10 Habits of Highly Effective Managers

By Wes Friesen, Portland General Electric

“Sow a thought and you reap an act; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

Right in the middle of the quotation above is the importance of our habits. A habit is “an acquired mode of behavior that has become our common practice.” Our habits mold our character and ultimately determine our destiny in the world. Want to further develop your character and develop in to a highly effective manager? Intentionally pursuing and building worthwhile habits is the key.

Following are ten of the habits of highly effective managers. This is not an exhaustive list – but these will build a strong foundation on your road to increased management effectiveness:

1) Habit #1: “Expanding Self-Awareness.” Having a high level of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is essential to being an effective Manager – and EQ starts with having accurate self-awareness. Self-awareness can help us gain self-control and be helpful to people around us – not hurtful. Some tools to help expand our self-awareness include: get feedback from others such as using 360 degree surveys; have a mentor to speak into your life; and constantly seek feedback from others on how we are doing.

2) Habit #2: “Pursue Continuous Learning and Continuous Improvement.” Are you a perfect manager and person? Me neither! What we can do is to commit ourselves to be like-long learners and seek to continuously improve ourselves as managers and as human beings. I have been inspired by this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: “I may not be the man I want to be; I may not be the man I ought to be; I may not be the man I can be; but praise God, I’m not the man I once was.”

3) Habit #3: “Always do the Right Thing.” Too many people have been victimized by the unethical behavior of those in leadership roles. Remember Enron? My co-workers and I at Portland General will never forget – we were owned by Enron at time of their bankruptcy and our retirement savings were decimated. Mark Twain said “Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.” My former pastor Loren Fischer said “it’s always right to do right” – and I agree.

4) Habit #4: “Be Results AND Relationship Oriented.” As leaders we are expected to get results – and we should. At the same time, building positive relationships is the right thing to do – and it leads to great results. One tool to help build relationships is to consistently practice the 3 Rs with people. Recognize people for who they are and what they do; Reward people for individual and team achievements; and show people Respect – everybody wants to be respected as the classic Aretha Franklin song emphasizes.

5) Habit #5: “Achieve Big Goals one small step at a time.” I remember a grade school friend telling me the following riddle: “Question: how do you eat an elephant? Answer: one bite at a time”. Get the point? We need to set long-term visions and big goals for ourselves and our teams. And we need to break down the journey towards the vision and goals into manageable steps that inspire others to move forward.

6) Habit #6: “See the glass as half-full.” Are you normally a pessimist or an optimist? Studies have shown that the most effective leaders are strong optimists. Being optimistic does not mean that we ignore the half of the glass that is empty. It does mean we are thankful for the half that is full, and we work together to fill the rest of the glass as best we can.

7) Habit #7: “Look for the win-win.” Effective managers don’t get locked into specific positions, but look for ways to meet interests of themselves and others so everybody gets something (a “win-win” versus a “win-lose”).

8) Habit #8: “Spend much time in Quadrant 2.” Stephen Covey popularized the importance of intentionally spending significant time doing “Important, Not Urgent” items. These include things like building relationships, reading and other learning activities, planning and thinking, exercise, etc. To spend more time in Quadrant 2, we need to spend less time in Quadrants 3 & 4 (i.e. “Urgent, Not Important” and “Not Urgent, Not Important”) activities like watching TV, playing video games and wasting time doing things that add no value to our lives or the lives of others.

9) Habit #9: “Enjoy the journey.” Management (and life!) is a journey – filled with both positive and negative experiences. The journey will be much more pleasant and we will go farther if we learn to laugh and be thankful. A Yiddish proverb says “what soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.” Studies have shown that laughter makes us physically and emotionally healthier – and more fun to be around too. Find a funny friend; enjoy a funny TV show or movie – and just laugh! Being thankful is also important. The reality is that we all have much to be thankful for, and our lives will be more joyful and productive if we learn to develop an “attitude of gratitude.”

10) Habit #10: “Remember - your health is your wealth.” Gandhi said “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” Living a healthy lifestyle will increase your energy, stamina and emotional well-being – and help us be more effective in all that we do. A holistic healthy lifestyle includes developing and using our mental capabilities (read a good book lately or taken a class just for the learning?). We are also spiritual beings, and finding faith and serving others can nourish our spiritual health.

