The Hindu Business Line : Activity does not automatically translate into productivity

CAN you name the diabolical career killer? The answer is not stress, BP and so on, but a five-letter word — `delay'. It shows as procrastination, where you tend to put off things till the last minute, as with exam preparation too. As a result deadlines pass by, and you would be slogging at meaningless tasks.

"A member of your team who is habitually late can cause tremendous harm to other players. It could be in the form of added stress for everyone, financial loss, or even failure of the enterprise," writes Jerry Colangelo in his foreword to Ken Blanchard's new book,

The On-time On-target Manager, published by Harper Collins.

The intro alerts you to the `insidious enemy' that can wreck marriages, fortunes and even lives. Why does this happen? "People often procrastinate because they don't have a clear picture of what's important." Also, they don't understand that delay in action leads to poor decisions and poor performance.

If you carefully watch, you may realise that people who procrastinate lack "a commitment to broader goals, higher ideals, more important tasks, and other people". They may be interested in getting things done, but not committed. To explain the subtle difference, Ken gives an example: "Consider the matter of exercise. Interested people will make all sorts of excuses as to why `today' isn't the right day to work out. `I'm tired, it's raining. I have too much going on in my life right now, missing one day (or week or month) won't hurt.'

In contrast, the committed people don't know about excuses: they only know about results. `This is something I'm going to do for myself. If it's too hot or it's raining, I'll do a speed-walk in a shopping mall.'"

There's Bob in Ken's story, and he's the `last-minute manager', and he meets the CEO, for chief effectiveness officer. (Don't forget that Ken is the chief spiritual officer of his company.) CEO would explain: "People with good hearts sometimes have their heads screwed on wrong." That would show as "faulty thinking about serving customers and working with people." Don't throw them away, because "it's hard to teach people about values; skills should be easier to teach."

So, if you have to "choose between character and skills", choose the first. CEO's job is to identify cases where "good character is blocked in their head and never gets played out in performance".

See if these sentences make sense for you or somebody near you: "People often create meaningless tasks for themselves, and then allow those tasks to move to the top of their priority list. Worse yet, they will let others create meaningless tasks for them." But how does that happen, you wonder.

CEO explains: "A lot of managers believe that activity translates into productivity — and that productivity translates into results. So they create long to-do lists filled with activities. Then they complete all of those activities and, after they do, they believe that they've been productive. When they eventually discover that there are no meaningful results, they are mystified. After all, they've been busy."

Sadly, many who fall a victim to killer diseases, are often victims of `denial' — that is, not going for regular health check, because they didn't prioritise it in their `to do' list.

So, check your desk and do a stock-taking of what you read. Ask yourself if you can skip some of that stuff and save time for something more important. As a result of this exercise, you may even cancel subscriptions to magazines and journals that contribute little to your work's productivity.

Maxim is, `first things first', or `do things in the right order'. Such as: "A builder doesn't put the roof on a house until the walls are up, and the walls can't go up before the foundation is poured.

The foundation can't be poured before the ground is levelled, and the ground can't be levelled until the surveyors have done their work. And the surveyors have to rely on the blueprints for the house to get all of the elevations correct."

Want to postpone reading the book till tomorrow?

ManageMentor@TheHindu.co.in

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