Issue No. 20 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting is about executive effectiveness (the book) and systems for effectiveness (the bucket). Peter Drucker said that “plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Whether you meet with your team weekly or monthly, create an environment that affirms the value of their time and the critical nature of each meeting. It’s not easy—it’s hard work!
He outlasted 27 board chairs and served as president of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce for 27 years. Local papers and national leaders still write about George Duff’s effectiveness, more than 10 years after he retired.
What was his leadership secret? George is a management zealot—and he focused on results (and still does). Every year he re-reads Peter Drucker’s classic, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done.
Introduce your team to this timeless treasure. Inspire your people with Drucker’s belief that executive effectiveness can be learned. Brush up on these core building blocks: 1) Know where you spend your time, 2) Focus on results, 3) Build on the strengths of your team members, 4) Set priorities and focus on just those key areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results, and 5) Take the right steps in the right sequence: effectiveness is all about systems.
Read summaries of Peter Drucker’s books.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
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1. Focus on Results. Identify your Number One Priority for this month or this quarter—and then evaluate how much time you have actually blocked on your calendar (actual appointments with yourself and/or others) to focus on that priority.
2. Discuss a recent high priority project that “went south” because the systems and the sequences were messed up.
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Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience
Most golfers are having too much fun (or anguish) to notice this—but my systems radar kicks in on the 10th hole. The trash can on 10 is always overflowing with garbage from golfers’ clubhouse stop after the ninth hole. The obvious solution: place a jumbo-size trash can at the 10th hole. It’s rarely done because a non-systems person ordered identical-sized trash cans for all 18 holes.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. recently implemented a computerized system that schedules employees' shifts based on customer traffic. Some church offices are now open Sunday mornings and incoming calls go to a live person during the busiest hours of the week. (Why doesn’t every church do this?) But more times than not, it’s amazing how we still staff and structure our operations as if work, priorities, and customer demands flow evenly Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we challenge you to turn your organization upside down and, per Drucker, focus on the right steps in the right sequences in The Systems Bucket, one of 20 Critical Competencies Required for Leading and Managing Today’s Nonprofit Organization. Email me for the 2007 workshop dates.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
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1. In your mind, wander around our organization and then let’s list on this flipchart several examples of the “10th Hole Trash Can Syndrome.”
2. Do our systems serve our staff or our customers (members, donors, clients, prospects, etc.)?
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Download the Management Buckets brochure
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