The economy may or may not recover this year.  The Drachma may or may not maintain parity with the Deutschmark. The USA may or may not say ‘Yes’ to Obama.

One thing is certain though:

Our personal, commercial and future prospects this year will be influenced more by what goes on in the 7 inches between our left and right ears than what goes on in the outside world.

Business will be done. Profits, bonuses, reputations and futures will be built. Ours is in our hands.

When it comes to what goes on between our left and right ears we must avoid the self delusional self talk of Gareth Cheeseman . We are not tigers, no matter how much we shout ‘Grrrrrr!!!!!’ into a mirror.

We must manage our Mind Traffic

Mind traffic is that constant dialogue that goes on between our conscious and subconscious mind.

Its roots are many and varied. Untamed, it can result in short attention spans, inability to focus, lack of clarity and control, stress, procrastination, urgency addiction, Continuous Partial Attention, which is NOT the same as multitasking.

We can manage this through deliberately working on our Self Talk (what we say when our mind talks to us and what we say when we talk to our mind).

Arguably we cannot claim authentic influence and leadership of people until we can claim authentic internal influence and leadership.

We must weld our purpose to our priorities

Peter Drucker famously said that the preferred management style is Firefighting and most managers are arsonists. We must overcome Urgency Addiction and the ruthless reality that ‘Just in Time’ is really just too late and unsustainable when working through people.

We need to create habits, rituals, processes that are simple, robust and flexible enough for us to clarify and control our competing priorities within our demanding days.

 In short we must manage our Mind Traffic and be Doers of Dreams.

These are the things we all need to be working on every day as we go about our day-job. These are the things we need to be deliberately learning and growing through. These are the things I get out of bed for and what I love working with my clients on.

Speaking about getting out of bed, here’s a simple ritual I run before I plant my feet on the floor first thing in the morning.

Over to you. You are a Doer of Dreams …. What habits, rituals or processes work for you? Drop a note in the comments section below.

If you or your team could use some practical support in managing Mind Traffic, purpose and Priorities just get in touch. I’m confident that, together, we will produce results worth talking about.

Because a number of business friends have asked me about how I use Twitter for business I promised to write these few notes here.

I use Twitter as a business tool. I’m also ‘social’ on it BUT I choose not to use it as a social-chat tool. My usage is 80% business 20% social business chat.

My tool of choice is Hootsuite https://hootsuite.com/ These productivity pointers are written for Hootsuite. You can also look at Tweetdeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com/

This is not a comprehensive exploration. I hope it is enough to get you going with it. The beauty of it is that it is pretty intuitive once you start with it.

You are very welcome to add your own experience and tips here. I don’t have all the answers.

OK, signup is straightforward and I won’t talk to that.

Once you sign up and are set up, you will see that all your Twitter activity is shown in Hootsuite. It integrates well with Twitter.

You will see that in your main ‘Tab’ you have a number of default ‘Streams’ showing twitter activity in different ways. And this is the part I want to specifically point out to you here.

You can create your own ‘Tabs’ and ‘Streams’ to organise your engagement with the people, businesses, market sectors, trends, news, thought-leaders etc that are important to you.

For example, I have ‘Tabs’ to organise Tweets through a shortened version of my sales contact classifications: Raving Fans; Clients; Hot Prospects and Prospects (see below for ‘Streams’ for each).

I also have ‘Tabs’ for various communities I engage with. One such is my ‘Local Networking’ ‘Tab’ where I have ‘Streams’ for physical and digital communities I engage with. The likes of #IoDSurrey #digitalsurrey #TVSMC SurreyChambers and others are found there.

I also have a separate Tab for Thought Leaders where the likes of TED and HBR tweets live.

You get the point, It’s simple. Here’s how:

1. To add a new ‘Tab’ simply hit the ‘+’ sign to the right of your default Tab and overtype the ‘Untitled’ text.
2. Don’t worry about the order you create your tabs in. You can move them left and right by simply dragging /dropping it to your preferred location.
3. To add ‘Streams’ to your Tab you have a number of options: Search Keywords or List.
4. You probably know that you can assign any contact to a ‘List’ on Twitter. Most of my Twitter lists are ‘Private’ (I don’t want people to see my sales pipeline!). In Hootsuite you can add people via your existing Twitter lists or create new lists directly inside Hootsuite. Remember to choose whether you want these lists to be private or public!
5. Creating new Streams via Keyword is very straightforward. For my #IoDSurrey stream I simply enteres the word ‘IodSurrey’ in the dialogue box and hit ‘Add’.
6. The ‘Search’ option is useful because you can include up to 3 search terms. Hit the ‘Show examples’ button to see some cool search terms you can use to refine your particular search  stream.

There it is, hope you find it useful. Call or mail me if you want to.

By the way, if you ever thought you would like to remove the twitter chit-chat that some people clutter our Linkedin home page with you will find this post useful  http://richardmaybury.co.uk/2011/01/linkedin-tip-remove-chit-chat-tweeters-from-your-update-area/

What can you add? Go ahead!

Technology always promises to make us more productive. So how come small business owners still feel under the cosh and are still working long hours?

