How many objectives should you have?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

Are four objectives enough?

In the book “One Page Talent Management” they advise people should have just four objectives. The reason they give is “an emerging body of research indicates that the more goals an individual has, the more poorly he performs on each.”

There is a saying that all research is either so complicated that hardly anyone can understand it or so obvious that it is something your grandmother told you.
This seems to fall into the latter category.

Are 22 objectives too many?

Yes.

Too many objectives

When people have this many objectives it’s usually because they have gone into too much detail on their objectives.

However, another reason could be this situation I came across recently. A woman had been given a department that was a hotchpotch of what was left over after many cuts and cost-savings. It was not really a department, so she had all kinds of unrelated responsibilities and objectives. (But as she pointed out, at least she still had a job.)

Remind yourself what objectives are really for

Objectives are there to let you know exactly what you need to achieve in order that your organization can achieve its goals.

If you personally need to achieve 22 things for that to happen, then you need 22 objectives. But, if you really do have 22 completely valid objectives it may be that there is a lack of prioritisation at the top.

You need to prioritize

Trying to focus on too many things at once will lead to poor performance. This could just as easily be the poor performance of an organization as that of an individual.
If you have prioritised your 22 objectives so that you can work through them in order, that would be perfectly acceptable. The trouble comes when you ask your manager what the priority is and you are told: “They are all a priority.” In my view this is a manager abdicating his or her responsibilities.

Often, when you get this response, it is because of a similar response from the Mother Ship.

Being able to prioritise is a skill that many lack but for some reason is not often clearly identified.

What they do at Apple

In his fascinating book “Inside Apple” Adam Lashinksy identifies one of the keys to success at Apple as their ability to say “No” to so many good projects. They do this so that they can just focus on a few things and do them really well.

We are told that they have very small project teams that work on just one thing.

Key tips for success

The easiest way to do this is to get laser focus right at the top of your organization.
Then, cascade this down to everyone so they each know what their part in it is.
Make sure you have the objectives prioritized correctly.  You can only prioritize individual’s objectives if they are prioritized right from the top.
When priorities change, let people know straight away how that impacts on what they need to do.

What if I’m too busy to prioritize?

Yes, this can happen to the best of us. Our handy printed booklet Time Management Made Easy will walk you through 124 simple tips and techniques to ensure that you get your life under control and have some time for yourself too. It’s short and to the point so you can quickly find the help you need.

And of course we’ll tell you just what to do in those rare moments when unexpected things crop up and mess up your whole day, so that you can stay calm and effective at all times.

You’ll learn:

  • How to prioritize
  • How to say “No” to extra work politely and, even better, without actually saying “No”
  • How to get rid of that mountain of reading that’s been sitting on your desk for years

Get Time Management Made Easy now

 

Posted in Objectives, Performance Management, SMART Goals, SMART Objectives, SMART targets | Tagged , | 4 Comments

In defence of the ‘tick box’ exercise

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

When I was the business manager of a small industrial design company one of my first tasks was to find out why we were losing money on some jobs and stop the money leaking away.

It didn’t take long to discover what was going on. The problem was mainly due to items being left off the invoice. Simple things like the cost of materials, expensive taxi deliveries and ad hoc extras accounted for most of the missing money.

These oversights were easily remedied with the use of a simple checklist. I added one to each job file and no invoice was allowed to go out till every item on that list was checked.

I can safely say it saved thousands.

An insult

Usually when you refer to a process as a tick-box exercise you mean it as an insult.

The Oxford Dictionaries website tells us that, when you refer to a process as a box-ticking exercise you are “ denoting or relating to a procedure or process carried out purely to satisfy convention, rules, or regulations.”

It also refers to:

  • A bureaucratic tick-box exercise
  • A tick-box mentality

But what is wrong with ticking boxes? Why do we sneer at the process?
Atul Gawnde, in his fascinating (but not for the squeamish) book “The Checklist Manifesto” identifies how checklists can help surgeons to be more effective. (Just checking you have all the instruments you started out with and haven’t left any inside the patient is a great start.)

When I run time management courses we often talk about lists and the joy of ticking tasks off your list. Do you ever find yourself putting something you have already completed on a list purely to give yourself the undiluted pleasure of ticking it off? That smug feeling of just having something on that list that is completed?

Join the club.

It’s not illegal.

In fact having a list to check is a very good idea in many situations.

