An interesting article I read some time back identified several types of procrastination. To the best of my memory, the types were:
The solution I've found? Make systems out of everything. Instead of viewing each case as an individual problem to be solved, I try to categorize that problem, and design a policy to address similar problems in the future. I record my policy so I can refer back to it in the future. The principle here is to reduce the number of times I have to make a decision. I'm so often juggling lots of balls at once that I rarely get time to sit down and concentrate hard on anything conceptually difficult. So I focus those times on designing policies I can apply to lots of situations. Specifically, I use lots of checklists and form emails. The checklists allow me to break complex tasks into easy-to-digest steps. For example, here are some steps I go through when training a new Davis Dollars intern:
Form emails also reduce the need to make decisions about what to write, and help me avoid forgetting important details. Some of the types of form emails I use:
Crowd Wisdom 07/27/2010
Tomorrow, the beginning of our Crowd Wisdom program, will be another experiment in giving responsibility and power our Steinberg interns. We'll get together in the morning to share ideas on whatever topics the interns want to talk about. The question I have needed an answer to for a long time is this: How can I help interns be productive and energetic at the beginning of the day? Our interns are great, and we already have a strong working environment, but the mornings usually seem to start off just a little bit slowly. I keep a long mental list of problems, issues, and concerns, and I'm always on the lookout for solutions. (I suspect most managers and teachers do this.) I recently read a terrific article in The Atlantic entitled What Makes a Great Teacher?. The story is largely about Teach for America's efforts to discover what makes great teachers so great. They identify practices like walking around the classroom (instead of staying glued to the chalkboard) and having an established routine for each day, so students know exactly what they'll be doing next. It immediately struck me that many of these insights are easily applicable to management. One of the practices that interested me was writing a Problem of the Day on the chalkboard every morning, and students who come in get right to work on the problem. Could I do something like this at work? Interns often have great ideas that I'd like to flesh out some. Mark Averell, for example, suggested an internal website that would aggregate Sacramento- and Capitol-related news sources, tweets, legislative hearings, and district events. After he built it, he asked me for ideas of other resources he could add to the site to make it useful for interns. Other interns working on projects hit roadblocks, and come to me for ideas to get around the obstacle. I can make suggestions, but I would rather tap into the creativity and intelligence of all the interns in the office. So, Crowd Wisdom! Each morning we'll get together to solve problems and share ideas for doing things. I've created with a list of things to discuss, and each intern can vote for the things they want to talk about most. Each intern has 5 votes, which they can allocate however they like between topics. Interns can add topics that they think other interns would like to talk about. What will prevent this from becoming a traditional, energy-sapping meeting, or an artificial "motivational" pep-talk? Well, meetings in our office have never been the soul-numbing affairs they seem to be in other offices. We all seem to enjoy our meetings as opportunities to share what we've all been working on. This probably has something to do with the fact that my boss doesn't use meetings as an opportunity to lecture the rest of us - our meetings are used for sharing information and ideas. We'll use Crowd Wisdom get-togethers the same way. We'll only meet for 10-15 minutes, and we'll focus on exercising creativity and taking action. Interns in our office are already excited about work (interns often ask if they can come in more often than they're currently scheduled), so I'm not worried about it becoming an artificial event. I think this sort of program wouldn't work if they weren't already motivated. But I think the biggest reason I'm confident Crowd Wisdom will be a success is that it's another opportunity for interns to exercise their creativity and initiative. This event isn't about me; it's about the interns and their work. They'll choose what we talk about. This will also solve another problem I've been having - I can't keep interns' to-do lists stocked, because they work too quickly! Mornings are especially dry, because it takes me a little while to pull together new tasks. Interns currently jump into working on their Ownership Initiatives, but this will give them the opportunity to work on something else in the morning in case their Initiative is on hold for some reason. Beyond this, it will also create a get-'em-started atmosphere in the morning as we convene around a shared problem to solve. This is as much about creating team spirit as it is about providing tasks for eager interns. I'll post updates as Crowd Wisdom develops and evolves. Share in the comments if you have some regular form of morning check-in with your colleagues or subordinates to get things started in Internships: Managing your interns 07/21/2010
This is part of an ongoing series of posts about creating and strengthening an internship program. The posts are compiled on the Internships page. If you go about recruitment and interviewing well, you will make your management job considerably easier by choosing someone who does not need much hand-holding. This does not mean that you won’t need to manage at all, though. There are several important principles and techniques for managing effectively. Prepare in advance: Create a list of projects and tasks your intern(s) can work on. Interns will quickly lose enthusiasm for an internship if they feel underutilized – even faster than if you give them nothing but grunt work. Make sure you can keep your interns busy and productive. Create teams of interns: If you take on more than one intern at a time, form them into a team (or teams) to work together on projects. This increases morale significantly, encourages mentoring by the more experienced intern, and stimulates the interns’ creativity and problem-solving abilities. They will solve more problems on their own, and you will spend less time answering simple questions. These teams can be cross-functional (e.g., including people with different skill sets, such as a designer and a business major), but they need not be if you have multiple interns from the same background. Assign responsibilities, not just tasks: Interns want