Would you believe the average office worker spends 28% of working hours reading and writing email? If the 2012 McKinsey study is still accurate, and I doubt things have improved, that’s the equivalent of 3 and a 1/3 months each year doing nothing but email! Imagine if your company could cut that time in half. What might your employees do with an extra 7 weeks each year? How many more customers could you serve with the same workforce? What would that do to employee stress levels, yours included? So what are you waiting for?!?! There is no reason to let email consume more than a quarter of your day. Here are 5 steps your company can take to reduce email immediately.
I learned about the Brat and the Chicken at a conference last week. Laurie Gerber of the Handel Group gave a lively talk on time management at one of the sessions. We all know about the little voices that sit on our shoulders, whisper in our ears, and generally prevent us from doing what we need to do. What I liked about Laurie is that she reduced the voices to the two most prevalent. The Chicken is the fearful voice, scared and afraid of failing. The Brat is the little whining kid with constant complaints and masterful arguments as to why you shouldn’t do what needs to be done at any particular moment. Neither the Brat, nor the Chicken, have any business controlling your life! What shocked me was how readily I could come up with examples from my Brat, especially when it came to exercise! I don’t feel like it today. The weather is bad. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing. I’m on a roll. Awww, come on, just 10 more minutes! I need a cup of coffee first. I need to finish this, and that, first. I can’t decide whether to pole walk, lift weights, ride my unicycle, do yoga, read on the treadmill, …. Time to squash the Brat!
It’s here! The cheat sheet for clarity! The best quick tips for getting better results faster with greater confidence and commitment at your fingertips! Download Ann’s Clarity App from the iTunes store today! It’s loaded with tips you can use and share immediately to improve decisions, meetings, planning, holding others accountable, and more! Imagine the value gained from sharing and using nuggets such as the: only 6 types of outcomes for any meeting 4 steps to better decisions, 3 of which are usually skipped biggest mistakes people make when planning how victim-hood prevents us from managing our time 2 criteria you should use to include others in your decisions 4 words that will make your productivity soar and more, including more to come! Since shared clarity is the most powerful clarity, encourage your colleagues to download Ann’s Clarity App right away as well. Need another incentive to act now? The introductory price can’t be beat! Once you’ve tried the app, I’d love to hear your reaction. And don’t forget, new content is on its way!
New York Magazine announced that the secret to better meetings is to stand up because sit-down meetings last longer and produce no better results. I have news for you. By that logic, you’ll save even more time by cancelling your meetings altogether. Of course standing up shortens meetings. Because it makes people physically uncomfortable. But that certainly doesn’t mean you will accomplish more per minute. If you don’t know how to get results in meetings, you shouldn’t be running meetings at all! But I’ve got more news for you. If you can’t run effective meetings, it has nothing to do with meetings. It has everything to do with a lack of clarity about what you are trying to accomplish, a lack of shared processes for fundamental tasks such as decision-making, planning, problem solving, and strategizing, and a lack of language to quickly get a group on the same page so you can agree on where you are and next steps. Quit blaming meetings for the wandering, confusion, and lack of progress evidenced by your company’s meetings every day! Start creating clarity instead!
Most people are blind to how much time they and their organization are wasting. The farther they are from the production line, where both flow and snags are usually quite conspicuous, the more true this is. The National Center for the Middle Market shares Ann’s tips on How to Create a Work Culture That’s More Productive.
The corporate world has enjoyed huge leaps in productivity over the last several decades, but all of that improvement has been focused on physical processes, not cognitive processes. Our production lines, ordering, purchasing, picking, and shipping have all been streamlined. Anytime we are moving physical product, or even paper, we are focused on efficiency. Not so with our cognitive processes. The way we think, communicate, and make decisions is just as sloppy as ever. Our mouths are veritable Pandora’s boxes in their ability to create and disseminate confusion. Words and ideas, once cut loose, can be as tough to corral as wild horses. We do not have the shared cognitive processes and language needed to quickly agree on where we are and what must come next.
The skiing was great in Vermont this year. From mid-December through early April, the snow, on average, made for one of the best seasons I can remember. Even when conditions are great, there is the occasional slope that gets scraped off early, which totally changes the way I ski. When I can’t trust the snow, I can’t go with the flow, can’t attack the hill. I slow down and ski more defensively. Like a broken promise, it spoils the fun for me. My best clients of all sizes know that employees are held back in the same way when they can’t trust their environs. When people know what to expect, they can get in the zone and attack their work. When surrounded by confusion, shifting priorities, broken promises, or unreliable processes, they have to slow down and be more defensive. It spoils their fun, but also their productivity, commitment, and enthusiasm. The costs are enormous. There is one important advantage to skiing however. When it stops being fun, you can always just quit and head for the bar, the sauna, or a good book in front of a toasty fire!
After spending 10 years and $10 million dollars, a British company hired the company where I was once employed to build what they had failed to finish. They lost more than 10 years and $10 million. What else might they have accomplished during those 10 years had they hired us much sooner? What’s the full cost of this mistake? Work-in-progress sucks up resources. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about manufacturing, product development, or a management initiative. To exist is to consume money, space, and time. How much per day? Improvement-work-that-should-be-in-progress sucks up resources too. Anything that takes twice as long as it should – wandering meetings, slow decisions, and employees operating at half the speed of their peers are just a few examples. Can you tally the cost of those? Speed matters. Resources are finite. Life is short. Time is passing. Ka-ching! Want to move faster? Clarity is the secret. Give me call at 800-527-0087.
If I were to help you dramatically increase your productivity, how would you know it? What metrics would you expect to improve? When thinking about productivity, most people immediately think of three types of metrics: Production metrics – such as throughput, rework, and units per hour Sales metrics – such as sales, length of sales cycle, and conversion rates Financial metrics – such as return-on-assets, account receivable days, and margins Nothing wrong with these, but think about all the productivity that is not being measured by these and similar metrics. Think about all the executives, managers, and staff who aren’t selling or directly involved in moving product one step closer to the shipping dock all day long. How are you measuring their productivity?