Some tasks seem to take much longer than they should, don’t they?

But it’s no surprise, when you think about it…

1. Tasks take too long because there are too many people involved. Too much subjectivity (opinions, tastes, preferences and the like). Too many diaries to get in sync. Too many egos. Too many jobs to justify the existence of.
2. Tasks take too long because they are too big, and unwieldy. Big tasks scare people. Tasks are not manageable in bitesize chunks.
3. Tasks take too long because of process. Process (i.e. bureaucracy) can stop tasks starting, continuing, and even stopping when they should. Too much process stops people actually executing (getting on with the work). Too much process means that tasks can be too expensive, or time consuming, so they don’t get done.
4. Tasks take too long because people don’t see the benefit of doing them. When workers can’t see the benefit of completing a task, it can be stalled or dropped in an unfinished state. If you don’t know what a task results in, why do it?
5. Tasks take too long because they are the  wrong task. Some tasks shouldn’t even be done in the first place, because they’re inefficient, unethical, or plain stupid. Workers know this, so they stall or delay in completing these tasks.
6. Tasks take too long because they are being performed alongside other tasks. Other tasks compete for time. Unplanned work gets in the way. Too many concurrent tasks creates complexity and uncertainty.
7. Tasks take too long because they are difficult. Difficult tasks (not to say impossible tasks) are delayed in favor of easier tasks. Difficult tasks require energy that people just don’t want to give, or have.
8. Tasks take too long because people don’t want to do them. Some tasks are just not pleasant, or interesting. Some tasks aren’t cool. Some tasks are below our pay-grades. Some tasks make us look stupid. Some tasks are embarrassing. Sometimes, we just can’t be bothered.
9. Tasks take too long because they are too badly defined. Too little information to know how to start, process or end. Too little data as input. Too much confusion about what a good result looks like. Too much ambiguity in the task’s definition. Some school examination papers are like this.
10. Tasks take too long because the people doing them are ill-equipped. Too little time, too little knowledge, not enough tools, money or resources. Incompetence.

Now when any number of factors are combined, the likelihood of the task NOT being done on time is exponentially greater.

Just imagine: a badly defined, difficult task performed by a large number of busy people who don’t have the tools to do it…… think it will be late?

Bet you’ve had a few of these in your time.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Do some tasks take much longer than you want them to? Do you dread some tasks? Well it’s likely your are suffering from procrastination.

I have a friend who, if procrastinating was an Olympic sport, would be a triple gold-medalist. Some tasks take her an age to complete – much longer than they really should. What’s more, she hates these tasks. And it’s amazing how inventive she can be about what other jobs should be done first, like sharpening pencils or cleaning her PC monitor.

Procrastination is a psychological effect. It is when we replace high-priority and urgent activities with less important tasks, therefore putting off the important stuff to a later time (which, by the way, may never come). For example, we might have an urgent report to write, but writing the report is boring, so instead we tidy our desk.

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination can be a result of anxiety. Perhaps we’re worried about poor performance in the task, or, we don’t know where to start and can’t (or won’t) get help.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, St. Joseph University, and Ohio State University have also researched the links between the benefit of completing a task and our willingness to do the task. They found that people who feel more ‘entitled’ (i.e. expect to gain a lot from performing any activity) have less patience for activities that don’t provide them with an immediate benefit. In other words, people who believe themselves to be a high-achiever feel less inclined to do things where they don’t get an instant result.

What effect does procrastination have?

Procrastination often results in stress (because that task hasn’t been completed!), a guilty feeling, and a severe loss of personal productivity. The feeling of guilt can be compounded when we know that the lack of action impacts other people.

And here is worst of it. These feelings can then have the effect of further procrastination. It becomes an expanding, vicious cycle.

If we procrastinate, are we bad, or lazy?

No. It is quite normal for most people to procrastinate to a certain extent. I do it. My mom does it. And we’re not lazy. Nor is my super-procrastinator friend.

‘Chronic’ procrastination can be linked to an underlying psychological problem, and often these people don’t seek help because they don’t want to be seen as lazy or unambitious.

