Improve My Business

I’ve been culling my email while home sick with a head cold (don’t want to be around folks and get them sick, and periodically lose my voice/cough my head off).  One of the things I’m noticing is that I’m reticent to put some ‘gems/jewels’ into the archive pile without noting things down.

I also  noted that I needed to get some blog posts up.

Voila!  It’s two, two, two tasks in one! (reference to an old Certs commercial… about 1:30 in)

Get Organized

Some of my favorite links:  to Charles Gilkey of Productive Flourishing (original post by Michael Bungay Stanier) for his downloadable planners and calendars; they will help you to remember the things you need to be doing, and also provide a record of what you got done for a given month.

Get Productive

Michael Bungay Stanier for his “one two punch” - he says, ” At the start of each day, I pick the one key thing that I must accomplish, and then two additional things I’d love to accomplish.”

[Try this simple technique for focusing your workday, and you'll be amazed at how much more you can accomplish every day!]

Don’t let e-mail rule you

Instead of culling through my emails, Fred Wilson suggests email bankruptcy:  I’m not quite there yet (and I LIKE some of the old stuff I’ve got, per these posts - Fred’s post was from 2007, for Pete’s sake and I still have it!) but I do see the allure of it all…

and for those of you who email me regularly, you know that you may get an autoresponder if I’ve got a ‘no face time’ week, saying something like “I’m out of the office on business and do not have access to email and voice mail during the day.  I will return from my trip on [date] and will try and answer all emails by [date +2] but if you need something urgent, please resend with ‘urgent’ in the title.”  This allows folks to reset their expectations of when they can reasonably expect an answer back from me if needed.

Sure, there are techniques galore for handling email - have someone else sort through your email, set up folders automatically, etc.  but my favorite technique remains - click on ‘unsubscribe’ for valid emails I no longer wish to read on a regular basis.  Why deal with it if I can just stop getting them instead?!

Have you ever been frustrated because no one except you seems to be worried about a deadline?  Or, everyone seems to be uptight about a deadline that you think you’ll make with no problem?  This disconnect comes about as a result of not sharing the same sense of urgency for the task.

How do you avoid this?  I know the answer seems simple - better communication.  But how do you achieve better communication?

I ran into this problem recently with a group of folks I was trying to coordinate.  The person who hired me told me about the project.  He had set a very tight deadline with his client, and needed our assistance to make this deadline.  Because I knew more intimately all the steps that we’d need to do in order to make this deadline, I went into “HIGH” mode from an urgency standpoint - working that weekend to have things laid out by Monday when his staff would come into the office, as an example.

What did I forget?  To verify that the client was also aware of the workload, which things had to be done serially vs. parallel, and how long I thought it would take.

What was the result?  The client took their time about getting documents to me, did not return my phone calls for 2-3 days, etc.

Once I realized what the problem was (my lack of communication on the full, expanded task list with timetable), I rectified this, and we were on the same page again (and I was getting my info in a timely manner).

When have you had a problem with communicating the urgency (or lack thereof) for a project?

Technorati Tags: communication, important, urgent

It’s interesting to see where business is going right now.  I’ve got a few irons in the fire, all put there through a different method, and all equally interesting:

1)  working with a national government  on improving healthcare using Lean techniques;

2) working with a state government to manage the hundreds of tasks that are a result of a detailed report (how to help them actually DO something with all these comments);

3)  teaching a (different) state agency how to map their processes in order to see where they have duplication and waste; become project manager for the elimination of these wastes;

4)  working with a services company at remote locations to implement a quality system;

5)  providing auditing services to clients.

In some of these engagements, I am dependent - dependent on being selected as the vendor; dependent on monies being released; dependent on governmental schedules.  I’m definitely swimming with the sharks - hoping my bid is deemed best fit; wondering if I should subcontract to a larger firm to get my foot in the door; etc.

In other engagements, I am master of my destiny (but not in the “Seinfeld” way) - I control my schedule, am the sole selected vendor for the assignment, and may have worked with the client previously and therefore our expectations are pretty clear and defined.  I’m the only fish in my puddle, or at least a big fish in a little pond.

