End of the Year Management 101

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The end of any given year is always a challenge. Even if your fiscal year runs contrary to the Gregorian calendar, managing time, people, expenses and other resources in December can leave you waiting with bated breath, and perhaps a serious lack of patience, for the New Year holiday.

So, how did the end of the calendar year become such a challenge to manage? After all, you still have staff to do the work, and many of them come to work this time of year in a festive mood. This should translate to more work and less stress, right?

That’s not necessarily true since many employees save a significant amount of time off for the end of the year, and in our undeniably now global society, not everyone celebrates the same holidays, requiring the use of different vacation or PTO days than the traditional Christmas to New Year’s week. Couple that with the increased demand of customers and clients who also want things done before their holidays begin, and you generally end up scrambling even more than usual to make staffing assignments and provide resources to meet that demand.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a bad thing in any way, shape or form. I, for one, enjoy celebrating the various holiday traditions and exploring those for which I have very little knowledge or experience. I guess it’s the one-time-sociology-major coming out, allowing me to revel in the opportunity to explore different ways of looking at life and business.

Over the years, I have picked up a few tidbits here and there about meeting end of the year management challenges, and have listed three of them.

Make Company Holidays Flexible. As I mentioned earlier, different cultures celebrate different holidays. If your company’s annual holidays include 2 or more days for Christmas, make them floating holidays that can be taken by employees of different faiths when their holidays fall. This provides your company with staff coverage for clients during traditionally slow periods. Global companies staff their offices 24/365 because they recognize the importance of being there for the customer when they are looking for something. Having flexible authorized holidays makes this possible.

Choose and Support a Nonprofit All Year Long. Resource allocation, including staff, is one of the greatest challenges in December. If your company supports a nonprofit by allowing staff to volunteer during work hours, implement a program to encourage staff to do so every month of the year, rather than just December. Having worked in the nonprofit community for almost 30 years, I can tell you that they need your support on a consistent basis; not just on Thanksgiving and Christmas. In fact, the need for those supporting the homeless and less fortunate is often greater in the first quarter of the year once winter really sets in.

Be Flexible in Managing the Generations of Your Workforce. Although I've written about this before, I think it still bears repeating. There are at least four different generations in the current workforce, all with differing needs and means of communication. Yes, you can teach an old dog a new trick, but that doesn't mean he likes it, or embraces it willingly. Likewise, puppies have boundless energy and their own ways of doing things that an older dog can’t fathom. However, that doesn't mean that one way of doing something is better than the other; they are just different. Don’t forget to keep that in mind when confronted with a management decision.

All in all, the end of the calendar year can be an exciting and busy time with its own unique management challenges. Although I've only listed three, I’m sure there are many, many more ideas, so please feel free to share yours.

Editor's Note: This blog post also appears on LinkedIn.

Before founding her own consulting firm in 2013, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and women’s healthcare fields for 25 years. She holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Organizational Management from American Public University, is a contributor on LinkedIn, and the author of the Management in Motion blog.

Dawn currently serves as the Past Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Women’s Council, and teaches health and safety classes for the American Red Cross. As an infertility survivor she has been a featured speaker within the Fertility Community, and written numerous articles on the topic of childfree living. 

The Challenges of New Leadership

Change is a good thing, right?

Businesses and organizations refine and adjust their strategy based on many things, including the changing needs of their client-base and the market place. One of the most significant catalysts for change is new leadership.

Once the announcement of a new leader is made, the change process begins. 

And then, all the people say, “Oh, joy; a new leader who will want to change everything.”

As they say, change is never easy. There are multiple upon multiple studies showing that just the idea of change causes fear and stress for those involved. However, sometimes new leadership is not just necessary, but also vital to organizational growth and, even perhaps its very survival.

New leaders, be they CEOs or mid-level managers, certainly bring their own personality and management style to the top of the table. If they come from outside the organization, the most valuable asset they bring is not their education or years of experience, but a perspective quite different from those on the inside.

Good leaders know that recognizing and utilizing differing perspectives to make decisions about what must be changed is crucial. The difficulty in implementation comes from team members with the “We’ve Always Done It This Way” mentality, and those mired in GroupThink. Without trudging down the rabbit hole discussions of those two issues, I think it is safe to say that they have their own particular challenges which require situation-specific actions to address.

When I began my career in the early 1980’s, organizational leaders based decisions on input from their division or department heads, who gathered data from their subordinates in a very controlled fashion. Employees worked 8am – 5pm (or 9am – 5pm), Monday through Friday, and spent evenings and the weekends with their families.

Thirty years later, more Millennials are moving into positions of leadership, and facing an ever-evolving multi-generational workforce with different, and often competing, demands for engagement and working conditions. The younger generation not only expects, but demands to have a seat at the table and expects to move to another company in a few years to take the next step in their careers. They also don’t want to watch the clock, or be constrained by having to be in an office every day.

Older workers, such as those from the Greatest Generation and my Baby Boomer generation need to feel respected for the knowledge and experience for which we have worked so hard for many years to earn. We also need a seat at the table, or at least know that the new, younger leadership has heard and acknowledged the issues we bring to light. Like the younger crowd, I love working from home, but I also like the idea of having evenings and weekends free.

The leadership challenge with a multi-generational work force is finding a way to meet the differing needs, while building a cohesive and open organizational culture that allows and encourages employees to be passionate about their work and their organization’s success.

In the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell from his book, My American Journey,

"The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."  

