Leadership
Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.
by: Pam Swanwick and Juliet Wells Leckenby
Every manager struggles to balance writer workload and project capacity. A simple spreadsheet-based system can help you objectively evaluate assigned tasks, task time and complexity, special projects, and even writer experience levels to more accurately assess individual workload and capacity. The result is a simple but useful representational graph.
In addition to measuring current team capacity and productivity, this method also provides objective metrics to better estimate future project capacity and to support performance evaluations for individual writers.
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The difference between a new team member and a seasoned team member is easy to see. One has energy and one does not.
Why is this? For many teams, it’s not a matter of the job situation, but rather it’s a lack of motivation. This is no one’s fault necessarily. Motivation is something that waxes and wanes, though you want to find ways to keep it high if you want productivity and creativity to be consistent.
1. Answering the Why
Though it might seem as though people should do the work they do because they should, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Your team members might have days when they feel what they do isn’t important or that it doesn’t make a difference. You need to show them that it does.
When you can show your team that the things they do add up to real-life impact, they will see that their continued energy and motivation is for a good cause.
2. Recognition for a Job Well Done
Rewards and other forms of recognition are also going to help your team see that you are noticing their hard work and that their efforts aren’t going unnoticed. It might be a good idea to offer rewards after particularly hard projects, as well as recognition in team email or meetings when it is deserved.
Pointing out that one person did a particularly good job often has the effect of causing others to try to meet that standard as well.
3. Work as a True Team
Though it might seem easier to just assign tasks to your team and allow them to go about their day self-motivating, it’s actually a better idea to encourage your team to work together. When the team is interacting, they can creatively problem solve as well as spend their time finding ways to work as efficiently as possible. The team will work harder because they know they’re not the only person that matters. They have a team depending on them too.
Productivity has almost become a buzzword these days, but it still should be a priority. With the proper motivation in your office, you can increase the speed of the work to be done and have a team that’s willing to do it, even when they don’t want to.
If you manage a team, what techniques do you find particularly helpful in motivating them? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment.
Related topics
Fundamentals of Leadership: Communicating a Vision
Making the Transition from Technical Writer to Manager
Wearer of Many Hats: One Management Style Does Not Fit All
Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.
Scott Abel
No matter where you look these days, some vendors are touting how their new software products can help technical documentation departments magically “collaborate” their way to tremendous savings. You may be considering a purchase of one of these collaborative authoring tools. If you are, be forewarned that your return on investment may not be as spectacular as anticipated.
It’s not that there aren’t tremendous savings to gain by working in a collaborative manner. There are software products that can help your documentation group work more efficiently, making it possible for you to save significant time and resources. The real problem is closer to home. And it actually has nothing at all to do with software.
The real problem is that most technical documentation groups do not work as a team. Just because you co-locate a group of people in one big room, or somehow join them together under a common departmental umbrella, does not make them a team. Not even close.
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A Reduction-In-Force (RIF) or layoff is usually seen as the easiest, fastest way to cut costs as companies trade immediate, short-term gains for long-term growth and performance.
But the downside is that the negative effects on the company can be wide-spread and lasting. Yet, it seems, layoffs are the first things management considers, especially in a down economy. More and more companies have followed the crowd in believing this policy just makes good business sense. But, as Kerri Barber points out in Common Myths and Misconceptions About Layoffs, year after year, hard data and analysis disprove that theory.
While Kerri wrote the article quite some time ago, it’s a useful piece of information even today as the economy is hanging out in a trough of sorts. She not only methodically goes about debunking these myths, but offers some good employer alternatives to layoffs that deserve serious consideration.
In the article, Barber looks at three of the most common myths companies hold about layoffs:
- Layoffs are necessary to cut costs.
- Reducing costs through restructuring and downsizing results in higher stock prices.
- Layoffs help streamline the workforce, weeding out the poor performers and creating a more efficient employee base.
After you’ve read the article you’re likely to agree with her conclusion: “Successful leadership will be defined by those decisions made for the benefit of the company to preserve short- and long-term goals, not jeopardize them for the benefit of a few individuals at the top.”
What are your thoughts on layoffs or RIFs and how do you think employers can work to avoid them? We’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment.
Read Common Myths and Misconceptions About Layoffs
Great leaders are not always born that way.
Unfortunately, many management training programs don’t sufficiently emphasize leadership development, but instead focus on fundamentals and the day-to-day tasks that confront managers within the organization.
