Where Are You
Heading?
We can know whether what we are doing is absurd only after we have identified the goals we are trying to achieve.
— Charles Hughes
WHAT RESULTS ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO ACCOMPLISH?
It is time to take a look at your job. What results are you expected to achieve? If you have a job description, is it spelled out in terms of activities or results? If the former, can you make the conversion to results? If no position description exists, try writing one paragraph to describe all of your responsibilities.
Christian psychologist Henry Brandt asks the questions, "Where do you want to go in life? How do you want to get there? Do the roles you fill contribute to your goal? What is
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really important that you do? What merely fills up time?" He says further, "In determining your best roles you ought to keep those that advance you toward your goal — perhaps even expand one or more if you can eliminate those that are useless and a drag. Your trouble may be too many good roles. You cannot afford to take on more than you can handle well."
Manuals of position descriptions have recommended position guides consisting of three elements: (1) position description; (2) position qualifications; and (3) organization chart.1 We are here concerned with the first of these items, the position description. A skeleton outline of a possible position description might look like this:
POSITION DESCRIPTION — GENERAL DIRECTOR XYZ FELLOWSHIP, INC.
BASIC FUNCTION
As chief executive officers of XYZ Fellowship, Inc., the General Director is responsible for the general direction of all operations and affairs of the Fellowship as a whole, and for advising and making recommendations to the Board of Directors with respect to these matters.
RESPONSIBILITIES AND AUTHORITY
Within the limits of the Articles of Incorporation, bylaws and policies established or authorized by the Board of Directors, the director is responsible for, and has commensurate authority to accomplish, the duties set forth below. He or she may delegate portions of the responsibilities, consistent with sound operations and authorized policies and procedures, together with proportionate authority for their fulfillment, but the director may not delegate or
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relinquish any portion of his or her accountability for results.
1. Informs the Board of Directors fully on status and progress of the various activities of the Fellowship and all important factors influencing them, and properly represents the Board to staff members, volunteer workers, donors and the general public.2. Oversees execution of all decisions of the Board of Directors except when execution is otherwise specified by the bylaws or by actions of the Board of Directors.
3. Directs the development of specific policies, procedures and programs to implement the general policies established by the Board of Directors, and oversees the effective administration and control of these policies, procedures and programs.
4. Evolves appropriate modifications to the overall objectives of the Fellowship from time to time and secures Board approval for same. Oversees the development of complementary and supportive objectives within the various departmental units of the Fellowship.
5. Develops and recommends to the Board of Directors long-range plans, consistent with the overall objectives of the Fellowship, and oversees the development of similar planning at appropriate levels throughout the organization.
6. Periodically reviews and evaluates the soundness of the organization structure and the related responsibilities and authority of key personnel, and effects the changes required to meet changed conditions or improve the operations and effectiveness of the organization and its components.
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7. Insures optimum utilization of personnel throughout the Fellowship. To this end, staffs key positions with competent people, delegates appropriate authority, and insures understanding of major assignments. Places appropriate emphasis upon the training and development of leaders to meet present and foreseeable needs. Reviews performances of key personnel on regular basis against developed criteria of performance in relation to established objectives, and takes corrective action where indicated. Recommends salary adjustments annually or more often, as indicated.
8. Develops and implements an appropriate program for public relations and promotion of the work of the Fellowship.
9. Proposes and executes such contracts and commitments as may be authorized by the Board of Directors or by established policies.
10. Develops, gets Board approval for, implements and controls an appropriate budgetary procedure throughout the Fellowship. Prepares and submits to the Board of Directors an annual consolidated budget for review and approval.
11. Determines that all funds, physical assets and other property of the Fellowship are appropriately safeguarded and administered.
RELATIONSHIPS
The General Director develops and nurtures the following relationships:
1. Board of Directors — The director is accountable solely to the Board for the administration of the Fellowship and for proper interpretation and
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fulfillment of the functions, responsibilities, authority and relationships.
2. Field Staff — The regional and overseas directors are under the director's supervision (See paragraph # 3 below.)
3. Administrative Staff — All administrative or department heads are under the director's supervision. He or she supervises, coordinates and assists in the activities of each of these offices. The director is accountable for the effective performance of each and secures their advice and assistance in formulating overall organization objectives, plans and programs, and stands ready at all times to render them advice, assistance and support.
4. Donors and Friends — The director represents the Fellowship in an informing and inspiring way to donors and friends.
5. Others — The director conducts such other relationships as the Board of Directors may specify or as he or she may deem appropriate and in the best interests of the Fellowship, including those with churches, denominational representatives, seminaries and leaders of other Christian organizations.
WHAT RESULTS COULD YOU ACCOMPLISH?
