You do not want your customers and competitors understanding the power of optimising personal effectiveness

In a services based knowledge economy, you do not want your customers and competitors understanding the power of optimising personal effectiveness.

You want them to be ineffective at organising and managing time and commitment.

If they are ineffective, you can control them! You can sell them more; you can sell at a higher price; and you can outsell them (in the case of competitors).

You don't want your customer or your competitor's management or staff understanding how to make effective decisions, you want them to be easily led by the latest and loudest emergency or offer.

When I say the power of optimised personal effectiveness, I’m referring to this situation:

• Firstly, you and your teams are capable of focusing completely on what you/they are doing at any given moment, and that there is total confidence that what is being done is the most appropriate thing to done at that moment.


• And secondly, you and your teams are ready for anything, i.e. you and your teams can at an instant change direction and handle interruptions.

In contrast, deficiencies in personal effectiveness might be highlighted by one or more of the following:

• You get to the end of the day feeling exhausted and concerned that nothing important was achieved?
• Your e-mail is overflowing and you never find enough time to respond to everything?
• You can’t find the time to finish things properly?
• You never find your own space – you are subject to continual interruption?
• You struggle to let go of or stop thinking about work issues when at home and home issues when at work?
• You find yourself rushing into meetings, missing deadlines, missing key business opportunities or not having sufficient time for important family events?

You are reading this blog right? Are your customers and your competitors reading this blog? Do you understand the art of work, the art of effectively managing and organising your time and commitments? They might!

In reality, if everyone fully understands the best practice in personal effectiveness, everyone makes better decisions, products move quicker, customers are happier because they get the right product or service, and after all, good completion makes us stronger, not complacent.

Getting you and your team using best practices in personal effectiveness

In my opinion, the best practice in personal effectiveness is this:

• Firstly, you are capable of focusing completely on what you are doing at any given moment, and you have total confidence that what you are doing is the most appropriate thing you should be doing at that moment.
• And secondly, you are ready for anything, i.e. you can at an instant change direction and handle interruptions.

Being focused and ready for anything, means you can get more out of your day, complete more of the important things and to do it all stress free.

Ensuring your team understand the best practices in personal effectiveness is simple:

1. Step 1 - Establish a programme to ensure everyone in your team understands the concepts.
2. Step 2 - Engage a business consultant to help you ensure your processes and systems are not getting in the way of optimal performance.

To get you on the path with Step 1, you should contact Next Action Associates and ask them to help you build a programme around education in optimisation (make sure you mention I sent you ;-)).

Next Action Associates can be found here - http://www.next-action.eu/

The Two Gears of Getting Things Done® (GTD®) Adoption

I've published a whitepaper that presents the concept of the "two gear of GTD adoption". This concept is part of my research into introducing the concepts of Getting Things Done. I also touch on methods for adopting GTD.

Here is a preview...

The "first gear" of GTD adoption is effectiveness and the "second gear" is doing it all stress free.

GTD is not about speed, it is about momentum:

The idea of the two gears of GTD adoption comes from the concept of converting energy into momentum.

Just as a manually geared car (i.e. stick shift) stalls if you try to take off in 2nd gear, so will GTD if you try stress free before you've mastered effectiveness.

You need to get some speed up before you can change to the 2nd gear. Changing gears too early will stall your progress; i.e. focusing on the finer details of GTD too early will kill your enthusiasm. Likewise, changing gears two late will break your engine, i.e. working all the effectiveness techniques and routines without learning the critical thinking will have you exhausted before you experience the truly profound benefits of mind like water.

... Download the white paper to read more...

Stress Free Effectiveness is…

Stress Free Effectiveness is basically this – the ability to focus completely on what you are doing at any given moment, and the knowledge that what you are doing is the most appropriate thing you should be doing at that moment.

The issue for most of us is two fold: firstly it is difficult to completely focus on what you are doing because of interference from others and more importantly your own thoughts; and secondly, confidence you are doing the most appropriate thing at any given moment assumes you know everything you aren’t doing at that moment. The reality is that most of us don’t have a complete inventory of everything we should or could be doing.

The solution is both easier and harder than you may think… here it is…

(1) clear your mind and keep it that way.
(2) get everything you should or could be doing on to lists.
(3) keep those lists up to date and reviewed often enough that you trust the contents to be correct and complete.

Are you perceived as being responsive?

For a long time, I would get frustrated and stressed over what I labelled “poor responsiveness”. I would apply this label to people I worked with, friends and even family members. Mind you, not everyone got this label, only those I knew I needed to “track and follow-up” in order see a commitment carried out.

This behaviour is typically associated with procrastination, but manifests itself in all aspects of life. For example, you could be in a meeting where your colleague commits to taking an action after the meeting. Equally, you could be chatting to a friend on the phone and agree to talk next Thursday regarding going to a coffee or pint. Sometime after the event you realise neither has occurred.

In order to “manage” those that I felt weren’t responsive, I would create reminders in my “To-Do” system and then chase people down when I hadn’t got what I needed. This created unnecessary effort and the associated stress for all parties involved, because no-one likes being reminded of something they didn’t do.

I now know better.

I now understand what creates the perception that someone doesn’t respond appropriately. And I know how to be more effective in situations when someone doesn’t deliver on a commitment.

