4
5. List their qualities to complete the item (skills, schedule, education, relationship, experience, etc.). 6. Organize your tasks so that those completed by the most people are at the bottom and the fewest at the top, following the pyramid shape. 7. Delegate the action items. We use this exercise in combination with an organization chart that defines roles and responsibilities. It allows us to empower employees and provide clear direction regarding expectations while at the same time allowing others to let go and focus on making the business successful during periods of growth. With this exercise, control or responsibility is not taken away from the owner or PM; it simply pushes assignments to team members who can contribute at their appropriate level or role in the company. Today, with a staff of 70, this exercise has helped our company leadership hire many non-engineering positions, including an HR director, marketing coordinator, and IT manager. By adding key quality people, time was freed for our project managers and group directors to focus on core sectors of the business and develop the next generation of engineers. We completed this concept five years ago and now are developing our strategic plan to push onward to the next plateau. Rolf Armstrong, P.E., S.E., is CFO at Eclipse Engineering. He’s based out of the company’s Bend, Oregon branch. Connect with him on LinkedIn .
ROLF ARMSTRONG , from page 3
for direction, and you are getting pulled in multiple directions trying to fill every role in your organization, it’s time to let go. We found ourselves with an opportunity to get ahead of these crisis moments and were determined to problem-solve a way to systematically let go. As engineers, we reverted to spreadsheets and charts to begin laying out a process. Rather than focusing on how to let go, we decided to develop an exercise on what to let go, which we call the “pyramid.” This exercise can be scaled to any group of people or activity involving more than one person. This is how the pyramid works: 1. First, identify the activity. For example: Bring on new talent. 2. Next, draw the pyramid with horizontal lines. 3. At each horizontal line, define a role or action item that is required to complete the activity. For example: Attend career fairs Create a new job position Post job listing Contact candidates 4. Under each action item, list the people in your organization who can complete that task.
© Copyright 2024. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 15, 2024, ISSUE 1533
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker