2DaysaMonth

06/14/2024

What does "2 Days A Month" get YOU? 🤔

✅ 20 hours a month of 1:1 support scheduled when YOU prefer

✅ Unlimited contact through email & text

✅ An in-depth assessment of YOUR business in the first month

✅ Month-to-month contract with NO long-term commitment

For $6000 a month. That's a fraction of what large consulting firms charge.🤯

🙋‍♀️ Interested? 🙋‍♂️

www.2daysamonth.com

Management consulting that helps you become a better leader with personalized coaching to address immediate work challenges with flexibility.

04/03/2024

Guest lecturing is definitely our Founder's passion.
We believe our years of experience with problem-solving, change management, and working with clients makes us a great partner for businesses. But what better way to use that experience and knowledge than sharing it with students in the classroom on their learning journey.

03/22/2024

Our Founder & CEO with our Director of Sales & Marketing at a networking event in Whitby last night.
What an excellent event for a great cause!
Thank you 5 Paddles Brewing Company for hosting the event.

01/24/2024

Did you know half of Canadians will face some level of mental health issues by the time they are 40? .
What does “Mental Health” even mean? On the Government of Canada’s website, it states that mental health is “the state of your psychological and emotional well-being.”
Knowing this fact, and the age of your employees, does your business have anything in place to support them?
Do you encourage mental health days? Have you increased sick day allowances with a “no questions asked” policy? Do you offer mental health services in their benefits package to ensure they can afford the support they need?
There are many ways to support your employees, but where do you begin and what is the benefit to you as a business owner?
Well, 66% of companies in 2022 were making changes in their mental health support for employees. You can bet that those employees will stay at a company longer with those benefits & support systems.
What is one of the leading factors in profit loss for companies? Employee turnover.
Supporting mental health initiatives will not only help your employees but it will benefit your company in the long run as well.
Luckily, at we can help with any changes you may be looking to make within your business.



For more stats on mental health in Canada please go to https://madeinca.ca

07/27/2023

Do You Have The Correct Meeting Etiquette?

With more and more of us working from home, meeting management etiquette is more important than ever. The following are simple guidelines that will eliminate a lot of frustration for your participants:

1. Keep your calendar up to date, including personal appointments: Few things are more frustrating for someone trying to coordinate multiple schedules than to have someone respond "sorry, I'm not available at that time." Even if you have to step out to pick your car up from the shop or take your child to an appointment, block out your calendar as a courtesy to others.

2. Respect peoples' calendars: Make every attempt to only book meetings when all participants are showing as "available" in their calendars. If you must book a time when someone is showing "unavailable," have the courtesy to speak to them first. Most people are happy to work with you ahead of time to find a time that works for everyone.

3. Book a minimum of 24 hours in advance: Most people plan out their day first thing in the morning. Even if they look "available," chances are they have work they need to complete. If you suddenly book 30 minutes in their day, chances are you will set them back in terms of what then planned to accomplish.

4. Include an agenda within your meeting invitation: Do not assume that people can read your mind or infer from the title what the meeting is about. Your agenda should be detailed enough to allow people to prepare ahead of time.

5. Provide reading material with your invitation: Most online meetings involve some sort of material that you will go through. You may not have everything available when you book the meeting (See 3.). But make sure you update your meeting invitation with a link or an attachment well in advance of the actual meeting.

6. Explain each change to your meeting within the invitation: Often you will have to reschedule a meeting, change details such as the agenda or attendees, add links or attachments, etc. Each time you do this all your recipients may receive a new meeting request. Rather than make everyone guess as to what's changed, include a brief note that explains.

Following these guidelines your meeting invitations should end up looking something like this:

(20230725) Added a meeting room for those who will be onsite
(20230724) Added links to the deck that we will go through
(20230721) Moved the meeting from Monday to Wednesday due to schedule conflicts
--------------------------
Purpose: To review the options identified, as well as the pros and cons for each. And make a decision on how to proceed.

Meetings materials will be provided in advance of the meeting.

Please confirm that you are available at this time.

Thank you,
Kevin
--------------------------

Techniques like this can make a world of difference when managing an underperforming team. For more information check out our site

2DaysAMonth offers senior level consulting services and access to expert business advisers, all for less than the cost of an administrative assistant.

