Have you noticed that after doing the same thing for a company for a while, you get .. bored with it?  Of course you have.

Recently this has hit me square in the face.  I’ve been working with one of my clients for over 3 years without any change.  I didn’t recognize the warning signs – but the quality and timeliness of my work started to suffer.  That’s not acceptable in my books.

Good staff, (any staff for that matter) requires growth and change in their position or they will get complacent and their work will suffer (or they’ll leave). Managing the level of that change is an art unto itself, which I won’t talk about right now.

So what do you do about complacency?  One thing is to make sure that everyone on the team gets their share of cool, growth projects.  A friend’s company makes sure to tie in some “Google time” for people to work on off-the-books (but still semi-work-related) style fun projects.  I think this is a great idea – it lets your team learn and grow and stay interested in what they’re doing.

Don’t forget about mentoring and helping staff grow out of their positions.  Leaving someone in helpdesk 1 forever will slowly kill them (mentally).  Even if you don’t have the need for a helpdesk 2, giving them some server-related tasks or just SOMETHING new helps.

What am I doing about my client?  Changing things up a bit.  With my new consultant, I can distribute the mundane tasks a bit more, so we’ll make a plan to ensure the client gets the service they deserve.

For the past several months, I’ve been turning down work.  It’s been so busy that I haven’t managed to maintain the service levels I want, roll out new projects or even take a lunch break. 

Thankfully, after way too many interviews I finally found the new resource I’ve been looking for.   Luther is now coming online has already made an impact with my clients (he’s getting the fun projects I haven’t had time for!). 

Hopefully this will mean more posts on the site and other exciting expansions to our humble consulting business.  As it stands I have 5 articles in drafts just waiting for my attention. 

More soon.