Introduction
Almost every manager suffers from them: irritating little “thorns in the side” that affect staff performance. Mostly, they’re small things. But lumped together they’re a major hindrance. Try answering these thorny questions.
Ten Thorny Questions
If only my staff would ….?
My biggest staff performance problem is ….?
The one thing I wish my staff wouldn’t do is ….?
If there’s one thing I’d like my staff to do better it’s ….?
The thing my staff should realize about this business is ….?
My business would improve greatly if only my staff would ….?
Overall my staff do a good job, but ….?
It would help me a lot if my staff would ….?
What do I do that my staff should do ….?
My staff are very good: I just wish that they would ….?
The Process
- Complete the answer to each question.
- Rate the completed items 1-10 in order of their importance to the development of your business.
- Discard items 6-10.
- Retain items 1-5 only.
Weighting The Most Important Items
You now have 5 items to concentrate on. You must decide not only which are most important but you also need to determine the importance of the items relative to each other. Do this by “weighting”.
The Weighting Process
Imagine you have 100 points to allocate across the 5 remaining items. Give each item as many of the 100 points as you believe reflects its importance relative to the other items. e.g.
- If you consider all items equally important, give each item 20 points.
- If you consider one item far more important than all the others, give that item 100 points and the oter items 0 points.
- You may consider 3 items dominate the list. Give each of them 30 points and the remaining 2 items only 5 points each.
- Whatever you do, distribute the points across the 5 items to reflect the importance of each item relative to the others.
Remember, you’re weighting only the items you ranked 1-5 from the initial list of 10 completed questions.
What Have You Done?
You started with ten “thorns”. You decided that 5 were relatively unimportant: “prickles” if you like. You then ranked and weighted the other “thorns” to reflect their relative importance.
What Are You Left With?
You’re left with a list of between one and five priorities that you believe are the most important things your staff must do or stop doing to improve your business results. These are the “thorns” that must be removed.
Some Useful Observations
Notice that it’s what staff do or don’t do that causes you grief. It’s not the staff themselves. Of course, certain individuals may have irritating habits that annoy you. But it’s whether they do their job well that’s most important.
The ranking and weighting systems focus performance not personality.
The so called “weighting” is essential. It ensures that you consider the importance of issues relative to one another. When you do this, you retain perspective. You don’t give all your attention to relatively minor matters because “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.
Conclusion
Your “thorns” may be large, numerous and painful or small, occasional and no more than irritating. But they exist. This problem centred ranking and weighting system helps ensure that you use your energy and resources where you’ll gain most important.
What To Do Next
You have your priorities. Act on them. Consult with and involve your staff on what to do about them. Have your staff concentrate on those issues in a logical, systematic way. It’s one way of showing your staff what’s important to you.