For most people, procrastination can be overcome by a few coping tactics. Although this isn’t an exhaustive list, below are a few things to try that I know work for me, and they’re beginning to work for my friend too:

1. Visualize the benefit of performing the task – imagine what our world will look like once it’s done. Often, this is as simple as knowing you don’t have to think about it again. Try and form a vivid image of yourself after the task has been done. This helps us perceive the immediate benefit.
2. Ask someone for help – it’s amazing what a bit of help can do. It can result in a new understanding of the task that makes it easier, or even just emotional support.
3. Avoid low points in your day – I get tired after lunch quite often. Do you? If so, then avoid performing this task then as it will be even more difficult. Either do the task before the low point, or postpone it briefly until afterwards.
4. Manage your time – if you don’t have a set deadline, then create one and hold yourself to it (I find committing this to someone else helps my commitment.)
5. Break the task up into smaller chunks – it’s far easier to focus on a small task than a big one! Identify the sub-tasks, prioritize them in a logical order of importance and start from the top.

If you’re a procrastinator, then I hope these tips help, and please share your experience by leaving a comment below.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

We all want job security, right? Even if we don’t want believe that we will necessarily stay in the job ourselves. Ask yourself, what does job security look like/feel like? Does it really exist? Here are my thoughts…

Here’s a definition of Job Security that I think sums it up:

Job security is an employee’s assurance or confidence that they will keep their current job. Employees with a high level of job security has a low probability of losing their job in the near future. Certain professions or employment opportunities inherently have better job security than others; job security is also affected by a worker’s performance, success of the business and the current economic environment.

So job security is about an individuals perception of themself, the situation and the potential. It isn’t always tangible, unless the terms of employment that provide the security are all-encompassing (never happens!).  This makes it hard to define in exact words… but we know Job Security when we see it (or feel it.)

For most of us, Job Security is something amorphous – it is constantly changing, and it is also like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (for you scientists) that when you measure it (analyse your own Job Security) you also change it. Can we really understand it, then?

There are some external factors that have an influence on our Job Security. A good indicator of Job Security held by the majority of the national workforce is how the business environment fairs – it is often reflected by the country’s unemployment rate and whether the country is in an economic expansion or recession. Our individual Job Security is influenced more by personal factors, e.g. our education, our experiences, the skills we have developed, our performance and our capabilities.

When we perceive that our organization is in need of our specific skills and experience, the greater we tend to feel Job Security. Conversely, the less specialized these skills become (and the greater the number of available workers that can provide them), the lesser the Job Security is felt.

Why Does Job Security Matter?

When we have a high level of Job Security, we will often perform and concentrate our effort into work more effectively than an employee who is in constant fear of losing their job (although fear can actually increase motivation in certain situations, but only for a short period.)

Job Security has a significant effect on the overall performance of teams, too. Because, in most organizations, the breakdown of tasks into jobs means that teamwork is essential to deliver a service or a product, the result is as strong as only the ‘weakest link’, which could be a worker who is feeling very nervous about their future. Not just that, an organization with workers with low Job Security cause others to doubt their own future. Water-cooler chats are a hotbed of gossip and rumor-mongering.

I think high Job Security is vital for the whole workforce, as well as ourselves.

But does it really exist?

In a turbulent global economy, in a world where natural resources are under strain and economies are up and down like a yo-yo, I don’t believe we can say that it does exist for a whole national workforce. For example, in the UK economy, austerity cuts are threatening public sector jobs for the first time in decades, yet private sector jobs will benefit (eventually) as the delivery of public services becomes increasingly outsourced. And look what is happening in North Africa too – regional political forces are destabilizing their economies which have relied on tourism (I wouldn’t pack my suitcase to go visit the Great Pyramids, right now, would you?) Just imagine how assured a waiter in a Cairo street cafe feels about his Job Security now!

