Day: October 26, 2021

Want to succeed? Hire the right people

A successful employer needs more than a clever product. It needs a market that wants it. And it needs employees that know how to make it. So, in hiring, employers often fall back on stereotypes: energetic, enthusiastic people, or those who show initiative, or those who seem logical, or those who seem creative. Unfortunately, these stereotypes often end up selecting for the wrong things. If you hire enthusiastic people, you will end up with too many. If you hire logical people, you will end up with those who can't communicate, or those who can't solve real problems, or those who can't pay the rent. But if you hire initiative, or creativity, or communication, these will be skills that set you apart from the competition. That is how hiring should work. But in practice, it usually doesn't. The conventional way to get hired is to have qualifications. Qualifications are partly what you need to do the job and partly what the employer thinks you need. But employers often express qualifications in the wrong way. The want a competence, but they mean a competence that they have already: competence in systems they have spent years understanding. They want a competence, but they mean a competence they want you to have. Employers want people who are smart or smart-looking or nice or likeable or hard-working. But these are skills, not qualifications. Skills are things you can teach. Qualifications are things you can't teach. To hire well you have to think like an employer. You have to think about what the employer really wants, not what the employer thinks is important. You have to think about what skills the employer wants, not the skills you think will help. You may need tools and that is where employee project management software comes in. Lucky for you, Finclock team has developed cool software for you and you may try it for free.

Simplify Project Management and focus on results

When I see the words "project management" on a job post, I know two things: the job is boring and the person hiring it has no idea what they are doing. The job has two main tasks: 1. Figure out what needs doing. 2. Get the other people who need to be doing it to do it.

The trouble with the first is that most organizations have no way of figuring out what needs doing. They are, in effect, run by giant collections of people who don't know what they're doing. In any organization, the people who run things (the executives) have information the other people don't have. So they try to figure out what they need to know, and they try to give it to them. But they can't. The trouble with the second is that, even if you could get the people who need to be doing something to do it, they might not do it. Or they might not do it in the way that you wanted them to. Or they might do it partially, leaving some problem unsolved. Or they might do it out of order. Or they might do it in a way that makes no sense. Or they might not do it at all.

If you try to have somebody figure out what needs doing, and somebody else figure out who needs to be doing it, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, things will go wrong. But if you try to have somebody figure out what needs doing, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, and then somebody else figure out who needs to be doing it, and then somebody else figure out how to get them to do it, things will go wrong. No matter how many people you have, you can't avoid risk. The trouble with the first task (figuring out what needs doing) is that, even if you could figure out what needs doing, you might not know which of your needs are important. You might have thousands of needs, but you don't know which ones are most important. Using online project management software would help you focus on the right things in your project and avoid excessive paperwork. So, just use the right software and focus on results.

Employees leave companies all the time. And when they do, they bring all that expertise and knowledge with them. But that knowledge doesn't stay with the employee. It stays with the company. So if a company wants to take advantage of its knowledge, it has to collect it somehow. And companies do collect knowledge. They are hiring smart people, and they are giving them lots of tools, so they can do lots of different things. And the company keeps careful records of what they are doing. But all that data has to be organized to be useful. using employee project management software ensures business continuity and eliminates turnover challenge. Notably, a software company makes software for collecting, organizing, and using the data. That way, a company can keep track of all the knowledge and ideas its employees have. And it can use it, too. Some companies do manage their knowledge in-house. But the complexity of gathering and managing that knowledge has often been underestimated. Here are some things a company has to do well: 1. It must have people to collect, organize, and use the knowledge. 2. It must teach people how to use the knowledge. 3. It must design the knowledge so it can be used in ways that are useful. 4. It must have ways of collecting knowledge from outside, such as through Web sites. 5. It must keep track of what knowledge already exists. 6. It must keep track of what knowledge is becoming obsolete. 7. It must keep track of what knowledge should be improved. 8. It must keep track of what knowledge is being misused. 9. It must keep track of what knowledge needs to be shared. 10. It must keep track of what knowledge needs to be kept private. 11. It must deal with the business implications of all this knowledge.