the opportunity to take responsibility for a project or goal, and will best be able to exercise their creativity and skill if you give them some freedom to decide how best to accomplish their goal. In one of our offices, we assign intern teams a project to accomplish. We consult with them initially about how best to accomplish the goal, then ask them to discuss it, and come back to us with ideas of their own. We often find that they have thought of things that hadn’t occurred to us. We expect them to report back to us frequently about their progress so we can make sure they are on track, but are often pleasantly surprised to find that they have made more progress than we expected them to make. Assigning responsibilities requires some trust, and it is best to ease into this practice by first assigning projects that are a little bit forgiving of errors and missteps. This is part of an ongoing series of posts about creating and strengthening an internship program. The posts are compiled on the Internships page. There are ways to catch a new intern up to speed without killing your own productivity. If you don’t want to regret the whole intern experience, it’s important to take some of these steps to save yourself headaches. Create training materials: Spend some time creating instructions for how to accomplish various tasks interns will have to complete on a regular basis. A shared set of Google Docs (docs.google.com) is probably the easiest way to share these sorts of resources. A set of word documents on a shared computer drive is also very easy to create and manage. Time invested up front creating instructions will pay off many times, especially since interns sometimes need to refer back to instructions multiple times as they get the hang of new tasks. (The alternative is being prepared to explain the same thing over and over again.) If you have a microphone, it is extremely easy to record and narrate “screencasts” (videos of your computer screen) to show how to do certain things. There are many websites that allow you to create a screencast for free (such as www.screencast-o-matic.com), without requiring you to download software. If you can record these videos without revealing proprietary information, you can upload them to Youtube for easy reference, and link to them from your written instructions. Rely on the expertise of veteran interns: If you take on more than one intern at a time, veteran interns can be an excellent training resource for greener interns. Interns generally enjoy sharing their expertise and knowledge with trainees, and they learn more through the teaching process than they otherwise would. Internships: How to get interns? 07/16/2010
This is part of an ongoing series of posts about creating and strengthening an internship program. The posts are compiled on the Internships page.HOW SHOULD YOU RECRUIT AND HIRE INTERNS?There are lots of universities looking to place interns. Finding prospective interns can be fairly easy, but you’ll want to make sure you go about the recruiting and interviewing process the right way – this can make the difference between finding a great intern and ending up with a slouch (or at least someone who isn’t a match for your organization).Creating the internship descriptions: Think about each skill and/or position you need. Although you may want an intern (or interns) to come in with multiple skills (e.g., social networking, marketing and web design) and fill several roles (e.g., marketing and communications), we recommend preparing an internship posting for each separate skill or position. One of us once found an excellent community outreach intern through a posting for a business development intern. We don’t think the intern would have been as interested if we had tried to combine all the job functions into a single posting.In your internship posting, explain (1) what an intern will do with your organization, (2) what expectations you have of the intern (including skills they need to have), and (3) what experience and skills they will gain as a result of the internship. Interns are particularly excited when you can offer them a real learning experience over the course of their internship.Recruiting applicants: Sacramento City College, Sacramento State University, and University of California, Davis all have internship programs. Each has its own posting procedures. The best interns may also come from art, music and performance programs at each school. You can contact each department directly, or ask the internship program at each school to connect you to the appropriate person in each department.
 This is part of an ongoing series of posts about creating and strengthening an internship program. The posts are compiled on the Internships page. Interns can help your organization extend its reach without increasing its staff budget. Interns are much more than just free labor; they can also contribute their creativity and energy. You can provide an excellent opportunity for interns who want to acquire specific job skills, and who want to learn about nonprofits more generally. If you already take on interns, you can probably improve your program. IS YOUR ORGANIZATION READY FOR AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAM? Before you embark on creating an internship program, be sure an internship program will really work for you. Consider: Will you have time to oversee an intern (or interns)? A smart, skilled intern will not require hand-holding, but you will still need to commit some up-front time training a new intern, and some ongoing time to answer questions and oversee your intern. A good, well-chosen intern can help lighten your load, but if you can’t even spare a few minutes to get someone started, taking on an intern won’t be practical. Is there real, meaningful work for the intern? Most interns want more than just a learning experience – they want to know they’re making a genuine difference for your organization. They’ll be unhappy if they feel they’re doing make-work. On the other hand, while interns may be willing to do grunt work all day, you won’t be making the best use of them if you don’t give them a chance to stretch their wings by making full use of their skills. They can contribute more if you give them something they can take responsibility for. Are the skills and positions you’re looking for appropriate for an unpaid intern? If you are looking for a position that requires a lot of expertise or confidentiality, you may be better off hiring someone. Changes are taking place quickly here in the internship program! These are actually updates from a month ago, but things have been so fast-paced that I haven't had time to write about them until now. I used to be concerned about starting up intern mentoring (as I've mentioned before). The intern retreat we held convinced me that senior interns actually