Personal development planning has gained a lot of popularity in management and leadership circles. It is a process of creating an action plan based on values, awareness, goal-setting and reflection fro personal development in the context of relationship, self-improvement, education or career. To ensure success in one’s career or business, a wide range of skills relating to management and leadership are needed.
To be successful in the above area one needs to get advice on actions to take towards achieving their goal.
Innovation strategy must be well communicated to fit into the vision and mission of the organization. Colleagues nad partners must be motivated so that they can come up with ideas for new goods and services. All business plans and ideas need time to mature so it is important that you evaluate and approve only those that appear viable. This makes it easy for one to monitor their progress.
A very important thing in this area is to ensure that resources, especially time are channelled to towards testing and development of ideas. Equally important is to ensure that odevelopers and originators of ideas are rewarded and recognised for their achievement.
Firstly you must communicate your strategy for innovation accross the organization. An effective way to achieve this would be to ensure that every body is involved in drafting thee mission and vision statements, or simply put everybody feels as a part of the team. This ultimately leads to constructive feedback and openness when reporting poor outcomes.
You may also need to learn methods of pursuing and identifying opportunities to work with external experts. This will help you to manage and recognise risks before it is too late. Consequently, you need developed and efficient systems for reporting and measuring to relevant parties.
In this area, excellent perfomance is being able to review the disparity between current and the required state of systems, structures, procedures and roles. Training and support needs should be identified. Your plan should cater for short-term wins as well as long-term deliverables. Assess the benefits and risks associated with your plans and strategies and model contingency arrangements.
Meanwhile, you may need to get some advice on:
Methods and models to managing well
Techniques on effective planning
How stakeholder expectations influence the process
How to apply teambuilding techniques
Leading the Change
Leading change involves communicating your ambitions and visions of the future. You should also tell people about the reasons for the chane and how it will impact on the company’s growth and development.
You must identify barriers to change and deal with them. It must be ensured that everyone involved in implementing change is aware of their responsibilities. For one to succeed in this area, advice on resource, bureaucratic and political barriers to change, and how to deal with them is critical.
Mange a programme of projects
A programme needs a time frame. A program without a time frame will be a pipe dream. Excellent in this area demands that you take into account all essential needs and translate strategic targets into efficient, effective and practical actions. The programme should be controlled and monitored so that it achieves the set objectives on budget and within the time specified. It is important to make recommendations so as to identify areas for development and good practise. Everyone involved must be informed about special important issues and on the impact of putting the programme into use. A lot of training will be required so as you can differentiate between programme management and project management. You will be clear about the tools, techniques, principles and processes required for management of programmes.
Review of your development
To review the progress of your plan you need strengths in the following areas:
Links between organizational objectives and personal development objectives
First you need a marketing plan. This is a framework that describes your business to customers suppliers and stakeholders. It reveals how your organization intends to sell its services and goods. A marketing plan also lays bare your target group and gives a preview of how your products affect peoples’ lives. You must enact an effective safety and health policy. Benefits that can be accrued to an effective approach to safety are enormous. It also improves your organizations public relations, hence, improving your business reputation among suppliers and customers. Employees will be highly motivated due to decreased risks to injuries.
As you get ahead in your personal development plan, your organizational skills will improve tremendously. Inevitably your business will expand and you will need additional funds for your expansion. Skills on how to raise capital are priceless. You will benefit from networking with the right people. Benefits include cheap credit and new ideas.
The most important skill in personal development is the ability to manage your time well. T is a skill that is prevalent in all leaders of high calibre. Good time management allows you to act on situations rather than react to them. One needs to shift his focus from being busy to concentrating on results. You might want to split major assignments into small bits. This enables you to get a good picture of the work before you. Conventional wisdom states that effective time management is doing many things in less time. Nothing can be further from the truth. Time management entails doing the right things and doing them to the best of your ability. The question arises, how do you plan your work? Start with a to-do list, schedule your day, delegate duties and say no when not ready for something.
Manage your energy not your time
Whereas time is a finite resource, energy is a different story. In humans energy comes from four springs: mind, body, emotions and spirit. In each, energy can be regularly renewed and establishing behaviours that if practised and scheduled can become unconscious and automatic. To effectively energize your workforce, you need to shift the emphasis from getting more out of your people, to investing more in them. This way they will be motivated. Apart from developing employee’s competence, skills and knowledge, you must help i building and sustaining their capacity (their energy) which is typically taken for granted. With greater capacity more is done in less time and at a higher engagement level and sustainability.
Manage and plan work
The most important thing in management is to get your priorities right. You must always know what you are required to do and do it when it the right time. Great managers have cultivated this trait into their systems. As a first line manager, a lot of pressure will be put on you to deliver results and beat deadlines while maintaining a high level of enthusiasm. To achieve your goal you must resist the temptation to multitask. Many managers argue that multitasking as inevitable. However, multitasking undermines productivity. It is advisable to fully focus on one task with all your attention before moving to the next task.
We have all heard of this, but it is amazing how most managers overlook this simple advice. Right people are not necessarily people with high academic credentials, but people who bring nonconventional strategies into your department. To get and retain such professional you need a high sense of empathy and self esteem. It is easy to feel threatened by juniors who are smarter than you. But you shouldn’t, such professionals are an asset to your team. They can come up with a revolutionary idea which can supplement your revenues for the next decade. To effectively lead and manage clever people, you should value their worth. Ineffective leadership can be costly. It reduces staff morale and increases employee turnover.
Leadership means different things to many people. Most psychologists concur that what distinguishes leaders is not so much their personality, their style of management or their philosophy of leadership. Instead, it is their internal action logic. Action logic refers to how a leader responds when his authority is challenged and how he interprets his surroundings.
Unfortunately, only few leaders can be said to understand their own action logic leave alone the possibility of developing it.
Interestingly, leaders who take personal understanding and development can not only positively change their own abilities but also those of their organizations. These leaders are characterized by one aspect; they have a clear vision and a non-convectional way of solving problems that are thrust their way. Levels of individual and corporate perfomance change with according to action logic. There are seven developmental action logics – expert, diplomat, achiever, opportunist, strategist, alchemist or individualist. Leaders can evolve from one action logic to another by conscious endeavour.
Inorder to succeed in your objectives you will need to cultivate a culture of team work. Team work means that instead of competing to show off how more talented you are than others, you compliment each other. Every decision made by an individual affects the outcome of the group. To facilitate the highest level of team work you need to have productive working relationship. There should be no duplication of duties as every team member is well aware of their responsibilities. Take the example of a manager who praises his juniors for revealing bad news about the company’s product in the market. Such an employee will feel appreciated and feel valued. The relationship between the leader and his followers will be strengthened and workers will be willing to express their opinions as they know they will positive feedback. The opposite is true. A manager who is always looking for somewhere to put the blame will create an environment of terror. He’ll ruin team morale and employees will not feel free to give feedback about the operations.
In almost all industries, one risk takes centre stage in impacting team welfare: remuneration. Even with all the best leadership skills low salaries and wages will lead to strikes, boycotts and unrest. The best way to deal with this is to constantly review your employees’ wages regularly so that they can be in sync with the industries average and prevailing economic conditions. Workers’ unions and welfare groups are also effective solutions.
