Nothing is more energizing than having great ideas fly around a meeting room and everyone is engaged in solving problems and getting things done. In tough economic times, seeing employees express ideas about how to keep the business booming is especially rewarding. “We should put this on the website!” “We can get advertising to highlight this feature in the next marketing campaign!” “Customers will love the ability to download this information!”

You want to keep these great expectations moving from one meeting to the next and ensure that the best ideas are not allowed to stall. It’s important that the great ideas “we” need to act on are not lost. Those ideas are gold and the miners of that gold are in the room.

The Problem with “We”
To get to the gold, you must eliminate the Nothing Has Been Done with the Great Ideas We Had in the Last Meeting syndrome. And why does nothing get done? Because “we” were going to do it.

To harness the power of every employee you must remember that the pronoun “we” doesn’t do anything or get anything done. When a person says “we” should do something, that’s great! What’s even greater, though, is when everyone is led to move a “we” to an “I”… with an accompanying “by-when”.

Imagine how the results of your team will skyrocket when individuals begin saying things like…“We have come up with some great stuff! I am especially excited about customers downloading this information. I’ll own that, and by the next meeting I will have an outline for you.” (more…)

Multi-tasking.  Deep down, we all know it doesn’t really make us more productive.  Yet it sure can make us feel more productive.  And for some people, and in some corporate cultures, it’s a point of pride to be doing half a dozen things at once.

But there are endless studies on the downside of multi-tasking.  Just Google “task switching” or “switch costs,” and you’ll find pages of reference material describing the high price paid by multi-taskers in lost efficiency and mistakes made.  Not convinced?  Try this quick example called the “Stroop Test”: (more…)

Feel free to use this tip sheet / checklist as you tackle tasks and projects.

ACT AFTER YOU PLAN

• start with a written plan of action to avoid getting distracted
• keep your plan simple and straightforward
• start with the one thing you must get done today to feel productive
• should be a manageable item you can complete in 10-15 minutes
• break the day up into a number of “action sessions” for other tasks
• balance the time spent planning with time spent creating or doing
• avoid over-planning — another method of procrastination
• before ending your day, spend 10 minutes reviewing your progress
• take time to plan your actions for the next day (more…)

by Harry K. Jones

Last month, I shared a very powerful time management tool which has proven to be very successful for those who have attended our time management seminars.

In that article, Start a “Stop-Doing” List, I explained that a “Stop-Doing” list is nothing more than a simple inventory of bad habits or negative actions currently practiced by an individual, team or organization that would provide better results if they were discontinued. (more…)

New Survey Reveals Layers of Workplace Distractions that Impact Employees and Businesses

Every minute of every work day employees are bombarded with distractions they must work with or around to get things done. Whether it’s the meeting that runs 30 minutes over, the Blackberry that won’t stop buzzing, office gossip about the newest employees or even family matters, there are a myriad of conflicting matters vying for employees’ attention. (more…)