August Workshop: Budgeting & Financial Plans....ughhhh

Well there was a slight change of plans and this week the workshop schedule was changed and lucky us had the very dull topic of financial planning and budgets. I'm not sure how this topic can be delivered in an interesting and relevant way but I certainly found it extremely boring and poorly prepared. It would have been more relevant if a team member could have presented it to us and shown us an actual budget and balance statement. 

ipad_team.jpg

This great article on the mind tools website, pretty much covers everything that we learnt. I may need more Excel training down the track. 

However it did make me think about my personal spending habits and how bad I am at sticking to the family budget. 

Following the workshop my project team got together and nutted out the next phase of our project. It is really great having such a great team of people to work with. My job is to finish off the literature review. So I must schedule this in. 

Culture, delegation, and stuff.

Well, my head is spinning trying to collate and make a report from 2 different drafts so thought I would review what I have learnt lately: 

I just came across this article and thought these 6 points are so relevant to all of our work. I think I need to find ways to train staff in the 'soft' skills. These are the things that I often call personality, but in doing this I am allowing myself to think I cannot influence and support that person and I am not giving the person the feedback they need to learn and develop. For example when a person has anxiety about their work and has a tendency to be a perfectionist, preventing them from working effectively, I need to be helping them to develop strategies to make faster decision and allow them the time at a later date to refine the work. 

I had a great session with my manager on Monday and he imparted information about another great tool to use to help lead and manage: the RACI model to help delegate tasks. He uses this all the time and once he makes someone responsible he then checks to make sure that the action occurs, remaining accountable. It is probably useful to think like this when sending info to the team- who needs to know? How should I manage this information? Often people are overloaded with information emails and therefore they are unable to use and absorb the information. 

http://thepaceofservice.com/is-your-social-media-strategy-raci/

So I have left the meeting with a few new responsibilities. 

I have been interested in the ways that some of my colleagues are working. As a team leader I seem (although this hasn't been identified) to need to be on top of what everyone is doing. I work with a number of female colleagues that have recently moved from India to Australia to work and my manager is a man of Indian background (although he did not grow up in India). I came across the work of psychologist Dr Geert Hofstede today and his website here provides his understanding of culture based on  five demensions. It is really interesting to look at the differences between India and Australia, especially in the area of power/ dominance and I have noticed the formal attitudes my colleagues have towards our manager. I thought this may be  because he is a man and the more patriachial society they have come from, however reading this has made me think that it is more about power. Where some of the team have an equal and jovial relationship with the manager, he often chooses to set himself apart from the team. I thought that this was his way of keeping a distance so it is easier to have the difficult performance review type conversations, but the work of Hofstede has been useful in providing me with alternative view points.   

I am entering overwhelm again so today I will take the time to do a mind sweep and schedule in time to complete all the tasks that I need to do. Returning to using the time management tools I am familiar with. I know that consistency is not my strength and I need to revisit tools and keep consciously using them to develop new habits. 

I am looking forward to the workshop next week, especially as the topic is Teamwork.