Each, I’m finding, has their good points:  for larger contracts, it’s more job security (if they come through).  For jobs that I am subcontracting for (the national one), while I’m a valuable player on the team, I’m not the prime lead.  My friend Michael is.  He’s the one that gives me status (instead of the other way around); so he’s the one that has to determine the status; I’m simply the recipient of this news.  In smaller contracts, (#4 explicitly), we had a brief phone call on Monday, set up a longer one on Wednesday, and started working on contracts and initial visit dates on Thursday.  Less than 5 business days start to finish - and immediate gratification (”we’re doing something”).  However, it will be a smaller engagement, so if I focused solely on jobs of this size, I’d be doing the ABC dance - Always Be Connecting, looking for the next sale, etc.  If I worked on only larger engagements, I’d need to have the pipeline filled to allow for the 1-6 month delays between award of contract and start of work.

Conclusion?  I’m the same size fish - I just need to swim in both areas.

Technorati Tags: government contract, healthcare, Lean, quality audit

As we are gearing up for back-to-school, sports, and activities, do you find that your child is having trouble getting all their interests, and homework, fit into the day?  Is it becoming a source of stress rather than a source of joy, relaxation, or accomplishment?

What can you do about it as a concerned parent?

We’ve heard this comment, time after time - some variation of “Little Johnny/Susie really enjoys his/her soccer/violin/dance lessons; but the days (s)he has practice, it’s just a madhouse! We are eating dinner on the go (or through the drive-thru), and (s)he’s up until all hours of the night getting homework completed…”

The good news is, with a little help, you can get your child’s calendar, and the resulting stress, under control. There are several solutions:

1) Limit your child’s involvement in after-school activities. I’ve heard many parents say that they limit their child to 1 sport and 1 other activity, such as scouts; or they are limited to 1 activity if that requires significant lessons/practice. The child is allowed to pick what the activity is; but they know that they are allowed to pick only one during the school year.

If this is your choice, consider enrolling the child in something different over the summer months, so they can experience something that they may be interested in, to find out if there is a passion there…

2) Identify projects, assignments, etc. that can be worked on ahead of time - and then help your child to block out time to work on the project in advance. I’ve found this to be particularly helpful for my procrastinating child… (s)he tends to wait until the night before for most assignments. To combat this (and the inevitable 3 am bedtime unless (s)he wants to get a failing grade), I’ve asked their teachers to let me know which websites, papers, or assignments I should be aware of. Then, if I know that the teacher hands out long-term assignments on Mondays, I can proactively query what that week’s assignment is, and have a relaxed discussion about what we can do each day to chip away at that assignment. Our weekly schedule may look like this:

- Monday - think about what we want to research and write down some ideas

- Tuesday - research our idea and start to capture sources. Cut/paste info into a document.

- Wednesday - do an outline of how the info should be organized, start writing a first draft.

- Thursday - write final draft including all spelling, punctuation, and source citing.

- Friday - hand in completed assignment

You can lay it out on the family calendar, a whiteboard, etc. - wherever it makes sense for your family. The important thing is to help them do what they want to do, without stress, or missing deadlines.

Technorati Tags: Family, managing your time, preparation

People have different opinions on multi-tasking vs. one focus approach… so which is better?

“The Myth of Multitasking” by  Christine Rosen details several reasons why multi-tasking is not the optimum approach:

• a fall in IQ (more so than if the subject were smoking marijuana
• decrease in learning
• negative impact on productivity (affecting the economy?)
• lost ‘brain time’ as the brain works to juggle several tasks
• and many more.

I’ve seen first-hand how multi-tasking affects our decision making — while sitting at a light waiting to make a left, I watched a woman coming through the intersection from the other side, talking on a cell phone, and drive right into a telephone pole.  She never braked until she actually impacted the pole; and she continue to chat as she got out of the SUV to inspect her damage!  Unluckily for her, a patrol car was at the red light on the cross street; he simply flicked on his lights and pulled over to write her up.

When trying to get a project complete, divide the project into smaller tasks.  This tip:  do those smaller tasks in their entirety prior to moving on to the next step.

Good ways to accomplish this:

• ignore the phone and email while working on a project
• set aside time on your calendar to do research, gather materials, and write rough drafts
• work from start to finish without pause, if possible
• if you must break, take a break at a logical stopping point, and leave your materials in place for easy restart

WARNING: These simple ideas may cause you to become more focused, productive, and happy.  PROCEED WITH CAUTION!  <grin!>

Technorati Tags: focus, multi-tasking, productivity, Project Management, working smarter