We’ve never met in person but I just wanted to shoot you an email to let you know that I’m a fan of your work. While we both tick the “Management Consultant” and “Strategy” boxes, I appreciate how unique and focused your perspective is. I’m a big fan of the content you publish in your social channels and on your blog. Really liked this one: 4 Skills That Separate The Super Productive From Everyone Else. That’s it! Not that you needed validation from someone you don’t know, but I wanted to let you know that I think what you do is great. It’s refreshing to see a professional who cares so deeply about the people she serves. Nunzio Bruno
I remember when my husband and I first considered having a baby. We discussed how it might be better to wait. I don’t remember that conversation, but I do remember the realization that we would never be ready. If we had waited until we had had enough money, wisdom, and kid-free experiences – until we were completely ready, we never would have had children! If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never do anything. Nonetheless, I witness daily examples of people delaying action on their top priorities while they plan, practice, research, check with a few more people, or wait for someone to return from vacation or maternity leave. In other cases, they distract themselves completely by “getting all their ducks in a row” or tackling low hanging fruit of little importance. I have a Fortune 500 client who has postponed the start of our project every month since October because they aren’t quite ready. A business owner who attended my most recent speech has been thinking about doing a webinar, but isn’t quite ready. Next thing you know, it will be December again! Don’t spend February getting ready. Get clear about your priorities and figure out what concrete steps you need to take today, tomorrow, and next week so that on March 1st you can look back at February as a month of amazing action, not a month of preparation!
When I opened the refrigerator this morning, the space normally occupied by 100% natural orange juice was taken by an alternative. The unnaturally long list of unrecognizable ingredients and pledges of less sugar and calories raised my hackles almost as fast as my pause raised my husband’s defenses. He thought we could try it. I thought he had flipped. In some marriages, this could be the burnt toast that breaks the camel’s back. Why? Because we shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Our cart contains little other than fresh fruit, vegetables, chicken, and seafood. Since we don’t squeeze our own juice or keep a cow, we venture into the center aisles for things like juice and milk. However, the criteria that drive our selections remain constant. The brand of juice and milk matters little; the length and contents of the ingredients list matters a lot.
Your Clear Thoughts is a breath of fresh air for me. When I read your articles I feel joy! Because you make sense without making things complicated. You dig to the root of the problem, and I find this to be the only effective way of dealing with ambiguous blobs of reality. Perhaps the picture in attachment will speak for itself. Yep, I have your quote stuck on my desk. This is what makes a difference for me every day. I now approach every new project with this question, and I see my colleagues picking it up too. It’s the first time I’m writing a feedback email to an author. But this time I can’t resist temptation to say that I love your work! Tina Goryucheva, Marketing Manager, Energy 8 RSP, Dubai, UAE
A few weeks ago, I wrote “8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management.” Among other things, I explained that there are five effective ways to deal with having too much to do and one of those is to accomplish more faster. People try to do this all the time. They buckle down. They shut out distractions. And then they beat themselves up for failing. Why do they fail? Because they aren’t really doing anything differently. You know the old adage about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. By that definition, most people are nuts. Every week, every day, they do essentially the same things and hope that somehow they will get caught up. On top of that, people are faced with endless advice ranging from little tips to vast programs like Lean. Most people do not have time to digest all that they read or invest heavily in a process like lean. So here’s a simple way to reconsider your work and find a shorter, faster path. No new vocabulary or special tools are required. You can get as fancy as you like – but do that later. To get started immediately, embrace these staggeringly simple steps to accomplishing more:
What was on your list to do last year that you never did? I’m asking about both professional and personal goals here. Was it important? If whatever you didn’t accomplish wasn’t important, forget about it! I don’t care how many people you told, if it wasn’t important and you never got to it, don’t waste another brain cell thinking about it! If it was important, figure out why you didn’t accomplish this important task. If you can’t find the cause, you can’t eliminate the cause, and your goals this year are likely to suffer the same fate.
What’s the very first decision you make each day? For some it comes while still in bed. “Should I get up or hit the snooze button?” For those who lay their clothes out the night before, have no children, and are locked into an unwavering morning routine, including the content and quantity of breakfast, that first decision of the day can be postponed. Now that I’ve written that, I’m really curious to know how long someone could actually avoid that first decision. Not that it matters. Avoiding a few dozen decisions in the morning may reduce initial stress, but it’s only a drop in the bucket of what’s to come. We make thousands of decisions every day. Many are easy, but others are complex, stressful, or both. Because there are so many decisions and because they are literal forks in the road with dramatic impact on results, costs, time, feelings, and relationships, how you make decisions is extremely important. This is why decision-making is a top priority when I work with clients to create a culture of clarity. The best way to make decisions involves a four-step process that allows you to “SOAR through decisions,” whether alone or in a group. I won’t go into the details of that process now, because I want to focus on the value of having a process, not the process itself. If your decisions actually follow the four distinct steps of SOAR and involve the right people at each of those steps, with transparency, the benefits are numerous and dramatic:
1. You can’t manage time, you can only manage yourself. There are 24 hours in each day. You can’t change that. As long as you focus on managing time – searching for systems, lists, and tools – you are ignoring the real issue: how to manage yourself. 2. “Too much to do” and “Not enough time” are victim words. Every time you repeat those words, you are letting yourself off the hook for managing yourself. You are blaming circumstances beyond your control and subscribing to victimhood. Of course there is too much to do! Of course there is not enough time! Get used to it! 3. Too many priorities means no priorities. You can not have too many priorities. By definition. Priorities are those top few tasks that deserve attention next. If you have too many, you have none. You have to know your top few priorities at any time.
Boston, MA – Latham to present “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superwoman!” What will make you faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall problems in a single bound? According to Ann Latham, president of the Boston consulting firm Uncommon Clarity®, Inc., the answer, in a nut shell, is clarity! “Seriously!” she says. On January 21st, at Women Business Owner’s Alliance monthly breakfast, Latham will explain why and divulge the first 5 steps to becoming Superwoman.
There is a big problem in corporate America today. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace, only 30% of employees consider themselves “engaged” at work. As a result, corporations are embarked on multi-million dollar employee engagement programs in an effort to improve these numbers. Unfortunately, they are barking up the wrong tree. Employee engagement programs aren’t the solution to poor engagement. While there is a high correlation between employee engagement survey results and business performance, there is no proof that the former causes the latter. And that’s because it doesn’t. Engagement, as measured by employee surveys, does not cause success. Engagement is, at best, asymptom of success. Employees who are succeeding and feeling good about their contributions to your company are naturally more likely to: