Last week I was talking with a client who is the CEO of a burgeoning online content company. His ranks have grown rapidly and his team is distributed across the United States. The company is truly virtual – a structure that greatly reduces overhead commitments but produces challenges of its own. Coordinating people and projects in[…]
A Stanford University study recently concluded what most of us have known for a long time – we mere mortals don’t multi-task well. Not to lambast Stanford for their efforts, but consider the last time you were trying to converse with while there were checking their e-mail. If that’s not convincing, consider sitting in the[…]
One of the odd things about our house is that it didn’t have a hall coat closet. This has to do with the layout and orientation of the home, which was designed to take advantage of the view. To remedy this shortcoming, we had purchased an antique coat rack and placed it in a spot[…]
The science of increasing individual productivity is derived from the art of blending together three interrelated disciplines: time management, organizational skills, and workflow processing. This article summarizes each area and provides a list of specific QuickTips that will improve your productivity immediately. Time Management I often quip that there’s no such thing as time management[…]
I’ll admit it up front: I’m not a fan of regularly scheduled group/team/status meetings. They tend to be unstructured and, as a result, not terribly productive. Don’t get me wrong, I want people to feel a part of the team and playing on the same field in the same game. I just don’t believe weekly[…]
As a productivity consultant, I routinely hear, “But I just don’t know what to do with it all.” This, of course, is in response to the vast volume of e-mail, texts and tweets people receive. As an example of how bad it’s getting, I recently met with a social networking maven who confessed to having[…]
Discussions on “productivity” often focus on leverage or other financial management measurements. However, at its core, productivity results from better workload processing behaviors. People are the ones doing the behaving. So, to increase productivity, we must look at how they are managing the flow of work (and other things) during day. Small changes in these[…]
Executives and professionals all delegate work. Leveraging others’ skill sets through delegation is a critical-path management tool for these individuals. Getting the right work to the right people who have enough time is the key to the efficient and effective completion of projects. Yet many people are poor delegators of work. Why that is and[…]
Issue Whether productivity drives new business. Rule Clients use and refer professionals they know will be the most responsive, effective, and efficient – all components of productivity. This is especially true during business slow downs. Application Productivity drives new business because it increases your responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency in the following ways. Responsiveness Clients use[…]
One recurring theme we all face is balancing the demands of their career with those of our personal lives. These are often juxtaposed against each other, leaving a Hobson’s choice. Because each situation is unique, it is cavalier to suggest a list of pre-packaged solutions. Instead, this article will frame an alternative conceptual paradigm and[…]