07/21/2023

Documenting Verbal Commitments:

It's almost the end of a pretty long week so I'll keep this short. Today I want to share a tactic that has been very useful for me over the years. This is a very informal, yet legally binding, way to document a conversation with someone. I learned this from a lawyer early in my career and I continue to make good use of it when needed.

We've all been in a situation where we get a verbal commitment from someone who we do not trust. We know we should get that commitment in writing. The only problem is that untrustworthy people are generally smart enough not to put anything in writing.

In these situations, I was told to simply send a follow-up email to the person as soon as the conversation is over. It could be as simple as the following:

"Hi Frank, good to talk to you just now. I appreciate your update in terms of getting me that deliverable by this Friday. That will really help me out. Please let me know if you need anything further from me."

Of course, the untrustworthy person is almost certainly going to ignore your email. They will also certainly deny having ever provided you with any sort of commitment if asked in the future. However, just by sending that email you have created an electronic paper trail that will be very difficult for them to dispute. As my lawyer colleague pointed out to me; "not reading one's email is not a valid defense."

Hoping you rarely have to do this.

Respectfully yours,

Kevin

www.daysamonth.com

06/02/2023

Management Fundamentals Part 8: Daily Stand-up

Most managers are familiar with the idea of a daily stand-up meeting with teams. And opinions on the value of these vary from team to team. But without all the previously discussed expectations and planning work previously discussed, these can turn into nothing more than meaningless status updates at best, or lengthy unstructured wastes of time at worst.

If everyone has their Weekly Plan in front of them, these meetings become highly efficient discussions on the following:

-Notable successes
-Plans for the day
-Risks, Issues and Mitigation strategies
-Requests for support

It is important to keep these discussions short and focused. The following are 7 good ground rules to try and follow:

1. Move heaven and earth to attend these calls every day
2. Start and end calls on time
3. Address each staff member by name with “good morning, how can I help you today”
4. Referring to their Weekly Planner each participant should discuss:
-Notable successes
-Their plan for the day
-Mitigation strategies for any Risks or Issues
-Ways you can help them
5. There is no need to discuss the status of something that is on track
6. Anything requiring more than 30 seconds to resolve should be taken off line after everyone has had a chance to speak
7. Maintain an environment where everyone feels safe to share

I can not emphasize enough the importance of going through all the previous steps to set your team up for effective daily stand-ups.

Until next time…

Respectfully yours,
Kevin

05/04/2023

Management Fundamentals Part 7: Weekly Plans

The work has been assigned, everyone agrees on what they can deliver, potential excuses (Risks & Issues) have mitigation strategies in place, now it’s time to deliver.

There are many planning tools available today. But unless you’re scheduling widgets in a factory, I like to utilize what most people are already comfortable with: a weekly planner. This could be as low-tech as a whiteboard with sticky notes (my preference). Or, more practical in remote or hybrid environments, an online calendar such as Outlook.

Keeping with the theme of giving your team the freedom to manage their own workload, ask each of them to plan their following week using whatever calendar they choose. Then have them share it with you for review each Friday. If it’s a whiteboard they can send you a picture. If it’s their desktop calendar they can send you a screenshot.

Every Friday afternoon meet 1:1 with each of them to have them present their weekly plan to you. Be sure it includes the 2 - 3 deliverables or milestones they previously identified. Their plan should have time blocked out to complete tasks. Make sure it includes all of their other commitments (training session, personal appointments, booked or anticipated meetings). Finally ask them about any Risks or Issues they see and how you can support them in their mitigation strategies.

You may ask them why they feel a certain task will take them the time they estimate. This discussion is important to ensure both of you are on the same page. For example, they may have 3 hours blocked out to “Complete deck for meeting.” After some discussion you may both agree that if they repurpose a deck from another meeting it should only take an hour.

What is important is that the two of you come out of these planning review sessions with agreement that your employee is “planning for success.” If there are Risks or Issues looming then it is best to discuss and mitigate these in advance.

