Tag: Leadership

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Written by Laivy Brown on March 15, 2023. Posted in Articles.

10 reasons I can think of that a company might try to avoid giving a raise/promotion:

Budget constraints: The company may not have the financial resources to offer a raise.
Performance issues: The employee’s performance may not meet the company’s standards.
Market rates: The company may believe that the employee’s compensation is already in line with market rates.
Company policy: The company may have strict policies about when raises can be given or how much they can be.
Lack of value perceived: The company may not see the value in offering a raise to the employee.
Poor communication: The company may not communicate clearly with employees about what it takes to earn a raise or how the process works.
Fear of setting a precedent: The company may worry that giving a raise to one employee will set a precedent for others to ask for raises as well.
Limited growth opportunities: The company may not have a clear path for career growth or upward mobility, making it harder to offer raises as an incentive.
Profitability concerns: The company may be focused on maintaining profits and may be hesitant to allocate resources towards raises, even if employees deserve them.
Internal politics: A jealous manager or supervisor may feel threatened by an employee’s potential and may try to block a promotion to avoid losing their own position.

Did you know that 75% of employees who leave their jobs cite lack of recognition as the reason? Or that a striking 82% of employees feel that they don’t get recognized for their work?! To be honest it doesn’t really surprise me… Effective leaders play a vital role in the success of any organization. They understand the importance of creating a positive work environment, fostering employee engagement, and promoting professional growth. By investing in their employees’ development, they show that they value their contributions and are committed to their continued success. Promotions and raises based on performance and capabilities are tangible ways for leaders to recognize and show their employees that they are valued.

The problem is many leaders think they are recognizing their employees through providing professional development opportunities and sending “thank you” emails. Professional development and recognition are not interchangeable. While training programs and skill development opportunities are important, promotions and raises are essential for employees to feel that their hard work and loyalty are recognized and appreciated. Of course, it is not the only thing that matters, but it seems to be underappreciated in many cases! If employees can see a clear path to advancement and recognize that their hard work and dedication will be rewarded, it can create a sense of purpose and commitment to the organization.

I once had a manager who told me that in my current position I was performing at the highest levels and that based on the projects I had taken on recently, it was justified to get a promotion. However, she went on to explain, she didn’t feel it was appropriate or reasonable to ask for a promotion within the first 1.5-2 years. While I respected her perspective, I also felt frustrated that my hard work and dedication weren’t recognized beyond verbal praise. When I asked for the promotion, she shouldn’t have stood on principle but instead she could’ve used it as an opportunity to build a loyal employee. If she had beat me to the punch, no doubt that would be even better.

Promotions and raises based on performance and capabilities are vital for employees to feel that their hard work and loyalty are recognized and appreciated. A promotion or raise is not just a financial reward; it is a visible sign that the company is investing in its employees and sees potential in their continued growth. This recognition motivates employees to work even harder and foster a culture of excellence and not to be understated, loyalty.

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The traditional mindset of basing promotions and raises on tenure is no longer valid in today’s fast-paced work environment. Employees today have access to a vast amount of information about comparable jobs and salaries. They can easily research and compare their current pay and benefits to what they could receive elsewhere. This comparison can either be a disadvantage or an advantage for an organization. If an employee sees that they could be making more money and receiving better benefits elsewhere, it may lead to disengagement, and eventually, the employee leaving the company. On the other hand, if an employee sees that they are being compensated fairly and could have worse benefits elsewhere, it can increase their engagement and loyalty to the organization.

Professional development and promotions go hand in hand. It’s crucial to provide employees with skill development opportunities, but it’s equally important to promote and encourage growth and hard work. Employees who excel in their current roles should be given the opportunity to advance their careers. Doing so fosters a sense of loyalty and commitment to the organization and ensures that employees remain engaged and invested in their work.

Despite the best intentions of many leaders, there can be barriers to implementing recognition and reward programs. Some leaders may lack the authority to make these decisions, while others may lack the resources to provide meaningful recognition and rewards. While some leaders may feel powerless in their positions to effect change, it’s important to fight for recognition and professional development opportunities for employees. Every effort counts and can contribute to a more positive and productive workplace culture.

How many of those 10 reasons a company might try to avoid giving a raise still seem reasonable?

In the end, we are all leaders in some way or another. We all have the power to influence those around us and create positive change. Whether we work alongside someone who deserves recognition, or we have the ability to make changes in our management philosophy, we should all strive to invest in the people around us. If you’ve felt a sense of agreement or even frustration while reading this, then you already have the permission to take action. Start small by advocating for a colleague or an employee’s promotion or raise, let’s see where it takes you…

Project WFH – Is It Time To Re-scope For Phase 2?