Plan for the future using employee project management software

The future is unpredictable, and it is even less predictable if you don't know what you are trying to do. You can't predict the future if you don't know what actions you want the system to take. Most systems are collections of routines that respond to their environment, and these routines change and evolve. And they are not designed. They are evolved. As a result, the future is unpredictable. Moreover, we don't know what we are trying to do. Often, we are not even sure we understand what it is we are trying to do. No one knows what the Tesla Roadster is for. Nobody knows for sure what the Tesla Roadster is for, and to the best of our knowledge Tesla doesn't think they know either. A system that is not designed is often brittle. The routines change, and they don't fit together as nicely, and the system breaks. A brittle system is very difficult to maintain. Often, we know what we want the system to do, but we don't know how to do it, because we don't know what we want it to do. And often, we don't know why, either. The future is uncertain, and we don't know what we are doing. The best that we can hope for is that we are doing what we think we should be doing. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are sitting in your office, and someone walks up to you and says, "I want to build you a Tesla Roadster." How would you respond? To you, the Tesla Roadster is an object, a thing, something you can touch. You can't imagine what you want it to do. And even if you could, you couldn't imagine how you might do it. This thought experiment illustrates that to build your own Tesla Roadster, you first have to know how you want it to be able to drive itself. And to do that, you have to know what driving itself means. How do you move a car without a driver? The best way is to use PMS tools that will benefit your business now and in future.

Employees are the most important asset of an organization. They are the ones who bring in the customers. They are the ones who deliver the profits. They are the ones who do most of the work. Yet employee management is an area that most organizations waste enormous amounts of time and money on. Surveys show that managers spend an average of an hour every day checking emails, checking voicemail, and responding to other messages. They spend another hour reading mail. The average person in a typical organization spends 40 hours a week just on email.

The average person in a typical organization spends four hours a week on actual work. Most people think they should spend even less time. The surveys don't say how much time managers feel they should spend; the only thing they are asked is how much time they spend. But managers also know that if they spend too little time, they are likely to be criticized for not spending enough time. So they try to spend just enough time to avoid criticism.

A manager's job is to keep the organization running smoothly. She should spend, on average, 14 hours a week on work. That leaves 10 hours a week for everything else: reading mail, checking emails, responding to voicemail, and so on. These administrative tasks consume 20 hours a week. That leaves 4 hours a week for everything else: meetings, performance reviews, training, and so on.

The manager has 4 hours of work time, 20 hours of administrative tasks, and 4 hours of meetings. 4X20=80 hours. 4X4=16 hours. That leaves 40 hours. 40 hours divided by 7 days=20 hours. So the manager should work 20 hours a week. However, these hours are split among multiple tasks and projects, which may not be beneficial to a business. Lucky for you, employee project management software is available to ease the work and improve productivity. Think of the software as an assistant to take care of most of your work and leave you with enough time to do the most critical tasks.

Manage employees online

Whenever someone new starts a job, he or she is assigned to a project. The project leader assigns tasks to the team members, and then monitors their progress. The team shares information, and the leader makes decisions about how to coordinate their efforts. It won't work if everyone is doing the same thing. The person who does most of the work has to know what's going on. The person who takes most of the decisions has to know what's actually going on. And so on.

This division of work between project manager and team is called "functional decomposition," and it is standard practice for software development. It's also standard practice in construction. If the team doesn't know what's going on, they can't coordinate their efforts. If someone doesn't know what to do, they can't do it. But you can have a different system. Instead of starting with the project manager, start with the team. Do the functional decomposition on the team members.

In the software world, we call it "distributed functional decomposition". Instead of one person calling the shots for the whole project team, each person is in charge of a small part of it. In construction, we call it "distributed management". Instead of assigning tasks or making decisions for the entire team, each person is in charge of a small part of it. Distributed management is risky. Distributed functional decomposition is safer. You can't build anything useful if you don't do some of the work yourself. But distributed management is more complex than functional decomposition.

Distributed management is hard to standardize. Do your team members need to know what's going on? Do they need to make decisions? Can they agree on what "what's going on" means? Or on what's actually going on? Distributed management is risky. Distributed functional decomposition is safer. You can't build anything useful if you don't do some of the work yourself. But distributed management work best when combined with online project management software for business, which automates most of the tasks and ensures team collaboration.

How to use employee project management software for business

Project management software has divided reputation. It's not because it's complicated, it's because people use it badly. People hate projects. They think projects take too much time, are too expensive, and generally suck. They hate them so much that 65% of people on projects quit within five years.

But project managers hate projects too. They hate them for the same reasons, but for a different reason. They hate projects so much because they've seen other people use projects badly. Project managers hate projects because they've seen teams waste months on pointless meetings, arguing about everything. They hate projects because they've seen people work long hours without getting anything done. They hate projects because they've seen people spend weeks building the wrong thing, only to find out later that what they needed was completely different.

Projects work okay if everyone on the team is on the same page. But most teams aren't. Most people think in one way, and they think in one way only. They don't think in the way that engineers do, or in the way that business analysts do, or in the way that managers do. A project can't help teams work the way they need. That's why most projects fail. But projects really can work if they let the people involved manage themselves. A project should create space for people to try out new things. It should help teams discover what they need to know.

