Pattern of Organizational Design
Organizational patterns are inspired in large part by the principles of the software pattern community, that in Time management basically means making good use of the time we have to reach our goals or finish the tasks we’ve been given.
Time management is the process of planning how you will spend your time and being aware of it, especially when you want to be more effective, efficient, or productive.
Time management techniques help you get the work you need to do done in the time you have.
When you’re a project manager, you might be given a different set of tasks each time around. Planning, managing, and keeping track of your team’s work is also something you need to do.
Strategies for managing time are:
Create a schedule for your work.
A study shows that knowing what you want to do and giving yourself a deadline already makes you more likely to succeed.
Pedro Serrador from the University of Toronto shows that planning and project success are linked in his paper called “The Impact of Planning on Project Success.” Serrador discovered through the literature review that project success is closely linked to both how well the project is done and how little it costs. It means that good planning can not only make it more likely that the project will be finished successfully, but it can also save money.
Making a list of must-dos and want-to-dos for each day may be all you need to plan your day. But if you are planning for more than one project, a high-level project plan will help you see the requirements for all of them and set goals and requirements for each one.
Set clear goals.
It can be hard to handle a long list of things you need to do. You can handle your to-do list better if you break it up into smaller pieces. Making clear priorities will help you arrange your tasks based on how important they are, how quickly they need to be done, and how much work they will require.
You can use the Eisenhower Matrix to tell the difference between important and urgent tasks on your list. It is a tool for getting things done that helps you organise your work into four groups:
These tasks are important and need to be done right away.
Tasks that are important but not urgent that you can plan to do later
Not important but urgent: If you can, you may give these tasks to someone else to do.
This type of work is not important or urgent, so you can skip it.
The Eisenhower Matrix is great because you can quickly organise your tasks by making it on the go with just a pen and paper.
Just do one thing at a time.
There are people who say multitasking is helpful, but it seems to do more harm than good. An article in Entrepreneur about the dangers of multitasking says that doing several things at once is useless and inefficient. When we try to do too many things at once, our brains need time to switch between them. This means that we’re not as productive as we could be.
Try to focus on one thing at a time, finish it, and then move on to the next one. This way, the change is smooth, and your brain is ready for a new task, especially if you take a few minutes to rest between tasks.
A Pomodoro Technique is one method you could use. This breaks up the work into shorter 25-minute sessions with breaks in between. Because it’s easier to focus on one thing at a time, it’s been shown to boost productivity. Plus, you won’t get tired and will be able to get more done.
The name comes from an Italian word for tomato, and the idea for it came from a kitchen timer. These days, there are tools that are made just for this method and can tell you exactly how long you should work for every 25 minutes.
Fewer interruptions are better.
PMI says that 90% of a project manager’s job is communication. However, there are times when you need to focus on a task and avoid interruptions as much as possible. It could be making a report or working on project documentation.
Let us say you’re using the Pomodoro Method. To make the most of it, you need to block out all other activities so you can concentrate on one thing for 25 minutes.
You may need to get rid of interruptions like emails, calls, coworkers, or chats. Sometimes you might want to check your email, make small talk with other people at work, or chat with your team. But the truth is that it makes you less productive.
This is what you can do instead:
If you don’t want to miss any important emails, schedule a time to check your inbox every day. Every other time, the tasks that have been given are done.
Tell your teammates not to bother you when you’re listening to music. Additionally, you can listen to music that aids in focus (or to some white noise, if you prefer).
To stop checking your phone all the time, turn off notifications and put it somewhere out of sight.
People get distracted easily, which keeps us from working. It will be easier for you to focus on a task if you reduce their number.
Set shorter due dates for yourself.
Have you ever felt like the more time you have to do something, the more likely it is that you’ll put it off instead of using that time to get it done faster? The Parkinson’s Law, which says that people tend to put things off, was first explained in an article in The Economist in 1955.
Parkinson said that “the work grows to fill the time that is available to finish it.” Because of this, if you have more time than you need to finish a task, you probably won’t get it done any faster.
That’s something you can fix by giving yourself shorter deadlines. You can push yourself to finish a task faster by telling someone on your team that they need to look it over at a certain time. This way, you have to do the work to show them that you can do it.
Delegate tasks.
People are not islands. There are probably people at your company who have the skills and time to help you with some of the things you find hard to do or don’t have time to do.
You’ve already seen that it’s a good idea to find tasks that you can give to other people so that you can focus on the more important and urgent ones.
Use a resource allocation tool to find team members who are available and have the skills needed for a certain task. For instance, in Teamdeck, you can quickly sort all of your employees by their role and see their schedules and free times in a simple calendar view.
You can show your employees that you value their ideas by giving them work to do. Let them make choices, and if you need to, stay close by to keep an eye on them. This will not only make your life easier, but it will also help your employees grow as professionals.
Get better at saying no
Making sure you know how much work you can finish in a certain amount of time is essential for keeping your promises. Also, it keeps you from getting stressed out at work and eventually feeling burned out.
It might be scary to tell your supervisor, manager, or even boss “no,” but here are some polite and strong ways to do it:
Justify your choice by listing the important things you’re already doing and how adding new ones will affect them.
Let them choose: If you already have a lot to do and your boss asks you to add another task, show them your list of priorities. They should decide if the task they want you to do is more important than other things.
Telling lies as an excuse is not a good way to handle requests. Explain clearly why you can’t do something right now.
A lot of the time, the first date someone gives you to turn in a task is not the actual due date. Ask if the task can be pushed back. Let them know that you’re willing to take on new tasks if they can be put off until later.
Since you don’t want to be seen as someone who doesn’t want to work, explaining why you can’t take on more work or negotiating over due dates might help you get fewer new tasks.