Written by Rory McNamara on March 8, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Around about March 2020, the world of work changed for most of us. The swarms of bleary-eyed commuters with their heads bowed in servitude to their phones, books and newspapers, fed by their choice of music or podcast, disappeared off the face of the earth.

All that was left in the wake was a handful of critical works who, bound by their front-line worker status, trudged wearily to their local train stations and bus stops to find the usual fight-to-the-death for a seat battle no longer existed; those accustomed to a perpetual stop and start of the morning drive were now enjoying a traffic-free cruise to work akin to cruising down Route 66 with nothing but the open road in front of them. It didn’t last. As I write this in February 2023, those swarms are recovering and the stop & start car journeys are back, albeit slightly diluted. The commuter beast is no longer in-slumber. Whilst it will likely never be what it was, for many the stresses of commuting have returned.

However, for most of us we are now working from home far more than we ever did. For some of us it’s a full time and permanent change. For others it is a “hybrid” combination of some days at home and some days in the office. No matter what your working pattern is, a lot more has changed since March 2020 other than where we park our backsides each day.

Working from home undoubtedly brings some obvious benefits. Reduced or completely eradicated commuting time and expense, more flexibility for family commitments, impromptu visits to the gym or walks along the river; the benefits are there for us all as individuals to qualify. Yet as Newton taught us, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; specifically in this case, with benefit comes disbenefit. Things have changed and we haven’t really considered just how negatively the new world of remote working is impacting our productivity and our health. How so? Allow me to explain!

“I’m going to talk to you and I’m going to do it now!”
Take yourself back to the days of being in an office. You’re in a meeting with a client and they’re telling you that your current project is going badly. They’re unhappy, things haven’t gone to plan and you’re under pressure to get things back on track quickly. This is your moment; this is your time to calmly and clearly discuss your remediation plan. Just as you’re midway through responding, a colleague bursts into the office and whispers in your ear “Hi Rory” and then leaves the room. “Okay… that’s a bit strange” you think to yourself but you try to ignore it and carry on. Six seconds later, they’re back in the room whispering again “Do you know what the plan is for Project X next Thursday?”. Once again they turn and leave the room. Eight seconds later, they’re back. Like a mosquito that just won’t quit, they’re buzzing in your ear; “I only ask because I need Mohammed to work on my project on Thursday, too”.

However, this time someone else has walked in with them and whispering in your other ear telling you about a critical issue on another project that needs your immediate attention. This is now getting tricky. You’re trying to speak to your client but your colleagues keep barging into your meeting and talking at you. Now the first person who interrupted you is getting frustrated because you haven’t responded so they’re back again but this time they stand directly in your line of sight and put both hands up, tilt their heads and apply a facial expression that implies “So? Your answer, please”. All of this is going on at the same time as you trying to focus your attention on your customer in the meeting.

This scenario is laughable and would simply never have happened. Never. Yet, it does now and it happens every single day of our working lives. Our increased reliance on software such as Microsoft Teams to communicate has hijacked and destroyed our ability to focus; it has removed all courtesy from our interactions with one another. We have become selfish, inconsiderate and entirely impatient. Teams even tells our colleagues when we’re on a call or in a meeting but somehow it has become acceptable to be one of those people barging in and interrupting the meeting. Allow me to be bold; this has to stop. We must all regain our consideration and our ability to quantify the criticality of our question. Are lives at risk? Is this so urgent that it requires interrupting a meeting? Or, in reality, can you pop someone an email instead?

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Lunch is for wimps

Ill-fitting suit, red braces, slick-back hair and a love/hate relationship with that Wall Street character. He was ruthless, he spoke proudly of greed being good and despite his obvious character flaws, I have always had a shameful appreciation for that character. However, my name is not Gordon and I actually quite enjoy a lunch break! So, is lunch really for wimps or should we make time for a break?

I know I am not alone. I know my diary is not the only diary that has back-to-back meetings for seven, eight or nine hours a day. But why? My mind drifts back to a fabled time when I felt like the busiest person on earth but I still had time to eat, drink and think. Alas, not anymore. There have been countless days when I have not managed to eat until 4pm, but again, I know I’m not the only one. So, why? To me, it is quite obvious – those five minute, impromptu conversations with colleagues in the office have now become 30 minute scheduled meetings that often take a week to actually materialize and when they do, I’m almost always late. For someone who has a genuine issue with tardiness, this is hard to admit. We have become robotic in our methods of communicating and now even the shortest of discussions appear to warrant a meeting, yet in the old days, they did not and that is because we often leant back in our chair, asked a workmate if they have five minutes, et voila! Conversation organized and completed. I miss those days.

Fine, things have changed but what has changed so drastically that so many of us spend the majority, or all of (worse still, more than all of!) our working days in online meetings? Meetings are now scheduled between 12pm-2pm and frequently done so because “that’s the only time people are available”. Yet, we should not be available because we should be resting, eating, exercising or doing anything but working. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to sacrifice a lunch break but I just don’t want to do it (not do I expect my team) to do it on an almost daily basis.

Final Thoughts
If you have reached this point, you may well be thinking that I am anti-WFH. Well, I’m not. For the past 20 years of my career, I have enjoyed a productive combination of working in the office and from home… the only difference is that we did it and did not give it a name. It just worked. It can still work. However, we need to become more considerate of one another. When someone is in a meeting, they are in a meeting so do the courteous thing and leave them in peace. Think back to the old days of three years ago – it would take something incredibly critical to interrupt someone in a meeting. You didn’t do it then, so do not do it now; it is selfish and inconsiderate.

Perhaps we can plan ahead better – as Project Management professionals, we should be the ones setting the standard for pre-empting when we need to speak to people. Of course, even the most committed planners will still need to speak to someone at short notice but that has always been the case and we can all live with that. We should ask ourselves whether we really need all seven of those people in our meeting. Similarly, we should not be afraid to question the meeting organizer whether we really need to attend. Speaking frankly, I am not professing to have all of the answers but I want us all to start being more considerate.

Oh, and for the record, I am guilty of committing all of the sins I have outlined in this article. In fact, I am just as selfish as the next person when I want my answers! We are never going to go back to the old days and that’s just something I have to accept. This has been thrust upon us with no warning and represents a genuine seismic shift in how we work. Take a moment and consider it; we really have evolved our ways of working at an unprecedented pace so it’s to be expected that many of us are struggling to make it work. So, I end as I started, I believe it is time to re-scope phase 2 of Project WFH. Let’s be creative and considerate because we really are all in this together.

How to Make Every Project a Sustainable Project

Written by Gary Scharf on March 1, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Every organization brings a variety of motivations to its sustainability initiatives. Some aim to satisfy regulations, some install them as part of company culture, and some derive brand value from them.

In most cases, it’s a mix. In many cases, there’s a direct tie between sustainability and the for-profit projects a company pursues. Building electric vehicles or developing renewable energy technologies are examples of this intersection of interests.

But now that sustainability and ESG performance are part of the management landscape, it has something in common with everything else: It feels the effects of the macro environment. With fears of a recession on the horizon, a recent KPMG survey found 59% of CEOs plan to put their ESG efforts on pause or under review in the coming six months.

That exposes a potential contradiction. If sustainability is part of the business now, it’s no longer an “extra” that companies should trim early in a recession-proofing effort. So how can they bridge the gap between intention and execution in today’s business climate?

Whatever an organization is in business to do, there is an untapped opportunity to approach all projects with greener ways of working by embedding sustainability into the heart of project delivery. Every project has the potential to be a sustainable project. Project managers, naturally focused on execution, are the ideal partners to make sustainability strategies a reality, while delivering tangible organizational benefits, such as reducing resource consumption and expanding stakeholder understanding and engagement of sustainability.

Here’s how to shift your mindset and approach any project sustainably:

KNOW YOUR STAKEHOLDERS—ALL OF THEM

Every skilled project manager understands the importance of stakeholder management: knowing who is impacted by a project and how it affects them. The most obvious, and longstanding, definition of stakeholders starts with the people a project is “for,” such as customers, investors, and your leadership team.

But a comprehensive view of sustainability execution requires you to broaden this definition. There are the employees who work alongside you and the contractors, partners and suppliers who do their part to move your work ahead. Your project likely has ripple effects throughout an entire community, or several—residents, small business owners, local governments, and others.

It’s clear that important environmental, social and governance goals and frameworks have birthed a new ecosystem of stakeholders. According to Green Project Management’s recent “Insights Into Sustainable Project Management” report, 97% of executives say that projects and project management are integral to sustainable development. As sustainability broadens our perception of responsibility, everyone who leads projects must be aware of all stakeholders and the impact each project has on them.

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SET SUSTAINABILITY GOALS

One lens that can help us understand this new challenge comes from the United Nations, which created 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The list includes concerns such as “no poverty,” “zero hunger,” “responsible consumption and production” and “peace, justice and strong institutions.” What’s more important is that these aren’t separate items. They affect and support one another.

Not every SDG will be relevant to every project. For example, your project may have nothing to do with clean water or quality education. But at least one SDG relates to every project, and the link isn’t always obvious.

Suppose you’re developing software. SDG No. 8 likely comes into play: decent work and economic growth. No. 10, reduced inequality, is probably relevant too. What are the labor conditions, including for outsourced workers? Do your vendors and suppliers pay fair wages and provide equal opportunity in hiring?

Through this lens, it’s easy to see how ESG factors and the stakeholders they touch can multiply quickly. A broader stakeholder view, informed by sustainability goals and guided by the United Nations’ SDGs, can help a project deliver more positive benefits to more people.

THINK LONG-TERM

Sustainability expands the project management view along another dimension: time. Your work plan may have an end date, but the effects carry on. Especially if you work to create something tangible, such as a building or a vehicle, your project can impact the world over the years or decades until that work product is discarded or dismantled.

How long will the building last, for example? How will it serve and shape its community while it’s there? What economic effects will it have? And when its day is done, what will be the environmental impact of deconstructing it and accounting for its materials? According to Green Project Management’s report, 38% of project managers say that extreme weather events such as flash floods, wildfires and sea-level rise impact their project work, up from 4% in 2019.

Whether you operate on long timeframes like that or produce end products that come and go within days, the scale changes but the questions remain. Anyone who leads projects should probe to find and answer as many of them as possible.

A REWARDING MINDSET

There is a strong link between sustainability and innovation: to see change happen on the ground, and quickly. The world needs new ideas and out-of-the-box thinking. Approaching projects through the lens of sustainability adds a new way of thinking and opens the way for innovative approaches to sustainability execution. And the payoffs are for society and the planet.

Doing work that generates more value can’t help but be a long-term benefit to you and your organization. The good news is that the tools you need to drive sustainability are ones you already have in your project management toolkit.

So, take a step back—and take a look around. You got into this line of work to make things happen. Your opportunity to do that just got bigger.

Collaborative Relationships Between Project and Functional Managers

Written by George Pitagorsky on February 28, 2023. Posted in Articles.

This article addresses the project manager/functional manager relationship with an emphasis on collaboration, reporting, expectations, and empathy.

One of the nice things about PM is that the principles don’t change much over the years. One of the disheartening things is that the problems also don’t seem to change. Collaboration remains a key to the wellbeing of organizations, particularly, the collaboration between project managers (PMs) and functional managers (FMs). It is still a challenge that hinges on clarity, communication, understanding, and empathy.

Over the years there has been continued interest in a paper I wrote 25 years ago, The Project Manager/Functional Manager Partnership[1]. The key point then as now is that there is a need for clarity regarding roles and responsibilities, priorities, and communication protocols regarding commitments and status. Clarity leads to understanding, hopefully, resulting in empathy – a sense of feeling for others.

Roles and Responsibilities

The role of the project manager focuses on the accomplishment of project objectives – getting the work done on time, within budget to deliver a quality outcome.

The role of the functional manager, a manager of a department usually associated with a specific discipline, is to ensure that properly trained and well motivated resources (people) are available for project work. Some FMs lead departments that perform the work as a service, while others provide resources to be directly managed by project managers.

For example, the manager of a project management office is responsible for making sure that project managers are available for assignment to projects. Those PMs report directly to a program manager or steering committee with regard to project related activities.

The manager of business analysts provides her department’s people for work on projects and programs. The BAs typically report to the project manager. A Quality Assurance manager provides testing services as well as quality management standards and procedures, and oversite in the form of audits. Testers typically report directly to the FM and not the PM. Other functional managers provide engineers, procurement experts, attorneys, and more.

The manager of a software development department may be responsible for providing programmers to work on projects and ongoing system maintenance activities. Or they may be responsible for managing the programmers for the delivery of software for projects.

Reporting To

Regardless of whether the task is to provide people or services, functional managers “report to” project managers in the same way that a contractor reports to a client.

The idea of what “reporting to” means is a point of conflict between FMs and PMs. Commonly the term means that there is a hierarchy in which the person reporting to the other is under the authority of the other.

