Monthly Archives: January 2021

It’s All About Resources

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“We the willing, led by the unqualified are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We accomplished so much for so long and so little that we are capable of doing anything with nothing.”

I first heard the above sentiment decades ago. An older co-worker lamented how easy it would be to mop the floor if the boss would only buy a new mop head for the mop and detergent to add to the bucket. I found myself in the boss’s shoes not so long ago after taking over a nonprofit operation in it’s sixth year. My predecessor did a great job of finding funds to provide adequate technology to start operations. Like much technology, it had a useful life of four to six years. In my first year, everything started breaking. There were no plans or funds for replacements. I found myself buying lots of bubble gum, duct tape, and bailing twine to hold the place together. I developed a plan to replace technology and other high end resources on a staggered and regular basis.

Resources were limited on both sides in the Battle of the Bulge. The allies stronger supply lines allowed them to over-power the German offensive. Without an infusion of those resources the battle may have ended differently.
-U.S.G. Photo

In the movie “Battle of the Bulge” a junior officer presents a crumbly cake to his superior officer. He tells they officer the cake is evidence that Germany will lose the war. The senior officer protests. The junior remarks that if the allies have lift capacity to deliver baked goods to the front lines from their homes in America there is no way Germany can provide enough resources to fight them. Read any commander’s account of war. You will notice they rarely worry about whether or not their troops will be able to successfully close with and destroy the enemy. They worry about whether or not they can maintain open lines of communication and supply to continue the fight.

Ensuring people have necessary resources is a critical management function. Leaders learn early that when they ensure people have what they need to do a job, they will do it well with the right guidance. In those times resources are scarce, they will continue to work knowing that the leader is fighting to find and provide the necessary resources. Only when workers feel their leaders do not care enough provision their work will they quit. Good leaders provide the physical, human, intellectual, and financial resources necessary for the job. Identify and provide resources by analyzing the needs, obtaining the required resources, mange them appropriately, and ensure controls are followed.

Types of Resources

There are four broad categories of resources; places and things, people, skills and knowledge, and money. Physical resources are easy to understand. They include things. They are the buildings or land where the work is conducted, the tools required for the work, materials to create and manufacture, and the less tangible things like power, water, and internet. It is hard to take a picture without a camera. It is hard to write without paper and pencil or a word processor on a computer. Physical resources are all those things.

Most people know about human resources. That is the office where all the people gather that have nothing to do with the mission of the company. They are the people that bug you about the overdue evaluations and ride you when your payroll is late. If you really that think about your Human Resource department, give up your leadership position now. With the right people, doing the right jobs, the right way, your life as a leader is easy. HR ensures you have those people. They are supposed to be people experts. Their knowledge about labor law, health insurance and everything else is a bonus. Without people to follow you, you are not a leader even if you are the CEO. CEOs without people are called solopreneurs. If you want to be a leader, you must have people who want to follow you.

Knowledge and skills are important resources. Today’s computers are smaller, faster, and easier to use but training people to use YOUR system is as necessary now as it was then. -By Unknown author – U.S. Army Photo, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55124

You might have great people and wonderful tools located in a state-of-the art facility. People without skills and knowledge have little value. Organizations should seek out qualified people. It is unlikely that most of the people hired will have all the skills and knowledge necessary to do their jobs. Most require additional training. An example is using databases. The concepts of databases are pretty universal. However NCATrak, Spillman, Catylist, Hubspot, and Spire are all databases that track stuff different ways. The interface for each is different. Workers require training to use them. I know some of you are thinking, “What happens if we spend a bunch of money on training and people leave?” The best answer to that worry is, “What happens if we do not train them and they stay?” Provide your followers with the skills and knowledge they need to do well.

Financial resources are an easy metric to track. Without money, your organization will not operate at its full potential. However, even the largest companies rarely have enough money to execute every idea that comes along. Using your available finances well determines the quality of outcomes. Spending money on the right things at the right time in the correct amount makes the difference between success and failure. The story at the beginning about things breaking at the same time is an example. Use your money well.

Resource Planning

Planning resources is an important management skill. The first step in planning is analyze. Find the answers to questions like:

Planning for resources ensures people have what they need when the need it to complete work. Planning to have the right people in place means other resources will be used as expeced. Leaders must provide necessary resources to succeed.
-Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com
  • What do we want to do?
  • What materials are required to do it?
  • Where are those resources available?
  • What will they cost?
  • How will we store them until needed?
  • What skills and knowledge do we lack?
  • Where can we find people with those skills and knowledge to either hire or train us?
  • What tools do we need?
  • How can we get them?
  • How can we protect our resources to ensure they are available when needed?

