Maximizing Personal Productivity

The author notes that success in business planning and execution relies heavily on personal productivity skills. These skills help individuals get organized for implementation, improve their time utilization, present ideas effectively, and increase their ability to delegate work.

The most common time-wasters that plague managers are crisis management, procrastination, ineffective meetings, interruptions, and lack of plans and priorities.

Individuals who are successful at time management work on priorities that are both mission-critical and time-sensitive. According to Capezio, there are three primary types of meetings in the workplace: informational meetings, advisory meetings, and problem-solving meetings.

To make meetings more productive, Capezio recommends using the TOO Method, which stands for Topic, Objectives, and Outline.

The first step is to identify the topic. A best practice is to allow only one topic to be covered per meeting.

The second step is to establish the objectives. These are the expected outcomes from the meeting.

The final step is to prepare the outline. This contains the steps that the meeting leader and attendees will follow to accomplish the objectives.

Another important skill is making effective presentations. To communicate effectively with audiences, it is essential to analyze oneself, the audience, and the situation.

After conducting this analysis, it is possible to begin formatting the presentation. Work should focus on three key components: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.

During the presentation, managers should consider how to create a presence through appearance, language choices, pacing, and volume. After the presentation is complete, a Lessons Learned Analysis should be conducted.

When developing business plans, negotiation will inevitably occur. This type of discussion can be used to resolve a dispute, to reach an agreed-upon direction, or to satisfy diverse interests.

The negotiation style that is used will often determine the outcome of the discussion. There are three major types of negotiation styles: competitive, avoidance, and accommodating.

The competitive style focuses on winning at all costs. In contrast, the avoidance style seeks to avoid conflict and any engagement in a substantive discussion. The accommodating style focuses on pleasing the other party, but it can easily develop into a competitive style.

The most effective negotiations incorporate the interests of both parties. While this approach may be more time-consuming, it tends to create more enduring agreements.

The last way to enhance personal productivity is to strike a balance between work and one’s personal life. Capezio recommends assessing whether one’s current balance is appropriate.

It may be necessary to set explicit goals to free more time and to create a better balance. Other suggestions are to create a more flexible work schedule and to integrate work and family wherever possible.

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Developing a Diversity Management Capability

If the time for developing alternatives to affirmative action is now, what is our next step? What must leaders do to help their organizations move more broadly toward diversity so that the Band Aid is no longer needed? In broad strokes, these action steps must be taken:

Affirm your organization’s commitment to racial and ethnic representation. This means working proactively to create and maintain a representative workforce. Without firm evidence of your trustworthy commitment to representation, any effort to exit affirmative action will provoke a defensive reaction to cling to the status quo.

Work to depoliticize affirmative action within your organization. If you don’t, any serious discussion of affirmative action will continue to take place in the context of political contests. This win-lose environment will hinder progress with any complementary and alternative approaches to affirmative action.

Secure commitment to developing an exit strategy from affirmative action. The purpose isn’t to abandon or oppose affirmative action, but rather to prepare for an orderly transition when the time comes. Affirmative action proponents will accept the concept of an exit strategy only if they are convinced the organization will maintain its will and ability to achieve a representative workforce at all levels.

Legitimize the dialogue. Developing an effective exit strategy takes creativity and innovation, and those two qualities occur only in an atmosphere of honest debate. As a leader, you must create an environment of trust, openness and candor.

Develop race-neutral, gender-neutral, and ethnic-neutral people processes for attracting, selecting, and retaining a representative workforce. Apply a common set of process criteria and performance standards to all. Do whatever you must to ensure that each criterion and standard is based on absolute requirements and not on personal references, conveniences or traditions.

Build a collective and individual diversity management capability. Collectively and individually, organizational participants should work to acquire diversity skills and to attain diversity maturity.

Do Men Earn More Because They Are More Productive?

A study of court reporters finds that men court reporters completed 29% more work than the women in the same time period. Another, of ob-gyns, found that the men ob-gyns put more hours into direct patient care and did more deliveries, but they also worked four more hours per week – so they produced more in a week, but not necessarily per hour worked.

