Improve My Business

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

I recently gave a presentation at a well-known conference in my industry - something that I enjoy doing.  I get to share new ideas (or ideas combined in a different way), interact with folks, and get a conversation going.  Most gratifying to me was to hear a colleague whose opinion I admire and respect say, “Mary gave me such food for thought - I had never thought to combine these two techniques before, and she not only showed us how she did it, but gave us some ideas of how we can do it ‘back at the ranch’ “…

The presentation went well according to feedback (did it have anything to do with the fact that the presentation included lunch?), and I’ve been able to hear some interesting talks on diverse topics, as well as meet some great new business contacts.

What are YOU doing to improve your skills/business? Please comment on how you ensure that you’re staying on top of your particular market… is it

- reading trade journals?

- attending seminars? conferences?

- in-house training?

- online webinars? teleseminars?

- etc.

Do tell - I’d love to hear how you’re staying on top of your game!

And, if you’re not doing anything right now - take a minute to search online for some form of professional development; type some keywords into a search engine and read some relevant articles; find and bookmark / RSS some key websites or blogs and set aside 30 mins every week to read (may I suggest improveyourbusinessnow.com, blog.efficiencydr.com, or blog.sustainabilitydr.com ?)

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Business, communication, mcdonald consulting group, preparation, training

There are several things in life that are almost universally true. One of these universal truths is that, if you work at a company that has more then two employees, you are going to have meetings. Meetings can be a huge time sink for your day, not to mention totally throw your time management plan out of whack if you were not told about the meeting in advance. I know plenty of people who feel like they spend half of the time they are at work in one meeting or another, so it’s understandable how meetings could seriously cripple your ability to be efficient at work. Here are some tips to help you time manage your meetings so you can spend more time doing your actual work.

1. Avoid meetings that don’t have a specific goal or problem to address. This is a very simple place to start, if someone asks you to be at a meeting, your first question should be what is the meeting about? If they can’t give you a firm answer to the purpose of the meeting, chances are you don’t really need to be there.

2. Ask for an agenda, or if none exists create one. Assuming that the person who requests your presence at the meeting does have a real issue that the meeting is addressing our next thought you be organization, and this is where the agenda comes in. Without and agenda the meeting will probably take at  least an extra thirty minutes because it will take time for everyone to get on the same page and make the transitions as you  move through the topics of the meeting. Also, having an agenda will set a definite end time for the meeting, this way you know how much time you are committing and if the meeting starts to run over you can simply excuse yourself by saying you made another commitment for after the meeting assuming it would end on time.

3. Do as much pre-meeting prep as you can for yourself and the other people at the meeting. An agenda is a great place to start but beyond that, if you can prepare discussion questions, or anything else that will help guide the meeting towards reaching a conclusion on the issue at hand your meetings will run more efficiently and smoothly.

4. Make sure everyone coming to the meeting is up to speed BEFORE they come to the meeting. Remember the agenda and questions you created for the meeting? By sending the questions and agenda out in advance to all the participants in the meeting and asking them to come with to the meeting with their responses ready you can minimize catch up time and get right down to business at the start of the meeting.

5. Identify time wasters and avoid going to meetings with them. Time wasters is a term I use to refer to those people in an office who either don’t have enough to do or don’t want to do the work they have, and instead invent creative ways to fill their time while appearing to be busy. Many of these people have realized that holding meetings and/or prolonging meetings they attend is a great way to avoid doing real work. If you can identify who these people are in your office and be especially careful to avoid getting sucked into their meetings you can hopefully avoid the dreaded two hour status update from last week when nothing happened.

These five tips will hopefully help you cut down on wasted time away from your desk and increase your productivity at work. One final thought on meetings, is that I have rarely encountered a meeting that needed to be longer then an hour. This is not to say that many meeting don’t run longer then an hour, but it is rare that they need to. Typically most any topic needing to be covered in a meeting, if well defined upfront, can be covered in an hour or less. If someone is trying to schedule you for a three hour meeting, it had better be a really important meeting and cover a whole lot of material.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, managing your time, Planning, preparation, Time Management, working smarter

I’ve recently returned from a business trip in South Africa (I was a keynote speaker at an occupational health and safety (OHS) conference there) and the trip was truly a life-changing experience. I was a bit apprehensive about going there on my own; and since I didn’t want to be traveling more than I was working (2 days in each direction for a 3 day conference) I added on a safari at the beginning of the trip (so I could time zone adjust, rather than go at the end of the trip).

I found out several things about myself, and thought I’d share some of that here with you both today and in the next several posts.

Lesson #1: When something is new, it’s usually interesting.

I drove 4.5 hours from Johannesburg to Ladysmith to start the safari. Before departing on the trip, I thought the long drive would be a good opportunity to write some blog posts, start working on a presentation that would be due soon after I returned from the trip, etc. I dutifully packed my laptop in my small bag that was to accompany me in the seat rather than be stowed in the rear of the van. I had my camera, too, in case I came across anything I wanted to snap.

Fast forward 4 hours, and almost 100 pictures, later… I found the drive to be fascinating. Parts of South Africa in the winter reminded me of California (everything is a golden brown); other parts reminded me of a former vacation in Zion National Park; and other parts were purely South African in nature, and in the future other sceneries like this will remind me of “my first trip to South Africa”.

Lesson #1A: Make whatever you’re teaching interesting or relevant.

If you are trying to get a new concept across to others, it may be a bit scary to them (uncharted territory). If you can make the concepts interesting, or help them relate it to something that they are already familiar with (this looks like the rock formations in Zion!), then they will become more comfortable with the concepts quickly. But don’t be afraid to introduce new concepts into the mix (this is pure South African!) as it will also give your intended audience something to carry away with them.

Lesson #2: It’s not always about the destination; sometimes it’s about the journey as well.

I spent 4 hours talking to Thamba, my driver. I learned about typical South African life – family, housing, jobs, training, schooling – during our conversation. I also learned about controlled burning – the practice of burning the thick and inedible thatching hay in order to stimulate growth of new green shoots, which are edible by livestock. Accordingly, there were controlled burns going on all around us during the drive.

Lesson #2A: the more interesting you can make the journey, the better the journey will be.

Although I was ready to get out of the vehicle after 4.5 hours, I didn’t consider that portion of my vacation to be ‘wasted’. The more interesting you can make the delivery of your message, the higher the probability that the message will be heard, understood, and absorbed. Make the delivery of the message as important as the message itself. Can you use graphics, visuals? Do you have an audio portion? Do you engage the listener? Whatever you can do to make the message heard more easily, the better received the message will be.

Technorati Tags: living your life, preparation, Streamlining, travel

You can’t build a skyscraper on sand; you can’t build a business on memory.  - Mary McDonald

OK, this probably isn’t the most deep, philosophical  quote you’ve ever seen - I admit it.  But it DOES emphasize the importance of having a good foundation for your business.  Everyone from Michael Gerber to Tony Gattari to Ragen Chastain emphasize the importance of implementing a solid system for your business.  Whether it’s organizing your business to allow you to work ON the business rather than IN the business, writing a policy and procedures manual so that each person can exactly duplicate the work that needs to be done (think franchising level of detail), or setting aside 1 hour a week to do your admin hour (organizing, filing, etc), you need to spend time working on implementing a system that works for you and your organization.

If you haven’t already, click on the link for Tony to see a quick video on the importance of systems.

Technorati Tags: business building, efficiency, preparation, systemizing, systems thinking