You may be the world’s number-one neat freak, but you can still have clutter in your life. Clutter comes in many forms and shapes that we sometimes do not recognize. We tend to think of clutter as stuff piled up on a desk, clothes accumulating in a closet, or the messy interior of your spouse’s car. Clutter can also come in the form of a crowded to-do list or a schedule packed with activities and meetings. A good leader organizes and removes unneeded clutter from the organization.
If you consider yourself a leader, you need to plan and implement how you will help others by organizing for positive impact in your organization. Get that? Organize for your organization. Take a minute and think on that one. We will focus on three areas of organization today and three more on Wednesday.
1. SIMPLIFY
Keep it simple. For large projects have a simple plan of organizing it - organize around natural groupings. The point is don't create organization if you don't need it. If there is already organization, try to work through it and try to work with it. Sometimes a new leader comes into a situation and the first thing he does is start changing the whole organization. He doesn't need to do that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
First Law of Leadership: The strongest organizations are the simplest. It's like toys. Blocks are unbreakable. More complex toys break. The more complex something is the more it breaks. The simpler it is, the stronger it is. The simplest organizations are strong organizations.
2. PARTICIPATE
Work with those who want to work. A lot of leaders never learn this. They spend all their time trying to corral the lazy and the apathetic instead of working with those who want to work.
In every project there are two kinds of people -- workers and shirkers. Work with people who want to work. Leaders love everybody, but they move with the movers. In every organization, family, church there are some people who say, "I want to go. I want to be involved." Focus on these. Don't focus on those people who make excuses.
3. DELEGATE, DELEGATE, DELEGATE!
When you're organizing you make specific assignments, divide up the project in specific tasks, assign specific people to those specific tasks.
Tasks to do in delegation:
1. Break down major goals into smaller tasks. This is the capacity to cut problems down to size.
2. Develop clear job descriptions. Every one deserves to know what's expected.
3. Match the right person with the right task. The wrong person in the wrong task causes chaos. It causes all kinds of motivational problems. In good delegating you've got to understand what the task is all about and you've got to understand what the person is good at and get them together.