The future has become more unpredictable for us all. But there is one thing we can do to improve our own perception of Job Security, and that is to focus on our individual performance (check out my post 99 Ways To Become a High Performer.) Our individual performance is something that we own, and we control. We can increase our Job Security by concentrating on our personal development, relationships and productivity. When we know we are performing to our potential, we also know that we can control our destiny, and be assured of our success.  I have never met a person who does not enjoy high Job Security who is also a High Performer. OK, even the best get laid off, but the best also know that they can walk into another job the next day.

So, I say, Job Security does exist if you are prepared to give it your all and create it for yourself. Because, nowadays, you can’t rely on anyone else to hand it to you! And help your colleagues too, to increase their perception of Job Security, as it’s important for whole teams and whole organizations to share in it.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

If you have ever wondered why some teams consistently demonstrate high performance and achievement of its objectives (and why some don’t) you have probably experienced great leadership by a leader who understands his or her team.

A leader’s role is to create the right environment for work to succeed (measured according to the objectives specified.)  Ever wondered how a leader does that?

David Rock shares his experiences of effective leaders in his book Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work. It starts by establishing a fact that most of us will already know: that  improving human performance involves one of the greatest challenges of humankind: changing the way people think. As a coach, speaker, and consultant to organizations around the world, David Rock has observed that the key to leading people (as well as living and working with them) is found in the way followers process information.

The way followers interpret the words and actions of a leader and then commit to a course of action is a process, and adapting our leadership style and behaviors according to this process it is the most important facet of practicing leadership, says Rock. I’d sure like to master this, how about you?

By learning how leadership affects people internally, you can master it.

Supported by the latest groundbreaking research, Quiet Leadership approaches the challenge of leadership by showing how the minds of followers respond the leaders, and the situation, which will help busy leaders, executives, and managers improve their own and their colleagues’ performance. It’s no science journal, but it does back up the theories with scientific fact.

Who is the book for?

• Quiet Leadership is for the business leader (right up to CEO) who wants to be more effective at inspiring a leadership team
• It’s for the CFO/CIO who is busy and needs to make the most out of every brief exchange
• It’s also for the executive who would like to influence a manager to plan more effectively (but can’t seem to work out how)
• And it’s for the manager who wants to inspire the sales team, but is drawing a blank as to how
• It’s for the human resources professional who is ready to take on changing the culture of a whole organization
• It’s for the parent or caregiver who wants to reach new levels of communication and understanding with their family members

Quiet leaders are masters at bringing out the best performance in other people. They improve the thinking of the people around them—quite literally improving the way their minds process information—without giving blunt instruction. Given how many people in today’s organizations are being paid to think and analyze, isn’t improving our thinking is one of the fastest ways to improve performance?

Quiet Leadership offers a practical, six-step guide to making permanent workplace performance change by unleashing higher productivity, new levels of morale, and greater job satisfaction. Above all, Quiet Leadership will give you the clarity and strength that comes from mastering and using powerful insights that teach you to perform and succeed, at the highest level.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

The Key Influencing Factor in your performance at work is not your skills, your status, your experience. It isn’t even who you know, or who knows you. All these things are important, but there is something fundamental that is required to make all these things attain value. It is your Self-Esteem.

When we feel that we are adding value to our organization and that the value is created as a direct result of ourselves and the collaboration with colleagues, we have a healthy self-esteem. There is a direct link between the results of our performance review and how highly we believe that our work has caused good external results (sales, volume, customer satisfaction, etc – the things that our objectives are measured against).

So it’s no wonder that the people who are seen to perform the best are the people who appear happy, confident, charming and relaxed.

Get this: Some people think that it is the reward of great performance that creates these things in people. But it is the other way around – these things create the great performance.

In fact an acquaintance of mine who considers himself to have experienced some bad luck lately looks at my own personal success and reward as falling into my lap. He is a skeptical, generally negative person who tends to see the bad in things before he looks for the good. He sees the happiness I exhibit being a result of my rewards (e.g. bonuses). It has been tough to explain that one leads to the other, but not in the way he thinks.