Like the 1950s promise of a housekeeping robot, is IT productivity all just hype? Or is it us humans who need a little upgrade?

There’s no doubt that technology is continuing to revolutionise the workplace. And we all have to work smarter because we can’t work much harder. How does this productivity push play out in small businesses though? Especially when they are not accessing the infrastructure and support that bigger organisations have at their fingertips?

I was delighted therefore to learn that Microsoft featured some of my advice on their dedicated Microsoft Small Business Centre site.

After all, supporting smaller businesses in squeezing extra productivity and bottom line profits from their existing (or sometimes reducing) employee population through smarter working practices and improved collaboration and teamworking  has been an increasing focus of my consulting and training business over the past 3 years.

The truth is that upgrading people’s skills along with appropriate, simple, streamlined and integrated upgrading of technology can have a massive impact on the bottom line and deliver Results Worth Talking About.

Naturally, I would be delighted to support you, your team or people you may know, just tell me how now.

Another good conversation at the People Forum today touching on aspects of Leadership, Risk Management, General Management HR and Learning and Development  and Recruitment of talent. Once all the committed resources from the meeting have been given to me I will write-up a brief overview with appropriate links.

If you want to give proper priority to, and build management and control around, your resolutions for 2012 you will stand a better chance of achieving them when you state them as positive actions.

Positive thoughts and actions are invariably more motivating than negative ones.

Research on ‘Thought Suppression’  – notably the “don’t think of the white bear” studies of Wegner , Wenzlaff et al (1987) proves that the paradoxical nature of the process of thought suppression is responsible for the returning of unwanted thoughts to mind.

This applies equally to our behaviours.

So, if you are looking to replace ‘bad habits’ or ‘weaknesses’ just focus on what you will replace them with and build some priority and management rigour around how you go about working on them this year.

Supporting people in managing priorities, goals and strategies is what my business is all about.  Get in touch if this will help you, your team or your business this year.

I just got a lovely ‘Thank You’ email from an executive client who I supported in restructuring his strategic thinking and getting a grip on his strategic priorities.

Like many business leaders he was taking too much on his own shoulders and driving expectations of himself that he would not be allowed to drive through his people. What he was doing was unsustainable – and he knew it. Hence my engagement with him.

He reminded me of Christopher Logue’s wonderful 8 line poem ‘Come To The Edge’ which I mentioned to him earlier. It was a bitter-sweet email because earlier this month – on 2 December 2011 – Christopher Logue died, aged 85. Here is his poem – one of my favourites ….

So, another opportunity to introduce you to this under-appreciated 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award winner poet and his wonderful poem, ‘Come To The Edge’ which has inspired my training and executive support practice for over a decade now. Here’s the poem:

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

©Christopher Logue

Thank you Christopher, for your inspiration. Thank you also for being a poet that has a life outside the rarefied world of Poetry! By the way, for many years on the web this poem was incorrectly attributed to the French poet Guilliame Apollinaire. This is being slowly rectified. So now, you, dear reader, can spread the word and clear the confusion.

Here is a good place to start learning about Christopher Logue , the poet, then look for his CND work, his Private Eye work, compiling its perennial True Stories and Pseuds Corner features.

I really enjoy running the IoD People Forum for Surrey and am looking forward to our 2012 season.

The Forum has been developed and designed to be particularly helpful for business Owners, Directors and Managers who have direct employee responsibility, to human resource and learning & development practitioners, to employment lawyers and anyone else who is responsible for the ‘people side’ of the business.

our Top Priority is sharing ideas and energy on any and all aspects of finding, recruiting, employing, developing, leading and exiting people in these interesting times.

Conversation is critical to the ethos of the Forum and, right from the start, I was keen to embed 3 principles:

1. No fixed, restrictive agenda (but the meeting will be facilitated by me)
2. No ‘Talking Head’ presentations telling you stuff you already know
3. No selling to be subjected to

Topics for conversation and resultant committed outputs are determined on the day. Our priority is the practicalities of people management and business decisions.

We meet every 2 months on the first Friday of the month, kicking of the year with our 6th January meeting in Guildford. The meeting runs from 0715 to 0859.

So if you would welcome an early morning coffee in Guildford with like minded individuals any First Friday just let me know, and I can arrange for you to attend. The Forum is usually only open to IoD members but we do invite guests who are interested in pursuing IoD membership as part of their personal development and business networking strategy.

If you want to find out more please feel free to call me on 01428 607763 or hit the Contact me form

I have said it many times before - and in the light of current news from various organisations, including Atos , who has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months, as well as recent experiences direct from some of my clients – it needs to be said again.

Most businesses need to review and change their current use of internal emails to manage workflows, workloads and the competing priorities their people are asked to manage on a daily basis.

Here are 3 reasons why internal email can be a costly drain on team and individual productivity within any business:

Reason 1: Internal email is a very poor workload management tool

Email, used well is a good communication component of an overall workload management process. It is not, however, a good workload management tool – no matter how people try to push it into that domain.

The ruthless reality for most people though is that  Email is mostly misused and abused!

