Feel Like A Job Refresh? Try Organisation Renewal

Feel Like A Job Refresh? Try Organisation Renewal

Hey Professionals, are you getting bored at work? Tired of doing the same thing day in day out? Becoming frustrated at lack of opportunities to use more of your skills? Feeling unappreciated, unrecognised, underpaid, or insecure in your current role? What if we could change it up a bit by reducing the sameness and increasing the challenge??

And Managers, do you ever feel frustrated that your team does not seem to be putting their best efforts into their work, and certainly not coming up with suggestions to improve processes and procedures? What about increased engagement, proactivity, and productivity?

Why Refresh or Renew at Work?

There has been much discussion in the media recently regarding Australia’s slowing productivity. One of the primary ways organisations can enhance productivity is a realignment of tasks with resources to enable greater cost-effectiveness … Organisation Renewal.

It’s based on the Pareto Principle - better known as The 80/20 Rule - which suggests that the bulk of our time and effort goes into producing relatively little real ‘value’, while we typically only spend a minority portion of our time working on the things that do create real value.

If we better understand how we spend our time, we can reduce the time we spend on lower value tasks and activities and create room to spend more on those of greater value.

Since some jobs are designed around a single task, there may not always be scope to apply this technique fully. There may, however, be occasional opportunities such as one-off projects, training others, team leadership, and so on, at least for some members of the team.

Furthermore, individuals and organisations may perceive ‘value’ differently. Organisations look for value in the form of increased productivity, lower staff turnover, and increased revenue and profitability, whereas individuals look for increased variety or challenge, more opportunity to excel and progress, greater recognition and reward, and enhanced security.

Personally, I once felt so over-worked and unfulfilled that I undertook an analysis of how I had been spending my time, on what, and to what end, then made some changes. I resolved to log my time more regularly to allow a more accurate ongoing picture, and continue to use the “quiet” time of the year to go through the review-and-renew process to get me off to a great start to the new year by making changes that excited me as well as freed me up. Refreshed!

So how do we go about it, as individuals?

Off the top of your head, or even better if you keep a log of your time, identify up to five primary activities that take up the bulk of your time. Then, for each of those activities, identify which ones create High/Medium/Low value primarily for the organisation, and which create H/M/L value for yourself. Clearly H/H is top, then H/M and even H/L, then M/H, etc.

Figure 1: A sample distribution of 5 tasks each taking around 20% each of my time:

If you have identified 5 activities which account for most of your time, the 80/20 Rule suggests you should probably be spending more time on one of those, and/or adding another high-value task. To make room, identify one of the other four to spend less time on, and still have 5.

Beyond spending more time on current activities, are there any other activities you would like to add? If you’re not sure about this one, perhaps you could ask your Manager what other tasks they might be able to delegate to you. Your Manager might be surprised by this, though you both might be pleasantly surprised by what you get out of it.

And how do you “get rid of” a particular task or activity? You could …

-????????? Delegate to a more junior (or less costly) resource within the team,

-????????? Delegate to someone outside your team,

-????????? Outsource beyond your organisation,

-????????? Automate it,

-????????? Or just stop doing it, as some long-standing tasks may lose their relevance.

Note that delegating, outsourcing, adding, and even automating will all take additional time on your part (and others) in the short term! Some of those other resources may also then need to do some rearranging of their own Task-Time-Value matrix, and so it goes on.

If you work for somebody else, then you may require input and sign-off from your immediate manager, but at least you can initiate this process yourself and push for some change.

And as Managers?

You probably already have a fair idea what your people are working on and how much organisational value is being created. If your team provides services which are “billable” then you probably have a very good idea, though others may need to gather some more data.

You can now categorise all the key tasks and activities as H/M/L organisational value to spot the opportunities to devote less resource to some and more resource to others. Whilst not quite as important, bear in mind also which ones could be more motivational for your staff.

You can then either make task-time changes uniformally across your team, or for each individual. You might achieve greater uplift in performance if you tailor these changes to each person, but that will take you longer, and you need to ensure any such changes are equitable.

As mentioned above, you also have a role to play in reviewing your team’s suggestions for changes to ensure the overall team’s outcomes are not adversely affected. Consider which tasks or activities you might wish to get off your own plate, and who among your team members you might consider delegating these to. You can be a role model by being prepared to revisit and fine-tune your own tasks and time allocations.

If you are practised in the art of delegation then this concept is probably already familiar to you, but the process will provide greater granularity and credibility when explaining your decisions to others. This requires extra time from you, but you, your team, and the organisation all benefit.

And whole Organisations?

The 80/20 Review-And-Renew process can be extended both above and below you and your team, and across divisions and departments, allowing for better resource allocation as part of overall Organisation Renewal. Moving sideways is just part of career development.

This process enables greater hiring of younger staff, whose earnings can more easily be aligned with additional tasks and responsibilities rather than tenure. This, in turn, reduces the need to hire expensive, highly experienced personnel who bring their own preferred ways of working. More ideas for improvement can be expected to come from workers themselves, and for further advice and guidance, consider using external consultants - short-term only.

When everyone feels they are growing, they are more likely to remain at your organisation. They might also be more inclined to share positive rather than negative work experiences with their social networks. Costs of hiring, numbers of candidates and interviews, along with recruiters’ commissions, can also be reduced. Overall cost of labour can also lower.

Figure 2: Above and Below Me in the Organisation Structure:

?What are the Outcomes and Benefits?

Professionals, you should enjoy reorganising your time for greater efficiency and effectiveness, then looking forward to reduced stress and dissatisfaction with increased recognition and reward. You might even feel more like jumping out of bed each day and into your work.??

Managers, you should enjoy higher team morale, greater cooperation, and stronger overall performance, contributing to higher engagement and proactivity, and leading to increased team quantity and quality of output. You might even enjoy delegating more of your workload and increasing your visibility up the line.

Semi-regular Organisation Renewal is an integral part of a culture that values and invests in staff for sound commercial reasons. Accompanying management skills could be one of the best leveraged investments that can be made in seeking to increase cost-effectiveness, and investment in human capital is one recognised way to significantly enhance productivity.

So, how are your organisation’s job and task allocations reviewed? How well equipped are your professionals to self-review, and your managers to coach and facilitate such a process??