Perhaps he is right, to a certain extent (what do you think?) My belief in myself and high self-esteem must have started somewhere – perhaps by encouragement from my parents or a mentor – but the difference between me and him is that I deliberately shift myself into a ‘virtuous cycle’ where every success creates further opportunities to grow, learn and take on new challenges with confidence. My self-esteem is both a cause, and an effect!

I was looking around to see what is available for people who have a nucleus of enlightenment that their own self-esteem can be a cause and effect too, but are not sure how to develop it. The ACE Your Performance Review Crash Course doesn’t really help in that space.

Instead, I found an excellent course on DVD by Jack Canfield (author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Success Principles) who talked me through his ‘proven recipe’ to approach the building of self-esteem. I was on the road for a few days, so I whacked it onto my iPod and off I went. I was totally engaged – mostly because it shares real stories from real people – so it’s easy to relate to it. Especially as Jack Canfield is humble and down-to-earth. There isn’t a shade of consultant-speak (which I abhor!)

It is very inspirational for people on all stages of their enlightened journey.

If you’re ready to take your journey, this is what you’ll learn:

• BUILD YOUR SELF-ESTEEM HIGHER THAN EVER
• CHANGE YOUR RESPONSES TO CHANGE YOUR OUTCOMES
• TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES
• CREATE A VISION AND FIND YOUR PURPOSE
• CREATE MORE BALANCE & LIVE A MORE FULFILLING LIFE

Perhaps the short statements above don’t do it justice…

Jack Canfield – Peak Performance Principles – How to Boost Your Self-Esteem and Discover Your Purpose – Personal Development DVD Training Video

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Personal performance improvement is often treated like a ‘project’. You identify goals; you plan change; you manifest change; you test change; you review change; job done. For most personal improvements, this works just fine.

But get this – this project work is often de-scoped or de-prioritized. And then it is rushed, just before your Performance Review/Appraisal. How can we expect to achieve great performance and improvements if it isn’t taken seriously?

Here are 8 things you can do on a weekly basis, instead or in addition to your ‘project’.

1. Introduce yourself to at least one new person in your office, each week, and tell them about yourself. Who knows, you may just find someone who can help you or give you a fresh outlook on your challenges.
2. Block off some time at a regular slot each week, and use it for ‘thinking’. Did I just use a dirty word? Allow yourself some thinking time. Ponder new ideas or use it to listen to your thoughts or feelings. Don’t consider this as a waste!
3. Visit your industry websites, and see what is happening beyond IT. Learn more about the challenges of your industry and see what competitors are doing. Why? Well a) it is context that could be important when considering organizational change, and b) it gives you something interesting to talk about when you do (1).
4. Invite someone in your network for a coffee, once a week. Create an informal environment to talk about stuff you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to in formal meetings or by email. Use this as an opportunity to socialize ideas you might be working on and test them out, or consider different ways of achieving them.
5. Write an update to your boss and your peers. Send these folks some bullet-points or a full-blown update on the things you’re working on to keep them connected or involved. This avoids the appearance of working in a vacuum, and it gives people the chance to offer help or advice.
6. Review your contribution to the business strategy. A great thing to do once a week: it keeps you honest and fresh. It’s so easy to get buried in work without knowing why you’re doing it. And if your review turns up “Don’t Know” then it is time to ask!
7. Review last week’s achievements. Allocate a slice of time to stock-take the results of the previous week. I notice that when I stop doing this I can lose sight of what I am striving for, and it can then feel like I am just going through motions. Reviewing the previous week links cause to effect, and creates an opportunity to identify course corrections.
8. Scan your Job Description and Objectives. It might only take a minute to read through your Job Description and agreed Objectives, and it will be a minute well spent. This action can totally clarify priorities in an instant. It can also lead you to question whether your Job Description is still appropriate. It can result in many things – you’ll know that when you do it.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Last week I posed 6 powerful questions to ask at your performance review . I’ve received quite a lot of traffic on this post so I can conclude this is an important and hot topic. Here are six more powerful questions to ask at your review, which delve further into your performance and to inquire about how you can excel in the future:

1. “What can I do better that will help my team more efficient?“

2. This next question requires you to understand your particular strength(s).

3. “What impact has my training had on the department and our customers? “

4. Ask “What further training should I take to add more value? “

5. Pose the question “Who do you think is a great role model for me in the organization? “

6. This is an amazingly powerful yet simple question – “Am I making our customers lives easier?”

Good luck in your reviews!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Business Analysts are the fulcrum that turn an idea, problem or opportunity identified in the business into something that IT can engage with and deliver. So BAs generally deal with work whose inputs are less easily defined and therefore measured. So how do BAs measure their value?