The importance of the list

The key is to identify things you do that would benefit from a list and then to get the list right. When people talk about ‘tick box exercises’ with derision I think it is an indicator that the list is wrong or is being used incorrectly.

Let’s face it, if you are waiting to take off on a flight across the Atlantic, you probably want your pilot to go through the checklist and make sure every bit of the plane is working correctly (I know I do).

Checklists

Do you have enough checklists? And are they well thought out?
In fact, if you apply yourself and identify the correct boxes for ticking, you can save yourself a great deal of effort and give yourself time to get on with more exciting things.

Get more time management tips here.

Posted in Time Management | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Too busy to work on your objectives?

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

Keeping the elephants away

A man was in a railway carriage with one other occupant: a young woman. On the seat beside her rested a large bag of ham sandwiches. Every five or ten minutes, she opened the window, took a sandwich from the bag and threw it out of the window.

Keep the elephants away

After the expulsion of three sandwiches, the man asked; “What are you doing?”
“Keeping the elephants away.” Responded the woman in the tone of someone speaking to a rather stupid and annoying small child.
“But there are no elephants.” Pointed out the exasperated man.
“Of course not. The sandwiches keep them away.” Came the smug reply.

Getting the objectives right

A client recently complained to me that he had spent quite some time doing a very thorough job of working out what the business priorities were and agreeing everyone’s objectives, making sure they were all SMART objectives, of course.

Job well done, he sat back expecting the results to roll in.

But that’s not what happened. Unhappily he discovered that most people were far too busy with other important work to spare time for the new objectives.

What’s going on here?

There are two options:

  1. They are working on the wrong stuff
  2. The objectives are wrong

That’s it really. It’s just those two options.

Get help with your objectives

The great bonus scheme

In my very first real job we had an excellent bonus scheme. If we hit the profit target at the end of the year, everyone got a £100 bonus. There was no percentage or weighting, it was the same for all of us.  And it was really clear what had to happen for that bonus to be triggered.

I remember our MD saying: “Only those people who contribute to the profit will get the bonus.” My question was: If they are not contributing, what are they doing here?

Why am I telling you this? Because sometimes there are things that people do that are very much contributing to the overall goals but are almost invisible to others. At other times people are doing things that are not adding any value at all, or perhaps not adding as much value as other things they could be doing.

As a manager, you need to be able to work out which is which.

A big mistake in objectives – not including the ‘day job’

This is one of the biggest and most common mistakes I see in objective and goal setting. For some bizarre reason people think that their normal activities should not be included in their objectives.

It can lead to exactly the issue that my client was faced with.

What your objectives are for

All the objectives need to line up to make sure your goals are achieved

You have objectives so that you know exactly what you personally need to achieve in order for your organization to achieve its goals.

What happens if you get the objectives wrong

The objectives need to be cascaded down from the organizational goals to everyone in the organization.

Your day job is what you are doing to make sure those goals are achieved. If not, what ARE you doing? If you do not include this (which should be the bulk of your work) in your objectives you will end up with all kinds of spurious and strange tasks in there that are not related to the core goals.

On top of this, you will end up in the situation that my client described.

Administrative objectives

Sometimes these objectives can somehow slip off the menu. The trouble with admin is that, when it is done well, it’s invisible. No one notices. This is as it should be. However, the impact of this is that people tend to undervalue and ignore it.

Keeping the database up to date and cleaning the floors may not be very glamorous but they are both extremely important and do contribute to the goals of most organizations. It’s just that you need to put a bit more effort into working out how.

Often easiest way to do this is to imagine what would happen if they were not done.
So sometimes people don’t have time to do the new objectives because what they are working on has been forgotten about by everyone except them.

Get help with your objectives now

Other times, they simply should not be working on whatever it is. It may be no one has let them know that priorities have changed. Or perhaps their objectives were just wrong.

Posted in Objectives, SMART Goals, SMART Objectives, SMART targets | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A vital time management skill that is easy to learn

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

Time management is a skill that many people lack – you probably know people who continually break their promises and deliver late (or not at all).

Perhaps you have even fallen into this trap yourself.

At the core of time management is a very important skill: estimation.

The impact of poor estimation skills

It’s hard to overstate the impact of not being able to estimate effectively. It shows up in so many ways:

  • Overspend
  • Lateness
  • Letting others down
  • Over-runs
  • Inefficiency

What are poor estimation skills?