Here’s the productivity-pay dilemma: if a man assigned to carry a stretcher needs only one additional man, but a woman needs three additional people, should the man receive extra productivity pay if he partners with a man to carry the stretcher, freeing two other military people for other functions?

If a man is less likely to drop out of the armed services, more willing to be deployed, and more willing to do what it takes even at a much greater risk of being killed, is that productivity in military terms? And if so, should the men be awarded extra pay?

In conclusion, defining productivity is different for business, the government, and the individual. For business, it’s profit. For the government, it may be protecting the country as efficient as possible. Or it may be trying social solutions that may not benefit monetarily but could benefit socially – in this case, troubleshooting the problems created by the integration of women into the manual labor part of the workforce.

Divided responsibilities are the wave of the future – not just for women, but for many men, too. Not for all workers, but for some. Why? Technology. Cellular phones allow a mom to pick up an important call from a home-office-on-the-soccer-field while watching her daughter kick a goal past the Running Devils.

Laptop computers allow Dad to retrieve a file while his son is retrieving a fly. Instead of “home, home, on the range,” it’s office, office, in the home… where our sons and daughters roam.” Ironically, the same technologies that facilitated independence and the option of divorce and therefore the destruction of families is now also creating opportunities to reunite families.

A projection is that by 2020, approximately 70% of dads will have responsibilities that are significantly divided between work and home. Making use of the gift of working women, then, involves treating women as pioneers in helping companies adapt to the divided responsibilities that will be a twenty-first century reality. It also involves helping employees understand why someone with divided responsibilities cannot be paid as much as someone whose responsibilities are more fully focused on work. 
 


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Get It Done

What happens when you create vitality, energy, and buzz in an organization? Well, you are certainly more visible, and you have more of a voice than others.

Your ideas will carry more weight and have more influence on the business. That means you have a better shot at getting other people to rally around your ideas.

Whether it’s calling to check in from a different time zone in the middle of the night, going the extra mile to research an issue, filling in when you are short staffed. Or connecting you to significant others in their network, people will give you more of their discretionary time and energy.

The best of the best will want to work with you, because thoroughbreds like to run with other thoroughbreds. People seek out people who energize them.

That means you have a better shot at putting together project teams that win. Do this enough and BOOM – you will build a reputation as someone the organization can trust with bigger or more important assignments.

Do you bring the same level of energy and passion to the game as those you admire – or envy?

Here are some things to consider if you want to become a “buzz agent” and bring more life to others and infuse more energy into the organization.

Give people a voice. When you create room for people to “weigh in” with their ideas, you value them – even if you disagree with them. When we are valued, we feel more vital to the organization. One of the greatest ways we can energize people is by asking for their insight, listening without distraction, and acting upon what we learn.

Build momentum. Have you ever arrived at the end of an extremely busy day and felt as though you accomplished nothing? We all want to know that we are making a difference. People get energized when they are going somewhere. You can help this along by being action oriented – by creating a sense of urgency.

Break the back of entitlement – banish it from your thinking. Entitlement is grounded in the belief that if I make a sacrifice for you or for the organization – guess what? – you owe me, baby! At some point each of us has to wake up to the fact that society is better served and we are better served when we stop claiming rights that we haven’t earned and step up to the plate of meritocracy.

You stand a much better chance of making a difference when you recognize that you earn your way into more responsibility, more autonomy, higher visibility, bigger jobs, more important roles, and better pay.

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Leaders Strengthen Society

When we’re fortunate enough to come into contact with someone who lives his or her values, we can’t help but feel blessed. Author John Gardner said, “Some people strengthen society just by being the kind of person they are.”

Have you been fortunate to know someone like that in your life? Has there been a manager, coach, parent, or professor you felt blessed to know? Have you worked for or around someone who was a quality person, through and through? Who is that person? How would you describe their long-lasting influence on you?

As a leader, you are what you say, you are what you do. The biggest mistake any leader can make is to talk out of both sides of their mouth, to voice one opinion to one person, but an opposite opinion to another. Remember, words never die. If you can’t follow through, don’t put it out there.