Take a look at BAs who are working in your organization, and then how their performance is measured internally by their management. You might have seen feedback forms or appraisal documentation that asks specific questions and their performance. Do you find…

• Is it demonstrating the application of a proscribed process?
• Is it having domain knowledge?
• Is it producing well articulated documentation?

The measures above tend to be the norm. Most organizations I’ve experienced use these kinds of measures, but in my opinion they are the lowest common denominator and should be taken as granted because I don’t think being able to do these things really creates business value.

Karmjit is a Project Manager based in Ontario. Recently, she was asked to complete an appraisal form for a BA who had recently worked on her project. The BA was new to the organization, but was up for promotion. What Karmjit discovered was that the appraisal requested feedback on the behavior of the BA which covered only whether the organizational process had been followed, documentation produced and that he was demonstrably a subject matter expert. Karmjit had to give top marks in each category, but guess what: the BA was lousy. He couldn’t build rapport, he failed to engage with people effectively, he struggled to make decisions quickly, and misunderstood the fundamentals of the idea, wasting time. Without intervention, Karmjit would be sealing the promotion! (She did provide feedback off the form to share he experiences.)

Contrarily, I met a modest guy a while ago who I will Dave. Dave is a BA who was an excellent communicator and had a reputation for helping business people turn a rough idea into something specific, realizable and measurable. He works with the people by building relationships, forgoes process if he feels it would be inappropriate. His background (law) is different to his business (manufacturing), so he often has to go away to research a subject, and isn’t afraid to admit when he lacks knowledge. He doesn’t document very well because he is dyslexic, but he can stand up and present facts and opinions like a maestro. Dave builds confidence in his customers and is called into a wide variety of situations as he always delivers.

If we measured Dave by the same criteria as Karmjit’s organization does, he’d probably be fired.

This illustrates a fatal flaw in the de facto measurement of the performance and value of Business Analysts: it should be about business value, and nothing else.

OK, I am not advocating the encouragement of mavericks. In fact the de facto measures serve to create traction of the value a BA creates into the organization. Without them, BAs like Dave could be frustrated genii. That’s why I said you should take these for granted as without them, the BA is dysfunctional. But the measures mustn’t end there.

BAs must be measured on their creation of business value as their differentiator amongst peers. Therefore, much of the measurements are subjective, and oriented to opinion. It is the softer measures that really matter, such as

• Confidence created
• Rapport and trust built
• Effective decision making
• Foresight and anticipation of risks
• Leadership
• Verbal communication
• Pragmatism

I think the best way of surfacing feedback against these softer measures is using 360 degree feedback. Assessing their impact on customers, colleagues, subordinates and superiors gives the best overall view of the BAs effectiveness in these areas. 360 degree feedback is a structured method for consistently measuring the performance and value of individuals – it is qualitative.

If you’re a BA like Dave, or the one who worked for Karmjit then it is in your interest to ensure that your value is measured above and beyond the hard factors like process adherence, as your value isn’t in the numbers, it’s in the hearts and minds of the customers you serve.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about the most disliked behaviors in IT departments, and one that 80% of IT leaders felt strongly about was the rise of the Merit-Whore. A Merit-Whore is someone who persistently and unfairly takes credit for the work of a team or a subordinate. Why does this happen?

In most business organizations now, merit is the currency of success. A ‘meritocracy‘ is an organizational reward model where the high performers are rewarded with ‘credit’, i.e. bonuses, promotion, recognition or something similar, and poor performers are punished or moved on – what’s more poor performers tend to be widely known for that fact and social pressure grows to move them on. It is a kind of corporate immune system. Being known as a poor performer is painful.