Let me leave you with a challenge to not settle for mediocrity, but to get in the game and go for management excellence. Listen to this President Teddy Roosevelt quote “It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doers of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly … who spends himself in a worthy cause.”

Wes can be contacted at Wes.Friesen@pgn.com.

Are you Fred?

By Wes Friesen, Portland General Electric

“There is only one boss – the customer. If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will.”

Fred Shea was a postal carrier who really took to heart and embodied the following quote from Martin Luther King: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper (or work in A/P or A/R!), he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great sweeper who did his job well.’”

Fred provided exceptional service to all his customers, and constantly went the extra mile – he would even drive through the neighborhood to check on people on his days off! One of Fred’s very satisfied customers was motivational speaker and author Mark Sanborn, who wrote a book about exceptional customer service called “The Fred Factor.” I highly recommend getting the book and the video training series and going through it with your team.

Here are four cardinal principles about being a “Fred:”

1) Principle #1: Everyone Makes a Difference - every individual can choose to do his or her job in an extraordinary way, regardless of the circumstances.

2) Principle #2: Success is Built on Relationships - the quality of the relationship determines the quality of the product or service.

3) Principle #3: You Must Continually Create Value for Others, and It Doesn’t Have to Cost a Penny - you can creatively find no-cost ways to exceed expectations of your customers.

4) Principle #4: You Can Reinvent Yourself Regularly - every morning you wake up with a clean slate. We can choose to follow the advice of John Wooden’s father Joshua who taught “make each day your masterpiece.”

One tool to measure how well your team provides customer service, is to conduct a periodic customer survey. By analyzing the results of the survey you can reinforce what is going well, and identify areas that can be improved. Because people are busy these days, I prefer to keep the survey simple and short. Here is a sample survey that you can use as a starting place:

CUSTOMER SURVEY

Timeliness:
Are your jobs completed in a timely manner?
Below Expectations ____
Meets Expectations ____
Exceeds Expectations ____

Quality:
How is the overall quality of the work that our team provides for you? (same scale)

Responsiveness:
Is the staff responsive to your special requests? (same scale)

Helpfulness:
Do you find that our staff are helpful and offer solutions to your needs? (same scale)

Overall Performance: (same scale)

Are there services that you would like to see that are not currently provided?
What do you feel are some areas of strength in how we serve you?
What ideas do you have on how we can serve you better in the future?

Unfortunately Fred-like service is not common – as Roger Staubach says “there are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Being a Fred is a choice – how will you and your team choose?

Let me close with a final quote to think about that comes from Andrew Carnegie: “There are two types of people who never achieve very much in their lifetimes. One is the person who won’t do what he is told to do, and the other is the person who does no more than what he or she is told to do.” Good luck as you commit you and your team to go the extra mile and be “Fred’s!”

Wes can be contacted at Wes.Friesen@pgn.com.

Attendees Share Operations Tips

By Mark Brousseau

During an interactive networking luncheon at TAWPI’s Capture Conference in Ft. Lauderdale today, attendees were challenged to provide the best strategies they’ve implemented in the past year for improving their operations. Below is a sampling of the best strategies:

1. Eliminate manual reporting and move to automated real time reporting. This will help you meet your service level agreements.
2. Implement 2D barcode capabilities. The State of Georgia Department of Revenue was able to save $1 million in three months by implementing 2D barcoding.
3. Incorporate auto-classification into the capture process as early as possible.
4. Start designing your business processes with the end game in mind. Understand where you want to go, and white board it out.
5. Don't price the solution until you are done with due diligence and requirements are defined.
6. Don't just automate a manual process – upon closer inspection, you might decide to re-engineer or completely eliminate the process.
7. Design your black and white forms with a color gray that drops out on certain scanners.
8. Evaluate your processes every six months to make sure they still make sense – or haven’t morphed!
9. Use an abacus (don’t ask!).
10. Approach automation projects in phases, starting with getting buy-in.
11. Look for ways to automate exceptions processing with image technology.
12. Don't be intimated by offshore key entry.
13. Implement OCR for T&E forms and P-card forms. This saves time, money and labor.
14. Before rushing out to buy a solution, see if you can’t get significant benefits by re-engineering your processes.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Money-Saving Strategies

By Mark Brousseau

During the interactive roundtable luncheon at the 2009 TAWPI Forum & Expo in Washington, D.C. this week, attendees shared the best money-saving strategies they have implemented in the past year.