After completion of a position description, such as the one suggested above, the executive should have a picture of "results expected." Next comes the questions concerning "results possible." What results, above and beyond those expected, might possibly be accomplished? Remember that in this chapter we are concerned with reviewing our opportunities.
William Oncken, in his film Managing a Manager's Time,2 produced for the American Management Association,
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divides executive duties into three categories: job-imposed; system-imposed; (organization) and self-imposed. He suggests that what sets apart or distinguishes the effective or successful executives is the number, significance and rate of completion of their self-imposed tasks. These are tasks not called for in the job description ... not required by the organization... but voluntarily assumed by the executive who sees a need and a means of fulfilling it personally. The manager who thinks in this area — Oncken calls it the "area of ambiguity" due to the lack of guidelines — will be an "opportunity-oriented" manager. Concentration on such areas may offer great potential gains as opposed to concentration on problem areas alone. More will be said about this in chapter 6.
In considering what could be accomplished in your job, again think in terms of results, not activities... of accomplishments, not stated duties. If things went right... if events transpired in a favorable sequence... if resources could be marshalled at the opportune place and moment... what might be possible? One head of an international Christian organization has found this very question to be of significant help in orienting and directing his entire organizational effort.
In a recent Guideposts piece, Dr. Dorothy L. Brown wrote, "Just as God gives each one of us our special talent, so does He give us our dreams to make us aware of the talent."
THE ACCEPTANCE OF CHANGE
Today's executives have developed a keen appreciation for change... that is, in matters other than their own jobs. Gaining acceptance of change in organizational policies has become a common subject for executives seminars and management publication. New insights from the behavioral
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sciences have reinforced what may have been long suspected by some: whatever gets done is done through people; to do things better means to change; people resist change. Hence the emphasis on winning acceptance of change.
The change in a manager's own job may be so gradual, and so continual, that it is scarcely discernible. Even when sought in any but the most thorough and systematic way, such change may go unrecognized. This makes doubly important the task described above — that of carefully analyzing your own job.
An added benefit in this procedure is the opportunity it presents of comparing your own job requirements with your organizational objectives. If these overall objectives are in writing, the task is simple. If they are not, write them down, and then compare. If there are aspects of your job which do not coincide with any stated organizational objectives, take a second look at that particular aspect of your job. Why are you doing it? Because your predecessor did it? Because things in the organization have always been done this way? Did an influential member of the Board inaugurate the procedure... and is this board member pretty sticky about suggestions for change? Hopefully, this process will result in redefining, modifying, and especially eliminating many activities done previously without questioning. Then, when your own objectives and job requirements have been trimmed to coincide precisely with the organization objectives, concentrate your efforts on the essentials. Ray Josephs refers to this as the "instinct for the jugular."3 No characteristic better describes the critical activity of the successful Christian executive than that executive's conscious application of effort to the strategic requirements of the job.
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PLAN YOUR WORK
It has been said that time is on the manager's side the moment it's organized. While the time an executive should spend planning ahead may vary depending on a number of factors, the consensus of consultant opinion is that almost no executives spend enough time on this critical area. The higher up the executive ladder one goes, the smaller is the proportion of time which should be spent on present problems and the greater is the proportion which ought to be spent on future considerations.
LONG-RANGE PLANNING
In developing the planning function, logic favors starting long-range. Until you know where you want to be at the journey's end, it is difficult to plot the course on a daily or weekly basis. Just as long-range objectives are the most important of all objectives, so with planning. While some industries plan up to twenty years ahead, consensus holds that planning for five years ahead is practical for most endeavors.
A realistic approach to developing plans five years ahead is to request from each department or division their five-year expectations of accomplishment. The composite of these divisional goals, discussed and modified as they certainly should be, will provide the basic structure for your long-range plan. General experience has shown that goals set by managers or supervisors for themselves tend to be too high. There appears to be a tendency to want to set the objectives or goals at the highest possible level. Managers and executives face the problem of applying a realistic yardstick to goals which have been set in such a way. That this tendency should almost uniformly result from participative goal-setting is reason enough to practice
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this method. Other benefits, discussed in a later chapter, include the increased tendency to feel highly motivated to accomplish goals which you have had a part in establishing.
INTERMEDIATE-RANGE PLANNING
While planning from one to five years ahead may conveniently be termed long-range, that from one month to one year may be termed intermediate-range planning. Once the long-range plans are set, the question is put: "Where must we be in three months... or six... or nine... in order to achieve the long-range objectives in one year?" Thus, by starting with the longest-range objectives, one can work back to the shortest-range objectives. All intermediate requirements which must be met in each division or department, when grouped together, become the intermediate objectives or plans.
SHORT-RANGE PLANNING
We must also consider those requirements which, in order to achieve the intermediate goals, must be accomplished in one day to one month. Whatever must be accomplished within this short span of time in order to achieve the intermediate objectives become the short-range plans or objectives.
