Category Archives: Productivity

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Creating Stability in Your Organization

by Pete Fovargue

Change Management is a role we often place on leaders. We know that too much change impacts performance and saps motivation, so “managing transitions” and “mitigating turbulence” are common phrases relating to this managing change. More often, however, what the organization actually needs is Stability Management.

Leaders must make the work environment predictable and routine, with clear expectations for performance. People perform their best when they have a clear and stable environment in which to function. Here are five things that you can do to create stability in your organization.

stability

Inside the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. Photo by Pete Fovargue.
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Avoid the Meeting Meltdown

By Christopher Manganaro

We have all heard the saying, “I went to a meeting to discuss a meeting.”  Meetings can be very useful and a huge waste of time if managed improperly.  They are either too long, too short, or do not solve the problem or issue that the meeting was trying to solve in the first place.  Leaders at all levels will have the opportunity to conduct meetings of their own and, if they’re not careful, could repeat the cycle of doom for the next generation.

meeting

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Leaders Turn Brick into Paper

walls

What is this a picture of?

“Well that’s easy. It’s a brick wall.”

Nope.

It’s a paper wall.

Brick walls are unmovable obstacles, roadblocks that prevent progress, hindrances to achieving an endstate. They represent phrases like “It’s too hard,” “We can’t do that,” and “That’s never been done before.” Brick walls halt effort.

Paper walls, however, are flimsy, easy to break through.

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Permitted but Useless

In the midst of a pleasant two-week road trip with my family, I observed something of note. Interrupting my view of the rolling grasslands of central Oregon and the twisting turns of California’s Highway 101, were “Adopt-A-Highway” signs. Standard issue:  small, square. Oregon’s were green. You’ve seen them. Some person or group pays the state for the responsibility of keeping this particular mile clean and in return, gets free advertising.

useless information

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Picking Which Ball to Drop

by Harlan Kefalas

As the saying goes, when everything is a priority, nothing is. In a system that heaps requirements and tasks on subordinate units, leaders routinely struggle to reach 100% compliance. Though some try, leaders cannot do it all themselves. They must prioritize tasks and delegate work to subordinates. But what tasks are appropriate to delegate? Which ball drops when there are conflicting priorities? It would be helpful to have a framework to sort it all out.

ball

The Soldiers are assigned to the Fort Bragg Warrior Transition Battalion who completed training for Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification. U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Reserve Command partnered to provide the training to the Soldiers over several weeks in March and April 2012. Photo by Bob Harrison, FORSCOM Public Affairs.
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You Don’t Have Time for Professional Reading…Try This

by Nicholas Simontis

I am a firm believer in the value of professional reading as a critical part of professional and personal development. Early in my career, I began maintaining a list of titles that leaders and peers recommended, a list that expanded considerably during my time in CGSC and SAMS. But I was seldom able to whittle it down, let alone think critically about what I was reading. Professional responsibilities, family obligations, TDY travel, and deployments continued to pile on and, probably just like you, professional reading was the victim.

professional reading

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Juliet Moth reads through a safety study guide in the weapons handling area aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, the Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, in the South China Sea, July 16, 2016. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan McFarlane.
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Stories of Failure – “That time I made my FRG Leader cry.”

Know this…the demands of being a leader put you on a path to break someone’s heart. Meetings and phone calls, requirements and taskings, emails and paperwork. They serve as culturally-legitimized distractions that can divert leaders from seeing and doing the right thing. And if you don’t sort through the sea of busywork to identify the glass balls, soldiers and families can get hurt. It took an ugly failure to teach me that lesson.

failure

Tiffany Smiley holds her youngest son while watching her husband Capt. Scott M Smiley salute the colors during the U.S. Army Warrior Transition Unit at West Point change of command ceremony Feb 1. U.S. Army photo by Tommy Gilligan.
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17 Productivity Hacks for Your Military Staff

I bet that more than once a day, you let out a sigh of frustration at the absentminded staff activity that surrounds you…Your boss asks why you didn’t respond to his “urgent” email. THE NEW OPERATIONS NCO TYPES IN ALL CAPS (incredibly annoying). Someone prints 30 full-page copies of the 53-slide presentation because, “there are 30 people in the meeting, right?” And in that meeting, your unit’s update doesn’t make it to the slides, even though you sent them yesterday.

And those are just the ones you notice! There are probably dozens more inefficiencies, idiosyncrasies, and ineptitudes you aren’t even aware of that impair you and your staff’s productivity.

Having spent a few years in the Army staff machine, I offer these immediate adjustments to reclaim your sanity and reduce the needless, often well-intentioned but inefficient staff practices that keep you from getting more important work done.

productivity

The U.S. Army’s ‘Cyber Center of Excellence’, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga., hosted a multi-service ‘NetWar’ to show, and build, cyber Warrior capabilities Tuesday, June 10, 2016. Georgia Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Tracy J. Smith.