Do not over analyze. Ask some simple questions and find the answers. Seek out others who have done the work before you. There is a post in this series on planning. You can find it here.

Obtain the resources required for the project. You do not need everything at once. Plan arrivals to reduce the cost of storage. Obtain it when you need it. Space is not free and drains your finances. Learn how to have what you need when you need it to reduce storage and handling.

Now that you have stuff, learn to manage it. In an earlier article, I discussed organizing. Part of that section deals with identifying processes for work. When we talk about managing resources, they are useless unless the people that need them have access to them at the right time. Figure out a process to make sure that happens.

Controls are simply the rules used to manage resources. Controls are another important management function that they are also covered in another post. Click here. Some controls are pretty straight forward like balancing accounts. Controls should be written and communicated so people know, understand, and follow them. Effectiveness is important. If a control is in place but it does not prevent the loss of a resource it is time to find and implement another control.

Managing resources is an important leadership skill. Leaders who fail to plan for resources set their teams up for failure. No matter how skilled, well trained, and motivated people are, without stuff there is little they can do to accomplish the mission of the organization. There are four types of resources and four steps leaders use so people have what they need when they need it to do their job. People need access to physical resources, other people, knowledge and skills, and money to accomplish work. Leaders plan for those resources by analyzing needs, obtaining stuff, and developing processes to manage and control resources. Resourcing is not necessarily the most glamorous part of leading. Without resources there is nothing to be done so there is no one to lead. Learn to provide appropriate resources and people will follow you.

References

BCcampus (ND) 11. Resource planning. Project Management. https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-11-resource-planning-project-management/. Retrieved January 25, 2021

ProjectManager.com (2021) What is a resource plan? https://www.projectmanager.com/resource-management. Retrieved January 25, 2021

NCATrak, Spillman, Catylist, HubSpot, and Spire are all brands controlled by their owners. Inclusion does not serve as an endorsement.

(c) 2021 Christopher St. Cyr

Organizing: the Art of Systematic Functionality

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Organizing can be a daunting task. We all know people who are so organized that if one thing is out of place they are unable to function. You know the types, the left shoulder of every shirt in their closet is closest to the door, any papers related to money are placed in green folders, or that on any given Saturday night at 8:15 they will be doing laundry. These habits help people become organized. Organization is an important management and leadership task. Leaders take habits like these and use them to create organization in the groups they lead.

Like an organized closet makes finding what you want to wear in the morning makes life easier, organizing your team makes operating easier.
-Photo by form PxHere

There is a reason softball teams, boy scouts, companies, religious groups and similar blocks of people grouped together for a common cause are called organizations; they have some level of, well, organization. All have common traits or organization. Sometimes the organization occurred accidentally, sometimes by virtue of the way the work to be accomplished, or because there was a law requiring a specific process. Responsible leaders ensure current the current organization of the organization best meets of required functionality to accomplish the group’s mission. There are three basic areas leaders organize, teams, structure, and processes.

Before we dig into those areas, let us start with a common understanding of the art of organizing. Organize means to arrange parts in a systematic fashion to create functionality to accomplish a desired outcome. You may notice I do not cite a dictionary resource for my definition. That is because I read lots of definitions preparing for this article and found none that really described organize for leaders.

Hasbro makes a game called Mousetrap. It comes with lots of parts. When assembled correctly, players can catch the mouse token of other players and eliminate them from the game. Assemble the parts incorrectly and the mouse trap fails to work. The game is like the organizing function of leadership. Like the game, organizations have many moving parts. If you organize them well, you will catch the mouse.

Teams

Teams are the most important part of the organizational mouse trap. In his book, Good To Great, Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus and then putting them in the right seats. Early in my leadership studies I read or was told that it is better to hire people with the right attitudes, values, and potential than the right skill and experience. The training indicated that if you hired someone whose values aligned with the organizations, had some demonstrated potential to master the required task either through work, volunteering, or learning experience, and had a can-do attitude, that person would be more successful in the long run and make the organization more successful than a person with knowledge and experience.

After a few times of going through hiring processes I found this to be true the hard way. As a young leader, I supported candidates that had skill and experience. Not all have values aligned with my organization and they did not last long. One time I recommended a young person right out of school who lack experience but seem to have the right attitude, values, and desire to learn. That person worked out very well. We were able to mold the person into the kind of employee the more senior people in our organization wanted working with clients. After that, I always recommended the person who had desired values, attitude, and demonstrated potential.

