Time Tracking & Management 

Part 1: Tracking Time

Acceptable Time Tracking

As we’ve often said, organizations come in all sizes and flavors.  Some activities may be suitable for standard time tracking, while some roles may not lend themselves well to jotting down minutes spent here and there.  Few restaurants would ever dream of having the waiters or cooks track their time – they’re either prepping food, cooking it or delivering it, and on a busy Saturday night they’re lucky to even get to go to the bathroom.  Two manufacturing companies basically make very similar “widgets,” but one company pays workers by pieces completed and the other has a standard piece-per-hour expectation (by doing occasional studies), and pays by hours worked.  So the first manufacturer tracks number of pieces (which must be recorded per person at the end of every shift) and the second just tracks time (with occasional checks to make sure the standard piece-per-hour is holding true).  Two different ways of reaching a similar “time” conclusion.

One company we know has every production worker list each day’s tasks with a reference number (Task 13 for Project A = 2 hours; task 7 for Project B = 30 mins, etc).  In this particular company there’s almost no middle management, and so the owner’s rule makes sense: “I can’t pay workers until I know what they did.”  Acceptable time tracking occurs when chunks of time can be accounted for by functional activity, and need to be accounted for because the worker is splitting time across multiple functions that cannot be correctly predicted by management.  It’s absurd, completely  unacceptable, to track time for a person doing order entry 8 hours a day everyday.  It is acceptable, however, to track time during the first week of the month when that order entry person may also be expected to create and distribute a previous month’s report.  Unbeknownst to the manager who spent 3 minutes reading the report, it may have taken 3 hours to create it.

Reasonable Time Tracking

“Reasonable” is a subjective word, but in this case we mean a leader’s (owner, director or manager) desire to get a handle on what tasks staff are typically performing, for how much time.  Once a “snapshot” of a week or a month is obtained, staff stop taking the time to track their time and re-focus on their work while someone analyzes the information gathered.  What the leader may do with that information could range from staff changes (adding, reducing staff, or shifting staff to different functions), to bringing in computers, machines, temps, or outsourcing some functions altogether.  To be in the category of “reasonable” time tracking, staff must be told why the exercise is being conducted, when to expect either the results of the analysis or decisions, and when the tracking will begin and end.

Immature Time Tracking (and the consequences)

As you might guess, in an immature organization, someone with authority gets the idea that either staff are wasting time, or the leader is subtly admitting that he doesn’t actually understand what staff do on a daily basis.  Either way, the authority figure (or authority group) decides to find out by imposing time tracking on everyone.  When grumbling or push-back starts to occur, the leader (or a stand-in) generally explains that senior leadership wants to analyze where time is being spent so that “adjustments” can be made.  Then fear (especially in this economy) adversely affects productivity, and everyone begins adjusting their numbers in a variety of ways (some too low, some too high, everyone wondering how to game a system they don’t understand).  No statement is made about when staff will get feedback on the exercise.  No statement is made about when the exercise will end.  The exercise goes on week after month, perhaps for an entire year, until the entire tracking effort finally, thankfully, dies of its own accord.  First one area stops doing the tracking and is not reprimanded, then another stops, then the beast collapses.  Many times the program dies without anyone actually using the data collected.  In a worse scenario, someone tries to analyze the information gathered and figure out what changes to impose.  Even if the intentions are good – to improve manufacturing quantity or quality; to reduce “maintenance-of-business” time and increase project time; or to bolster customer service – in an immature organization the culture will win in the end.  The leader will lose the trust of the staff, and a downward spiral will ensue.  In less than a year that leader will likely have either transferred (possibly even been promoted due to the appearance of progress and improvement) or left the organization.  Workers will remember time tracking as a loathsome annoyance that never led to anything positive.  No trust was established, and in fact future trust will be even more difficult to earn. 

Part 2: Managing Time

Time Management vs. Activity Management

Time management is nothing more nor less than knowing when to shift attention from one task to another.  A person can be responsible for his own time management if he knows the priorities of his supervisors.  In many situations (particularly in immature organizations), workers don’t know their supervisors’ priorities because the supervisors don’t know the managers’ or directors’ priorities.  And in a truly immature organization, even the directors don’t know the priorities because they’ve lost control of planning and only know how to react to the loudest customer or board demands.

In an immature organization, “time management” is misunderstood to be activity management.  “Let’s manage peoples’ activities, let’s make sure that everyone is as active as possible all day long.” Unfortunately it’s easy to keep people “jumping,” but much harder to know whether the end results, the deliverables, are being produced from 100% or 90% or 40% of the activity.  People can always look busy if their paycheck depends on being active. 

The real art and science of managing time is to:

1)      understand all the tasks that go into producing each deliverable;

2)       understand the organization’s maximum capability to deliver (that is, maximum without burn-out);

3)       be aware of changing customer wants, needs and demands;

4)      re-prioritize deliverables to best satisfy customers; and

5)      constantly communicate the current customer needs and the organization’s priorities. 

If you understand the tasks which go into producing each deliverable, identification of the skills required to accomplish the tasks with proficiency can be used to establish training plans and efficiency metrics of individual workers. 

If you understand the organization’s maximum capability to deliver priorities can be shifted based on a mixture of customer demand and worker capacity. 

If you are aware of changing customer wants, needs, and demands you can obtain alignment between worker hiring and training, and the purchase of the right tools and materials to meet customer needs. 

If you reprioritize deliverables to best satisfy customer needs, the organization becomes flexible enough to rapidly address changes in the marketplace. 

And if you constantly communicate the changing needs and priorities everyone in the organization knows not only when to alter their activities, but why.  And when the why is understood, people will team spontaneously to quickly complete deliverables.  As the organization matures it will also encourage people to make creative suggestions and offer creative solutions.

