Stop sending, start talking
One of the challenges facing businesses today is the sheer volume of e-mail we send and receive and dealing with it. It’s easy to send an email asking a question to get something off our to do list and into someone else’s, but it does two things. It creates more work for you AND the receiver. They have to deal with your request in some way, even if it’s just reading it, and you have to ‘pick up’ the conversation when you get the reply. It stretches the response time. Unless the other person has their email open waiting for …
What’s your release valve?
Sometimes it feels like we could work 24/7 and still not catch up! Whilst working long hours may be necessary in the short term to meet deadlines, in the long term losing the balance of having life outside of work can be damaging to product as well as our physical and mental health. Having a release valve, an activity that releases stress and frustration is vital to enable you to recharge and bring you back to a productive state. It could be as simple as time with family, walking your dog, or a boxing class. Whatever allows you to get …
Ask for Help
I started a conversation with Sarah, a woman I was sitting next to at an event last week. She told me a little about her job and the fact that she loved to help others but didn’t like to receive or ask for help back. When I asked her why, she said it was because it didn’t feel right to take from others. I asked her how it felt when she gave someone help. She said, it feels wonderful. It makes me feel like I am contributing and am needed. It’s like giving a gift. It was something I could relate …
Letting Go of Control
I like to control my workflow, my environment and my day. However, for many people, it can be a challenge each day, week or month to sit down and consider what you need to do. Rather than think about what tasks, projects and goals will you be undertaking in the upcoming period, what resources you need and then allocating realistic timeframes to complete them, it can be easy to simply go with the flow. Then before you realise it, here comes performance review time and you haven’t met your business milestones! It can be particularly challenging if you are relying …
Correct, Perfect, Enhance
Ever read an email and wondered why or what? Why was it sent and what, if anything, are you supposed to do? Before email existed, we used to write letters and memorandums (memos). Aside from the facsimile machine (fax), letters and memos were the main way we communicated or confirmed things in writing. Letters were laboured over. Spelling mistakes corrected, grammar was perfected, and the clarity of the message was enhanced before it was sent out. Today email is the primary method of written communication in business. It’s ease of use has both it’s good and bad points but applying …
Time to update?
Awhile ago, I was in a meeting with an executive of a company whose product requires an investment of around $100,000 per sale. I’d conducted interviews with various managers in the organisation about the productivity challenges the organisation faced and the common theme that was coming up was a compatibility issue as a result of their software being so old, they couldn’t open documentation they received from customers in a newer format. It was frustrating for them to have to ask customers to resend the documents in an older format to make it easier. The executive’s thoughts were, it wasn’t …
There’s No Such Thing as a Dumb Question!
When I present at conferences or in-house professional development events, I regularly get a sheepish hand raised and the phrase “this is probably a dumb question…” spoken as the precursor to a question. When I hear this, two things immediately come to mind. The first is recognition of the huge leap of courage the individual has taken to ask the question, and the second is, the trust they feel in the moment that I may be able to answer it. When I respond, I always reassure the person that it is not a dumb question, and that it is likely …
Maybe it’s time we stop thinking technology alone is the key to productivity
Businesses look with hope when new software is released. Could this be the ONE? Software that truly delivers the turn-key productivity solution every organization dreams of? As a veteran of over twenty years in both business and adult education and training, I think it’s time to let go of the mystical belief that software on its own will magically improve organizational productivity. Technology is the mechanism by which corporate data is stored and categorized, but the productivity power lies in HOW an organization chooses to leverage it. Increased productivity doesn’t automatically happen simply by containerising data into a central location. …
What Happens if it Breaks?
I was recently working with a client who had a manual process that their team would go through to produce regular reports in Excel. It wasn’t a high level or challenging process, it was basically do this step, then do that step and so forth until they reached the end and the resultant “report” was created. Whilst this worked a bulk of the time, problems arose when something wasn’t quite right, and they needed to troubleshoot the formulas or they recognised that results were not what they should be. All they had been shown was a process. They never understood …
Do You Know Your Peak Time?
At 5am every day, alarm or no alarm my body tends to wake me up. A sleep in for me is 7am which might occasionally happen on a weekend or public holiday. I love to get up and exercise, then after my first coffee (a freshly ground, single origin from a Fair-Trade roaster) I’m ready to go! I focus on my highest priorities first thing so they can be ticked off my ‘to do’ list and then deal with everything else after that. By about 4pm I’m starting to slow down, and by about 6pm I know I am at …