But a project can't do that unless the team figures out what it needs to know and works together to find it. We can make it easier. We can start by helping teams learn what they need to know. That's the job of a project. Using employee project management software saves you the time and effort.

Employees don't think in terms of projects. They think in terms of jobs, and jobs are about solving problems. They don't think of problems as projects. Projects are a method of organizing work. They work especially well for large projects, but you don't have to do them that way. You can use a project to organize any job, and that is sufficient. Projects can make you more effective. But they don't make you more effective at solving problems.

The essence of a project is that its parts don't have to do what they are supposed to do. A project's job is to bring parts together so they will know what to do. Projects can work well, but you have to know what you are doing. As you get bigger, projects become harder to manage, and more important, because they also cause a lot of people to get fired. A project's job is to make your job easier, but you don't get that benefit unless you understand how the project works.

What is the best way to use employee project management software in a business?

There is no good answer. Management by committee is a really bad idea. But you also have to be able to manage by initiative, and that can't happen if it's driven by a committee.

I think the answer is a mixture. You have to make decisions, but you need to be aware of the possible consequences. If you are the person who makes the decision, you obviously need to be aware; but if the decision is in the hands of a committee, you also need to be informed. For example, if you are designing a new computer chip, you want the chips to be small, and you want them to run fast. So you want smaller transistors and a faster clock speed. But you also want the chip to be reliable. So you want bigger transistors and a longer time between failures.

But you can't have both. Sometimes you can't make both. If you make too many of them, you can't fit them all on the chip. If you make them too small, they get burned up. And if they run too fast, you burn up the ones you make. It's the same with missionaries. Sometimes you can't make both. Sometimes people won't listen. You need to know which you can make. And you need to know what the consequences are of making them. You need to weigh the benefit against the cost. You can't necessarily predict what the consequences will be, but you do need to be aware that they are possible. You can't be paralyzed by not knowing. You need to know that things can go wrong, but you also have to be aware that things can go right. And you need to know which they are.

You need to decide. But you also need to be informed.

Employee project management software for SMBs

Employees, by their very nature, are unpredictable. Their moods change unpredictably. Their priorities change unpredictably. Their needs change unpredictably. Their inputs change unpredictably. Their outputs change unpredictably.

So, when managers ask them to do predictable things, like tracking hours or meeting deadlines, they are asking for trouble. They have no way of knowing whether their employees will follow their directions.

But managers can't predict everything. So they have to rely on their employees to do the unpredictable things, like keeping track of time. If employees are doing their own time tracking, they have no reason to lie. That's where employee project management software for business comes in. The software tracks employees' time automatically. It reports the hours automatically. It gives them no reason not to tell the truth.

Why doesn't the software report the hours automatically? Because managers too often have no way of knowing whether their employees are doing the unpredictable things they are supposed to. Managers are given the time tracking data by the software, but they have no way of checking the data. The software doesn't know whether employees have tracked time, or whether they have accurately reported the hours they spent on work.

So managers have to ask employees, "Did you track time today?" And the employee has to lie. Managers can lie too. "What time did you start?" "I don't remember." "What time did you end?" "I don't remember." Managers can invent the time. Employees can't. Managers can estimate the time, knowing that if they guess wrong, they will lose face. Employees can't lie, because

Why Use Employee project management software in your business?

You can't motivate people; you can only pay them.

But pay them more than their competitors, and you can do that. Creative people want to go to places where they will be paid for their creativity. And in that kind of market, employees have a huge incentive to be creative. But markets for creative work are not easy to design. The better you are at something, the harder it is to get noticed; the more talented you are, the harder it is to get hired.

So any market in which employees can make money has to help employees get noticed. And that's where competition comes in. In normal markets, competition is usually bad. In normal markets, a company's only advantage is itself. But in a creative market, the employees' only advantage is the company. And a company's only advantage is employees. By helping employees get noticed, competition helps a company get noticed, and the cycle continues.

Of course, every market has a marginal cost. The more of one kind of work you do, the less you can profitably do of another kind of work. But in creative markets, where a lot of people are doing the same kind of work, the marginal cost of one kind of work is greater than the cost of another.

That is what makes markets for creative work different from normal markets. In normal markets, everyone has a comparative advantage. And in creative markets, everyone has a comparative disadvantage. But what's in that advantage? The advantage is creativity. And in creative work, creativity is your only chance. So, in markets for creative work, you can't motivate people; you can only pay them. But pay them more than their competitors. Using online project management software will simplify your work and improve productivity of your employees. Luckily, there are online software for you that you can try for free.