But, you ask, what happens to the longer-range plan when something goes wrong short-range? A good question. It puts the finger on a point often neglected... that of flexibility or adjustability of planning. The Critical Path Method tells planners in space and electronic industries what happens "down the line" when a delay is encountered at any point along the path. As actual progress of your plan is plotted against short-and intermediate-range plans, and the deviations between planned and actual performance
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are visible, these discrepancies should be transferred to the longer-range plans, unless other action is possible to compensate for the loss.
Similarly, every year that passes converts all plans to a minus-one-year basis. Thus the former five-year plan is now the four-year plan, with corrections to accommodate actual performance over the past year. A new five-year plan must be created, based on the best information available at the time.
WHEN TO PLAN
The most successful planners in Christian service seem to find that a few moments of prayerful, relative quiet at the end of a given period (a day... or a week) provide the best opportunity for planning the next period. But how you do this is as important as doing it. Many managers think it a good idea, at the end of the afternoon, to write up a calendar page consisting simply of the items to be accomplished on the next day.
"TO DO" LISTS
These "to do" lists hold a unique place in the annals of management. No complete treatment of managerial effectiveness can ignore the concept of listing and prioritizing the things you have to do.
In developing "to do" lists, managers set their long-range objective first, then intermediate, then short, thereby determining weekly subgoals and making up the daily targets confronting every manager. One of the least obvious benefits of a prioritizing system is the way they help managers avoid indecision — a real time waster. Instead of attending to whatever is on the top of the pile on the desk, the manager can, with a prioritizing system in place, begin
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the day working on the project most worthy of his or her time.
Managers using "to do" lists for the first time report feelings of exhilaration. Before that, slips of paper littered their desks. They would find fragmentary notes tucked in drawers or stuffed in pockets, purses, wallets and briefcases. These ranged from telephone messages to reminders from the secretary about deadlines for head office reports.
But all that clutter was swept away once managers made a habit of listing these reminders in one place, rather than writing indiscriminately on the nearest scrap of paper. It gave them a feeling of being on top of things, at last.
Obviously, having less paper to contend with is a major step toward becoming organized. It takes time to get everything listed in one place, but you gain a sense of control over your work. As each item is taken care of, you cross it off the list. This gives you a feeling of accomplishment. There is no question that "to do" lists improve your performance. You forget fewer things, and you have a clearer picture of what remains to be done. You begin to gain better perspective of your whole workday.
However, it isn't long before some managers realize that maintaining a list of impending tasks is not a total solution to all organizational problems. In fact, for some it introduces a whole set of new questions. Why does a tool that creates euphoria in the first-time use lead to frustration so quickly?
How "To Do" Lists Can Fail
The "to do" lists fails for some when they discover that:
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Their lists are always filling up and they have to transfer them.
They become increasingly conscious of the time spent copying the same items on new lists.
They are maintaining multiple lists. They find they have three or four lists going in different places — on the desk, in the car, at home, or wherever they happen to be when a new series of things to do come to mind. (There is the story of a person who made a list of his lists in order to keep track of them.)
Often the same item can appear on more than one list. This results in the final frustration — when the manager believes he or she has accomplished a task, only to discover that same task on a list where it hasn't been checked off. They then question themselves: Have I completed this task or not?
Other frustrations include lists that fill up so fast that the manager has to start new lists before all the items have been crossed off the old lists. Managers also deal with the problem of memory — wondering what tasks were accomplished and crossed off on the old list that's now discarded.
Some have attempted to overcome the limitations of "to do" lists by maintaining a concurrent diary. This is helpful to some, because it orients the use to dates and time frames. It does mean, however, another set of records to maintain.
Others integrate a "to do" list and diary into a single system. Instead of writing upcoming appointments, meetings, projects, and tasks on a separate list, they enter them in a calendar on the day they intend to accomplish the task.
Notebooks and other tools are available that integrate the diary and "to do" list concept. These tools make it
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easier to refer back to tasks already accomplished, keep the "transferring" of lists to a minimum, and often force the manager to focus the jobs and assign them to the appropriate people.4
REFERENCES:
1. Wortman, Max S., Jr., and JoAnn Sperling, Defining the Manager's Job, 2nd Edition: The A.M.A. Manual of Position Descriptions, American Management Association, New York, 1975.
2. Oncken, William, Managing a Manager's Time, a film, American Management Association, New York, 1961.
3. Josephs, Ray, "Control Your Personal Time Better to Get More Done," American Business, February, 1960.
4. Time Tactics is one such planning guide designed by Alex Mackenzie after years of research. Information on this planning tool is available from Alec Mackenzie and Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 130, 88 Salem Street, Greenwich, NY 12834.