The first revelation is that the concept of “responding appropriately” is different across cultures, companies and communication mediums.For example, in your business you may expect a response to an e-mail query to a colleague on the same day. However you may not expect a response from an external customer for up to 3 days. On the other hand, if you receive a SMS Text message from a loved one, they may get concerned if you don’t respond almost instantly. Therefore, we must understand who we are communicating with and what is accepted as the “normal” level of responsiveness.

The other revelation, and more critical aspect, is to do with an unfortunate inadequacy in the tools and techniques most of us employ. For example, things just don’t get done because it is “accepted” that e-mail queries with-in the office should be answered on the same day or even actions taken on minutes during a meeting need to be completed before the next meeting. Unfortunately, whilst I believe most people honestly aim to deliver on a commitment at the time the commitment was made, their system for managing that commitment lets them down.
The root cause in our “system” in most cases is our short-term memory. Unfortunately short-term memory is very flippant; it is easily distracted by the latest and loudest thing that comes into our world. Therefore, whilst we may have honestly committed to do something, that something will be replaced in our consciousness at some point, be it later in the day, tomorrow, next week or even as you leave the meeting and get into a conversation with someone on your way back to your desk. Even if a commitment is written down in your notepad, if your personal system for reviewing and organising these notes isn’t adequate, you will still be relying on your short-term memory to get back to the notes and those agreed meeting actions.

Now that I understand what is behind my misconception, I am better able to manage it. For example, when looking for something from someone else, I will be very specific about the outcome I expect and by when. Where as previously a meeting action might read “Quarterly results report (Joe)”, it would now read “Joe to export October to December transactions into the reports spreadsheet and forward to Brad by Wednesday lunchtime”.

Furthermore, if someone is still struggling with their commitments and exhibiting stress is doing so, I help them understand more about how they might better manage their “to-do lists” and inadequacies of short-term memory.

How are you perceived by your colleagues, customers, friends and family? Are you seen as “responsive”? Do you know someone who is non-responsive? What actions do you take?

The Humble Task List isn’t enough

Why do we use task lists? When used properly, task lists can help us track what we need to do, when we need it done and for whom it needs to be done. We can use lists to manage our commitments and reach our goals. Even “Ticking” tasks as complete does provide you with a list of mini-achievements.

Is it enough? So does the humble, yet powerful task list offer a path to an ultimately happy and fulfilling life? Well no. Why? Because I believe, we need to do things in the context of what is most important to us. I propose that the underlying and fundamental human need here is linked to goal recognition or having a sense of accomplishment. If we do not often reach this sense of accomplishment we slowly but surely get tired, worn-out and bored with what we are doing. The things that used to have us bouncing out of bed in the morning do not matter any more. A sense of accomplishment comes simply by seeing in every action one takes, no matter how small, progress against a greater goal.

Where is the utopia? If we frame or categorise what we do in relation to where it fits into our lives, every little “tick” will bring us closer to where we want to be.
For example, suppose we have a list of things we need to get done today. When used in isolation this list may not totally excite us and have us humming through our day. However if we were to add some categorisation to each task that provides a link to a goal or even a greater purpose, then we have a better chance of seeing the bigger picture and end point.

By seeing completed tasks as steps towards a goal we will have a better chance of achieving the sense of accomplishment on a daily, hourly or even minute-by-minute basis.

Do you frame or categorise your individual tasks in terms of a goal or greater purpose?

Maximise your performance by minimising your interference?

Why is performance important?

To really perform at what we do, we need to constantly and consistently move things forward. To move things forward, we need to give each specific part of that thing our full attention, even if only for short burst. Giving something our full attention improves the quality and reduces the overall time it takes to get it done.

What is stopping us maximising our performance?

To answer that question, you should look at the work by Timothy Gallwey, called the Inner Game. The Inner Game as developed by Gallwey in 1974 builds on the notion of “Potential” and “Performance”. There is a gap between potential and performance which Gallwey describes as the thoughts which you have when going about an activity. These thoughts can be better described as “Interference”. Interference then is the self doubting thoughts you have that get in the way of your potential and reduce your resulting performance.

As Gallwey proposes, our performance is limited by interference caused by our thoughts. In a typical work place, that is not the only place interference comes from.

We are subject to continual bombardment, more so than ever before, from things we allow into our space, like e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and SMS text messages. Then there are the external things that we have no control over, like the phone ringing or perhaps the boss or a colleague wandering by and requesting something. And what about the meeting culture? Have you ever felt your whole day was full of meetings? How much can you get done if you are in meetings all day, surely that is interference also?

So how do we minimise the interference and maximise our performance?

The obvious answer is to just remove the inference right? So maybe lock yourself away from your colleagues, the phone, the computer, your mobile phone. And how about your own thoughts? Should you just stop thinking? Ok, so none of that is realistic, because you need your thoughts, you need your colleagues and you need all the tools.

What you can do however, is two things. Firstly, for short periods you should limit the interference from the things you can control, i.e. turn off e-mail notifications and try to give yourself the permission to not answer phone or text for a period. The second thing we can do is to clarify the things in our head, get on top of our commitments by writing them down in a list, then when done doing the thing you need to get done, you can review that list and get back to the other million and one things to do. Being clear and in control for these short periods by reducing the interference will enable you to perform much closer to your true potential.

Where does your interference come from and how do you reduce it?