WHAT’S NEW
MANAGEMENT FOR DESIGN Winter 2016
10 steps to finally have a workfree holiday
With today’s technology it is difficult to take a real vacation with no time spent answering emails and dodging calls. Many people are becoming reluctant to take time off because it is not much of a break when you are constantly checking your phone and locating the closest Wi-Fi source at your holiday destination, not to mention the pile of work that will still be there when you return. Use this checklist for less stress either side of your vacation to achieve a well-deserved work-free break. 1. Delegate Make a list of everything that will need to be completed before or during your vacation. This includes meetings, ongoing tasks and daily operational work. 2. Prioritise Figure out which tasks are essential to get done before leaving. Prioritise these tasks by importance, deadline and length of project. You should also decide whether the task is a priority for you to get done before you go away or if it can be delegated. Can the work be done without you?
3. Review and add to your employees’ work backlog To ensure your team’s productivity and avoid getting emails, create a backlog of work. This backlog of work should not only include the tasks that need to get done but also the context and tools that may be needed to complete the tasks. 4. Who’s in charge while you’re away? Identify someone who you trust to make decisions in your absence and leave them your contact information in case of emergency. Make sure you define what a ‘real emergency’ is so you’re not hassled unnecessarily. 5. Meet individually with team members to review plans for the time you’ll be gone Before you leave you need to ensure each team member understands the above steps, that they know what extra work they may have to take on, what to do with potential spare time and who to go to if they have questions or concerns. 6. Send a context email to your team Send your team a group email with all the details they will need while you are away. This includes who your delegates are, exact dates you are away, who is responsible for what, etc. This will ensure all members of your team are on the same page and will give everyone a point of reference. 7. Review your plan with any additional departments, outside contractors or teams Ensure you have asked everyone what they need from you before you leave, especially if you work with other businesses or work closely with your clients. 8. Plan a meeting when you return Set a meeting for your team leaders and delegates to debrief you on things that happened while you were away. You can also take this opportunity to improve your systems by getting your team to look at what the learned while you were away, how they handled unexpected situations, what went well and what didn’t go so well. 9. Set your out-of-office message You should set your out-of-office notification to start one day before you leave and one day after you get back to give yourself a buffer. In your message you should tell people that you will not be responding to messages during your absence, but will respond to them as soon as you return. 10. Unplug Make sure you log out of all work-related apps and turn off all work-related notifications until you return to the office.
Have a great break! Credit: thanks to eMyth for inspiring this article. You can download the original article along with an out-of-office email template here: http://go.emyth.com/ business-vacation-checklist.
M4D at Consult Australia’s Annual ASPAC conference
Management for Design participated in Consult Australia’s Annual ASPAC Conference in Sydney at the end of April. The forum provided a unique networking platform for CEOs and senior business leaders of the major consulting and engineering firms in the Asia Pacific region. This three-day event offered an opportunity for insightful debate and discussion with peers from over 25 nations in the region. Management for Design’s Gordana Milosevska presented the session ‘The value of benchmarking — how to use it to drive business success’. Other speakers at the benchmarking session included Max Bomben, Managing Director, Calibre Consulting, and Justin Davies, Chief Operating Officer Northrop Consulting Engineers. In her address, Gordana took a close look at Consult Australia’ practice performance survey and discussed the role of benchmarking to identify areas of opportunity where clients can make improvements. In a participatory
and educational presentation, Gordana focused on the importance of benchmarking as a radar for change where true value resides in the actions leaders take. The Consult survey highlights areas of strength within firms when it come to decision making. Firms who are able to see their strengths and weaknesses are better equipped to take the right steps and maintain their advantages. With numbers becoming a reflection of the decisions made, Gordana underlined key steps to success. These include knowing your numbers, setting your KPIs, measuring financials and also your reputation and brand, comparing or benchmarking, and ultimately taking the right action to create change. Gordana and the Management for Design team have been instrumental in enabling businesses to attain financial stability and sustainable growth by creating the change that’s needed to unleash the professional expertise and creative spirit in AEC firms. Other main speakers at the conference included Megan Motto, Consult Australia CEO; Phil Davies, Infrastructure Australia CEO; Stuart Fowler, Norman Disney & Young CEO; and Professor the Hon. Stephen Martin, CEDA CEO. The program included interactive sessions consisting of an initial presentation followed by a facilitated discussion or workshop to enable participants to share their concerns and learn from each other’s experiences. Sessions covered strategy and planning, legal, operational, managing growth, building brand CEO, future leaders, infrastructure, economic and political outlook, global M&A trends, free trade agreements and practical challenges in working across Asia Pacific. The Management for Design team very much enjoyed the conference and the opportunity to share knowledge on benchmarking, business systems and strategy in the AEC sector.