Review each day
You can find out what you did well and what needs to be done by writing daily summaries of your work.
Every night before going to bed, look at your list and mark off the things you’ve done. A great way to get ready for the next day is to look at what you’ve already done.
Organization for Learning
The process of making, keeping, and sharing knowledge within an organisation is called organisational learning. As a group gains experience, it gets better over time. It is possible to learn from this experience. This information is very broad and can be used to help any organisation. Some examples are ways to make production more efficient or to build good relationships with investors. There are four levels at which knowledge is made: the individual, the group, the organisation, and the relationship between organisations.
A learning curve is the most common way to show how much an organisation has learned. As a business makes more of a good or service, it gets better at being productive, efficient, reliable, and/or high-quality, but the benefits get smaller over time. This is called a learning curve. Differences in learning rates cause learning curves to be different. Organizational learning rates are affected by how skilled each person is, how well the technology in the organisation is used, and how well the structures, routines, and ways of working together are improved.
Modern businesses are under a lot of pressure, which makes them evolve into learning organisations. These organisations stay competitive in the business world.
What Learning Organization Can Do for You
- Keeping up with new ideas and staying competitive.
- Efficiency has gone up.
- For example, knowing how to better connect resources to what customers need.
- Making outputs better at every level.
- Improving the company’s image by focusing on people more.
- Speeding up the organization’s change process.
- Getting the organization’s sense of community stronger.
- Making better long-term choices.
- Sharing knowledge better.
What Makes a Learning Organization Unique
Thoughts on systems
Systems thinking is the body of work that gave rise to the idea of the learning organisation. The idea behind this framework is that businesses can be thought of as bounded objects. This way of thinking is used by learning organisations to evaluate their business, and they have information systems that check the performance of the whole organisation as well as its different parts. According to systems thinking, for an organisation to be a learning organisation, all of these traits must be present at the same time. The organisation will not reach its goal if some of these traits are missing.
Mastery over oneself
Individual dedication to the learning process is called personal mastery. A company whose employees can learn new things faster than employees of other companies has an edge over those other companies. People believe that learning is more than just getting new information; it also means becoming more productive by figuring out the best way to use our skills at work. In a spiritual sense, personal mastery can also show up as things like clear focus, a clear vision, and the ability to see and understand reality objectively. Individual learning happens through staff training, development, and constant self-improvement. However, someone who doesn’t want to learn can’t be forced to do so. Research has shown that most learning at work happens by accident and not because of formal training. Because of this, it is important to create a culture where personal mastery is practised every day. It has been said that a learning organisation is the sum of all the individual learning that takes place. However, there must be ways for individual learning to be used to help the organisation learn. Self-mastery leads to many good things, like performance, self-efficacy, self-motivation, a sense of responsibility, commitment, patience, and focus on important things, as well as a healthy work-life balance and overall well-being.
Brain Models
Mental models are the assumptions and broad ideas that people and groups hold. People’s personal mental models show what they can and cannot notice. People’s observations might be limited by mental models because they cause selective observation. To turn an organisation into a learning one, these models need to be found and questioned. A person’s theories-in-use are what they actually do, while their philosophical beliefs are what they want to follow. Similarly, groups often have “memories” that keep certain behaviours, rules, and values alive. To make a good learning space, you should get rid of attitudes that are hostile and replace them with an open culture that encourages questions and trust. To do this, the learning organisation needs ways to find and evaluate theories of action for organisations.
The same goal
To get the staff to learn, it’s important to create a shared vision. This gives everyone a sense of belonging, which gives learning focus and energy. Traditional structures that force the company vision down from above can make it harder to create a shared vision because the best visions are built on the individual visions of employees at all levels of the organisation. So, learning organisations usually have flat, decentralised ways of running their businesses.
Teamwork at work
Team learning is when the learning of many individuals is put together. Through team or shared learning, employees learn more quickly and the organisation is better able to solve problems because it has better access to knowledge and expertise. Structures in learning organisations help teams learn by letting people cross boundaries and be open. People can learn more from each other in team meetings if they pay attention, don’t talk over each other, show interest, and answer. People don’t have to hide or ignore their disagreements anymore thanks to progress. They learn more about those things as a group. The best kind of team learning is when people can think deeply about complicated issues, work together to come up with new solutions, and build a network that lets other teams do the same. Team’s main goal is to share both private and public information with the rest of the group and make a space where creativity can grow. Team improve your ability to think together. It is the process of adapting and building up the team’s skills so that it can get the results that its members really want. To learn as a team, people have to talk to each other and have discussions. This means that team members need to work on open communication, shared meaning, and shared understanding. Most learning organisations have great knowledge management systems that make it easy to create, acquire, share, and use knowledge within the organisation.
The three types of learning in organisational learning theory
Argrys and Schon (1996) say that an organisation may have three levels of learning:
Single loop learning: When a strategy is changed because of an unexpected result, there is only one feedback loop (error correction). As an example, when sales are low, marketing managers look into why and change their plans to try to get sales back on track.
Double-loop learning is when you learn something that changes how you use that knowledge. To make the environment work better, the values, strategies, and assumptions that guide behaviour are changed. In this case, managers might rethink the whole sales or marketing process to make sure that there aren’t any more or smaller changes like this.
Learning in Deuteronomy: Learning how to make the learning system better. This is made up of structural and behavioural parts that determine how people learn. This means that deuterolearning is basically “learning how to learn.”
This has a lot to do with Senge’s idea of the learning organisation, especially when it comes to improving the way people learn and understanding and changing mental models.
So, all three must be a part of effective learning in order to keep improving the organisation at all levels. Any business will use single loop learning, but double loop and especially deutero learning are much harder to do.