| How to be productive
Leslie Quinton |
2008-06-16 13:01:07 PR Agency |
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Being efficient and making the most of our time is paramount in agency life: not just because we are often paid fixed sums and need to be effective (i.e. to deliver) within the budget identified, but also because there are only so many hours in a day and to get everything done that needs to be done, you need to be on your game efficiency-wise.
This is an issue that has been piquing my interest more lately as we have begun to integrate new members onto our team who are unaccustomed to the pace of the agency environment. To my immense pleasure, they’ve all caught on. Success seems to come from a happy combination of understanding how to prioritize and having good communications reflexes, along with a healthy dose of quick action. So I found it somewhat provocative (and couldn’t help but wonder how it applied to us) when I read about a Microsoft survey that mentioned that employees feel they are only truly productive a little under half their time at work. The survey, which was published in 2005, was conducted by Microsoft of its own personnel, and the results of the over 38,000 employees are sometimes discouraging (particularly if you’re a Microsoft customer!). Let’s assume we can extrapolate some of their findings to the corporate world in general, and consider the following: - People say they spend almost 6 hours a week in meetings: 69% say meetings are not productive - Women say their workweek is more productive than men’s (but not enormously so) - The average American worker receives 56 emails a day - The most common reasons cited for being unproductive globally are, in order: unclear objectives, lack of team communication, ineffective meetings, unclear priorities and procrastination At the same time, I’ve been reading about a concept called ROWE for Results-Only Work Environment. The idea is essentially this, that success is measured by results rather than the time needed to complete the task. The concepts relies upon rewarding people for the great outcomes they deliver and puts less stock into how much time they take: it doesn’t matter if they are quick or slow, as long as everything gets done and done well. I think intrinsically I am in favour of this idea and live it to an extent already. I don’t really care about someone showing me how many long hours they put in if in the end, the results aren’t there. It’s all about delivering (see first paragraph) and if you can deliver quickly, so much the better since I’m sure we’ve got something else you can work on! This might seem at odds with the classic agency approach in some ways, since the implicit expectation is that you need to put in a lot of hours to be effective. But true efficiency for me is putting in the hours that are required, whether it’s two or twelve, in order to get the best results. You need to be accurate in terms of what time is going to be needed when you estimate the project to the client, of course, but I like very much the idea of upping efficiency while focusing on end results. And the good news is that companies like Best Buy who use ROWE have found that their turnover rate when down almost 90% and productivity went up 41%. And that’s pretty impressive. |
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| This company is led by Generation X
Leslie Quinton |
2008-06-02 15:43:01 Media |
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The three seniors at Massy-Forget are all technically Generation X, that is, in our thirties or early forties. Although we have many other things in common, including a collective love for sushi and champagne (and together, if possible), what seems to most unite us professionally-speaking is our apparent attitude towards work.
After years of being told that Generation X doesn’t work as hard as our predecessors (according to a conference given by Richard A. Lewis, we value “fun, balance and informality” more than structure or traditional perks like bonuses – oh really?, finally I’ve read that we are a valuable group who needs to be courted as the next generation of leaders. This doesn’t come as any surprise to anyone who has been following the demographic trends, and really, that should be everyone. In other words, the generation of which I’m part is poised to take over the leadership positions in the public and private sector, and this small but crucial group can wield an inordinate amount of power given that the number of senior positions may exceed the number of candidates available. A recent post on the Harvard Business Publishing website interested me, though, because it discussed how a lot of Gen Xers are leaving corporate life for something with more personal value to them, either as entrepreneurs or in smaller companies with attitudes that more closely mirror their own. According to that author’s research, a lot of members of this generation are unhappy because their careers “got off to a slow start”; we graduated when the economy was slow and all the key positions were held by the generation before us. Furthermore, we are in charge of managing “pesky Generation Y” (her term, not mine!) who have dramatically different attitudes and who, ironically, are having more fun interchanging with the Baby Boomers, with whom the differences are vaster, than with their slightly older brothers and sisters who just seem like slightly slower and less technologically adept versions of themselves. I don’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions posited on the Harvard Publishing site: it’s always easy to make sweeping statements and with a few rare exceptions, Generation Xers and Generation Yers don’t perfectly fit the stereotype that we and the media may believe. And I’m happy to say that I guess I’ve already made that leap by being involved in a small company with good values but with an opportunity to serve large corporations and to learn from their models. And yes, we hire a lot of members from Generation Y. And I find them to be very skilled at teamwork, communication and creativity, plus have a healthy respect for work-life balance. In other words, I think X and Y can live (and work) together just fine. And soon it will be Z’s turn. (But I’m curious, what comes after Z?) |
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| Should we be protected from media coverage which makes us uncomfortable?
Emily Bradshaw |
2008-05-05 12:57:06 Media |
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In doing my daily read through of the Gazette this morning, I happened upon an article that made me nearly lose my composure right in front of my colleagues. The headline read: “Are racehorse owners breeding their thoroughbreds to death? Eight Belles Killed Herself at Derby” (Montreal Gazette, May 5, p.C4). The article was referring to an incident during the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and went on to say “She ran with the heart of a locomotive on champagne glass ankles for the crowd’s pleasure.” Apparently, “her front ankles (were) broken so severely she could not be taken from the track.” She had to be euthanized, right then and there.