Think about it for a moment. With Email:-

1. The 80/20 Rule is ruthless – In larger organisations especially – 80% of emails are generated within the organisation and only 20% of them are relevant to the critical results of the day.
2. Everyone has their own closed silo of communication and information, filed in their own particular hierarchical structure.
3. Everyone decides for themselves who needs to be in the loop and who is best to get a particular message to
4. Everyone decides for themselves who to send a message ‘TO’, who will get a ‘CC’ and the ‘BCC’.
5. Everyone decides for themselves why they will use ‘CC’ and ‘BCC’, sometimes for ‘political’ and ‘escalation’ reasons that undermine teamworking
6. Everyone gets fed up with the tsunami of emails they receive, there is universal hatred of ‘Reply all’ and pointless ‘Distribution list’ emails that people can’t disconnect from because the list controller is not easily identifiable within the organisation …………………………

I could go on … and in 12 years of running this business, believe me …. I could go on with example after example of real people experiencing genuine pain and frustration at the email culture and conditioning that has been built up within their business, whether by design or neglect in the face of other pressing commercial issues.

Only last Friday I tweeted about a cri de cour from a senior manager in a great job within an industry leading multi-billion dollar business….

‘Email seems to be becoming work rather than a tool for it.  Not having read an email within an hour of it arriving is increasingly frowned upon.  A trend that makes it increasing hard to do the work and not just reply to emails.  A trend that the mobile email platform has exaggerated, a reply now constitutes completion of a request.’

That’s why I consider it really important, when working with clients on time, priority and workload management training programmes, to incorporate modules around recreating a more resourceful culture and expectation management system around how they ‘Do Emails’. And it always gets amazing results - even within very large organisations.

It is possible to tame the email beast. It is possible to put an end to Inbox slavery and turn it into Inbox mastery. If it were not proven to be possible my clients would not continue to book us year after year.

I’m not stating this to big myself up. I’m stating it to encourage you to take heed of Confucius ‘It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness’  and of Mahatma Gandhi ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’

Reason 2: Current collaboration tools beat internal emails hands-down for productivity

You wouldn’t expect me to get too soft and fluffy here, so I’m not going to talk about ‘Social’ …Ooops, I just have.
let’s focus on Collaboration built upon social-like platforms.

There is so much good work being done in this field that I believe that internal emails will increasingly be seen as about as relevant to the transaction of business as the use of a telex machine is. Remember those?

Two platforms that we are currently considering for our team of six people who rarely sit in the same office at the same time but none-the-less have to be continuously in contact, are:

The VMWare platform: SocialCast.

We are currently working with vmware’s Social Cast platform live in the business and all 6 of us find it very intuitive, simple to use and very useful. I plan to write a full post on our direct experience shortly.

IBM Connections

I have seen IBM Connections demos and sat in on some webcasts about this platform and it does look incredibly powerful and rich. I also know some business associates who use it within their businesses and advocate it.

Microsoft Communicator and Lync 2010

Microsoft are also very busy in this space. Their Communicator product is well known and the new 2010 version of their collaboration platform Lync looks great from the outside, especially as it will work seamlessly with SharePoint and Outlook. We don’t know yet how Lync will work with the Macs and iPhones that some of us use, so this is one to trial later.

So, you see, internal email is more challenged than ever … and will eventually succumb to the more open, real-time collaboration options being developed and refined right here right now.

Reason 3: Younger, newer workers are increasingly seeing Email as archaic

Young people are no longer weaned on internet email accounts.

Most of them communicate on Social platforms like Facebook and through Text / IM in various forms.

Even at college and university, the communication platform of choice is increasingly ‘Social’ in structure if not in actual usage.

There is plenty of evidence recording the decline in use of  internet mail accounts by these leaders of the future, of which this research behind the chart on the right is only one that I am currently aware of.

This chart comes from ComScore Media Metrix

So, there you have it:

1. Internal email is rarely managed well in most organisations. It can be improved – especially with our help, as our clients advocate day in-day out
2. There are options to explore – and again – we can help your people make the change.

Let me know your thoughts, either here in the comment section, on twitter or by email. Oh, and if you want an old fashioned chat just call me

You and I will have no choice but to develop ourselves more effectively and work much smarter on our core purposes and priorities in 2012. That’s a no-brainer.

You will have a choice, however, in how you go about that critical, future-proofing work. That can be a killer – especially when you are already working at – or close to – maximum capacity, and probably putting in well over a standard shift…..  Day in day out.

You will have many choices on how you will do this meaningful work within your already crowded schedule and the increasing demands that will be placed upon you next year. Here’s a simple split for you….

Are you going to put more effort into deliberately building upon your strengths or are you going to level-up your weaknesses?

Let me strongly suggest the former strategy to you.

The results you are responsible for delivering next year will be more visible, more scrutinised and more questioned than in the past.

Arguably, your boss, your own team, customers or suppliers are less concerned about your physical, emotional and intellectual well-being than they are about how you bring your energy, resilience and creativity to bear on what they expect from you.

You are going to be responsible for your own development. No one is going to push you into a class, some people may encourage or guide you but no one is going to do it for you. It makes sense therefor, to pump your energy into leveraging what you are already doing well – something that already motivates or interests you – something that you can rely upon to improve your results.