wanted to be relied on as experts. I was still worried that setting up interns to mentor each other might be logistically difficult. Well, I should have trusted more in the skills of my intern crew. When Ryan started up in early June, I told him to ask Mark and Jeysree (two senior interns) questions. Both of them were extremely helpful in getting him started. Besides saving me work, this had two unexpected benefits: I got to see how other interns did tasks (which allowed me to make corrections), and it built morale between the interns. Our first completely intern-planned ownership initiative was completed, as well! Jeysree and Mark carried out the first of the Community Office Hours successfully. Now that Mark and Jeysree will both be gone from the office, I'll have my first practice transitioning a project to a new set of interns. Last month I also started Jeysree on our first official Learning Project. The idea of the Learning Projects is that we will offer interns specific skills to learn, and assign them a project (e.g., an ownership initiative) that will force them to practice this skill. The ultimate goal is for them to become proficient at a new skill. Jeysree was working with the Prezi presentation platform (prezi.com). I haven't quite figured out a way to integrate learning projects, though - they sit a bit uncomfortably alongside the ownership initiative structure. Ideally they would mesh, but I'm having trouble finding ways to work them together. Perhaps I need to spend more time matchmaking between interns, skills they'd like to learn, and projects that could benefit from those skills. The success of the learning projects idea may depend on whether interns are more attracted to a project because of the skills it will offer them, because of the project itself, or because of the people already working on the project. If the latter two are strong attractors, I may need to focus on assigning learning projects to interns already on projects, rather than trying to match interns based on skills they want to learn. I'm entering a strange new world - teaching and delegating management. Okay, if you aren't as weirded out about that as I am, I can understand. Here's what's strange for me: I'm still learning management myself, and though I've been delegating other responsibilities to interns, delegating management is an entirely different animal. One of my Davis Dollars interns in particular seems really promising - not only does Julia have confidence and good ideas, but she has the inclination to organize and coordinate, the ability to see the larger picture, and the action-oriented mindset required to get people moving in the right direction. As a fairly new intern, she organized our first intern co-working session. The co-working sessions bring the interns together on campus, during the week while I'm away at work. They allow the interns to get together and get more done than has been possible in the past, but since I'm not around, they need someone to make sure the meetings have purpose and direction. Ok, ok, so I've done something like this before - we've actually had intern meet-ups on campus. What's different this time is Julia's intuition when it comes to management, and our need for management now that our team is so much larger. Before, the intern team was all working on the same project, and didn't need much management. Now we have two, and soon three, different teams of interns - campus outreach, community outreach, and business development. All of them need to be coordinated. On her first try, Julia did a really good job observing the sorts of things a manager needs to be aware of - the team had good morale, but spent too much time socializing. She thinks this is in part because there were several new interns who hadn't joined the team yet. She noticed that the teams formed up well, but that some of the teams weren't quite sure what they needed to be working on, so she and I need to make sure each team has a list of current and future projects so they won't have empty hands. It's exciting to teach management. I'm learning a lot. Julia is a quick student, so I still have a way to go before I can prepare others for the same responsibilities, but this is a milestone in creating a self-sustaining growth organization. Share any experiences you've had with teaching or delegating management! I'm managing five full-time interns! 06/17/2010
I just calculated interns' hours as full-time equivalent (FTE) employees. If you're not familiar with this, it means adding up all their hours per week and dividing by 40 (for a 40-hour work week), which can give you the equivalent number of full-time employees. So we have 16 interns right now, but only two are genuinely full time. All their hours together come to 4.78 FTE interns! I think it will be closer to 6 during July. Here's a graph of my FTE intern management experience over time: Interns want initiative, but also structure 06/15/2010
My interns, apparently, aren't as wild about initiative as I thought they'd be. It turns out they want a bit more structure. We recently had an Intern Retreat - we got all the interns together to talk about how things were going, and to ask them to suggest improvements. A few quick findings:
When I dreamed up the idea of ownership initiatives, I thought the biggest appeal would be that interns could think up their own projects. One of the aspects of my job that I've always valued the most has been the freedom to initiate a project I thought would benefit the office, and I imagined interns would clamor at the opportunity to do the same. So I developed the ownership initiatives around the idea that interns would propose an idea, then investigate how to turn that idea into a feasible project. Well, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that things don't always go as smoothly as I imagined. There are at least three things that stand in the way of my idealized vision:
The ownership initiatives now have a slightly different focus. Instead of trumpeting the benefits of being able to work on projects that interns can design on their own, we emphasize the appeal of having ownership (responsibility and commitment) over a project. We help new interns find places on existing projects. I spend time making sure projects aren't getting stuck. What I still need to implement is a list of fully-vetted projects with notes on how to get started. Beyond that, I talk to interns about ideas they may want to pursue on their own. I know that there are interns who want to design projects of their own, and I want to make that possible. But I also realize that not everyone wants to invent a completely new program; they just want the opportunity to contribute something of value for which they will be recognized. | CategoriesAll ArchivesJuly 2010 |
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