News

The age-old expression ‘Time is money’ isn’t too far from the truth. The most successful (and profitable) organizations in the 21^st century require employees who are effective time managers, and know how to set and reach goals based on the organization’s vision and values. Employees who are able to prioritize their activities and set and reach goals in their personal and organizational lives will make the biggest impact.

The key for owners and managers is to develop employees to recognize and implement time saving strategies. There are many strategies to achieve a more productive day, below is our top four:

Define time management
Remember, the focus of time management is actually changing your behaviors, not changing time. A good place to start is by eliminating your personal time-wasters. For one week, for example, set a goal that you’re not going to take personal phone calls or check Facebook while you’re working.

Prioritize time use
You should start each day with a time management session prioritizing the tasks for that day and setting your performance benchmark. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish? And reduce those time-wasters that steal time we could be using much more productively. Frequent culprits are surfing the net and checking email. And set time limits for each task. For instance, reading and answering email can consume your whole day if you let it. Instead, set a limit of one hour a day for this task and stick to it.

Adopt a time management approach
Whether it’s a paper calendar or a software program, the first step to physically managing your time is to know where it’s going now and planning how you’re going to spend your time in the future. Figure out what system works for you and work that system tirelessly. A software program such as Outlook, for instance, lets you schedule events easily and can be set to remind you of events in advance, making your time management easier.

Enhance time management skills
Utilizing skills like delegating, organization and maximizing time usage can take your time management skills to the next level. No matter how small or large your business is, there’s no need for you to be a one-person show. For effective time management, you need to let other people carry some of the load. Determine which tasks you’d be better off delegating or outsourcing.

Being organized also saves time. Whether it’s a physical manila folder you’re searching for or files on your computer, both can suck up valuable time. Take the time to organize a file management system so it’s organized to the point that you can quickly lay your hands on what you need.

Lastly, identify ways to use traditional “down” time, like time between client meetings to the waiting room at your dentist. It’s impossible to avoid waiting for someone or something. But you don’t need to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs. Always take something to do with you, such as a report you need to read, a checkbook that needs to be balanced, or just a blank pad of paper that you can use to plan your next marketing campaign.

Whether you are leading a small firm or a Fortune 500 company, today’s workplace requires managing, motivating and developing your employees’ time management skills. Increasing and enhancing your current time management leadership ability is paramount to your organization’s success. The objective is to change your behaviors over time to achieve whatever general goal you’ve set for yourself, such as increasing your productivity or decreasing your stress. So you need to not only set your specific goals, but track them over time to see whether or not you’re accomplishing them.

The Influential Women of Northwest Indiana recognizes Susan Riddering, vice president of NorthStar360 Business Solutions, as a nominee for the 2012 Up-And-Coming Woman of the Year in Business. Riddering will be honored at the annual awards banquet on May 31.

“I am so very honored to be recognized as an influential woman in Northwest Indiana. Being recognized with a group of women that I look up to and admire is such an accolade. These women truly are making our communities a better place to work and live,” said Riddering.

This annual event honors women from 11 industries ranging from healthcare and education to construction and law. A committee of local business leaders had the daunting task of selecting nominees from more than 100 nominations. A nomination is a high honor and shows each woman nominated is highly respected by her peers.

“Northwest Indiana is the center for the growing influence of women in the workplace,” event founder Andrea Pearman said, “We are simply here to honor those women of the area who are working to build and help the women’s place in the workforce.”

The last seminar of the Compass Series program will conclude with a Time Management workshop on Thursday, June 14. This half-day workshop takes place from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Providence Bank in Schererville and is designed to develop productive employees, an essential characteristic for those who are supervisors and managers.

Time management has a direct link to employee productivity and financial success of an organization. In this workshop, participants will assess how they are currently using their time, identify the barriers which keep them from managing their time more effectively, and discover the difference between The Important and The Urgent, Each participant will set professional goals to guide the use of time and create a systematic approach to managing daily events, applying these principles directly to their workplace.