Here are a few quick pointers for you.

1. Reposition your learning as the rocket fuel that will propel your performance during 2012 and beyond.
2. Take time now (yes, I know year-end is upon us with all it’s attendant pressures) to do a radical reappraisal of your strengths, then set about creating valuable contributions out of those strengths to, ultimately build on the best of you.
3. If you have not come across Marcus Buckingham  before I suggest you check him out, grab one of his books – His ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths’ book is a good place to start because you also get a code to take the online ‘StrengthsFinder’  self assessment tool.

Now, making this happen when you will be busier than ever on your day-job is going to require 2 things from you – whether you will be doing this for yourself or driving it for your team. You are going to need:

1. To develop a fuller, richer picture of what ‘Purpose’ looks like – beyond hard numbers – for you and your people, and then create a compelling strategy to help you achieve it, when everything else will be pulling you back to the events of the day.
2. To develop increased productive capacity within your schedules to actually do this work with ease, rather than trying to fit it in when you can. If you think that an extra 68 minutes extra capacity per person per day would help you, just get in touch or call me now on 0044 (0)1428 607763

You might find this quick overview of Marcus Buckingham’s ‘First break all the rules’ book useful. I think it is one of the best SlideShares on the subject on the web.

Enjoy!

That’s it for now, let me know if you have any thoughts you wish to share here in the comments section or – of course – by email  ot through my Book Me or Contact me forms.

As mentioned in my earlier post on driving Microsoft Office through a Mac  , I am looking for good resources for Mac users who find themselves in Microsoft environments.

I have just come across this good overview from Paul Mew, Technical Director at ramsac . If you know of any other resources that you find useful please post them here.

I am seeing an increase in the number of questions from our client’s people who have opted to use an Apple Mac and iPhone / iPad within a Microsoft Exchange environment. They have challenges in bringing the full functionality of their firm’s systems, software and productivity tools to bear on their chosen tool. So, they are often looking for individual solutions to the way they manage their results and workload through these tools. This is amplified because, whilst many businesses these days will provide Phone and IT tool flexibility in the same way they provide company-car flexibility, very few employers provide the same IT support to these tools as they would to their core Microsoft or IBM infrstructure.

All our consultancy, training and support programmes around Collaboration, Teamworking, Workload and Time Management and Project Management, are designed to drive foundational philosophies and principles, proven processes and Best Practice behaviours through the productivity tools that our clients already use without Third Party software add-ons. This makes it tough for those who diviate from the productivity tool norm in their selection process.

The ruthless reality for most Mac, iPhone and iPad users within an Exchange environment is that their choice carries a productivity price – at least for now. Take for example, perhaps the most common productivity tool combination – Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. There is simply an amazing amount of productive capacity that can be released very easily individually and across teams with our support. Not all the processes work on Office2011 for Mac though.

Right now, we do not specifically support Mac /iPhone to the same extent as we support Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce and other major collaboration tools out there.

Here, though are our current favourite sites for Office Outlook 2011 for Mac on Exchange self help:

http://www.officeformachelp.com/outlook/ independent and ‘Unofficial’ Keep up the good work guys!

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macoutlook Microsoft Answers site for Mac heads

Do you know of any other trusted resources? If so please add them here via the comments area. Thanksjot them down her please.

Another great conversation at my IoD Surrey People Forum on Friday 4th November. A big thanks to everyone for their attendance, their insights and their contributions to the conversation. I came away with much to think about. Here are my memory prompters from my notes which I am happy to share with you here:

1 Mark Craven’s http://www.lansbury.co.uk/ experience in using a neutral outsider to engage his team members meaningfully in conversations on how they contribute to the overall effort and results of the business.

2 The economy: News is invariably bad and hyped. There are real challenges that must be managed. BUT we are in Surrey in the sunny South East. John Stuttaford’s clients at MSP Chartered Secretaries are NOT issuing floods of P45s for them to process. Many of us have SME clients who are growing. Jonathan Richards can’t fill 2 vacancies. As always it is important to back winning sectors and players and there are always winners in every market – even this one!

3 Many large organisations are in a holding pattern at the moment. Mike Shephard is aware that interim engagements are increasingly used to plug experience/skills gaps rather than direct employment. I am getting this feedback from some of my clients too.

4 Reflecting on Robin Pearce’s experience at Cartwright Group. Never underestimate how fearful employees can be – even when their management team point out the real security of company income, margin and importance derived from their employment in as open a way as he is doing right now. This somehow, for me , links back to our opening conversation about …. well ……. conversation!

5 One of my old outstanding Manager’s mantra ‘Richard, leaders must always be drip-feeding good news’

6 This links into the conversation that Jonathan Richards initiated about how leadership styles have been evolving over time. Certainly, there is far less formality apparent within the companies that appear to be winning at the moment. There is still a relentless focus on results, huge expectations and massive efforts being demanded but the leaders who are winning tend to be more engaging, less formal and closer to their people. I also see this in the clients have the privilege of working alongside recently. Remember my friend Tony – leading a 10-12 year old company, 15 or so people, engineers in the main, in a crowded competitive market. The standards he has built are very high. All his people are well above the market standard. He always engages them in assessing new recruits, recognising that they have a valid voice in the standards he drives into the business. How many people do you know who do this?