How can anyone not have a visceral reaction to this? The article goes on to analyze the problems inherent in thoroughbred horse breeding and racing and the dangers to the animals, all for the sake of entertainment and a lot of $$$. For the record, horse racing is a “sport” I oppose. What interested me the most about the article though, was its criticism of NBC, which turned the cameras away as Eight Belles went down. It made me ask the question: What is the media’s responsibility in a situation such as this? The article argues that NBC should have kept on filming, and I agree. When it comes to issues or situations which make us uncomfortable, we have a tendency in our society to bury our heads in the sand (and I shamefully count myself among the buried). However, the fact that a situation makes us uncomfortable or distressed, does not give us the right to pretend that it is not happening. We have become oblivious to the tragedies going on all around us, just because we don’t want to feel uncomfortable. Tragedy happens, but I fear that we (especially in the West) would rather hide out and wait for the discomfort to pass, than really allow ourselves to feel something and react. And much of the media is complicit in our desire to hide. The news is all too often packaged in a way that keeps it distant from us, allowing us to go on with our lives feeling somehow removed from what’s happening. I believe that the media has a fundamental responsibility to report on issues in a way that ties us to them and not turn the cameras away in order to protect us or distance us. And we have a responsibility to look. While I don’t endorse the flagrant display of gore and violence for their own sake (and perhaps there is a fine line between “do we show it or not?”), I can’t help but feel that if taken in context, perhaps images of suffering might make us so uncomfortable or angry that we would stand up for something. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but ask what would happen to our capacity to empathise if we just took a deep breath and allowed ourselves to look and to feel that visceral reaction? Perhaps we’d be so outraged that we’d stand up and say something when a horse goes down. |
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| The Unspoken Discrimination of Mothers (to-be)
Leslie Quinton |
2008-05-05 12:51:01 Society |
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I recently came across some research that showed that more than 75 percent of British management would not hire a woman if they suspect she will become pregnant within six months of taking the job. Now, we’re not even talking about obvious, bump-out-to-there situations but women who aren’t even pregnant yet but who “might” become pregnant.
According to a recent survey by UK-based Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS), also mentioned in the Harvard Business Review Conversation Starter, the following statistics were gleaned from talking to over 1,100 UK executives: • 5 percent of managers would offer a job to a pregnant candidate • 52 percent said they assessed the likelihood of a candidate’s getting pregnant, including her age and whether she had recently married, when deciding whether to hire her • 76 percent said they would not hire a woman if they knew she was going to become pregnant within six months of starting the job • 86 percent said they would feel “cheated” if a new recruit announced within weeks that she was pregnant As a manager, I get this – I understand that you might be disappointed if a new hire announces months after starting that she is pregnant and therefore, that you should expect to see considerably less of her in about six months’ time. Every time you hire an employee, you are making an investment in training, in resources and in relationship-building. You want to know that this commitment is reciprocal and that the efforts you expend will pay off for you. Of course, you have to ask, how would you know during the interview that someone “might” get pregnant? What kind of question would you ask to determine that?? I also have to state what for me and I hope would be the obvious: even in work, life takes precedence. And in this case, we are really talking about a life! I think it is tragic that many women are forced to put off children in order to build their careers and then find out as they approach 40 that they are not able to have children after all, that getting pregnant is not like scheduling a lunch date. Yes, having someone absent from the office for an extended amount of time does have an impact on the overall workload for the team but having survived maternity leaves (from both sides) I can say this: work goes on. Things turn out okay. A last confession: I was once headhunted a long while ago for a big job with an important multinational. At first, I thought it seemed interesting and I thought, why not learn more. But as I approached the third interview and I realized they were seriously interested in me, I had to ask myself if I wanted the responsibility and the apparent lack of a private life that this new position would have demanded. So I told the recruiter that, in all fairness, I should explain that I hoped to get pregnant within the next year (which was not exactly the case) and my name immediately fell off the list. We just hired three new women to our team. While I’m hoping none of them plans to get pregnant right away (I’m still enjoying getting to know them!), if they did, I would be thrilled for them personally and remind myself, work goes on. Things turn out okay. Real life takes precedence. |
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| Estime de soi
Johanna Raynaud |
2008-04-30 16:50:26 Agence de RP |
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D’habitude je ne parle jamais d’un client sur le blogue mais parfois les sujets me touchent plus personnellement et je tenais à souligner les efforts soutenus de cet organisme au Québec.
ÉquiLibre mène depuis plus de 20 ans des actions afin d’aider la population essentiellement féminine. Sa mission est de « favoriser la prévention et la diminution des problèmes reliés au poids et à l’image corporelle par l’élaboration d’actions de sensibilisation, et la conception de programmes et d’outils éducatifs à l’intention de la population et des professionnels de la santé. » Pour la deuxième année consécutive, ÉquiLibre sensibilise la population en faisant la promotion de la Journée internationale sans diète (JISD) qui a lieu à travers le monde le 6 mai. Au Québec, des activités sont organisées cette journée-là afin de soutenir les femmes. Cette année, la campagne « vise à développer le regard critique des femmes et des filles face aux modèles de beauté ainsi qu’à démystifier certaines croyances entourant la question de l’amaigrissement. » Hier, au Musée McCord se tenait le lancement-conférence de la JISD où une mère et une adolescente nous ont livré un témoignage touchant. Le problème des adolescentes est récurrent et ne s’améliore pas avec les années. Les statistiques sont même alarmantes. On apprend que 70 % des adolescentes font des efforts pour contrôler leur poids, que 50 % des adolescentes sautent des repas dans le but de contrôler leur poids et le plus attristant est d’apprendre qu’un tiers des petites filles de 9 ans ont déjà essayé de perdre du poids. Je trouve que leur mission est extrêmement importante et mon passé de diététiste refait toujours surface dans ces cas-là. Des images de jeunes femmes anorexiques ou obèses dans une grande souffrance psychologique me reviennent alors en tête du temps où je pratiquais en milieu hospitalier. La détresse peut toucher tout le monde. Voici le site du groupe ÉquiLibre : www.equilibre.ca, pour en apprendre plus sur le sujet et connaître les différentes activités offertes gratuitement le 6 mai dans un CLSC ou un centre pour femmes près de chez vous. |
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