This workshop is part of the Compass Series workshop program, composed of 11 topics designed to increase personal effectiveness. These training materials have been used by several Fortune 500 companies including: AT&T, BP, Ford Motor Company and Hewlett Packard. Each workshop consists of a mixture of facilitated lectures and discussions and high-energy, interactive exercises to help participants internalize the principles and apply the lessons to workplace experience. To register, contact Susan Riddering at (219) 864-1576 or e-mail at susan@northstar360.com for complete details and pricing.

What do Tiger Woods, Patrick Kane, Brian Urlacher and Shaun White have in common?

The answer is they all have one (if not more!) coaches.

You see, even the best need help. They need a coach, someone to assess their performance, someone to show them how they can improve. They need someone to give them objective advice, and who will push them forward onto even greater achievement.  And business people are the same.

Business Coaching is an effective means of improving business results and is rapidly becoming a best practice in business. It offers individual attention and focuses on how developing each leader and manager to be their very best. A business coach works with individuals to recognize current behaviors and patterns and identify new choices that may be more effective. Emotional (and unconscious) barriers often deter even the best leaders from changing behaviors and attitudes. Business coaching addresses these barriers, and leaders are encouraged to stretch current performance boundaries.

A study by the Center for Creative Leadership identified several intangible benefits to business coaching, including increased employee engagement, increased job satisfaction and morale and increased retention. To attribute a financial benefit to these intangibles can be challenging, but experts estimate the financial benefits add up to more than 2-3 times a person’s annual salary.

“Coaching helps focus on each individual employee’s challenges and goals. A face-to-face meeting holds each person accountable for constant improvement,” explains Susan Riddering, vice president of NorthStar360.

An experienced Business Coach creates a trusting, collaborative and stimulating environment. The coach listens to the individual employee’s concerns, and offers practical processes that enable them to explore the issue. It is an achievement-oriented partnership focused on improving the individual and organization. The result is improvement on real business issues and a rapid and significant return on investment.

The Compass Program continues featuring a Personal Accountability Workshop, on Thursday, May 10. This half-day workshop takes place from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Providence Bank in Schererville and is designed to develop productive employees, an essential characteristic for those who are supervisors and managers.

In this workshop, participants will understand their role in the overall success of their organization, including methods for documenting results, tips for cultivating advocates and allies, and tactics for informing appropriate people about key accomplishments. Attendees will apply these principles directly to their workplace experience.

This workshop is part of the Compass Series workshop program, composed of 11 topics designed to increase personal effectiveness. These training materials have been used by several Fortune 500 companies including: AT&T, BP, Ford Motor Company and Hewlett Packard. Each workshop consists of a mixture of facilitated lectures and discussions and high-energy, interactive exercises to help participants internalize the principles and apply the lessons to workplace experience.

To register, contact Susan Riddering at (219) 864-1576 or e-mail at susan@northstar360.com for complete details and pricing.

NorthStar360 Business Solutions was founded to help businesses maximize their success through comprehensive hiring practices and in-depth employee development programs. The company customizes its training and tailors its development programs to meet the specific business goals of its clients. For more information on NorthStar360, please call (219) 864-1576 or visit www.northstar360.com

We’re all familiar with the coined phrase “baby boomer generation” and likely hear about this large generation’s impact on things like healthcare and retirement. Last year, the oldest of the 77 million U.S. baby boomers turned 65 – the traditional retirement age – and about 10,000 more will be reaching that milestone every day during the next two decades. That equates to nearly half (43 percent) of the work force set to retire within eight years! Can your organization afford to lose your pool of talented, experienced older workers in such a short time span? If not, have you done serious strategic planning to analyze the impact of baby boomer retirements and to identify potential skills gaps that could result?

