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 …
The 4-Hour Work Week’s Concepts
Whilst Tim Ferris’ The 4 Hour Workweek book got people talking about building a business in which you work only 4 hours a week, the four steps in the book can easily be applied to help improve productivity and workflow in any business. Step 1 of the 4 Hour Work Week is D for Definition. In the context of an owner, manager or team member in any business, defining where we are going and what we need to do is important. Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland quote of “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get …
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 …
Time Out
Time out is a strategy traditionally used when a child has done something wrong. It’s designed to encourage them to think about what they have done and contemplate why it was wrong. But it’s also a great strategy to use in business to refocus and encourage connection and collaboration within teams. In a lot of the sessions I facilitate in-house with organisations we don’t use technology when we cover technology related topics. Sounds strange that a technology productivity program doesn’t require participants to be hands on with the technology they are learning doesn’t it? The programs I deliver are interactive …
Fear
Yesterday I worked with a group of women in a range of roles in an organisation. Some were quite skilled with technology using it every day, others were not. Some had spent time with me before and a few hadn’t. I found out later that one of those that hadn’t worked with me before was anxious and fearful about the program she was participating in. Why? Her past experiences with technology had made her feel out of her depth and scared. I encouraged her not to feel overwhelmed, but to simply pick and choose the elements she needed and just …
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 …
Has your tech ever gone wild?
Occasionally stuff happens and I call it “Tech gone Wild”. When in the US we hired a car to drive from JFK airport in New York up to Boston to visit a friend. We got upsold in a great way at the car rental counter to a brand new vehicle with an inbuild GPS system, heated AND air conditioned seats, the whole works! Whilst a GPS system in a vehicle isn’t unusual these days, in this car it was different. We got into the car and started to set things up for our drive, move the mirrors, the seats etc. …
Respect
It’s natural walking on the street or driving a car to be respectful of those around us. We keep left or right, depending on what part of the world we are in. This respect ensures that most of the time we know what to expect. When working with teams, I often meet staff who express frustration when their everyday programs change or don’t do what they expect them. For better or worse technology is here to stay. Realistically our everyday technology is simply hardware or software designed to fast track tasks in our lives and increase our efficiency so we …