7 To John Everist’s point about bad apples and the 2 very valid reminders by Michelle Tudor and Carolyn Hopewell that (1) In far too many cases the ‘Performance Management and Exit Process’ is initiated after the decision is already made to exit someone from the business. This is just too late! (2) There is a big difference between ‘Performance Management’ and the formal ‘Appraisal’ process.

8 Finally, to Jonathan Richard’s point about DropBox. Go check them out sometime. They tried to grow through ppc and other Google search strategies. They offer an unlimited feature, unlimited time freemium service on their basic storage offering that suites the vast majority of their (non-paying) customers. The biggest engine of growth? Giving away even more storage space to happy non-paying customers for referring new paying and NON paying customers to them. Go figure!

Next IoD People Forum meeting will be in January 2012

Why join the conversation?……. Well, it provides you with:

1.  No fixed, restrictive agenda (but the meeting will be facilitated by me), no ‘Talking Head’ presentations to listen to and no selling to be subjected to!
2. Opportunities to develop new relationships and strengthen existing relationships with people involved in leading and managing people
3. Opportunities to ask and answer questions, float ideas, share news, give and get energy for the day ahead.
4. It is designed to be particularly helpful for business Owners, Directors and Managers who have direct employee responsibility, human resource and learning & development practitioners, employment lawyers and anyone else who is responsible for the ‘people side’ of the business.
5. The conversation and the coffee are simply wonderful

We will be meeting at Bar des Arts, Millbrook, Guildford, GU1 3YA. Near Debenhams in Guildford Town Centre. We will be sharing ideas and energy on any and all aspects of finding, recruiting, employing, developing, leading and exiting people in these interesting times.

If you want to find out more please feel free to call me on 01428 607763 or on my mobile 07711571653, otherwise the booking details are here:

If you are not an IoD member and have never attended this forum before just reply to me to benefit from a reduced £10 fee. Otherwise the non-member fee of £20 is chargeable.
Members can book online in the usual way

Date: Friday 4th November
Time: 7.15am – 8.59am
Host: Richard Maybury
Venue: Bar des Arts, Millbrook, Guildford, GU1 3YA Located near Debenhams in Guildford Town Centre, parking is available in local Public Car Parks – please see the website for more details: http://www.bardesarts.co.uk/
Cost: £10.00 (+VAT) for IoD members and £20.00 (+VAT) for non-members

Here is a simple, low cost, personal and direct way to spread some joy to those who could use it this Christmas.

You can do this yourself or with your own children, with a bunch of friends, with your work colleagues, through your local community groups, schools, clubs and churches. There are so many ways to make a direct difference this Christmas. 

All you need to do is grab a shoe box, fill it with some simple goodies appropriate to underprivileged children, pop a £2.50 donation in the box or contribute on line and take your shoe box to your local distributor. Here’s how you can find out how to do a shoebox

So, dig out a shoebox and turn it into a magical gift – start it now and get your box to your local distributor between Tuesday 1st November and Friday 18th November, so that your gift can make a direct difference to a child far away this Christmas.

I am not a Mac-Head and I don’t own an i-anything (although I have bought plenty for my family!) I am, however a big Steve Jobs business fan.

I love language and the power of words and this video is one of my favourite Leadership video clips ever …. and it is NOT the ubiquitous 2005 Stanford Commencement address …… and I have been studying Rhetoric for a long time, subscribing to sites like http://www.americanrhetoric.com/ since it started and- of course – http://www.ted.com/ .

Prior to meeting the amazing Paul Dunn a short while ago, my favourite Steve Jobs video was the ubiquitous 2005 Stanford Commencement address., with his 3 stories – the one about ‘Connecting the dots (which the wonderful Anne Marie McEwan and I were discussing this morning) – the one about ‘Love and loss’ and the third about ‘Death’.

BUT…. this clip is, to my mind awesome.

Imagine yourself in this meeting with him, shortly after he came back into Apple. This is a serious ‘Marketing’ oriented business meeting with his team, it is not a staged mega-media new product launch event.

Imagine how you would feel in the presence of your company leader talking to you about the core values of the enterprise. Imagine…….

RIP Steve Jobs and thank you.

The 23rd September marks the start of the 100 day countdown to December 31 – and even fewer official work days to achieve our career and business goals for the year. Whether we are on target or not, now is a great time to get serious again on the priorities that matter most to us.

• Now is the time to recalibrate our focus on our mission critical priorities.
• Now is the time to redirect our energy towards our mission critical priorities.
• Now is the time to manage the final push to propel us over the line.

Here’s 3 ideas to add to what you are already doing…

Get Clarity and Control over your priorities

Use today, or at least some time this week to get real clarity and control on what the 100 day timeline means for your ambitions and on what absolutely has to be done before December 31, despite everything else you have on your plate at the moment.  And – YES  – I know we are in the run in to quarter end! Build these as milestones or reminders into your Calendar, dump them into your Task or To-Do lists or other preferred priority planning process. Whatever you do, don’t leave these thoughts floating about in your head where they are hostage to the next urgency, crisis or interruption.