So a phenomenon arises from this model – the Merit-Whore. It’s a harsh term I guess. I’ve known a few in my time, and in my experience the Merit-Whore is a complex character, but it isn’t so easy to say they are ‘bad’ people or ‘bad’ workers.


The Merit-Whores I’ve experienced tend to have low-self esteem, self-confidence and they shirk personal responsibility because they feel inadequate to meet the expectations bestowed upon them. It is a behavior rooted in fear, and the fear provokes other behaviors. What Merit-Whores do is try to take any kind of credit from a situation to boost their self-esteem. However, the credit given to Merit-Whores has no long-lasting effect, as their sub-conscious knows they don’t deserve it and the credit was gained without integrity, which further damages their confidence and self-esteem.

Merit-Whores are particularly common in IT, because the value created by IT workers isn’t always instant and obvious because of the esoteric nature of much of the work. IT workers can save $millions or save their organization from serious issues through effective risk management, but this contribution can go unnoticed as it is difficult to quantify and qualify. This is particularly acute in structures where a manager is ‘distant’ to their subordinates, in terms of technical understanding and context.

These situations don’t help the poor performer. Moreover they reduce the morale for their colleagues. A group of workers continually assess each other’s behavior and performance, even if they don’t know they’re doing it. But when a poor performer is rewarded equally or more than their colleagues who contributed then it has a deep psychological effect – a display of unfairness by a leader damages the credibility and trust in the leader and, overall, it reduced productivity of the whole team. Often, passive aggression and loafing ensues in the other workers. What we end up with is a whole team of poor performers!

Leaders are really to blame for this phenomenon. Meritocracy can create a harsh environment for workers who might be going through a period of poor performance, and it is leaders who create this environment.

Leaders can often be lazy in finding out who was involved in a particular contribution and reward someone just because they said they contributed. Great leaders I have observed drill down into the situation to find out who did what, and why. A consistent approach to giving credit is needed so that leaders can fairly distribute it. This approach finds out who really added the value, and for those just doing their job, it should result in neutrality (no punishment).

Leaders can address such situations like this:

• Don’t reward for doing the day job – it’s much better to incentivize for value-added contribution
• Leaders mustn’t expose poor performers as such, to avoid the triggering of the corporate immune system
• Leaders must ask questions about how the contributions were created, as well as listening to what the contribution is, before awarding credit
• Credit should be given to teams as much as possible rather than individuals
• Poor performers should be nurtured differently. Outright reward for improvement in behavior just compounds the issue. Poor performers could be privately coached or mentored
• Be direct and honest about your observations – perhaps the most powerful intervention. Leaders must be upfront about how the poor performer is perceived and share your observations. In 99% of the time, the poor performer will be aware of their own performance, but the important aspect of this is to demonstrate your awareness, and also your support

Are You a Merit-Whore?

Do you recognize some of the indicators of a Merit-Whore in yourself? Here are some tips to help you stop this behavior:

• Give credit to other people and take none of your own (if you haven’t contributed) – this sounds counter-intuitive, but this has the strange effect of giving you a personal boost of well-being and managers also like to hear about the contributions of others through their peers. Demonstrating your sensitivity to contribution of others is a trait managers like
• Take credit, but share it – if you do deserve credit, then share it with your co-workers. This will portray you as a team-player. Once your co-workers know you’ve done this then it is much more likely to be reciprocated
• Create opportunities for others to earn credit- instead of feathering your own nest, you could try creating opportunities for your co-workers to be merited with achievement. Sometimes, this is just as simple as connecting people up – e.g. suggesting that your co-worker should speak to a financial accountant because you know they need some help in a system that your co-worker has had previous experience with. If you do this, it will definitely be reciprocated
• Take positive action- start with assessing your awareness of your behavior and identify how you react in situations where you become hungry for confirmation and merit. Now identify a short list of alternative responses you could choose and try them out

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.