Structure

Another important aspect of organizing teams is determining how to structure them. The most important aspect is span of control. Every team has a captain who provides the vision, establishes priorities of works, and sets standards. Depending on the complexity of the task, the captain may only be able to adequately supervise two or three people or a dozen people. Complex, and highly skilled tasks require a smaller span of control. Tasks that are simpler and require less skill allow the captain the ability to supervise more people. In the work place, the captain might be called a supervisor or manager.

Structural organization determines spans of control, who belongs to which group, and who reports to whom.
-Chart by author.

Likewise, the person overseeing the team captains has a limited span of control. During the 1980s there was a trend to flatten organizational pyramids. Not all attempts worked. Much of this has to do with the span of control and the complexity of the work to be done.

Geography is another limitation. If parts of the organization are spread over a large area, the senior leaders may find it necessary to create geographic regions to improve planning, resourcing, controlling, and leading. Leaders who have the ability to stand in one spot and observe everyone they lead have an advantage over those who may have to go from one place to another to observe. As that distance grows, so does the time required to provide adequate supervision and leadership.

I use both supervision and leadership when discussing spans of control. Both activities are important management skills but they are different. Supervision is a process of observing the work of a subordinate and providing reinforcing and corrective feedback to performance. Leadership is the process of influencing others by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish something even in the leader’s absence. All supervisors are managers and leaders. Not all leaders are supervisors or managers. The differences between the three will be examined closer in the leadership post.

Processes

Processes are the repeated actions required to achieve a predictable, repeated result. Ideally they should be simple and easy to understand. Of course that means simple to understand for the intended audience. For example, the process to start up the particle accelerator at CERN would be completely impossible for most people. However, to the people who work at CERN, the process is simple. Many of you have had fun purchasing something with the phrase on the box, “Some Assembly Required.” Some of you tossed the directions. Others called tech support because you could not figure out why tab A did not fit into slot B! That is why it is important to provide simple, easy to understand directions in processes.

Processes need to be thought out and though through so each step makes sense. I heard a yoga teacher trainer suggest that teaching a new yoga teacher required teaching them to think about telling someone how to walk. Because wannbe yoga teachers have been doing yoga for so long they no longer think about how to do yoga any more than most people think about how they walk.

Creating well organized processes helps people figure out how to put together the puzzle. Each piece has a place. The process provides the guidance to take a bunch of stuff and make it a whole picture.
-Photo by author.

As you work through your processes, periodically stop and test. Have people who are not familiar with the work follow the directions provided in your video, slide deck, or written instructions. If they produce an acceptable product it probably means you created a good process.

At various times in life, I found many tasks I needed to repeat for work that were sometimes only needed to be done occasionally like creating an annual budget, or completing annual tax forms. I found that by creating checklists for myself to follow on these types of tasks, I was able to complete such tasks faster and more accurately. When it came time to teach someone else how to do that task I had the beginning of a process to share with them. With a little work, I could take my checklist and create instructions about how to do each task. As a result, rarely have I been indispensable which means I was always able to accept a new role. My successor was set up for success. I could spend minimal time with them which allowed me to focus on learning.

Organizing is an art. Leaders figure out how to take all the parts required for a job and arrange them into a functioning system that achieves repeatable, predicable results that achieve the mission. Organizations rarely think about the organization of their organization. As leaders it is important that the teams, structure, and processes we supervise are arraigned to create a system of functionality. Ensure you have the right people on the team. The right person will learn the skills they need to do the job if their values are aligned with the team’s. See that the structure allows supervisors the ability to provide purpose, direction, and motivation to followers by developing reasonable spans of control. Create processes that are easy to understand by the intended users. Seek ways to improve your organization. Groups of people who share a common vision of the future and are part of well organized teams, that are well leadership, and execute appropriate processes will eventually succeed. Be the leader your team deserves by organizing well.

References and Additional Reading

CERN (2021) Seeking answers to questions about the universe. https://home.cern/about/what-we-do/our-research Retrieved 1/18/21

Collins, J. (2001) Good to great. Harper Collins. New York, NY www.jimcollins.com

Hilgert, R. Leonard, E. & Haimann, T. (1995) Supervision: Concepts and practices of management.(6th ed.) South-Western College Publishing. Cincinnati, OH (Particularly Part 3, Organizing)

Kinicki, A. & Williams, B. (2008). Management: A practical introduction. (3rd ed.) McGraw-Hill Irwin. New York, NY. www.mhhe.com

Raghunath. (2020) Men’s 30 day yoga challenge. DoYouYoga. https://www.doyou.com/creators/raghunath/programs/ (not able to find the particular video he made the comment)

(c) 2021. Christopher St. Cyr