Now this is weird – and it has happened half a dozen time in the past 15 minutes, so there is something going on here. And I think it proves an important productivity point.

I’m sitting in my office bashing through my priorities on my laptop without a mouse. I changed desks, plonked the laptop down and it just so happened that one of my mousemats was to the right of  the laptop keyboard - and here’s the weird thing.

Because the mousemat was in my peripheral vision, my hand went over (unconsciously) to it to grab the non-existent mouse – even though I have been using the keyboard shortcuts most of the morning at another desk! That’s why I’m an advocate  of tuning off all email alarms alerts and flags - especially those alerts on the bottom right of your screen in Outlook. They come into your consciousness – just like my mousemat – and affect your behaviour. They are Productivity Pirates!

Call or mail me to learn how to use this liberation, alongside other proven processes and approaches to managing competing priorities whilst keeping your inbox at zero.  Or see what other people say about their results from our support, then get in touch.

I was triaging  my Learning inbox subfolder just now. I go to it when I’m in a ‘learning mood’. In there I found a mail from Wow Accountants which got me thinking.

So I’ m sharing this with you right now

When managing conflicting priorities I have found over time that the quality of the question determines the quality of the outcome - always.

So I responded to their 5 Questions for success and thought I would ask you what question helps you make better decisions.

Here’s what I wrote on their blog. What question works for you?…….

Questions I ask myself when I need to get serious with myself:
1 ‘Why would I do that?’
2 ‘If not now – When?’
Both have helped me focus better than I otherwise would do. They are not easy ones to ask – especially if the object of the questions is immediately appealing but nonetheless distracting!

Over to you…… what questions work for you?

I had the privilege of chairing another great IoD People Forum today. We had 11 Leaders around the table with a depth and breadth of experience in managing people – from headhunting them into and exiting them from businesses.

As always, the conversation was wide ranging and always focused on the practical aspects of people management that we can – and need to – get a grip on within the present and near term future. These musings are, obviously, not exhaustive and you really needed to be there to get the full flavour!

Given that navel-gazing is not an option, it was ironic that we briefly looked at the case of the Exotic Dancer and Peter Stringfellow’s  Stringfellows Restaurants Ltd  where an Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the dancer was an ‘employee’ and not a self-employed contractor.   http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2012/0289_11_2604.html

For all the talk about employees being almost bullet-proof and bullying employers, Geoff Bignell,  pointed to a Department of Business survey that suggests that only 3% of businesses are actively discouraged from employing people because of regulations and red-tape.

That said, there is a strong suggestion that, through various polls, up to 30% of all staff are actively disengaged from the business of their employers.

The challenge of separating ‘Performance Management’ from ‘Appraisals’ from  ‘Reward and remuneration’ was briefly discussed and, as Fintan O’Toole said  there should be no surprises in the ‘Appraisal if the Performance Management is done well.
Ben Freeman  pointed us to one story from the book  ‘The Leadership Challenge’ by Kouzes and Posner highlighting the importance and impact of the Leader keeping people fully informed on where they are on the journey. The  analogy was a military march.

Carolyn pointed us to recent CIPD work on ‘Engagement’ which found that people who were exposed to big reasons why they were doing what they were employed to do felt more engaged with the business.
Jonathan Richards  pointed us to a book he is currently reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inspiring-Leadership-Jonathan-Perks/dp/1906377200

I promised this link to RSA’s excellent short video on Dan Pink’s excellent TED talk on Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us:  The full TED presentation is excellent    as is his book – a ‘Must Read’. Many in the room consider TED to be mandatory viewing – it is an excellent resource.

Geoff Bignell pointed us to Lady Hale’s recent comment that ‘We all have a lot to learn about Age Discrimination. Given that she is the only female Supreme Court Judge, we should take note.

On that note we all left to do a day’s work.

Onward and upward! Till next time

Richard

Readers who have heard me deliver a keynote or teamtalk presentation or perhaps attended one of my productivity and performance training programmes will have heard me say that ‘All we can truly manage in a demanding day is where we choose to put our focus and energy moment to moment’. In fact it has become, what my clients call, a ‘Mayburyism’.

Energy management seems to be a hot topic with people at the moment and in the past month many people in 4 different countries for different clients have asked me for specific support in this area within my training programmes.

Something is sapping our collective energy right now it seems.

