to gather.  This week you will not get all these things solved. YOU ARE MERELY SORTING INTO LIKE PILES. 

Pull out everything that needs sorted and put into one big pile. Then turn on a good movie or a professional development DVD/CD you’ve been meaning to listen to or an audio book and get busy – sort, sort, sort.  Throw away that which is no longer needed.  I suggest using baskets, cloth bags, banker boxes or whatever works for you to keep your piles separated.  Once everything is sorted, put it in the room it belongs and keep it separated.  

For some, this will be a week-long project.  Others may finish quickly.  If you have some extra time after getting it all separated, you might want to start the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, take out the garbage and then start in on going through each pile (one at a time, maybe one per day) and figuring out the best way to store and file this particular subject matter.  If it’s finances, this might mean a banker’s box with folders or large envelopes by the month or by category. Marketing materials can be put in banker’s boxes and labeled accordingly.  All your Post-It notes and pens should be in your desk or on top of it, etcetera.  Again, the system doesn’t matter as long as it works for you!

You will be amazed at how much better you feel even by completing this task this week.  Decluttering opens your mind and makes you feel clean and new and refreshed.  I would love your feedback on this process as you go through it. It will be posted on my blog and also my Facebook page.  Please follow them and start a conversation of business leaders helping others.

Don’t forget to spend some time outside in the sunshine and love on your family this week! Those are the most important things in life anyway!

5 Ways To Improve Employee Engagement

Managers and leaders should know their people -- who they are, not just what they do. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company's bottom line. Here are five strategies organizations can use to help build their constituency of engaged employees:
1.    Use the right employee engagement survey. When a company asks its employees for their opinions, those employees expect action to follow. But businesses often make the mistake of using employee surveys to collect data that are irrelevant or impossible to act on. Any survey data must be specific, relevant, and actionable for any team at any organizational level.
2.    Focus on engagement at the local and organizational levels. Real change occurs at the local-work group level, but it happens only when company leaders set the tone from the top. Companies realize the most benefit from engagement initiatives when leaders weave employee engagement into performance expectations for managers and enable them to execute on those expectations.
3.    Select the right managers. The best managers understand that their success and that of the organization relies on employees' achievements. But not everyone can be a great manager. Great managers care about their people's success. They seek to understand each person's strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions. I
4.    Coach managers and hold them accountable for their employees' engagement. Companies should coach managers to take an active role in building engagement plans with their employees, hold managers accountable, track their progress, and ensure that they continuously focus on emotionally engaging their employees.
5.    Define engagement goals in realistic, everyday terms. To bring engagement to life, leaders must make engagement goals meaningful to employees' day-to-day experiences. Describing what success looks like using powerful descriptions and emotive language helps give meaning to goals and builds commitment within a team. Make sure that managers discuss employee engagement at weekly meetings, in action-planning sessions, and in one-on-one meetings with employees to weave engagement into daily interactions and activities and to make it part of the workplace's DNA.