It is the lack of ability to work out how long a task will take, how much something will cost or the level of resources are required. When you get this wrong it is almost always an overly optimistic guess.

You think something will take half the time it really does, or be the real cost. Sound familiar?

You see it everywhere. Building projects, research projects, overspent budgets.

How to make your estimates more accurate

The silly thing is that improving your estimation skills is incredibly easy. And the benefits are enormous.

All you have to do is make your estimate, for example how long you think it will take to complete a task, or how much your supermarket bill will be and write it down.

Then, compare it with what actually happens. Next time, make another estimate and adjust it according to what happened last time. Very quickly you will start to improve.

Planning

You will immediately find that your plans become much more accurate.

A great starting point

This is just one step in effective time management but it is one that gives benefits very quickly and is really easy to implement. Just have a go.

For more help with time management, go here.

Posted in Planning, Time Management | Tagged | 2 Comments

Do the police need time to reflect?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

The Royal Society for Arts (RSA) has produced a report suggesting that police officers should get 20 minutes of ‘reflection time’ each week and that this would improve communications and efficiency.

I could not agree more. In fact I think we should all be doing this, not just police officers. (It’s rather worrying to discover that they do not currently have time reflect.)

It’s all about learning

Just fire-fighting

Taking some time to review what you have been doing, the results of your actions and what you could do differently next time is a vital activity for anyone who wants to improve in any way.

If you don’t do this, you end up fire-fighting.

Feedback

It’s all about using all the feedback you can get to its maximum advantage.

Don’t just review things that went wrong

So often you hear people talk about ‘learning from your mistakes’. This is of course useful. However, you can also learn from what went well. Any good coach will help you to do both. However, you don’t need a coach to make the most of these experiences.

Ask yourself these questions

  • What happened? (Stick to the facts in your answer.)
  • What were the results?
  • Why did I get those results?
  • What could I do differently another time?
  • Where else could I apply this?

Make sure you spend enough time on the facts

Many people rush through to the ‘why’ part before really going through the facts. But it’s often by carefully considering all the facts that you get the really useful information.

An example

I remember running a one day course with two colleagues. We ran it every day for two weeks.

The fourth was significantly better than the previous three; the participants grasped the concepts much more quickly and their results at the end were of much higher quality.
I asked my colleagues why they thought this was, but they weren’t really interested. (A bit disappointing for trainers, I thought.)

My reflections

As I drove home that evening I went through the workshops in my mind. The material we used the same on each workshop. There was just one difference I identified. The example I used to illustrate a key concept on the Thursday morning.

Friday

I tried this same example on the Friday and again, things went much more smoothly.

The following week

On the Monday the following week I shifted back to my original example and the results were the same as those on the first three days.

Learning

As a result of this reflection I used the better example for the remaining workshops.

Long term

Since then I have always made sure I have several examples to illustrate each point and often try them out before hand. I am also constantly trying out new examples so that, over the years, I keep my results improving. All this came from reflecting for probably a lot less than 20 minutes.

This is just one way to keep learning all through your life. For others go here.

Posted in Brain, Feedback, Improving Performance, Learning | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Scrapping the annual appraisal

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

I heard last week that Adobe Systems is scrapping their annual performance appraisal (though pay reviews will still take place once a year).

Why is this? It turns out that Donna Morris, senior VPHR at Adobe Systems noticed that there were may grievances about appraisals each year and there was also a tendency for managers to focus on just the most recent examples of performance instead of assessing performance using achievements throughout the whole year.

To replace the system, managers are going to be giving real time feedback.

What are performance reviews and appraisals for?

Organisations use them in many different ways. Many use them, as the title suggests, to review performance. However, reviewing performance is only of benefit if it makes a positive impact on future performance.

The real purpose of appraisals

In my view, this should be to enable an individual (the appraisee) to achieve the coming year’s objectives and goals. So the focus should be on what a person needs to do differently (as compared to last year) in order for this to happen.

You can include some review of performance and behaviour in the previous year, but it’s only worth it if doing this will add value in the coming year.

Simply raking over past events that should have been dealt with months ago is rarely a benefit to anyone.

How accurate are your records?

Donna Morris cannot be alone in her observation that most managers consider the most recent events and exclude (or perhaps “forget” would be a better word) events in the more distant past. Let’s face it, not many managers keep accurate records of what their team members do over the year.