In project work, the FM does not report to the PM in that way. The PM does not have the authority to tell the FM what to do and how to do it. But the FM does have the responsibility to tell the PM what is going on, to provide information regarding plans, estimates, projections, status, and changes to resource availability.

Part of the needed clarity is about how and when this reporting will be done. Perhaps the most critical part of this reporting process is notification of changes to commitments.

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In healthy organizations FMs take part in project planning. They provide estimates and resource availability information. Where there is a well-functioning project portfolio management process, there is clarity about which projects are to be initiated when. This clarity comes from the knowledge of functional resource availability as well as the priority of each project.

So the FM not only reports to the PMs that he/she/they serves but also to the portfolio manager. Whenever there is a change to resource availability it will impact project performance.

PM as Client

I find the analogy between FM and contractor to be helpful. A contractor knows that satisfying the client is the most important part of the job. If the client is not satisfied the contractor will suffer. Rational and empathetic clients will understand the contractor’s situation, protect themselves by being realistic in their expectations, and creating agreements that include provisions for both penalties and flexibility.

The FMs that treat the PMs their departments serve as clients deserving quality service will add greater value to their organizations and will better serve their own staff.

The FM’s Situation

The FM and the savvy PM know that there are multiple “clients” vying for the same resources. The FM needs to satisfy them all. Just like some clients, some PMs try to ignore this reality, making themselves believe that they are the only one.

Just like some contracting firms, some FMs overpromise, often caving into unrealistic demands and putting themselves and their resources under unnecessary pressure.

This leads to unreasonable irrational expectations. And irrational expectations lead to conflict, overwork, stress, burnout and missed deadlines.

That is where understanding and empathy comes into play. Effective collaboration is based on the understanding of the other’s situation leading to the ability to maintain rational expectations. This doesn’t mean to be “soft” and allow oneself to be taken advantage of. It means being reasonable and rational.

The FM needs to understand the PMs situation. If the project is behind schedule because functional resources or services are not delivered as expected, the PM will be accountable.

The PM needs to understand the FMs situation. The FM is not in control if resources are out sick or leave, or if project priorities change causing resource shifts. The best the FM can do is to report the situation as it is to the PM and portfolio manager, and be open to having project variances clearly pinned to functional performance variances.

With reasonable and rational expectations set at planning time and made part of the overall organization’s project management and portfolio management process, there will be less conflict, less unnecessary strain on functional resources, and a greater probability of project success.

If there is chronic conflict between PMs and FMs an intervention that seeks the causes and works to resolve them.

[1] Pitagorsky, G. (1998). The project manager/functional manager partnership. Project Management Journal, 29(4), 7–16 (https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/collaborative-relationship-roles-well-being-organization-2062)

Innovation on the Clock: How Taking Time to Work Smarter Can Drive Success

Written by Laivy Brown on February 22, 2023. Posted in Articles.

I want to talk about an oldy but goody, the importance of innovation, aka work smart not hard, or maybe both. In our current environment, the importance of innovation is even more pronounced as many industries are experiencing layoffs and downsizing. With limited resources and increased workloads, professionals who remain in their positions or with the company in any fashion are often expected to take on additional responsibilities and tasks that were previously handled by those who were laid off. This leaves them with less time to focus on their own work, let alone innovate and think creatively.

Yet, it is precisely in times like this that innovation is crucial for organizations to stay competitive and succeed in the long run. While it may be tempting to simply focus on completing immediate tasks and meeting short-term goals, taking the time to innovate and find more efficient ways of working can ultimately help organizations thrive in the face of uncertainty and change.

Professionals who make time to innovate can help themselves as well as their organizations. By developing new skills and expanding their knowledge, they can increase their own value in the job market, which can be especially important during times of economic uncertainty. Additionally, by finding ways to work smarter and not harder, they can prevent burnout and maintain their motivation and engagement in their work. Engagement is no small task, especially at times like these.

So, while innovation has always been important, it is even more critical in the current environment of layoffs and downsizing. Although it may seem difficult to find the time to innovate amidst increased workloads, it is precisely in times of uncertainty and change that innovation is needed the most.

Innovation is key to growth and success in any organization. It allows for the development of new ideas, products, and services, and helps companies stay competitive in an ever-changing market. However, finding time to innovate can be a challenge for professionals across various industries, from secretaries to project managers to developers. In this article, I want to explore the importance of professionals having time in their days and weeks to innovate, and how it can benefit both individuals and their organizations.

