Tiberone BLOG » Self Improvement

Tiberone Roles with the changes

Celeste Groenewald — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:15:40 +0000

Tiberone’s team leads went to Cork, Ireland, for an intense weekend of team building and strategic formulation. The agenda included improvised growth plans, important goals to achieve, organisational structure changes, roles, responsibilities, communication and collaboration. Although the meetings were intense, the group still managed to have a little bit of fun. It’s either that or the new strategy includes shotguns…

One of the most important topics covered was the importance of effective team work and enterprise wide collaboration between departments. As a team lead, they are responsible for the well-being of each individual, as well as the overall performance of the department. Each team is only as effective as the weakest link and it is the team lead’s responsibility to know what strengths and weaknesses each individual holds. To demonstrate this topic, Tiberone made use of Belbin’s Role model which was developed by Meredith Belbin in 1981. Many scholars over the years have debated just how relevant this model within the modern enterprise is, but it is still considered to be an effective tool and thus widely taught in many strategic management courses.

The main idea outlined by Belbin is the link between team roles and the team’s performance. Each role has a unique function within the team and if implemented correctly; it can eliminate team quarrels, poor team performance as well as the lack of communication. The table below outlines the widely accepted roles with their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Although the strengths are always a focal point, it is also of great importance to look at the weaknesses of each role, because it creates an understanding of how the individual will communicate with the rest of the team in certain situations. For example, the Implementer likes the way things are and would therefore resist change. It is the team lead’s responsibility to anticipate this and to make sure that an Implementer has enough time to adapt to the changes and challenges that lies ahead. On the other hand, if the team lead wants a (what they would consider mundane) task done right the first time without following up, the Implementer would suit this task well and more importantly, they would enjoy doing it.

All focus does not fall solely on the team lead. Each individual should know where their role within the team lies. If you know your own strengths and weaknesses then you’ll be able to find a task within the organisation that makes you happy. After all, one of the most important things in life is that you are happy with the work you occupy and the tasks you complete.

Take a moment to review the table below and then think about which role best describe you. It is possible to fall into more than one role, but one of them should be more dominating than the rest. Once you’ve done this, contact your team lead and ask about how your talents can be better utilised based on the information below.

Clay Pigeon Shooting

www.castlemartyrresort.ie

Quad Bike Ride

A round of golf

Belbin, R.M. (1993). Team Roles at Work. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

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Thought for January

Celeste Groenewald — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:18:00 +0000

Make your resolutions count this year.

Happy New Year to all of you!

January is considered the time for reflection, growth and change. It’s the time to look back at the previous year and learn from its mistakes (and successes) and then apply its knowledge to the year ahead.

For this reason it’s no wonder that the name was derived from the Roman god Janus, which had two heads facing in opposite directions – one looking to the past and another looking to the future. To reflect this, we still practise the age old tradition of making New Year’s resolutions on the 1^st of January.

Making New Year’s Resolutions is easy, but applying them to the year ahead can be difficult. January is a cold and wet month and snuggling up under the covers, seems to take priority over everything else.

This year I would like to provide you with a different view in order to help you keep the resolutions you‘ve made. Instead of making it a yearlong resolution, make it a resolution for January. Scientifically proven, it takes 21 days to adopt a new habit or break an old one. Since January has 31 days, you’ll get an extra 10 days to make it work, so don’t despair if you struggle the first week.

Start with a single resolution and work on it throughout January. By the time February comes, it’ll be second nature to you and you can move on to the next resolution on the list. If you repeat this every month, you’ll have completed twelve resolution by the end of the year.

Create a symbol for the resolution and mark that symbol on each day of your calendar for January. This will remind you every day of the resolution you made. It can be a picture of an apple if you want to eat healthier or a clock, if you want to be on time for meetings. You can even create a code, such as removing the repeating letters of the resolution i.e. IWANTOEHLY for “I want to eat healthy”.

Whichever method you settle for – you’ll be amazed with the results.

Good luck with 2010,

Celeste Groenewald

PS. Why not emphasize your resolution by adding it as a reply below.

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Time management – effective techniques for dealing with emails by Hani Sasani

Hani Sasani — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:59:42 +0000

Incorrect email handling is one of the major pitfalls in ineffective time management which could be inefficacious.

Many studies have shown that time wasted reading emails is the major contribution to ineffective working in the workplace. The truth is a working day could consist of many distractions, such as telephone calls, people stopping at the desk for questions and instant messages.

On a normal day you can receive anywhere between 120 and 150 emails a day. On average if you dedicate 1 minutes of your time to read each email, this will easily equate to 2 to 3 hours a day!! At this point we are only talking about reading emails and not even action or reply to mails.

For a project or operations manager this is very concerning. The key element in any operation is productivity, and one of the factors effecting productivity is time management.

There are a number of methods that can be used to manage email and productivity. Some of these take months of practice, but here is some simple advice:

Schedule a time to read your emails or messages. You have enough distractions during a day and every interruption like the “ding” on your email client or Blackberry device could easily put us off what we are working on. If possible close your email client or switch off your wireless email device. One hour is all it takes to Read/Classify and action emails.
Classification is key. All emails can be classified as either “Reference” or “Action”. Statistics shows that using such a technique can save 50 minutes per day, almost 7 hours per week.

Create folders in your email client and move emails to these folders. Try keeping your inbox empty. If you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox then that is a good indications of bad email management, leading to inefficient time management.

Reference email: These are emails that you receive where you do not have a task or action but you wish to keep it, so you can refer to it later.
Action emails: Data that you use to complete and action a task.

One at a time: Avoid the temptation to open emails at random. Most people open emails where the subject is of interest. However, working through emails one by one has proven to be more effective and increase productivity.

More to tips to come soon …………..

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