So in most cases an appraisal that purports to review the previous year is basically flawed.

What to do if you really want to improve performance and achieve goals

There is a much more effective way. Make sure people get the feedback they need when they need it.

It is quite obvious that receiving feedback about what you have done 11 months later is at best frustrating and at worst, useless.

It's great to have a back-seat drive

Imagine you make the same journey by car every day for a year. Then, in December, someone tells you that you have been taking a route that is 10 miles longer than it needs to be.

Clearly if you had checked the map before making your journey you could have picked this up and altered course accordingly.

It’s the same with everything you do. The more immediate the feedback, the more useful it is.

Don’t wait for your manager to give you feedback

It is a misconception that you need to wait for your manager to give you feedback, or, if you are a manager, you need to give all the feedback.

The important thing is that I find out what the best route is as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter how I get that information.

Get the system right

More than just the skills of giving feedback, you need to set up systems to make sure you get the information as well and you also need to be able to ask for feedback, instead of just waiting for it.

This is the difference between driving you car with a ‘back seat driver’ telling you where you went wrong and using your own eyes and ears.

Drastic improvements

If you can do this, you will be able to make drastic improvements to your performance and the performance of your organization. And then why would you need annual appraisals?

For more on feedback

Feedback for the Faint-Hearted – a booklet explaining how to give and get feedback

Double your Profit – my interview with Mel Stephenson who has doubled his profit every year for 5 years using these simple but effective systems

 

Posted in Feedback, Measuring performance, Performance Management, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 5 Comments

People who work 9-5 and take an hour for lunch

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

If you read this last week, you’ll remember that I was told by someone that you couldn’t write meaningful objectives for people who just work 9-5 and expect to take an hour for lunch.

I dealt with the first part of that statement last week. This week I’d like to address the concept of people who “just work 9-5 and expect to take an hour for lunch.”

The true story of a 9-5 worker

Many years ago I had the pleasure of working with a delightful client at a university.
One day he asked me if he should give his secretary a pay rise or not.

She was a very senior secretary, responsible for the running of his office and at least four other secretaries. I asked him what his concerns were. It was just one thing:
“She never stays late.” He told me.
This was true. I had never seen Avril in the office after 5pm. So I asked:
“Has anything ever been late or unfinished because she would not stay late?”
“No.” He responded immediately with absolute certainty.
“So are you saying she is so efficient that she gets everything done during the normal working day and never costs you any extra money in overtime?” I asked.
“I think I’d better give her that rise.” He responded.

Political overtime

I came across this phrase when I worked in a company where it was seen to be a good thing to stay late. People thought it correlated with commitment. That may have been the case. In my view it also correlated with poor efficiency, low levels of organisational skills and a need to impress the boss.

My colleagues would sit around chatting about all kinds of things during the day and then start doing serious work at about 5.30.

The trouble with this kind of behaviour is it leads to massive inefficiencies. It’s a system where it is in the interest of people to stretch out their work.

What you need is the complete reverse: a system that encourages exactly the opposite kind of behaviour.

People who just work 9-5

Now, when I hear someone describing colleagues in this way I regard it as more of a comment on their own failings. It usually indicates that they think long hours in themselves are beneficial, no matter what is achieved (or not achieved).

They are often incapable of measuring achievement and find it easier to measure value by the amount of time people spend on the task or keeping a seat warm. The more you think about that the more stupid it is.

Who are the people who work 9-5?

I have worked with many of these people and they are the salt of the earth, in my view. Many of them are skilled, highly committed employees and members of a team.

They often have to leave at 5pm to pick up children or catch a bus. This does not make them any less committed. And it often makes them more efficient.

A question for you

Imagine you need to have an operation. You have the choice between Sam and Charlie. Sam’s operations take on average 8 hours. He always stays late and works long hours. Charlie usually completes her operations in 4 hours and, although happy to stay late, rarely has to do so.

Do you want a surgeon who is tired, inefficient and possibly incompetent? I imagine not.
I know of one surgical unit where the situation I have described exists (I have changed the names.) The reason Charlie is so much more efficient is that she has spent years improving her technique and learning better and more effective ways to carry out her operations.

It is not surprising that she is much more popular as a surgeon than her colleagues (who have put in very little effort in this area).