Thank them for a successful week, ask about any plans they may have for the weekend, and look forward to the week ahead.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“A goal without a plan is an excuse waiting to happen.” ~KF

Until next time…

Respectfully yours,

Kevin

https://2daysamonth.com/

04/27/2023

Management Fundamentals Part 6: Excuses, Risks, Issues & Mitigation

You’ve assigned deliverables to each of your staff and they’ve shown you their plans. Now you want to discuss Risks and Issues. It is both pragmatic and human nature for people to want to talk about Risks and Issues associated with their plans. There must be an evolutionary advantage that has bred it into our DNA.

As a manager you want to let people discuss these Risks and Issues before they start their year, not during year-end performance evaluations. And you also want them to identify mitigation strategies for each item identified. Any seasoned manager will be familiar with the experience of people coming up with more excuses than you have solutions. So transfer this responsibility to the ones who are closest to the problem; the person responsible for delivery of the assignment.

That does not mean you leave them on their own. You need to ensure that you listen and support them with their mitigation strategies. In some cases they may need something from you. This could include support from another executive or team or individual, or access to specific data, or any number of things. The key is to identify and mitigate any Risks or Issues before they become excuses when a milestone has passed.

I find it helps to think of this way:

“An excuse is just a Risk or Issue that wasn’t identified and mitigated.” ~KF

Until next time...

Respectfully yours
Kevin

04/19/2023

Management Fundamentals Part 5: What’s Their Plan

You’ve assigned deliverables to each of your staff, you’ve agreed with them on what each deliverable entails. Now it’s time to work with them on their plans. Likely you will have a high-level timeline for when you need each item finished. But those timeline might not align with constraints your staff may have. These constraints will include the ebbs and flows of everything that takes up their time. This may also include key personal commitments they know of over the coming year.

It is important that each staff member comes up with their own plan that suits these three equally important requirements:

1. Deliverables are completed when you need them to be done
2. Your staff believes they have everything they need to be successful
3. You have enough detail to follow up on ex*****on of their plan in a timely manner

Some deliverables may simply need to be completed by the end of the year. Others may have specific outside constraints as they are part of a larger organizational initiative. It is important that your staff know where they have autonomy and where they do not. It is much better to have the “there is no way that’s going to happen” discussion before the year even starts so you still have time to make adjustments.

When you have agreement on the high-level timing of deliverables, ask your staff to break each one into tasks. The level of detail is dependent on the experience level of the staff member, as well as the complexity of the deliverable. Different people have different levels of comfort when it comes to planning. But the key is that they identify one to two accomplishments a week. This sounds like a lot but it is critical.

In the end your staff members will have put together their own plans, in whatever format they feel comfortable, for each deliverable. Each plan includes 5 - 10 accomplishments a month. Most importantly they take ownership of their plans.

Until next time...

Respectfully yours
Kevin

2DaysAMonth offers senior level consulting services and access to expert business advisers, all for less than the cost of an administrative assistant.

03/30/2023

Management Fundamentals Part 3: Who Does What?

In my first post I talked about why your staff deserve to be micromanaged. That was followed by a post explaining why you start with your scope of responsibilities. In this post I talk about assigning your responsibilities to you and your team.

Now that you have a list of everything you are responsible for, the next step is to decide who does what. For you this may be obvious. But that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to your team. This simply involves assigning the names of you and your staff to each of the scope items previously identified.

After a little effort you should end up with a list of everything your team needs to accomplish this year, as well as names beside each. As you do this you will also probably see things that don’t make sense. This could include unbalanced workload across your team. Opportunities to better match individual skills and abilities to deliverables. Timing of deliverables that no longer make sense. Or even deliverables that you aren’t quite certain about. Remember this is not an exact science and your list will not remain static. This is why I strongly discourage you from going any more high-tech than a Word document or your whiteboard.

There is a tactical reason for staying low-tech as well. As leaders it can be tempting to think we have to share ideas through formal presentations complete with title pages, agendas and appendices. The problem in this case is it makes you look as though you are laying down the law, as opposed to creating a framework for discussion. Your staff will be more open to exchanging ideas on your list if it’s written out on your whiteboard, as opposed to appearing in Arial font on the screen at the front of the meeting room. More on that in the next post.

Until next time…

Respectfully yours,
Kevin

2DaysAMonth offers senior level consulting services and access to expert business advisers, all for less than the cost of an administrative assistant.