A proven, exciting Retirement planning process for individuals and couples, The Best-Half is a combination of workshops, coaching and personal reflection. It was developed by experienced coaches and educators. For organizations, The Best-Half is a process to be used in succession management especially for transitions and to establish common goals and objectives in the senior phases of a career.

Monday, November 07, 2011

It’s “more the merrier” when it comes to getting things done



Last week I was in Calgary presenting a Best-Half Discovery Forum workshop to a group of senior leaders and their spouses. Earlier in the week there was a Kolbe team synergy workshop in Toronto. This resulted in a lot of material to prepare including 20 binders for Best-Half. This type of work is not my forte. I prevent in follow thru and insist in Quick Start. Assembling binders is probably the worst job ever for me. One call to our new bookkeeper and the job was taken care of and my stress was greatly reduced.
We have worked successfully with several assistants over the years each of whom brought to the business their unique instincts. Our strategy now is to use multiple people for tasks that require different instincts. Our son Charlie (2297) is working with Marilyn to post her popular weekly blog entries. Our travel is handled by our daughter Kate (7724), workshop preparation as discussed above will be the prevue of Sue, Shawn manages our computers and we even have delegated office cleaning to the remarkable Margaret. Lola our English Springer  Spaniel has duties ‘as assigned.’
A May 2011 Harvard Business Review an article titled: The case for executive assistants, by Melba J. Duncan, raised some interesting points. The thesis of the article is that we have reduced the ranks of Executive Assistants with a corresponding loss of productivity for senior managers. With a relatively small investment there can be a high return in productivity, not only for the senior leader but for their team. We recently worked with just such a situation. A VP with a virtual team was without support. Over a period of several weeks we helped determine through the Kolbe RightFit© process the instincts required for the position and selected a suitable candidate. This new person will become the hub for information for the team and result in increased productivity for all team members.
 Many of us remember the television show Murphy Brown, starring Candice Bergen and her perpetual difficulties in finding a suitable assistant. In fact one of our SVP clients earned the Murphy Brown moniker for her challenging searches. Ms. Duncan discusses the challenges of finding the Right Fit (her words). She relates the experience of one executive who was disappointed because he expected that the EA “read through memos and get them out quickly.” The EA responded by saying she didn’t have the ability to “read someone’s mind.” I suspect that it was not mind reading required but a more in tune understanding of the instincts of both the executive and the assistant. Someone who prevents in Quick Start (possibly the EA) would see this situation differently from someone who initiated in Quick Start and prevents in Fact Finder (quite possibly the Executive.) By using the Kolbe RightFit© to determine the appropriate instincts and the actual instincts of the EA “mind reading” may actually occur more frequently under the guise of two people working in sync, understanding each other’s unique instincts and celebrating the talents both bring to their roles.  Delegating your weaknesses and concentrating on strengths is not only a model for greater efficiencies but also for that elusive of all emotions – happiness.

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