If you’re currently a manager or about to become one, you need to think about more than accomplishing tasks if you want to become a true leader.
As writer Kerri Harris points out in Fundamentals of Leadership: Communicating a Vision:
“Experts have long studied the subtle differences between general management, leadership, and truly great leaders. Thomas Cronin, author of, Thinking About Leadership observes, ‘Managers do things the right way, while leaders are more concerned with doing the right thing.’ “
Harris goes on to say:
“There are recognizable characteristics in great leaders and simple strategies anyone can adopt to improve employee performance and change the work environment for the better.”
Harris’ article takes a look at how having vision and then communicating it is the foundation of leadership and contributes to the makeup of a truly great leader.
What are some of the characteristics of true leaders that set them apart from other managers? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Continue reading Fundamentals of Leadership: Communicating a Vision
Being asked to take the reins of a brand new documentation department is a challenge that many professional technical writers relish, even though the training and development activities they participated in may never have prepared them for such a rewarding challenge. This article looks at forming a new documentation department, team or group and determining what’s needed, when it’s needed and what resources are available to help the new group carry out its mission.
Five Questions to Ask Yourself While Creating a New Documentation Department
by Eric Butow
Congratulations! You’re the manager of your company’s emerging documentation department — and your work has just begun. To create effective documentation for your customers, you not only have to build a sound team, but also build working relationships with all other departments in your company.
In my contracting travels, I’ve set up two new documentation departments in two very different settings. My first was a documentation department for a startup networking software company in 1999. The company’s only previous documentation was a slim manual written by a programmer.
In 2004, I helped set up a new documentation department at the financial aid division for a major bank. Over the years, this division had been passed along to different parent banks — the newest of which was shocked to find that no one had written documentation about financial-aid processes, and no documentation about the software they had used during the division’s last 20 years! As a result, the new parent organization decided that relying on the institutional memories of its employees was a major risk, so the documentation department was born.
When you create your own documentation department, you should ask yourself five simple questions that will help your new department show its value to the company as quickly as possible. These questions are similar to those that a good reporter must answer when documenting a story — who, what, where, why, and how? — and they are as important for a documentation department manager as they are for an ace journalist.
The questions are:
Read the full article
by Kerri Harris
Today’s business climate of outsourcing, in-sourcing, virtual teams, and ROI-driven objectives can leave a manager at any level feeling powerless. Yet, we often see examples of those who can elicit unwavering support from their teams, driving highly effective projects, and getting the best performance from employees despite ever-increasing workloads. What is it about these individuals that makes them stand out as great leaders? Generally, the answer is the difference between a strict management model and one that includes basic principals of leadership. There are recognizable characteristics in great leaders and simple strategies anyone can adopt to improve employee performance and change the work environment for the better.
Experts have long studied the subtle differences between general management, leadership, and truly great leaders. Thomas Cronin, author of, “ Thinking About Leadership ” observes, “Managers do things the right way , while leaders are more concerned with doing the right thing. ” A focus on managing projects and deadlines leaves little room for leadership activities, but it can be done in a step-by-step approach beginning with awareness and a little common sense.
The remainder of this article addresses the following areas:
- Personal Evaluation
- Creating a Shared Vision
- The Collaborative Process
- Communicating the Vision
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by Whitney Potsus
Whether the documentation department has a staff of one or a team of 12, visibility within the company is a frequent concern. The reasons for this concern range from personal to professional. You want to be remembered when promotions and bonuses are handed out. You want new challenges to add diversity to your workload, and new projects to add skills to your resume. You want to defend your turf against budget cuts and layoffs during lean economic times. And you want to be more than an afterthought that lives in the back 40 of the cubicle farm.
You’ve probably come to this article looking for specific ideas of what you can do in your organization to raise the technical communications group’s profile. And there will be some of those. But trying to provide specific recommendations for raising your group’s profile in your company is a little like giving someone else marriage advice. Unless you’re sitting in the thick of things every day, participating in the maintenance of the relationship, it’s difficult to offer ideas that are compatible with and cognizant of all the variables in personalities, skills, strengths, and weaknesses, communication styles, schedules, aspirations, and so on.
In here, you will find suggestions to mull over as you try to determine the best ways to expand your influence throughout the company. Because when you talk to other technical communicators and documentation managers, what you often hear is “ Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it .”
Following, we’ll address:
- Taking Time to Focus
- What Solutions Do Customers Need?
- What Twirls Your Beanie?
- Mapping Your Goals
- Cited Readings & Resources
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