If you increase clarity, you absolutely will increase productivity. You will also increase engagement, commitment, and determination. You will make smarter decisions, better plans, and solve problems more readily. It’s true and I can prove it. Furthermore, the potential gains are enormous. However, you can’t improve anything if you can’t see it. Thus, in November I proposed the 1st Quarterly Clarity Week and my first suggestion for exposing opportunities to increase productivity with clarity. If you participated, your team consciously kept their eyes out for bandaids and workarounds over the course of the week. This should have been relatively easy since bandaids and workarounds are familiar concepts. I hope you found some great opportunities for improvement. Now it is time for the 2nd Quarterly Clarity Week. This time my goal is to raise awareness of a far less familiar, but incredibly important, opportunity. Here is what you do. At the beginning of each meeting in the week ahead:
Happy February to you! Last month I shared my 10 most popular Forbes posts. Today I want to share some of my least popular posts. But not just my least popular. My least popular but very important posts. These are articles that should have been popular, and probably would have been had I given them better titles! Some of these titles are so bad you probably won’t click on them even though I’m telling you they are important!
American companies spend billions on employee training and development each year and most of it is wasted. The hoped for changes just don’t materialize. Why? Here are eight reasons: 1. Training isn’t what employees need. Training develops skills. At the end of a training course, employees should be able to do something they couldn’t do or couldn’t do well before the class. If you don’t know what skill your employees need that they don’t have, you are wasting your money. 2. You are training the wrong people. Too often one employee screws up and the solution is to train everyone rather than deal with the miscreant. If-he-needs-it, they-probably-all-need-it thinking leads to training lots of employees who already know what to do and have been performing acceptably.
I’ve been an expert blogger for Forbes for 16 months now and I thought you might be interested in my 10 most popular posts at this point. The first one has been read by over 64,000 people – that’s a happy record for me! 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 9 Reasons You And Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hours Of Work In 40 Hours – And What To Do About It Three Traits of Top Notch Leaders 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company The Holy Grail of Productivity Are You Ready For The Next Big Innovation In Workplace Productivity? 5 Reasons Meetings Never Improve One Incredibly Costly Mistake You Make Over And Over Again 21 Games People Play With To Do Lists 12 Reasons Why How You Make Decisions Is More Important Than What You Decide
For those of you who appreciated the books I mentioned a year ago, I thought I would share my favorites from 2016: The Autobiography of Henry VIII with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins The Hills of Home by T L Greylock (my daughter – I could be biased!) Tahoe Dark by Todd Borg (my brother – no bias; just ask the fan base he has built with 13 previous books) Quite an eclectic list this year. I hope you enjoy any you try! Feel free to send me your favorites. Readers with similar tastes gave me some great recommendations after seeing my favorites from 2015. (I apologize for linking to Amazon, since some of you may resent the way they treat suppliers. I just wanted to add links so you could learn more about each book easily and Amazon comes up first when I search for book titles. Please support your favorite book store!)
Are you crazy busy? Do you have way too much to do? Here are a dozen reasons why you need to STOP IT! 1. There are only 24 hours in a day and you can’t change that. 2. Most of the items on your list are never going to get done so why kid yourself. 3. People are tired of hearing you complain about having too much to do. 4. You are not going to suddenly become five times as productive tomorrow. 5. “Not enough time” and “Too much to do” are victim words. You don’t want to be a victim!
Strategic planning isn’t always strategic. Why? Let me count the ways! 1. Strategic planning is usually mired in today’s circumstances. And it stays there thanks to tools like SWOT. SWOT immerses the planners in obstacles and current perceptions. It makes opportunities no more important than strengths, weaknesses, and threats. Your future is all about opportunity. You build strengths to take advantage of opportunities. You overcome weaknesses to take advantage of opportunities. You choose the opportunities to make the threats less relevant. Don’t let strengths, weaknesses, and threats overpower opportunities by treating them as equals. Concentrate first and foremost on the opportunities! Focus on creating value for which customers are willing to pay!
My top wish for you this year is Clarity of Purpose. Because everything hinges on that. Clarity of Purpose shrinks your list of priorities to real priorities, improves your ability to focus, reveals the shortest path to your destination, boosts your sense of commitment, and increases the odds that you will accomplish the tasks most essential to your success. Clarity of Purpose starts with big goals for a New Year. What top few accomplishments will have the greatest impact on your future?
Another great year, and one that passed all too quickly. But don’t they all! The ski season never happened in New England, but I barely noticed thanks to our continuing Urban Experiment. I’m truly hooked on Boston. It’s a great city! Fun, varied, walkable, and gorgeous! As the clock wound down on our year in Boston, the planning of our next chapter moved front and center. As originally planned, we moved once again. We now have a new home base. It remains to be seen how long that lasts and how widely we roam! I have so many plans! So many places I want to live and visit!
In honor of the season, I’d like to share a holiday post from last year. On the first day of Clarity my clear thoughts gave to me: The Luxury of Doing What I Do Best! On the second day of Clarity my clear thoughts gave to me: Short, Power Meetings and the Luxury of Doing What I Do Best! On the third day of Clarity my clear thoughts gave to me: Only 3 Priorities Short, Power Meetings and the Luxury of Doing What I Do Best! On the fourth day of Clarity my clear thoughts gave to me: