planning & monitoring work

Organisational Skills > creativity(brainstorming – mind mapping) > analytical (listing)

• Planning & monitoring
• Deadlines
• Timescales
• Priorities
• Resources

 Good Plan

• Listing activities
• Realistic
• Flexible
• Achievable
• Who does what – make sure there is no duplication and make sure people are working to their strengths
• Build in contingency
• Assess risks
• Contains some form on consultation with all key parties
• SMART

If staff don’t know what is expected of them how can they achieve anything?

Issuing tasks – who does what and why?

Priority / importance of task may influence who you give the task to but you shouldn’t make a habit of always giving the important work to the same person. This can lead to negative effects eg. overloading or feelings of favouritism in other team members leading to resentment and maybe conflict.

Try to make sure that a team has the right mix of skills to give it the flexibility to cover a range of tasks efficiently. The right skills mix can be achieved through focused recruitment, training & development. Using a skills audit matrix can help you to analyse the skills mix of a team and identify where possible areas of development may exists. 

[pic of skills matrix]

Action plan

An action plan should have: Clear objective, Clear objective, Clear objective

Try to think what your objectives are for each component of your plan. For example if you need a meeting with your manager be clear what it is you want from that meeting? Focus on the ultimate objective. 

WBA

Break projects down – micro manage every aspect for work based assignment. First few points put in points about consultation with manager/team and at the end commit to some sort of evaluation (organise meeting/ get team together, research figures, analyse results and research if project is achieving what it set out to achieve. Step back and review and monitor

Team Leader application task

After the coffee break we to part in a group exercise where we considered a scenario in which we were being applying for the role of a Team Leader in charge on floundering project - (home access to council services via TV). We had to consider the situation and present a plan as to how we would solve the issues. Plans involved: 

• Consulting existing staff
• Identifying problems
• Establishing solutions
• Creating a vision
• Training staff
• Allotting tasks
• Reviewing

Lunch

Presentations from scenario exercise.