Get clear on Decisions

Revisit the real meaning of DECISION. I’m not suggesting you get all Philosophical here, let’s keep this simple (at least for now). A great many people prefer to ‘keep options open’ or seek further information, advice or even on-line reviews, before making a final commitment. With 100 days on the clock we don’t have that luxury so much any more. The word ‘Decision’ comes from the Latin ‘Decidere’, de = off + caedere = to cut. So, it might be helpful if we decide on what has to be cut out of our schedules, even if only until 1st January 2011!

Create personal accountability

Make yourself ACCOUNTABLE for this effort to someone you choose. We are all accountable to others in some way. Many of us are accountable to a number of people – our boss, our family, our mortgage provider for example. Not all of them will necessarily have OUR best interest at heart though. Accountability adds rigour to our efforts. Look for someone who does have your best interests at heart, someone who will hold up a mirror up to you, someone who will not allow you to compromise on your commitment to yourself. You might also offer yourself as an accountability manager for someone important to you.

So, 100 days and counting. I wish you well on the journey. What would you add to make this more useful to other readers? Your comments below would be most welcome.

Remember, our legendary training and support in this and other areas of managing purpose, goals, projects and priorities is only a click away.

Till next time, Richard Maybury

I really appreciate it when people do things well. And I can’t help telling them, and this week I seem to be more grateful than usual – I’m obviously mixing with good people!

You will know from my Echo Smartpen post that I am impressed with the extra productivity it releases and the way it fits seamlessly into my day-today priority management processes. So much so that I was happy to go public after a good, solid workout with it. Well…….

Within a few hours of my post going live and the obligatory tweet and Linkedin update I got a phone call from Amanda Slayton-Joslin, a Head Honcho at honchopr, the people who run the PR for Livescribe in UK. Impressive!

Not only did I get a thank you phone call from a warm human being but I was also offered Joint webinar support from the Livescribe team over in Oakland California. Collaborative!

Not only that but Amanda asked if there was anything else I needed to maximise my Livescribe system and offered me an Executive folder for my A5 microdot matrix notebook– which arrived in the post next day. Generous!

So, there you are – a shout out to honchopr for their exemplary, impressive, immediate, collaborative and generous social PR response!

By the way, my Philosophy graduate son keeps telling me that – according to Cicero the Ancient Roman Statesman and Philosopher – ‘Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others’. So should I be grateful for being grateful? But enough naval gazing – back to work!

Onwards and upwards!
Richard

I have just returned from another excellent Shipley’s Business Club breakfast and am writing this, literally, on the run between meetings because there were a few items of collective wisdom that resonated with me and which, I hope, will be helpful to you….

We were looking at ……

Indicators for Trusted Advisors and Critical Friends to a business

The topics, indicators and information, you would look to explore, beyond the usual financial information from accounts and balance sheets, if you were in a trusted Advisor or critical friend to a business owner.

As always, at Shipley’s business club, there was a wealth of insight and information. Here is the list I co-created and curated from other people’s insights:

• The accuracy of sales forecasts to actual results. The smaller the gap the better!
• The extent to which the Business Plan is used and built into the planning, execution and reporting processes within the business.
• The quality of the sales pipeline and margin
• The usage of KPIs to measure and benchmark selective business performance areas. By the way, a couple of bankers in the room suggested that most SME Bankers should be able to provide useful KPIs for your business sector if you ask them nicely!

Finally, 2 gems from Chris Ragg, our facilitator:

1. Check that the Senior Team members are all working from the same assumptions when looking at the business and the future.
2. Brands are only useful until they are replaced with a face you trust.

Quite a few people were interested in my usage of the Livescribe Echo Smartpen which I went public on this week in this post

Onwards and upwards,

Richard

I’m guessing that you work in a world where much of the information you create, collaborate on and consume is digital, so do I. And that’s the problem!

I’m also guessing that you work with real people and your business might even be shifting physical product. And, out there, with them, we use pen and paper – see the problem?

We often have to convert our meeting notes, our agreed next-actions, our scribbled thoughts and illuminating diagrams into a digital format so we can collaborate, prioritise and add value to them when we get back to our desks.

In my book, that’s always been duplicated effort – and by definition that is not exactly productive working. So, here’s how I have squared the circle…

Why my Montblanc pen has been replaced by my Echo Smartpen for business writing

I loved writing my meeting notes into my beautifully crafted, Italian leather bound journal with my masterful Montblanc Meisterstuck – I just got fed up with turning the pages back at the desk and rewriting it all into Outlook emails and Tasks, into my CRM system and into Microsoft Word and other digital collateral. So……

I reflected on an earlier conversation with my friend Rob May over at Ramsac and bought myself an Echo Smartpen – that was almost 3 months ago and now I’m nailing my colours to the mast because it works well and meets my ‘Rules for Tools’ criteria:

1. It is simple and natural to use
2. It integrates seamlessly with my other productivity tools
3. It makes me more productive

So, there you have it,

Richard ‘Mr Productivity’ Maybury recommends the Echo Smartpen

Use the non-affiliate links ( I dislike them as much as you do!) to find out more:

Discover more about the Echo from the official (Non-affiliate) Livescribe Echo site http://www.livescribe.com/en-uk/smartpen/echo/

I bought mine in a great package that beat the Amazon deal from (Non-affiliate) Micro-Anvika Make sure you grab a pen refill pack along with your order.