We should be rewarding people for finding quicker, easier and more efficient ways of achieving their goals, not for incompetence and the lack of willingness to make improvements.

Get help with time management here.

Posted in Management Skills, Time Management | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Objectives for back room roles

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

I was told recently by someone that you couldn’t write meaningful objectives for people who just work 9-5 and expect to take an hour for lunch.

I was quite shocked to hear this coming from a senior person. Unfortunately it is not a unique view.

Perhaps it comes from having lost all contact with the ground floor. So let’s look at how you connect up those very fundamental level objectives with the top goals of large companies and organisations, because you absolutely can do this and there is a great benefit to you if you do.

Objectives for administrative roles

One of the most difficult roles to write objectives for is admin. This may be because many people have no idea what is involved in these roles and the value that they add when they are carried out efficiently.

Front line services

That’s why you often hear government departments not wanting to cut ‘front line services’. The automatic assumption is that the ‘back office’ services are somehow less important and add less value.

The back office is important too

Here is my favourite example (entirely true) of what can happen when you take liberties with ‘back office’ jobs.

Imagine you are an HR partner in a large company. You go to see a manager, Tina Jones, to review the performance of members of her team. As you go down the list you come to John Smith. She tells you there is no John Smith on the team.

You protest. Your records show he has been in her department for over seven months.
She assures you he does not exist. She has never heard of him. She’s been running the department for six months and is sure she knows who is supposed to be there.

You decide not to push it any further, and do a bit of research when you get back to your desk. It transpires that John Smith applied for and was offered a job in the department, but never turned up. However, you have been paying him for the last seven months.

(In case you are interested, the company concerned merely stopped future payments; they were too embarrassed to ask for the money back.)

No admin

This situation arose because some bigwig at the head office decided that there was no need for HR admin support. So he got rid of them all. This was just one of the many awkward situations that resulted. Some of them were illegal.

Admin objectives

Many ‘back office’ or ‘admin’ people have objectives like:
Ensure all employees are paid the correct amount on the correct day.
(This is something most people are quite keen on when it comes to their own salary.)

Under that, a ‘sub-objective’ might be:
Ensure the files of new employees are set up so that they get all the benefits they are entitled to from their first day with the company.

Ensure that the files of all leavers are updated to ensure they receive only those benefits to which they are entitled after they have left.

It may be the admin person who is responsible for this sets up new systems to make sure all this happens, or it may be they create and update each file personally.

Either way, they are responsible for making sure that it all happens seamlessly so that no one else has to spend their time running around resolving these issues. Instead, they should be getting on with their own objectives.

Ensure the XXX surgical unit has the materials required to carry out their procedures and the stock level is within budget.

Ensure the surgical materials meet the agreed standards.

We do not expect a surgeon to have to cancel his or her operation because a replacement hip joint is missing, or because the hospital has run low on blood.

Back office tasks are important

Anyone who has been responsible for these back office tasks will know that they can be complicated and hard to manage efficiently if you do not have the necessary resources.
As you can see, making sure these things are done is extremely important. As is getting the objectives right. Suggesting that you cannot write objectives for these people indicates a lack of ability and understanding. I’ll deal with the ‘9-5’ part of the comment next week.

Get help with admin objectives

If you would like some help with administrative objectives, get my Quick-Start objectives sheet for Administrators. It includes 39 examples of badly written objectives and details how to turn them into well-written objectives.

You should be able to write most of your objectives by modifying these.
If you get it and can’t find the one you need, just email me and I’ll do that one for you for free.

Posted in Admin, Objectives, Performance Management, SMART Goals, SMART Objectives, SMART targets | Tagged , | 6 Comments

An undervalued skill – in memory of Emma

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

I recently heard a programme about people in Japan who are having the deal with the aftermath of the devastation there, both from the Tsunami and from the nuclear fallout.

The village

In a small village the survivors are rebuilding their homes and lives. But because of a strong culture on the etiquette of giving and receiving, not everyone is willing to accept help.

They believe that you must always give something in return for anything you receive. (Of course, this is how society works in the main.)

Unfortunately there are times when you are simply not in a position to give anything in return, but you still need help.

Emma

This week would have been the 54th birthday of my dear cousin, Emma. Sadly she passed away before she could celebrate it.

There were so many things to admire about Emma. She never forgot a birthday and was immensely thoughtful in her presents. Even as she lay on her deathbed, she sent us a card enclosing a cheque. In the card apologised for not being able to buy us a present for our wedding anniversary.