Choosing the right ERP system for your business: part 1 Many firms use systems that aren’t right for their business needs. Using poorly matched systems has detrimental effects on the productivity, profitability and performance of a firm. To run your business effectively, it is essential to use a purpose-built enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that will optimize the specific needs of your firm. By focusing on what your business benefits from and assessing what is most profitable for your business in the future, it will help
to enhance the growth capabilities of your business. In addition, it will help to achieve a diverse and thriving portfolio. ERP systems streamline the flow of business processes by integrating information between different departments into one complete system. Collated information includes: •
Finance/accounting
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Customer relationship management
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Management accounting
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Acquisition
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Human resources
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Budgeting
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Sales order entry
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Materials
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Manufacturing
By integrating the information from the functions above into one system, it enables the firm to establish rules to implement major processes and gain a greater insight into the business. Information that is flowed accurately and efficiently between different departments increases the control that every element has on the business. Key characteristics of an ERP include: •
All information is collated into one complete system
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Real time information
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Flexible and interchangeable design
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An open system architecture — allowing changes to be made to one function that doesn’t interfere with the other functions of the process.
Choosing a Project-based ERP Project-based businesses — firms that receive the majority of their revenue from client-based project work — have very specific needs. It is important to be able to assess the nature and performance of every project worked on by viewing the business in three dimensions. Generic ERP systems don’t enable fluidity and don’t provide the necessary level of complexity when analyzing a project. In order to operate, these systems require a lot of customization. When project-based businesses attempt to customise generic ERP systems, the outcome is often disappointing, with processes lacking precision and focus. Lack of control when manually dealing with predictive costing methods, and reconciliations when connecting accounts makes it difficult to accurately view the profitability and performance of every project. If a projectbased ERP is used correctly, it results in decisions and work being completed faster. To improve your business’ success rate, be sure to address these three essential elements: •
Account —the general ledger account
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Organization — this describes who is doing the work, eg: a particular department
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Project — the product/service being completed for a customer/client. The project is the key success element and enables your business to stay in business.
By linking the following elements, businesses are able to produce accurate and efficient results that will maintain the growth of their business: •
Financial reports
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Invoices
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Payroll
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Project status reports
When all information is integrated under one system, firms have maximum control of their business. Being able to easily identify problems and make critical informed decisions helps to maintain a competitive edge in their industry. Real-time integrations between financial, distribution and manufacturing solutions ensure accurate and up-to-date data whilst it also eliminates duplication and manual entry. This ultimately saves time and cuts costs. By streamlining your business, it means there is more time for firms to focus on maintaining their position in the industry whilst being able to respond quickly and efficiently to their clients. Send us an email to info@m4d.com.au if you are interested in learning about some real examples of bottom line impact.
Retaining top talent in your organisation Keeping employees engaged Why does employee engagement matter to your organisation? •
$11 billion is lost annually because of employee turnover
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Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202%
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71% of all employees are not full engaged
Employees will be more loyal and more engaged to their organisation when: •
They feel valued
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They believe their work matters
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They feel they have supportive supervisors
It takes a combination of performance management career management and succession planning to get employees engaged. 1. Performance management Have a company wide performance management approach to enhance accountability, visibility and employee recognition. Give your employees support and feedback in order to increase engagement. According to The Energy Project employees who say they have supportive supervisors are 1.3 times more likely to stay with their organisation and 67% are more engaged. Provide constant feedback; do not wait until the annual performance review to let your employees know how they are going. Giving constant feedback about clear and meaningful goals lets the employees know what is expected of them. Goals can be used to inspire productivity and reward talent. Having a well-designed performance management process allows for ongoing, interactive feedback coupled with clear development and coaching plans. By doing this organisations are investing in growing their employees; they build high-performing teams and create more engaged and loyal employees. 2. Career management Employees are always considering their career opportunities, research suggests that up to two thirds of your work force may be looking for a new job or are open to the idea of changing jobs if the opportunity presented itself.