Below are some of the best ideas.

... Take good care of your scanner maintenance technician and they will reciprocate.
... Use of early tracking of customer replies to mailings in transit can help you avoid the cost associated with sending second notices
... Consolidate IT archive solutions; getting rid of outdated technology can save you big bucks
... Use slightly slower (and less expensive) disk storage in place of ultra high-speed archiving
... Enable internal and external end-users to access your archive to eliminate the need for dedicated back-office staff to handle all archive requests
... Ensure that personnel initiatives are team-based, not individual-based
... Take a hard look at open source technologies for IT back-office functions; they work fine and saved one end-user hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
... Educate your staff on the cost -- and potential impact -- of errors; other strategies for reducing errors: send errors back to the "team" that created them, have personnel who don't make mistakes mentor others, and don't be afraid to look at even small errors with relatively smaller savings
... Implement a program to recognize your best performers; symbolism helps
... Use a MICR database or other account lookup technology to reduce data entry requirements
... When shopping for an ECM solution, make sure its functionality is aligned with your business needs; you shouldn't buy features you don't plan to use
... Leverage the Internet to drive improvements in reject processing
... Move to image cash letters (ICLs) to eliminate daily trips to the bank branch
... Adjust your staffing to reduce the money you need to pay out for shift differentials
... Implement Lean Six Sigma
... Move to electronic signatures to save time and to reduce the number of documents required
... Adjust end-user pricing to further incentivize them to move to more efficient processing methods
... Consider remote keying with recognition technology
... Never pass up a free lunch -- definitely attend the interactive roundtable lunch each year

Ameriprise Emphasizes Process Improvement

By Mark Brousseau

As the economic slowdown drags on, many operations are looking for ways to reduce expenses and improve productivity. Ameriprise Financial, Inc. is one such organization.

“We have had a long-term strategy of process improvement and innovation,” explained Juan Paz, director, Document and Payment Operations, Service Delivery New Business and Transaction Services, for Ameriprise Financial. “This has paid off big time for us during the economic slowdown. We have achieved new efficiencies, which have allowed us to decrease costs and significantly reduce staff through attrition.”

During the recession, Ameriprise has adjusted on-shore and off-shore staffing based on business volumes and process re-engineering, Paz noted, and it has instituted "heavy" cross-training to provide support across business units, and deploy staff on-demand.

Paz said that Ameriprise also has a strong performance management process with solid performance measurements. This has kept the organization’s productivity and quality high, and assisted in rewarding and retaining high performing staff members. “We have a strong value-based company with an ‘It begins with me’ attitude. We would not have been as successful without the commitment of our associates.”

Paz added that Ameriprise also makes a conscientious effort to invest in technology that will yield the highest payback for the investment. The organization typically looks for projects that will provide a six-month return on investment, he said. From a cultural standpoint, Ameriprise also places great emphasis on its employees having a customer service orientation.

“Together, these initiatives have made us very successful and allowed us to grow and mitigate risk, while keeping us profitable,” Paz said.

What is your organization doing to control operations expenses? Post your comments below.

Finance Executives Refocus Attention

By Mark Brousseau

The economic downturn has forced finance executives to refocus their attention on wringing cash from their business, looking beyond conventional improvements in working capital management, and making sure no opportunity for keeping their company well funded goes unexplored. That's according to a research report conducted in November 2008 by American Express and CFO Research Services.

Finance teams have prioritized spending more time on the following activities:

85 percent - Cutting cost of operations
83 percent - Improving cash management processes
81 percent - Developing better budgets, plans and forecasts

When asked about growth strategies in the face of a challenging credit market, nearly three-quarters of executives who responded to the question say they will pay more attention to the customer:

... Organic growth through improved customer relations
... Continued customer contact and service
... Focus on our core business, leveraging existing relationships

What is your perspective? Post a comment below.

Operations Tips

By Mark Brousseau

During the interactive networking lunch at this week’s TAWPI Forums & Expo in Orlando, FL, attendees shared the best operations strategy that they have implemented in the past year. Below is a list of their winning strategies.

