November 24, 2014: Slow Week at the Office?

You have arrived at the office, the Monday of Thanksgiving week.  You have a lot to do, I know.  You always do.  But it seems like every stakeholder, every decision maker is gone this whole week, and normally smooth business processes, you know, will stall until next week.

So you have time at the half-empty office to fill.  What to fill it with?

First, you know that anything you do can't rely on anyone else to complete the task.  No approvals, no help with an IT system (although that department is most likely to have good coverage), nothing that will directly impact anyone outside your team.  What can you do that will positively impact your team, both up and down the management chain?  Here are some suggestions.

1) Build a tool to increase your knowledge and understanding of the business.  You get reports on your unit's performance through SAP or Crystal Reports or some other form of business intelligence.  But they don't tell you exactly what you want to know.  So build a tool that gets you the information you need.  I have seen managers build tools that model how busy each type of equipment is in a factory so they could forecast future periodic maintenance activity, or a financial tool that let him modify the number of people in his contract to maximize profitability without killing functionality, or a tool that tracks performance reviews for the team along with their raises to assess if he was really doing a good job at "paying for performance" like he was supposed to.  These are something you might show your boss at some point, but they key thing here is that they will help you to understand your operation better, and that will improve your performance.

2) Do some analysis to share with your team about their performance.  Perhaps you will do an COGS analysis and break it out by category, do a little drilling to see what potential savings are there.  You could share your analysis with your team to see what ideas they have about improving that metric.  Or perhaps your company is in a tough competitive market, and you can do some research on the competition.  Again, you can share this with your team at a later date and solicit their input on how they can impact your company's performance.

3) Learn something!  Always wanted to know how those Excel nerds write VBA?  You can, too!  It's not that hard, and Microsoft has free lessons online.  You local library or your college library almost certainly has access to business articles and research journals.  Do some reading on a topic that you are curious about.

4) Get ahead on an upcoming project.  Performance reviews due by the end of the year?  A budget due Dec 12?  Annual strategic plan due by Jan 15?  Get started now.  Even an outline is something.  If you take some solid first steps now and need to step away for a week, you will likely be surprised at how quickly it falls together when you come back to it.  The subconscious will work on this kind of stuff in the background; the results can be amazing.

5) Spend 1:1 time with the members of your team that are available this week.  They are probably having a slow week as well.  Do some coaching, get to know them better, see how you can help them and then follow up.

You already have a list 100 miles long of things that need to be done yesterday.  We all do.  A week like this one can let you get a little bit ahead.  Don't miss the opportunity.