Career development will help employees discover their strengths and the areas that need to be developed. By creating a detailed gap analysis it will make it easier to identify potential successors based on: •
Skill
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Competency
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Experience
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Desire an employee has to hold the job.
Career development has benefits for your organisation as well, it helps you to increase employee retention, develop employees and plan for the future so the decision of who to put into new positions isn’t made in haste. 3. Succession planning Employees want to know that there is a chance for them to grow and to advance within the organisation. Instead of grooming someone who is already a part of the organisation to one day move into a bigger role they choose to not think about what will happen when people leave and instead often look externally for someone to fill the role. Doing this does not give the employees much hope of being able to move up.
Investing in your business management system Your Business Management System is one of the core foundations of your business. An effective and integrated system will enable you to more effectively control your business and is a key foundation to enable you to build your business. At any given moment, project‐based firms need real‐time information to: •
Provide insight into the status and ensure project profitably
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Understand how the business is performing and why problems occurred
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Assess the impact on the business, and what should be done to enhance performance
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Efficiently share information throughout the organization.
Management for Design have developed the most comprehensive Business Management System for Architects, Engineers and Consultants in the
marketplace. Our unique combination of industry specialism and expertise, decades of experience and best practice in business systems and technology has enabled us to offer a fully integrated system with a powerful feature suite that facilitates and automates financial management, marketing, resource planning, project management, business development, management reporting, forecasting, payroll and document control. Management for Design’s solution enables your business to: •
Win more work
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Improve project delivery and profitability
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Improve business performance
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Streamline your operations and execution
No other system in our market will provide an integrated cloud based system that encompasses Accounting and Payroll, Project Control, Business Development, Management Reporting and Document Control. To learn more about how our Business Management System, download the PDF here.
READING LIST 59 Seconds: Change your Life in Under a Minute Richard Wiseman A psychologist and best-selling author gives us a myth-busting response to the self-help movement, with tips and tricks to improve your life that come straight from the scientific community.
The A/E Business Development Bible. PSMJ E-Book A concise overview of the essential “must-knows” of business development, direct from PSMJ’s marketing and business development experts. This complimentary e-book gives you real, tangible tools and advice on all you need to know about business!
The Ten Commandments for Business Failure Don Keough This light-hearted “how-not-to” book includes anecdotes from Keough’s long career as well as other infamous failures. His commandments for failure include: Quit Taking Risks; Be Inflexible; Assume Infallibility; Put All Your Faith in Experts; Send Mixed Messages; and Be Afraid of the Future.
Nine Steps to Creating Predictable Results in Your Business eMyth In this guide, you’ll learn the first steps to designing systems that will help you work toward owning a business that’s under control. You’ll learn the value of systems, how you’re already using them, and the Nine Steps to creating predictable and reliable results.
The Virgin Way: If It’s Not Fun, It’s Not Worth Doing Richard Branson This unique perspective comes from a man who dropped out of school at sixteen, suffers from dyslexia, and has never worked for anyone but himself. He may be famous for thinking outside the box—an expression he despises—but Branson asserts that “you’ll never have to think outside the box if you refuse to let anyone build one around you.”
MANAGEMENT FOR DESIGN
Management for Design provides integrated business systems and services to the design industry across Strategy, Finance, Information Technology, Human Resource Management and Business Systems. By working with Management for Design our clients are enabled to focus on what they are great at and to control and build their businesses. For more information visit www.m4d.com.au or phone 03 9645 8834.