... Go to a one-pass workflow for remittance processing, versus a two-pass environment where each document has to be handled twice. If your solutions vendor doesn’t offer this option, find one that does.
... Be sure that your processing system supports the functions dictated by your business needs.
... When developing a business case for a new processing solution, don’t forget to consider soft costs, such as maintenance and training.
... When purchasing a remittance system, be sure to do a complete cost analysis. Understand what functionality comes with the base system, and which additional modules you’ll need to support your business; ask what these modules cost. Also inform yourself about the frequency and cost of upgrades, and the resources required to implement them.
... Always get references for any solution or service that you purchase.
... Be mindful of the amount of document preparation required for any solution.
... Look for online tracking of quality and productivity in new solutions.
... As part of your cost analysis of low-volume scanners, require vendors to bring a machine into your operations that your people can test with your documents and workflow.
... Never limit yourself to only evaluating your incumbent vendor for a replacement solution. Thoroughly look at the top two or three. Compare functionality, and where the solutions are installed. Visit sites that are similar to your own.
... Leverage remote sites for data correction. This distribution of work significantly improves throughput. One user outsourced data entry to at-home keyers, providing only snippets of images to prevent distribution of sensitive information, such as Social Security Numbers.
... Consolidate the document preparation and batching functions to reduce processing times. The best part: there are no hard costs involved in this change.
... Use the United States Postal Service for initial mail sorting.
... Consider implementing a document tracking system. One user deployed bar code wands to track batches of documents through work processes. The solution interfaces with the organization’s scanner capture processes to identify documents contained in the batches, and who the documents below (offering customer service greater visibility, faster).
... Convert from paper-check processing to electronic payment processing using remote deposit capture. This speeds processing and reduces bank fees. An international user also noted that remote deposit capture has helped his organization reduce fraud.
... Evaluate the new form identification solutions available from software and hardware vendors alike.
... Consider automating loan processing to cut processing costs and improve document control.
... Require vendors to provide line-item pricing for their solutions, rather than lump-sum costs that hide over-priced components.
... Build strong relationships with your IT department … before you need them.
... Test and validate document design changes before going into live production.
... Involve your customer service group early on as you prepare to deploy a new solution. This will streamline training, and help you identify potential issues.
... Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark.
... Measure and capture statistics for each processing function so you can easily identify areas for improvement.
... If you haven’t done so already, implement an employee pay-for-performance plan.
... If you have multiple processing sites, be sure to implement load balancing.
... Define important capture fields early on when developing your system requirement.

Do you have operations tips to share?

Post them below.

Avoid These Outsourcing Pitfalls

By Mark Brousseau

Before outsourcing your back-office operations, be sure that you have a thorough understanding of all of the costs – direct and indirect – of your current operation, as well as a complete understanding of all the costs from the outsource provider.

Many companies that consider outsourcing simply look at the unit cost of their existing operation and do not consider the impact the in-house operation has on ancillary operations, said Steve McNair (mcnairs1@aol.com), president of FTP Consulting Services, Inc., based in Southlake, TX. McNair told me that this is the No. 1 mistake companies make when considering outsourcing.

“When considering an outsourcer, many companies do not identify all the costs associated with the service or operation being outsourced,” McNair explained. “The most commonly overlooked expenses are the staff the company must maintain internally to handle the exceptions work from the outsourcer. Other overlooked expenses are the communications and travel expenses associated with managing the outsource provider, whether they are across town or across the country.”

The most common mistake companies make after outsourcing an operation is that they forget the outsource provider requires management oversight – and often more oversight than what was required when the operation was in-house.

“Many companies do not develop the structured communications and metrics required to properly manage an outsource provider,” McNair said. “More often, companies take an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach. In this scenario, the communication of company’s strategy, expectations and irritations are left unsaid, causing problems to fester until the relationship is beyond repair.”

McNair said communications is a two-way street, where both a company and its outsource provider need to be pushing one another to perform. When all of the effort is one-sided, the project will inevitably fail.

“A key element of a company’s communications, should be realistic, timely and accurate metrics,” McNair said, noting that most companies scale back their benchmarking programs once they’ve outsourced. McNair said this is backwards: “The greater the distance between the company and its outsource provider, the greater the need for a metrics program that will not only monitor progress, but also provide warnings of potential problems.”

What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.