Preventing Burnout and Improving Efficiency

One of the primary benefits of allowing time for innovation is preventing burnout. Professionals who are constantly bogged down with routine tasks can quickly become fatigued and lose motivation. Having time to step back and work on something new and exciting will undoubtedly help prevent burnout and keep employees engaged in their work. When professionals are given the opportunity to think outside the box and come up with new solutions, they can find more efficient ways of working. This can ultimately save time and resources for the organization and improve overall productivity…It’s not that we are lazy or unmotivated to work hard, it’s that we want to do the best that we can.

Encouraging Creativity and Forward Thinking

Innovation also encourages creativity and forward thinking. When professionals are given time to innovate, they are encouraged to think creatively and come up with new ideas. This can lead to the development of innovative products or services and can help keep organizations ahead of the competition.

Naturally, encouraging innovation creates a mindset of creativity and forward-thinking throughout the organization. When professionals see that their ideas are valued and that they have the opportunity to make a difference, they will be more motivated to contribute their ideas and work towards new and exciting solutions. When it comes to innovation and finding more efficient ways of working, even small changes can have a significant impact.

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Let’s do a little math and don’t worry its simple: If a daily task that takes 20 people five minutes to complete and with some automation one guy took a few hours to figure out and implement that can be reduced to only four minutes, this would result in a time savings of one minute per person per day. While this may not seem like a lot, when you consider the impact over time, the results can be significant.

If this one-minute time savings is multiplied by the 20 people who perform the task, it results in a total daily time savings of 20 minutes. Over the course of a five-day workweek, this equates to 100 minutes or 1 hour and 40 minutes of time saved. Over the course of a year, assuming a 50-week work year, this time savings amounts to 100 hours.

Again, this may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that this time savings is just from one task performed by 20 people, the impact of finding more efficient ways of working across multiple tasks and teams can be significant. Math again, if 10 different tasks can be optimized in this way across an organization of 100 people, the total time savings per week would be 1,000 minutes or almost 17 hours. Over the course of a year, this amounts to a time savings of 850 hours. Assuming an average salary of $25 per hour, the 850 hours of time saved would equate to a cost savings of $21,250. This is just from finding more efficient ways of working across 10 tasks in an organization of 100 people. Imagine the impact of finding similar efficiencies across multiple teams and departments.

The truth is that the benefits of finding more efficient ways of working go beyond just cost savings. By saving time on mundane or repetitive tasks, professionals can free up time to focus on higher-level work that requires more creativity and critical thinking. This can lead to more innovative ideas, better decision-making, and ultimately a more competitive and successful organization.

Fostering a Culture of Innovation

Allowing time for innovation fosters a culture of innovation within an organization. When professionals are given the opportunity to innovate, they may be more likely to share their ideas with colleagues and collaborate on new projects. This can lead to a more collaborative and creative work environment, where everyone is encouraged to contribute their ideas and work towards a common goal.

Fostering a culture of innovation can help attract top talent to an organization. When professionals see that an organization values innovation and encourages new ideas, they may be more likely to want to work for that organization. This can ultimately help the organization attract the best and brightest talent and stay ahead of the competition.

Examples of Innovation Across Industries

Innovation can take many different forms across various industries. For example, a secretary may be able to innovate by finding more efficient ways to manage scheduling for the boss. A project manager may be able to innovate by finding new ways to track project progress or by implementing new project management software. A developer may be able to innovate by developing new features for a software program or by finding ways to optimize code for improved performance. Healthcare professionals can also be innovative in an office setting by finding ways to streamline administrative tasks, such as appointment scheduling, patient record-keeping, and prescription management. Innovation can also take place on a larger scale, such as the development of new products or services.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while it can be challenging to find the time to be innovative, it’s an essential component of personal and professional growth. Whether you’re a secretary, project manager, custodian, or doctor, taking the time to think creatively and work smarter can help you avoid burnout, stay motivated, and achieve better outcomes.

Ideally, companies will recognize the importance of innovation and provide their employees with the time and resources to pursue new ideas and approaches. However, even if this isn’t the case, it’s up to each of us as individuals to make innovation a priority in our work and personal lives.

So go ahead, take a break from your daily routine, and allow yourself some time to explore new possibilities and ideas. Who knows, you might just come up with the next big thing that revolutionizes your industry, or simply find a more efficient way to do your work. Either way, taking pride in your ability to think creatively and work smarter will bring a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that’s hard to beat. Here’s to innovation, in all its forms!