Productive Leadership: A Simple Test For Action

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[…]

Batch Processing: The New Black?

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[…]

Maximizing Productivity: Building The Three-Legged Stool

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[…]

Meeting Hygiene: Conducting Productive Meetings

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[…]

What To Do With It All: Treating E-mail As Correspondence

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[…]

Cause And Effect – Productivity Is An Action, Not a Result

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[…]

Great Delegation Skills

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[…]

Productivity Makes Rain – No-Cost Marketing During A Downturn

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[…]

The Ebb & Flow of Balance

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[…]