One important point to add at this stage, you will want to grab the ‘Myscript for Livescribe’ package to turn your handwritten notes into editable text through the magic of OCR for US$30

I have already been asked for some leverage tips on how I use my Echo Smartpen in my business, so stand by for that. Meanwhile if you have any comments or questions just drop them in the comments section below or call me on 01428 607763 for a brief chat.

Till next time … onwards and upwards!

Sometimes when you are sharing Outlook calendars you don’t want your colleagues to see full details on your existing calendar commitments even though you appreciate the benefits of a collaborative team working approach to your mutual priority management activities.

In short, we are going to do 4 things: Change our Calendar view, incorporate a ‘Sensitivity’ field (that’s Outlook speak for the ‘Private’ and normal calendar appointment value), change the Sensitivity of multiple calendar entries and recover our normal calendar view.

1 Change your Microsoft Outlook Calendar view

In Outlook 2007
In your Calendar: Select your ‘One Day’ view then >Click View > Current View > Select ‘By Category’.
Marvel at the options you have for viewing and managing your competing priorities in the Outlook Calendar.

In Outlook 2010
In your Calendar: Select your ‘One Day’ view then > ‘View’ Tab > Change View > Select ‘By Category’.
Marvel at the options you have for viewing and managing your competing priorities in the Outlook Calendar.

OK, you now have your Calendar in columns. And where you have columns in Outlook you can ‘Add’ ‘Delete’ ‘Rearrange’ ‘Sort’ and ‘Group’ by those columns! So …….

2 Incorporate a ‘Sensitivity’ field into your Microsoft Outlook Calendar

Right-Click on any column header – I suggest ‘Subject’ and select:

In Outlook 2007: ‘Customise Current View’. In Outlook 2010 ‘View settings’

In Outlook 2007 hit ‘Fields’. In Outlook 2010 hit ‘Columns’.

In the ‘Fields’ or ‘Columns’ dialogue box – select from ‘All Appointment Fields’.

Find ‘Sensitivity’ in the left box and add it to the right box just under ‘End’ in the list.

Click ‘OK’ twice to come out of the dialogue.

OK, now we are going to do that great ‘Group’ thing we can do with Outlook.

Right-click again on a column header and hit the ‘Group By’ box. See what happens? A ‘Group By’ area opens up at the top of your columns.

This allows you to dynamically group your total view by and Column header you want.

Now drag your ‘Sensitivity’ column into the area where it says ‘Drag a column header here to group by that column’. All you appointments are now grouped by sensitivity.

3 Change the Sensitivity of multiple Microsoft Outlook Calendar entries

Click on the ‘Sensitivity’ column to sort it with ‘Private’ entries at the top of the list.

Now click on ‘Start’ column until your future dates are at the top.

Scroll down to find the date range you want to change to ‘Private’.

Using ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ to highlight multiple entries.

Simply drag all those highlighted entries up into the ‘Private area of your list by holding down the left click and scrolling the selected items into the ‘Private’ group in your list.

4 Recover your Normal Microsoft Outlook Calendar View.

In Outlook 2007: Go to ‘View’ > Current View > Change back to ‘Day Week month’ and you are done

In Outlook 2010: Go to ‘Change View’ in your View tab and select ‘Calendar’

That’s it folks, I hope it helps.

My friends Mark Russell and Rick Peet over at avn Picktree ltd have arranged a remarkable and unique opportunity for business owners and leaders to share the room with 2 times TEDx speaker Paul Dunn this month. In this game-changing event on Tuesday morning 20th September in Farnham Surrey, Paul will be speaking on adding speed and purpose to our businesses whilst changing lives into the bargain. I am booked in already.

Nothing is more important in life than our purpose. Our day to day priority management helps us to achieve this. What if, in achieving this, we can leverage our impact almost exponentially and with minimal additional effort?

You can see what Rick says about it here or go straight to this non affiliate Eventbrite booking page If you are up for this I can get the first 3 to comment here in for free. Having seen Paul speak before I’m excited. Want to join me?

OK, in this post I mentioned that I was volunteering to run a number of 20 minute workshops for teenagers who will soon be entering the world of work. The workshops will be within the Surrey Youth Festival on 27th September at Epsom racecourse and I would welcome your help with a few ideas here…

I am a member of the IoD Team dedicated to providing Employability Skills input into this event.

Helping kids understand their  Teamworking preferences, gain insight into their strengths and appreciate differences  through using Social Styles profile

About 2000 kids will attend this event to learn about the world of work, Apprenticeship schemes and vocational training opportunities. Most will roll through our 20 minute back-to-back workshops (it will be an exhausting but exhilarating day, I’m sure).

