Q. How do you deal
with a task that has not
been done correctly?
Most of the time, if
you are an executive
and you are delegating,
you are delegating to
other management-level
people. Generally, you
don’t have to really
baby-sit those people or,
if you do, you’ve got a
real problem. Most people at that level, just a
simple reminder of your
priorities or just a simple question — ‘Did you
understand (the) priority of this?’ or, ‘Is this something that’s going to happen in
a certain amount of time?’
Obviously, you treat management people with a little more
latitude and a little more, maybe
rope, if you will, than you do
other types of employees.
I think that it’s important to
have some structure. You don’t
want to have too many levels.
Obviously, that depends on the
size of the organization, but
everybody likes to keep a flat
organization.
But you just absolutely need
to have some structure and
some reporting mechanism.
Otherwise, you’ll never have a
moment to think of strategic
things during the day.
Q. What advice would you
give another CEO on how to
delegate more effectively?
Organization skills are critical. When I say organization,
I’m talking about just keeping
the things that you’re focused
on organized — keeping your tasks organized and keeping
your goals organized and written down, so you have some
focus. Once you do that, then
all the kind of subtasks begin to fall into categories and are a
little easier to control.
As you get higher in the leadership, you need to have some
tools in place to slow things
down, as far as the speed at
which information and distractions hit you.
Q. What kind of tools can
you use to slow distractions
down?
Set aside times during the
day to do certain administrative tasks, and then try to shut
those off. E-mail can be a big
distraction if it’s not properly
(managed). Just managing
your inbox and your e-mail is
an important thing to be on
top of.
But, regularly scheduled
meetings with different departments and different managers
are important to have those
touch points, so you know
what is going on.
You absolutely have to take
notes and write things down
and store them in an organized
way. I store my customer
meeting notes and all of my
business-related notes. I scan
them, and I store them in an
electronic system.
You need them in some
organized place that’s probably getting backed up (so) that
you can retrieve things quickly
based on dates or people’s
names or things like that.
If you look at just the information you accumulate in a
single day, let alone a week or
a month, it’s pretty overwhelming. If you’re not, on a
regular basis, keeping that in
an organized fashion, (then)
all we have is our memory and
our past experiences to help
guide us in the future.
HOW TO REACH: ImageSoft Inc., (248) 948-8100 or www.imagesoftinc.com