Stepping into a new leadership role is an exciting experience. It is an opportunity to develop a vision for excellence and innovation, and to share that vision with an actively engaged organization. All leaders face challenges, however, it is their response to those challenges that determines their success.

If you have been a new organizational or business leader, what words of wisdom would you share with those who want to be, and one day will be, a new leader?

NOTE: This post also appears on LinkedIn.

Before founding her own consulting firm in 2013, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and women’s healthcare fields for 25 years. She holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Organizational Management from American Public University, is a contributor on LinkedIn, and the author of the Management in Motion blog.

Dawn currently serves as the Past Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Women’s Council, and teaches health and safety classes for the American Red Cross. As an infertility survivor she has been a featured speaker within the Fertility Community, and written numerous articles on the topic of childfree living. 

I Quit!

Your VP for Research and the Associate VP of Marketing have both resigned in the last 30 days to take positions with different competitors. 

Disappointing, yes; but nothing to worry about, right?

However, your HR Director just left your office after sharing startling statistics on employee retention, which suggests that very few stay with your company for more than 2 years, especially in the Research and Marketing departments.

What is going on, and why hasn’t this been brought to your attention before now? Or, has it and you just didn’t understand what was actually being conveyed?

Perhaps you should talk with your remaining leadership team members, and ask your HR Director to initiate an employee survey to ascertain employee satisfaction and solicit feedback for improvements. 

Based on the information already provided, it seems certain that an organizational strategic change initiative is in order. Maybe it’s the politics, or the culture, or the work process itself. Maybe it's a little bit of all of those, and more.

For example, a friend came to me recently for advice on how to deal with some issues she was facing at work. Since we have been friends for a very long time, she knew I had faced similar challenges, and wanted validation for the options she saw as viable for her particular situation.

It seems the politics in her organization have completely taken over good management practices. Until now, she has done her best not to participate in the games her colleagues seem to enjoy and clearly benefit from based on the promotions and frequent public “at-a-boys” they receive, while she and her efforts are overlooked. 

Regardless of her qualifications and superior work performance, her unwillingness to play the game has cost her two promotions and given rise to the perception that she is not a team player. 

As we see it, her options are: 1) start playing the politics game and build additional strategic relationships within the company so that she is seen as a team player and can start getting the recognition for her efforts, or 2) find a new position with a different company.

Now is not the 

time to be complacent

Based on the resignations noted at the top of this blog and like my friend’s situation, could politics and a culture that supports promotions based on the participation in cliques be the core issue in your organization?  

Before you shake your head and say, ‘of course not,’ make sure that the survey conducted by HR includes questions about culture, politics, upward mobility and team cohesion.

Better yet, contract an organizational development professional to provide an unbiased company evaluation, and then work with them to design a strategic change initiative to address the issues revealed.

While it may appear that the culture of promotion via politics is widely accepted, it really isn't. In fact, it is patently toxic to the success of your organization!

Now is not the time to be complacent, thinking that these resignations and the data from HR are just small bumps in the road. 

Now is the time to lead by example, to take action to ensure your organization becomes the one everyone wants to work for; not the one they use to get experience and then leave for better opportunities.

  

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.

Do You See the Forest or the Trees?

“Based on what you are saying, you obviously can’t see the forest for the trees in front of you. You need to see the bigger picture!”

How many times have you said and/or heard this? I’ve personally lost count.

And yet, many times we get so caught up in the great new idea we formed or heard presented at the last executive seminar we attended, that we actually fail to see how it fits into the big organizational picture; how many others and/or projects and programs it will affect if implemented.

As noted by Kotter and Schlesinger in the Harvard Business Review, one of the most significant challenges for business leaders is the ability to anticipate, recognize, and acknowledge the need for organizational change. Once they accept the need for change, they are then faced the additional challenges of choosing the method and degree of change, while developing a vision to move the company forward that is the most appropriate for their specific circumstances. 

Failing to consider these cornerstones when embarking on a change initiative can only be described as not seeing the forest for the trees. As we all know, the unintended consequences of focusing on the trees instead of the forest can be catastrophic in business. 

Sure, the keynote speaker (aka organizational development expert) at your last executive seminar presented a fantastic option for improving the efficiency of your organization; that’s his job. It’s what he does for a living, and his presentation was simply awesome!

Regardless of how good he made it sound, think about the forest instead of the trees. In other words, will you commit yourself, your organization, and the necessary resources to the work that must be done before dropping it on your employees, or are you just excited about the presentation you saw, and now believe wholeheartedly that it’s the quick and easy answer to all your organizational problems?

Change is inevitable

As Kotter and Schlesinger point out, there are many factors to be considered in the development and choice of manner for a change initiative in order for it to be successful in the long run. 

• How much change is necessary? 
• How will you engage and communicate with your organization so that they can see and support your vision? 
• How do you mitigate the resistance that is inevitable? 
• Can you sell this vision to your company and board even though it can take years to bear fruit? 
• Can you afford the cost? 
• Can you afford not to do it? 
• What will the new structure look like, and how will you manage the effects of the change?

Change is inevitable, and leaders who cannot, or will not, anticipate change and lead the way with a sound, innovative strategic plan and organizational structure its employees and board can get behind will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage. Just ask Ron Johnson how that worked out for him at JCPenney.

Again, looking at the trees only offers a beautiful, peaceful view filled with obstacles. However, looking at the forest rather than the trees, and then painstakingly devising a fully researched, inclusive and developed way through it is the only path to successful implementation.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.