Bottom Line:  One way to gauge the maturity of any organization is by observing the ratio of worker-directed vs. management-directed time management.  Do the workers monitor their time or does management?  The more that workers can manage their own time to fulfill the requirements of clear priorities, the more mature the organization, and the more engaged the workforce.    Where management over-controls staff activities, treats workers like robots that “just don’t get it” (because there are no clear priorities), the less mature the organization.

July 2010
ND Works Article

New book looks at reasons change fails
To institute change, look for “champions”
BY CAROL C. BRADLEY

              Despite all the planning, expense and good intentions, 50 to 75 percent of efforts to improve the culture and productivity of an organization will fail, say Martin Klubeck, Michael Langthorne and Donald Padgett.

            The three ND staff members joined forces to write “Why Organizations Struggle So Hard To Improve So Little: Overcoming Organizational Immaturity.”

            Many organizations suffer from immaturity—they are incapable of enterprise-wide change, argue Klubeck, OIT strategy and planning consultant; Langthorne, OIT project manager; and Donald Padgett, OIT program manager for strategic initiatives and principal in the business Play Like a Champion Today.

“Statistics show that most organizational improvement efforts fail to achieve what they intend,” says Langthorne. “It’s a huge waste of money and time. And it tears down trust, and makes people less likely to participate in future improvement efforts. What pushed us to do the book was figuring out how to get past these kinds of problems.”

            Klubeck says, “Organizations typically bring in consultants, who attempt to force change and no matter how badly they fail, they have a ready excuse…they blame the leader.  They claim the leader wasn’t committed enough, didn’t ‘walk the walk’ or ‘take ownership.’ But in our experience, it’s rare that leaders aren’t committed. It’s their reputation on the line. They look good if it succeeds, bad if it fails—of course they’re committed.”

            So who’s to blame? No one.

Here’s the hard part: Regardless of what consultants, or methodologies are chosen, chances are good the efforts will ultimately fail. The premise of the book is simple: Organization-wide change efforts will fail because an immature organization is incapable of this level of change.

The book includes a simple maturity self-assessment tool, and an organizational health survey. The two provide a good look at an organization’s maturity and health.   There are great potential savings if leaders can identify organizational immaturity before they embark on improvement efforts.

            One barrier to change is the acceptance of—and reliance on—“superheroes,” Langthorne says. “They’re called upon to solve problems, and resolve crises.  But this creates an atmosphere of information hoarding.  There is no benefit to the hero in sharing or teaching others.

Dealing with organizational immaturity calls for a different way of thinking.

To successfully change an organization, you must first understand that you CAN’T change the organization—particularly if the organization is addicted to superheroes, “crisis management” and maintaining the status quo.

The real goal of any change effort must be making the change stick. 

“It would be great if leadership got out of people’s way” Langthorne says. “Leaders should identify champions (people who have a lot of energy around specific, targeted improvements) and then give them the resources they need when they need them, encourage them, motivate them and reward them for their successes. Instead of dictating an unrealistic change, become a coach—work to get the best out of your ‘players’. Leaders have to lead, versus manage.”

                        The simple formula Klubeck, Langthorne and Padgett suggest is this: Look for champions, “the ones who are already making change happen in their small area.”

If you care about the organization, find others who care—who have passion. Those are your champions. Help them institute change within their sphere of influence, and propagate change by “infecting” others with results and passion.

Small successes are still successes—and the improvements will help the organization move toward embracing broader changes in the future.

            One good thing about immature organizations, they add, is that there are lots of opportunities to improve…just not all at once. 

NDWorks, Vol 7, No. 19,  Reprinted by permission,  Copyright 2010 University of Notre Dame

June 2010
The Engagement Ring

Performance management, development plans, hiring strategies and creating a culture of recognition: these 4 elements are essential for creating what we call an “engagement ring.” Each of these is a process that will pay great benefits if used correctly, or lead to low morale and cultural dysfunction if handled poorly.

Performance management means just that – managing employee performance. Self management is one side of the coin, supervisor review of performance is the other side. Many people assume performance management means the dreaded “annual performance review,” and they assume that because it is so typical. Typical, but wrong!

Development plans align directly with performance management. Development plans cover both job training and beyond-job development. Employees (at every level) need a development plan. Where do they want to be in 5, 10, 15 years? Maybe they want to continue developing expertise in their current roles. Maybe they dream of climbing the ladder from mailroom to president. Maybe they need to focus on preparing for retirement. There is no right or wrong personal answer to what one wants to achieve, but there is definitely a right or wrong approach to having development plans within any organization – and the wrong approach is to drop the ball, to ignore this process that doesn’t appear to immediately affect “the bottom line.”

We hear the same story when talking with employees at various levels in numerous organizations: “If a simple job opens up, leadership will allow hiring from within, either as transfers or promotions. But as soon as a complex job opens up or a high-level management position, no one here is good enough, and they hire from outside.” There are only two reasons to not look within for promotions: either leadership does not actually know the skill sets of its own employees, or leadership has for several years failed to develop employees. Both “reasons” are inexcusable! What is your organization’s hiring strategy?

Every organization has its own culture, developed and reinforced over time. Imagine an organization that has a culture of recognition – where employees are recognized by managers or peers for jobs well done; where managers are recognized by their supervisors, peer managers and employees. Stunning thought isn’t it? Not handing out rewards, but lavishly handing out thanks and praise. Just like people are pleased when others remember their names, so they bloom when their activities and behaviors are recognized. The recognition doesn’t have to be limited to the latest, greatest PowerPoint slide show they created; it might be for leading a volunteer food drive, for helping out in civic theatre, or for just changing the jug on the water cooler. Recognizing people for doing the right things should never be used as a form of manipulation through positive reinforcement – it’s meant to be a genuine expression of thanks, and people can sense the difference!