Nobody’s perfect, but when somebody does something wrong or something goes bad, as a leader you need to take the appropriate action. It’s not always easy, but for the sake of the team, organization, and all those involved doing the right thing is a must.

Zero tolerance is extremely important. It’s the foundation that holds everything that is good about a company together. It helps keep your core values intact. Action always speaks louder than words, whether it’s doing what’s right or fixing a situation that went wrong.

Are you facing a challenge right now? Are you waiting for someone to come along and rescue you? Could you figure out how to resolve it, all by yourself? Doing so will not only build your own resourcefulness, it will role-model for your employees and/or children that when we’re in trouble, we should first look to OURSELVES to resolve the situation, instead of standing by, helplessly, wringing our hands.

Charles Schulz, creator of the famed Peanuts cartoon strip, said, “Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.” As Al pointed out, leaders don’t shirk challenges, they welcome them. Vow to yourself that you will gear-up and face your next challenge head-on. You will probably discover, as Al did, that when you do, you will discover you have resources you never knew existed.

The attitude of leadership transcends titles, positions, race or gender. There is no special difference between the attitudes required to lead a company, organization, or individual.

Leadership is leadership.

Taking the lead and keeping it, however, will require you to embrace an attitude of love , and an attitude of continuous improvement. It requires change, and change produces growth, but as Dr. Dollar quotes often, “Change is not change until you change.”

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Branding Unbound

If you’re in marketing, advertising, or branding, consider this: While it used to take three television spots for a product to register with its intended audience, it can now take as many as seventy. Are people simply tuning out marketing messages?

No. They’re simply choosing which messages to tune in. Thanks to wireless technology, customers now have the luxury of responding (or not responding) to advertising when, where, and however they like.

Leading companies such as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Kellogg’s, MTV, Procter & Gamble, and others are already reaching millions of customers, one at a time, wirelessly. The technology gives these companies an unprecedented view of buying patterns, and the ability to identify and market specifically to the most likely customers.

In the wireless marketing era, your brand can enjoy whole new levels of differentiation and customer recognition, while consumers benefit from on-the-spot convenience and a message individually tailored to their needs. Branding Unbound shows just how to harness the virtually limitless power of this amazing convergence of advanced technology and progressive business strategy to create the truly remarkable experience that will keep customers’ attention and win their loyalty.

This book reveals how your business can emulate some of the most powerful and successful branding strategies in the world.

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Who is Anywhere Today?

To help clarify each of these distinct consumer segments, we’ve named the five groups to create intuitive impressions of each segment and how to reach it.

1. Analogs

In this revolution, the best way to describe them is to say that they are uninterested in digital technology. Analogs cannot even be called slow followers of our Anywhere trend, since they make the choice to avoid advanced technology altogether. Much of their reluctance may be the result of age; the Analogs are, in terms of average age, the oldest segment.

2. Technophytes

This is a group of consumers who aspire to be considered cutting edge when it comes to technology. In reality, though, they are late followers of digital media and connected devices. Why? Because while they are interested in these technologies, they don’t have the disposable income available to buy them until there are mature and more affordable. Technophytes want their Anywhere connections; they just can’t afford them until they are mainstream.

3. Digital Shut-ins

This is the group of consumers who have a great interest in digital media in their own homes, but less so when they are away from home. While these consumers enthusiastically embrace digital media, they aren’t as aggressive in adopting connected devices. Educating this segment remains important because Shut-ins often fail to equip their devices, such as HDTV, with all the services they support, like HD channel programming from their providers.

4. Outlet Jockeys

Along with consumers in our final segment, Outlet Jockeys own the latest and greatest portable devices and thirst for more of them. These mobile consumers enjoy cutting-edge portable applications as well as using their hand sets to e-mail, instant message, and engage in social networking.

5. Actualized Anywheres

Actualized Anywheres may be the smallest segment, comprising only 5 percent of the population in North America and Western Europe, but they are the most important. They enthusiastically buy Anywhere products and services for their mobile lifestyles, and, unlike Outlet Jockeys, they apply those devices and services at home. Actualized Anywheres bring the concept of a ubiquitously connected consumer to life.

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