Archive for category: Life Balance

Make Time for the Work That Matters (Post 2 of 4)

Since we all have the same number of hours in a day, working as efficiently as possible is no brainer. But how? Business productivity experts Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen in the September issue of Harvard Business Review provide a self-assessment score card for identifying low-value tasks. I’ve replicated it below for discussion purposes. Check back for my next post to learn how it’s helping some organizations win the race against the clock.

Self-Assessment: Identifying Low-Value Tasks

Developed by Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen (HBR, 9/13)

Make a list of everything you did yesterday or the day before, divided into 30- or 60-minute chunks. For each task, ask yourself four questions:

How valuable is this activity to the firm?

Suppose you’re updating your boss or a senior executive on your performance. Would you mention this task? Would you be able to justify spending time on it?

To what extent could I let this go?

Imagine that because of a family emergency, you arrive at work two hours late and have to prioritize the day’s activities. Which category would this activity fall in?                                                                                                                   

How much personal value do I get from doing it?

Imagine that you’re financially independent and creating your dream job. Would you keep this task or jettison it?

To what extent could someone else do it on my behalf?

Suppose you’ve been tapped to handle a critical, fast-track initiative and have to assign some of your work to colleagues for three months. Would you drop, delegate or keep this task?

Now tally your score. A low total score (10 or lower) reflects a task that is a likely candidate for delegation or elimination. If you subscribe to Harvard Business Review, go to “hbr.org/assessments/work-that-matters” for an interactive assessment tool to see how you stack up and to get advice for improved productivity.

Make Time for the Work that Matters

How much work can you get done before shifting your attention to the other parts of your day? How many tasks can you mark off your “to do” list before 5 or 6 p.m.? How do you know if you’re even focusing on the right stuff?

If you manage others, it also can be tough to know if your employees are using their time efficiently. “A manager may suspect that an employee is spending his time inefficiently but be hard-pressed to diagnose the problem, let alone come up with a solution,” writes London Business School strategy professor Julian Birkinshaw and productivity expert Jordan Cohen in the September edition of Harvard Business Review.

These guys know a thing or two about work productivity. Birkinshaw is the author of “Becoming a Better Boss” and Cohen is the recipient of the 2010 grand prize from the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) for his employee productivity work with Pfizer.

They describe a process that knowledge workers can use to “make time for the work that matters.” It’s a topic worth thinking about, considering the research showing that by their own admission “knowledge workers spend a great deal of their time—an average of 41 percent—on discretionary activities that offer little personal satisfaction and could be handled competently by others.”

It’s puzzling. If workers understand that much of the work they’re doing can be better handled by someone, presumably less skilled, than themselves, why do they keep doing it?

The authors hypothesize that people instinctively “cling to tasks that make (them) feel busy and thus important, while (their) bosses, constantly striving to do more with less, pile on as many responsibilities as (employees) are willing to accept.”

They also assign some of the blame for less than optimal productivity to lean-to-the-bone organizations that expect higher level employees to take on some low-value tasks that distract them from more important work.

How can knowledge workers be more productive? How can managers be more strategic in encouraging employee productivity? Check back for my next few posts to find out what productivity experts Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen recommend. I’ll also share how Intertech manages the time-task-value conundrum.

In Praise of Laziness

The August 17th issue of The Economist has an article titled “In Praise of Laziness, businesspeople would be better off if they did less and thought more.”

The article starts by sharing some of the top recent business books which tell us to Lean In, Book Yourself Solid, and Never Eat Alone.  I agree with the article… we need less doing and more thinking.  In thinking about my own time management, here are 10 things I do to increase productivity and not waste effort:

1. Say no.  Whether it’s someone who wants to “talk about partnering” or an invitation for an event I’d rather not attend, I pass.
2. Focus on results (not activities or perceptions).  In the first decade of the firm, I cared about being early into and late out of the office.  At a board meeting a decade ago, when going through details of what I did the last month, a board member stopped me and said, “I don’t care.  You’re paid for results.  Let’s focus on that.” Fast forward to now, I’m not concerned about perceptions–my mornings are filled with coffee, reading, writing, thinking, and planning before a morning run then heading into work.
3. Delegate.  Around the same time as the above mentioned board meeting, I attended Dale Carnegie’s Leadership Training for Managers.  It broke leadership down into seven major things… one of which was delegation.  Today, when new stuff pops up that could fall in my lap, I look to delegate or… question whether it needs to be done at all.
4. Trust.  As a leader, it’s imperative to trust my leaders and everyone in the firm.  Per #2 above, I focus on results and don’t care about when or where work gets done.
5. Communicate.  To be clear on expectations, I meet on Mondays with my leaders for 1-on-1’s.  To stay on the same page as a team, we finish our days with an end of day management huddle.
6. Think.  In my book, Building a Winning Business, I share there aren’t college courses on thinking.  Yet, it’s done constantly.  Before jumping into any activity, I take time to identify the best way to tackle.
7. Plan.  There’s wisdom to the adage, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” Simple things like setting advanced reminders for important things that can be booked or done ahead of time, save time, stop fire drills, and reduce stress.
8. Focus on the future.  In The Economist article, it shares how Jack Welch of GE would spend an hour a day “looking out the window of time” and Bill Gates would set aside two “think weeks” per year.  If these crazily successful people can commit time to think about the future, “Why can’t I?”
9. Goal set.  In Alice in Wonderland, she’s told “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” For the different areas of my life–health, family, friends, finances, career, spirituality, philanthropy, etc.–I’ve made a clear list of objective, measureable goals.  I use these to guide decisions about how to spend my time.
10. Manage time vs. being managed by it.  An early mentor, told me about the tyranny of the urgent.  He said if I wasn’t proactive and preventative, my days would be managed by urgent, most likely non-important things, vs. important non-urgent things.  This is spot on with the advice of Ivy Lee to Bethlehem Steel.

The Economist article finishes by saying, “… Doing nothing may be going too far… But there is certainly a case for doing a lot less—for rationing e-mail, cutting back on meetings and getting rid of a few overzealous bosses.” The of the article in The Economist and title of this post were meant to be eye-catching.  When it comes to work, I think about a quote from one of my favorite, “old school” business thought leaders, Earl Nightingale.  He said “We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.”

8 Secrets of Success

This Ted Talk is by Richard St. John. It’s based on seven years of research and 500 interviews.  Through these interviews, he summarizes the eight “secrets” successful people have in common:

1. Passion… If you do it because you love it, the money will follow
2. Work… Work hard because it’s fun
3. Good… Get good at what you do thru practice, practice, practice
4. Focus… Focus on one thing
5. Push… Push yourself thru limits like shyness and self-doubt
6. Serve… Serve others
7. Ideas… Listen, observe, be curious, problem solve, and make connections
8. Persistence… Be persistent and get over CRAP (Criticism, Rejection, Assholes, and Pressure)