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Four Steps for “Doing More with Less.”

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With recent layoffs, crushing inflation, and cost cutting across organizations, leaders at all levels of organizations are dealing with belt tightening. More and more they are being asked to do more with less. Easier said than done. Is that request realistic, or does it mean demanding more and more from employees—perhaps to the point of jeopardizing retention?

How can your organization truly do more with less, get the work done, meet goals–all while having sustainable workloads? It is possible, and there are four steps to follow to get there. [Read more…]

How to Stop “Firefighting”: Part 2

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Even with hopes that the pandemic is over, managers, supervisors, and employees at all levels continue to report firefighting at a larger scale than ever before. By firefighting, I mean work that is reactionary, urgent—dealing with issues that are not what would be thought of as ordinary work. In fact, firefighting has become so prevalent, some organizations have difficulty separating the “ordinary, standard work” from the reactionary work. There are several contributing causes: the “Great Resignation” left us with fewer employees, resignations continue, skilled employees are hard to find, processes without PM are now running to failure, recruiting is more competitive, and newly hired employees (and newly promoted front line leaders) lack adequate technical and process knowledge.

How can your organization start making the shift away from firefighting toward more sustainable workloads and the work of ordinary business? Fortunately, the solutions for firefighting also provide the foundation to addressing the tide of resignations. [Read more…]

Four Steps to Stop Firefighting

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fire extinguisher

In 2022, leaders across industries seem to have one thing in common: they report that their organizations are spending more time firefighting than ever before. A prevailing reactionary culture has emerged, born of the business climate of the past three years. In that time we’ve seen shutdowns, layoffs, large scale resignations, wildly changing employee expectations, supply chain challenges, interest rate hikes, and rising costs of attracting and retaining employees. The list goes on and on. Many organizations are still understaffed at several levels of the hierarchy and the resignation environment continues to disrupt progress. A large percentage of front line workers are new, and due to inexperience, there may be only so much they can do without strong guidance. Key staff supporting positions are also understaffed, including IT, Maintenance, and Engineering departments—all contributing to an atmosphere of intense firefighting.  How can you reduce or eliminate firefighting and get back to more purposeful work?

[Read more…]

2 Steps to Curtail the Great Resignation

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2 Steps to Curtail the Great Resignation – by Verna Lynch and Mackenzie Childs

In 2021, millions of Americans quit their jobs in what has been called the Great Resignation. If we’re hoping that 2022 may give us a respite, we need to think again. Based on a recent CareerArc/Harris Poll, 2022 will see even more resignations, with the lion’s share of them predicted to come in the first quarter.

If you’re like us, articles have been flooding your inbox with solutions to the mass exodus—many including great ideas—from improving employee engagement, re-recruiting your employees, and providing more mental health benefits or more flexible work, to improving your organizational culture.  But how do you know these ideas will work for your organization?  And if you do them all, won’t you be trying to juggle too many priorities? If you work to improve your culture, how will that help you immediately because culture change takes time. What can you do? [Read more…]

Employee motivation and retention: an untrendy solution

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As if COVID is not enough of a challenge for organizations to deal with, some organizations have been talking with us about a different challenge: keeping their highest performers during the pandemic. The issue being discovered by our clients and friends is that of motivating employees, not just by adding “fun” activities or a more energizing work environment. Employees want more. [Read more…]

Can your leaders lead?

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In a recent blog, I advocated for organizations’ developing a leadership pipeline in order to have the leaders they will need in the future. That blog item made the case for going beyond typical leadership training and development to understanding and building the competencies and skills leaders will need to have five or more years from now — and those skills might be very different from the ones required today. [Read more…]

How Healthy is Your Leadership Pipeline?

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At some regular interval, your organization refreshes its strategic plan.  Perhaps you did that in Q4 as you set this year’s budget.  Now that you are well into the new year, have you thought about one of the key factors that will help you meet the plan: your organization’s leadership pipeline?  Do you have that nagging question in the back of your mind that you may not have the leadership needed to achieve the near- or long-term plan?  Do you have a structure and process in place to develop the leaders you’ll need?  Current leadership development processes and programs in your organization may be doing a good job of developing today’s leaders, but what about tomorrow’s? [Read more…]

At some regular interval, your organization refreshes its strategic plan.  Perhaps you did that in Q4 as you set this year’s budget.  Now that you are well into the new year, have you thought about one of the key factors that will help you meet the plan: your organization’s leadership pipeline?  Do you have that nagging question in the back of your mind that you may not have the leadership needed to achieve the near- or long-term plan?  Do you have a structure and process in place to develop the leaders you’ll need?  Current leadership development processes and programs in your organization may be doing a good job of developing today’s leaders, but what about tomorrow’s? [Read more…]

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