2DaysaMonth

What does "2 Days A Month" get YOU? 🤔

✅ 20 hours a month of 1:1 support scheduled when YOU prefer

✅ Unlimited contact through email & text

✅ An in-depth assessment of YOUR business in the first month

✅ Month-to-month contract with NO long-term commitment

For $6000 a month. That's a fraction of what large consulting firms charge.🤯

🙋‍♀️ Interested? 🙋‍♂️

www.2daysamonth.com

Home - 2DaysAMonth Management consulting that helps you become a better leader with personalized coaching to address immediate work challenges with flexibility.

Guest lecturing is definitely our Founder's passion.
We believe our years of experience with problem-solving, change management, and working with clients makes us a great partner for businesses. But what better way to use that experience and knowledge than sharing it with students in the classroom on their learning journey.

Our Founder & CEO with our Director of Sales & Marketing at a networking event in Whitby last night.
What an excellent event for a great cause!
Thank you 5 Paddles Brewing Company for hosting the event.

Management Fundamentals Part 5: What’s Their Plan

You’ve assigned deliverables to each of your staff, you’ve agreed with them on what each deliverable entails. Now it’s time to work with them on their plans. Likely you will have a high-level timeline for when you need each item finished. But those timeline might not align with constraints your staff may have. These constraints will include the ebbs and flows of everything that takes up their time. This may also include key personal commitments they know of over the coming year.

It is important that each staff member comes up with their own plan that suits these three equally important requirements:

1. Deliverables are completed when you need them to be done
2. Your staff believes they have everything they need to be successful
3. You have enough detail to follow up on ex*****on of their plan in a timely manner

Some deliverables may simply need to be completed by the end of the year. Others may have specific outside constraints as they are part of a larger organizational initiative. It is important that your staff know where they have autonomy and where they do not. It is much better to have the “there is no way that’s going to happen” discussion before the year even starts so you still have time to make adjustments.

When you have agreement on the high-level timing of deliverables, ask your staff to break each one into tasks. The level of detail is dependent on the experience level of the staff member, as well as the complexity of the deliverable. Different people have different levels of comfort when it comes to planning. But the key is that they identify one to two accomplishments a week. This sounds like a lot but it is critical.

In the end your staff members will have put together their own plans, in whatever format they feel comfortable, for each deliverable. Each plan includes 5 - 10 accomplishments a month. Most importantly they take ownership of their plans.

Until next time...

Respectfully yours
Kevin

Home - 2DaysaMonth 2DaysAMonth offers senior level consulting services and access to expert business advisers, all for less than the cost of an administrative assistant.

Management Fundamentals Part 3: Who Does What?

In my first post I talked about why your staff deserve to be micromanaged. That was followed by a post explaining why you start with your scope of responsibilities. In this post I talk about assigning your responsibilities to you and your team.

Now that you have a list of everything you are responsible for, the next step is to decide who does what. For you this may be obvious. But that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to your team. This simply involves assigning the names of you and your staff to each of the scope items previously identified.

After a little effort you should end up with a list of everything your team needs to accomplish this year, as well as names beside each. As you do this you will also probably see things that don’t make sense. This could include unbalanced workload across your team. Opportunities to better match individual skills and abilities to deliverables. Timing of deliverables that no longer make sense. Or even deliverables that you aren’t quite certain about. Remember this is not an exact science and your list will not remain static. This is why I strongly discourage you from going any more high-tech than a Word document or your whiteboard.

There is a tactical reason for staying low-tech as well. As leaders it can be tempting to think we have to share ideas through formal presentations complete with title pages, agendas and appendices. The problem in this case is it makes you look as though you are laying down the law, as opposed to creating a framework for discussion. Your staff will be more open to exchanging ideas on your list if it’s written out on your whiteboard, as opposed to appearing in Arial font on the screen at the front of the meeting room. More on that in the next post.

Until next time…

Respectfully yours,
Kevin

Home - 2DaysaMonth 2DaysAMonth offers senior level consulting services and access to expert business advisers, all for less than the cost of an administrative assistant.