Getting Employees to Work Smarter, not Harder

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

It seems to be an afflic­tion many entre­pre­neursshare — they think that by putting in long work weeks and think­ing about noth­ing but their bur­geon­ing busi­nesses, they will be able to make it grow more quickly and achieve their pro­fes­sional goals. That rea­son­ing is skewed, however.Consider your own work pat­terns. Even if you put in days that are 10 hours or longer, work on the week­ends and spend the rest of your free time think­ing about the com­pany, how much of that time are you actu­ally being effec­tive? Do you find your­self in the office, star­ing at a pile of work, and wast­ing min­utes or hours try­ing to make sense of what’s in front of you?

Through The Covenant Group, I’ve met a lot of finan­cial advi­sors who are too busy work­ing in their busi­nesses to work on them. Wrapped up in the minute details, they can­not deter­mine where their com­pa­nies are going or ever decide where they WANT them to go. Step­ping away from the daily grind, giv­ing your­self per­mis­sion to take a breath and think, is far more impor­tant than mak­ing sure you respond to five more emails before going home for the day.

I think a recent Har­vard Busi­ness Review blog post writ­ten by Robert C. Pozen casts more light on this per­cep­tion that work quan­tity super­sedes qual­ity, as well as the worko­holic cul­ture that has risen around it. As he points out, we log our pro­duc­tiv­ity in terms of hours, instead of results and the value that pro­fes­sion­als such as ana­lysts, con­sul­tants and lawyers “cre­ate through their knowledge.”

From a resource man­age­ment per­spec­tive, this atti­tude can cut down on your own and your employ­ees’ pro­duc­tiv­ity, because they are think­ing too much about how long they are at the office instead of “answer­ing the most crit­i­cal ques­tion: ‘Am I cur­rently using my time in the best pos­si­ble way?’” Pozen points out.

Many of the advi­sors I I’ve coached have said that they are already maxed out on how much time they can put into their busi­ness and feel stuck at a cer­tain income level or num­ber of clients. They feel that it would be impos­si­ble to grow their busi­nesses any fur­ther, since there are only so many hours in the day. The solu­tion is not to ded­i­cate addi­tional time to the com­pany, but to give a greater effort when you are there. Del­e­gate some of the more time-consuming, less-valuable tasks that con­sume your time to an employee. Think about whether your daily tasks are truly advanc­ing the firm, or whether they just con­sti­tute busy work. Being hon­est about your own pro­duc­tiv­ity is the first step to cut­ting down hours and improv­ing results.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its’ lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Affliction, Attitude, Covenant Group, Critical Question, Emails, Entrepreneurs Share, Financial Advisors, Free Time, Going Home, Harvard Business Review, Lawyers, Management Perspective, Minute Details, Perception, Productivity, Professional Goals, Resource Management, Robert C Pozen, Work Patterns
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Hiring Cycle: Making the Decision

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

by Matthew Asser, The Covenant Group

Pre­vi­ously, I dis­cussed how prepar­ing and research­ing for the inter­view process can result in more fruit­ful dis­cus­sions with appli­cants. In this sixth part of the ongo­ing series on resource man­age­ment and hir­ing, I want to dis­cuss some of the con­sid­er­a­tions in choos­ing a hire from your list of applicants.

While it can be fairly sim­ple to gauge whether an appli­cant has the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence, per­son­al­ity types can add another vari­able to your deci­sion. Iden­ti­fy­ing what your cul­ture and core com­pany val­ues are is just as impor­tant as hav­ing a list of the job require­ments. Do the can­di­dates that you are con­sid­er­ing have morals and atti­tudes that align with that mission?

One man­age­ment tip I came across in the Har­vard Busi­ness Review urged employ­ers to look at a poten­tial hire’s moti­va­tion as well. What do they stand to gain from a posi­tion at your firm? How do they plan to advance pro­fes­sion­ally? What are their one-, five– and 10-year plans?

As Norm Trainor explains in The Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­ney, you should iden­tify the skills nec­es­sary for the job. Ear­lier, you deter­mined the employee’s areas of account­abil­ity and what kind of pro­fes­sional val­ues are needed to per­form the role well — now ask whether the can­di­date has all of those fea­tures. Remem­ber to avoid the trap of seek­ing out employ­ees who are like you, as the entire point of del­e­gat­ing to other peo­ple is to build a team of employ­ees with a diverse set of skills, strengths and per­son­al­ity traits.

You are build­ing an orga­ni­za­tion, and its suc­cess is depen­dent on each per­son fit­ting into and excelling at his or her pre­de­ter­mined roles. Keep­ing com­pany cul­ture in mind is also vital. For instance, deliv­er­ing con­sis­tently high-quality cus­tomer ser­vice is essen­tial to the suc­cess of a finan­cial advi­sory firm, and that atti­tude must be shared by every­one in the organization.

Don’t for­get to send out a thank-you note to other appli­cants who did not pass the selec­tion process. The fact that an appli­cant was not the best option for this posi­tion does not mean he or she will not be bet­ter suited for a role in your busi­ness in the future. Main­tain con­tact with poten­tial hires and recruits — not only is it a com­mon cour­tesy, it will keep your hir­ing pipeline primed for the next time you choose to expand your team.

Matthew Asser has spent the last few decades gain­ing exper­tise in how finan­cial ser­vices firms can opti­mize their oper­a­tions, mar­ket­ing, new prod­ucts, busi­ness devel­op­ment and client rela­tion­ship man­age­ment prac­tices. He’s well-versed in the chal­lenges that an entre­pre­neur may strug­gle with, and as a Senior Coach and Facil­i­ta­tor, helps clients achieve busi­ness change through The Covenant Group’s exten­sive finan­cial advi­sor train­ing programs.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Asser, Company Culture, Company Values, Core Company, Covenant Group, Culture In Mind, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Advisory Firm, Fruitful Discussions, Harvard Business Review, Management Tip, Morals, Nbsp, Necessary Experience, Norm Trainor, Personality Traits, Personality Types, Professional Values, Quality Customer Service, Resource Management
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