Talent and succession planning may be the single most strategic goal for preparing for this mass exodus of the workforce. As employers are paying more attention to the literal transfer of business wisdom from their baby boomers to the next generation, one of the practices having significant success is mentoring. In the past, the role of the mentor has been a relatively informal one. With this newly defined need, however, companies are formalizing the practice. Older workers are formally assigned to younger workers with the goal of developing these individuals. The mentoring relationship often teaches business wisdom, which goes beyond know-how to know-why. Similar strategies implement job sharing where a junior person shares a job with someone senior and more experienced. Another approach brings retirees back to the organization in a consultancy role. This allows an individual to retire when he or she chooses, yet extends the time for transferring knowledge and wisdom to other staff. Whether your company takes a more or less aggressive approach, some form of knowledge transfer represents a key part of your overall plan for addressing the boomer drain in your organization.

You are an architect. You thoughtfully design and create a plan, outlining your plan for success. What does your blueprint look like? What goals do I need to accomplish to make my blueprint a reality? Do you doubt your “drafting” skills? We could all use a refresher, so sharpen your pencil, below are a few tips for setting SMART goals.

Goal setting is the best way to transform lofty resolutions into bottom-line results. Research shows that when entrepreneurs set measurable goals for themselves, they’re more like to achieve them. When you engage in true goal setting, you define your objectives in practical, measurable terms. You also need to identify the resources, time and funds you’ll need to invest to attain them. That’s how you develop action plans, or your blueprint.

We have all heard about setting SMART goals. This is not a new concept, but one that works! Each goal must be defined so that it meets the following criteria:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Timely

Specific, achievable and realistic– Make sure your goals are concrete, concise and attainable. Instead of, “I want to make a lot more money this year,” specify “I want to increase my revenues by X percent (a realistic amount) by the end of the year.”

Measurable– Frame your goals in such a way so you can measure your progress. For example, plan on measuring monthly or quarterly revenues against last year’s figures–something you should be doing anyway.

Timely– Give yourself a reasonable time frame for achieving your goal. Then break it down into smaller, short-term increments. Realistically, you may not achieve that X percent increase early in the year, but you can work toward it. Divide your goal percent increase into monthly or quarterly increments that allows you to build on your momentum. This produces measurable, attainable and short-term goals to pursue.

Record your goals and action plans on paper, like a blueprint. Whether you write them down or type them, the very act of recording them will help you work through your ideas. Once your plans are complete, you’ll have a detailed roadmap with directions to follow. Review your goals and plans regularly. Make a monthly appointment with yourself if that’s what it takes. This will help keep you on track as time unfolds. Revise your blueprint as you achieve new successes and growth; all you need are basic “drafting” skills to start setting SMART goals.

It’s easy to overlook the quality of integrity when running the day-to-day operations of a business — but incorporating it into all of your business dealings and decisions can advance your company to greater levels of success. Integrity is synonymous with trust in the business world. After all, clients have to trust the people they do business with to keep them, so owning up to every responsibility is paramount.

The bottom line is consistency. A company needs to maintain what it says it does, and who it says it is.  Organizations that flourish over the long run commit to fundamental integrity in their products, services, processes and people. They “walk the talk,” even in tough times. Especially in rough economic times, to be someone your company and customers can trust is priceless. So while it might not seem immediately top on your list, your business can’t afford to compromise its integrity in this competitive market.

“When people choose to lead with integrity they position themselves at the top of their industry,” says Susan Riddering, co-founder of NorthStar360. “All the other details, like the product, or service come after integrity because people do business with people they know, like, and trust.”

Your reputation and relationships are all you really have. So nurture them and care about how you treat people from housekeeping to the most senior person. Maintaining integrity is in every step and mis-step you take as an organization. The communication within an organization can be a key indicator if integrity is present. Evaluate your communication practices in your organization.

Is the communication defensive?  The tone with which HR and senior management communicate to their employees sets the stage. When integrity is in place and people respect one another details like being on time to work and with deadlines fall into place. It’s not about Big Brother watching over you, but it’s suddenly about you watching over yourself. The power is in the employee. When employees feel cared about and have a voice in the workplace, it’s easy to put integrity into practice. And a better workplace is ripe with loyalists working together to grow the business.