She was always the one to help everyone else when they needed it, in her pragmatic and down-to-earth way.

She had an amazing memory, a ready wit, a needle sharp intellect, and huge generosity – I could go on. But I am going to focus on a particular skill often ignored.

Asking for and receiving help

It’s often very hard, when you have been independent and supremely capable for most of your life, to realise that the time has come to ask for help.

In her illness and Emma let us all help her and made it easy for us to do so.

Recognising change

The ability to recognise that the situation has changed and that you must change your strategy is quite rare. It’s even more difficult when there are cultural rules and norms telling you the opposite.

In this situation as in every other, she was completely practical. When she was first ill, she sent emails asking if anyone had CDs of her favourite books she could borrow to make the chemotherapy more bearable. This gave the rest of us an opportunity to do something we knew would be of value. I have no doubt she received many.

Her job

When I met some of her lovely colleagues at the funeral I was able to find out more about her work. Not surprisingly, much of it involved helping others. She would give them advice in the complex legal matters in which she was an expert.

Humour

Even in this extremely difficult situation, she quipped merrily about no longer having to worry out all the problems with her pension. She was a tremendous example to those of us who get a bit grumpy at the slightest excuse.

Weaknesses

She did, of course, have weaknesses. One of them (which I share – it must be genetic) was for puddings. So I smuggled in some of Waitrose’s finest, which we happily dug in to together in her last weeks.

How she remained resolutely slim all her life is quite beyond me.

A strength

Some seem to regard accepting help as a weakness and would never dream of asking for help for themselves, instead struggling needlessly with problems that could be easily solved.

Perhaps this is because some people think that you should be able to do everything yourself. Or it may be because we sometimes regard those who take without giving as scroungers. (And I’m sure there are cases when this is true.)

However, we also need to recognise that there are times when accepting help is the right thing to do, and refusing help is an injury to all concerned.

Asking for help

And there are also times when asking for help is the right and most sensible thing to do.
Yes, of course it is always good to give something in return, but when you have nothing concrete to give, allowing others to give is, in itself, your gift. Its value may be greater than you imagine.

In memory of Emma Jane Slessenger 1958 – 2012

“Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?” Jane Austen “Emma”.

Posted in Change management, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leaderhip skills, Management Skills | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Are you on the fast train?

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Nancy Slessenger

I have a client down in London who I see each month. I take a train from Luton because the trains are very frequent from that station (and the car park is very reasonably priced).
Recently I heard another passenger mention a ‘fast train’ on the other platform that went to St Pancras, so, with several other passengers, I rushed up the stairs, along the bridge and just made it onto the fast train. I thanked the other passengers.

The next time I went down to London I asked the man at the desk if there was a fast train. He consulted his screen. He told me there was one and gave me the time and platform. It was the same one I had caught before.

Just as I was about to dash off to get it he told me that I would need to change at St Pancras and the train I would need to catch would be the one I could have caught from Luton anyway. So more effort for no advantage at all.

Saving time

It made me wonder if there are others areas in my life where I am making efforts for no reward, or rushing when it won’t make any difference.

More haste less speed

It’s very easy to imagine you are saving money, time or effort, when you are often doing quite the reverse. This usually happens when you do things without thinking about them first.

It’s the same as saying things without thinking about them first.

Look at the big picture and consider others

An old client of mine came across a great way of managing his time. The idea was that his time would be divided into “A” time and “B” time (possibly “C” time as well).
“A” time was time for him alone. He was not to be interrupted even for a cup of tea. This would mean he could get all those difficult tasks done quickly and efficiently.  He decided to block out two hours of every morning between 10 and 12 as “A” time.

“B” time was a space for less tricky items when an interruption was acceptable.

The problem with “A” time

My client was dean of a faculty. Many of those in the faculty had to work to a timetable not of their choosing, including contact time with students (lectures, tutorials and so on).

Unfortunately this meant that some of the lecturers had no time at all when they were able to see the dean, due to their commitments. This had not occurred to my client, and I’m sure he’s not alone in this crime of omission.

When you are making improvements, check your impact on others and the big picture. If you do that, you can often make improvements that help everyone, not just you, and so get more of a benefit all round.

Go her for help with time management.

Posted in Planning, Time Management | Tagged , , | 2 Comments