I will be getting these groups to self select themselves into one of four  ‘Social Styles’ quadrants. Social Styles is a model for identifying your preferences around interpersonal effectiveness. It has been popularised by many training organisations, notably Wilson Learning and Tracom Group. We won’t be using pen and paper, the kids will be moving into their quadrants on question prompts, then deciding how they would describe people in ‘their ‘ quadrant and – importantly – how they would describe those in other quadrants. It should be fun and, I hope, insightful and instructive.

So, here’s where I ask you to contribute

I’m looking for suggestions about who, in popular culture or high profile leadership, would fit into each of the quadrants. The only criteria is that any names must be known to the average 14 to 16 year old school kid! I’m guessing that putting Maggie Thatcher into the Driving style quadrant would not mean a thing to these kids.

Go on, drop a suggestion, no prizes but grateful thanks

Onwards and upwards

Richard

Hi all, this post has 2 purposes:

1. To give you a suggestion on how you can track your digital procrastination – what I call ‘Structured Procrastination’
2. To update you on an exciting development on the tool I use to monitor this myself.

So, let’s dive in or skim the surface, the choice is yours …

Get a grip on how your digital procrastination affects your priority workload management

Sometimes it is useful to be confronted with the reality and the consequences of our behaviours – preferably before it is too late!

Activity logs are a useful tool for this but paper time management logs are so last millennium. They take time to complete manually and, lets face it, when most of us are  not in meetings we are working digitally, so it makes sense to use a digital logging tool to assess our time management behaviours. That’s why I use Qlockwork (non-affiliate) straight out of the box and recommend it.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your primary email, calendar and high priority workload management tool, I suggest you take advantage of the free trial of this software and use it to see exactly how you are investing your digital time at work. It works with stand alone Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Outlook profiles. It lives on your PC, so all data stays securely with you. AND it tracks all your digital activity – not just Outlook based work. Scary sometimes!!!

You might also want to skim my posts on The frog, the octopus and the procrastinator and the Resistance / Procrastination matrix then, if you are thinking about downloading Qlockwork check out how I use it.

Update on Qlockwork

Currently this super software works as an Outlook add-in but Anne Currie, the brains behind it all, tells me that she is working on making it available in other ways, so that it will be available to non-Outlook based workers. Rest assured that I will post this news here as soon as Anne releases it.

Well, that’s it for now. I’d be delighted to hear from you on your thoughts around overcoming procrastination – use the comments area below. Onwards and upwards,

Richard

My thanks to my friend Ian Crocker for drawing my attention today to an interesting article on meetings written in the Daily Telegraph. You can find a link to the article below but here are 3 quick take-aways for you:

The article covers 3 principles which also happen to be in our making meetings work smarter training, which incorporates a number of key philosophies, principles and processes to get much better results from our meetings.

In brief the 3 principles covered in the article are:

1. Replace most of your management control type meetings, especially on project or goal progress, with greater ongoing visibility on the planning, execution and delivery of agreed activities, using the technology your business is already invested in. Such meetings should be the exception and not the weekly / monthly norm! We know many ways to achieve this.
2. This principle requires a paradigm shift on what our Outlook, Lotus Notes or other team calendar is for. Schedule your management of high priority workload first and meetings last each day.  It always amazes me that people still consider their calendar to be primarily for meetings and reminders when they have shed-loads of work to do each day!
3. If you have the authority and responsibility for a team, consider implementing a ‘No internal meetings’ day – or if that is not practical – a no internal meetings morning – to liberate your people to focus on doing uninterrupted, high value work. This, obviously, goes beyond a ban on formal meetings and extends into permission to say ‘Not now!’ and even, selectively, to put phones to voicemail within in these time slots.

Meetings can be a major productivity pirate for people juggling and managing high priority workloads. You might also want to read a few pointers on getting more from creative or problem solving meetings .

You can read the full Daily Telegraph article here:

Of course, you can always ask me about how our proven practical training and support makes a major, measurable difference in how teams manage shared results with fewer meetings here

I need your help. I have volunteered, as a member of the IoD, to run a number of 30 minute interactive learning events for children between 15 and 16 years of age within a large one-day event with the overarching theme of ‘Developing employability skills’. Current estimates are that 2000 school children will be attending the overall event. My learning slots will be around the importance of Teamworking.

The main take-aways that I want for the kids are:

• An understanding of the importance of teamworking in the world of work.
• An understanding that teamworking profiles at work are very different to the profiles that the kids already use to define their peers.
• The importance of knowing and playing to your strengths, based upon some work-related criteria, when writing CVs, attending interviews and starting that first real job.

The constraints are:

• The content must be relevant, interactive and engaging
• The key learning points must be deliverable within 20 minutes
• The children must have a format to work on within the session as well as notes to take away
• The content can be delivered by a small team of volunteers with consistency.
• Zero cost beyond printing worksheet and notes

How can you help?

Obviously, there are a number of models that can be used. My preference is to keep it as simple as possible. Currently I’m inclined towards using a ‘Social Styles’ / DiSC quadrant type model for the learning.

Please help. Any and all advice, suggestions, insights, experience, models, or content will be gratefully received – even if only an anecdote that might unlock a teenagers thinking . I want the children who come into our sessions to go away with some useful information and some insights they can work with as they develop their CVs, interview preparations and first steps in the world of work.

Thanks,
Richard