Managing Purpose, Priorities, Focus and Energy leverages performance

Good personal purpose and priority management approaches to the key areas of our personal and professional lives obviously helps us maintain high motivation, performance and energy levels. But total Energy Management goes beyond that.

I see Energy Management as different to health and fitness management – both of which are, obviously, very important.

My GoToGuy for Energy Management is Bill Ford.

I bought his book ‘High Energy Habits – the busy person’s guide to more energy without diets and exercise’ in July 2002, one month after first publication and I have been recommending it ever since.

My battered, annotated, highlighted, Post-It tabbed copy is still close to hand in my office. It remains my No.1 reading recommendation on this topic.

I was having a chat with Bill recently and he kindly allowed me to post here a copy of one of his lists of ‘Top 10 ways to increase energy which you will see below. I have also added a non-affiliate link to the Amazon UK page for his book. Do yourself a favour and buy it!

Energy Management: Bill Ford top 10 ways to increase energy

Would you like to have more energy? Most business people would love to have more energy and feel that it would have an impact on productivity and profits. The main message is: notice what drains your energy and do less of it, and what boosts your energy and do more of it. As simple as that, here are some specifics:

1. Go for progress not perfection. The road sweeper when he wants to feel good looks behind him, not in front. Take a few moments at the end of each day to write down three things that you achieved that day.
2. Start meetings by going round the room and asking everyone to say one thing that is going well in their work. This modest exercise can be surprisingly challenging for some, but it will help to raise the energy for all present.
3. Clear clutter in 15 minute bursts – it matters more than you think. If it is neither useful nor beautiful, then sell it, give it away or dump it.
4. Fix the little things you’ve been meaning to get around to – the printer that doesn’t work properly, the loose light switch etc. Make a list and start taking action on them. Ignoring them drains energy, like a noisy fan in the background.
5. Start rating your energy out of 10. Before going into a meeting, prepare by deciding what level you would like to be during the meeting. Then act as if you were.
6. Make 3 minute phone calls to people who lift you. They can pick up your day and are particularly useful before you start making sales calls or more difficult phone calls.
7. Spend more time with people who lift you and less with those who drain you.
8. Avoid back to back meetings. Leave yourself a bit of space between them. And turn up for meetings a few minutes early so you are more composed and less flustered.
9. Allow an extra 15 minutes or so for journeys and put the departure time in your diary. Treat it as you would an appointment eg. If you said you would set off at 10.15, then do it. Resist the temptation to make an extra call or two. Do that at the other end, if you have time.
10. Your energy level impacts those around you. If you are managing others you have to look upbeat or you drag others down, affecting their productivity. Your apparent mood is a matter of scrutiny for those you manage. Ask yourself after every encounter did you just help them to achieve more or less by the way you came across?

Get Bill Ford’s full insights in his book ‘High Energy Habits’ through this non-affiliate Amazon link. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743428943/

So, what works for you? How do you manage your energy levels? Being around high energy people does it for me!
Until next time,
Richard

You can DELEGATE the creation of standard, often used text within emails to Outlook itself by using the Auto-correct functionality. I use the following method for short, often used email texts in my business. There is no limit to how many you can create – except, of course, the 80/20 rule is ruthless and a handfull of carefully selected autotexts will probably do more for you than a full library. If you are still using Outlook 2003 click here for the process

Situation: You have to send a number of similar emails as part of your Approval / Control / Management or Customer Contact duties. You currently create individual emails in response to individual requests etc. Also, you might want to include a standard text at the top or bottom of your mails.

Solution: Create standard texts which can be used at the touch of a button. Here’s how:

Engage the ‘Autocorrect’ functionality in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010.

To activate the Autotext functionality in your version of outlook do this:

In Outlook 2007:

From top tool bar in Outlook click Tools > ‘Options > Click on ‘mail Format’ tab > Click ‘Editor Options’ button on bottom right of form > Click ‘Proofing’ in left side navigation panel > Click ‘Autocorrect options’ button at the top of the form > Make sure the following 2 options are activated by checkmark: ‘Show AutoCorrect Options button’ and ‘Replace text as you type’ >

Before you exit the last dialogue box you can create any replacement text you wish right now.

I use a number of what I call my ‘QW codes’. I use QW1, QW2 etc simply because I do not know any English words that start with ‘QW’ so AutoCorrect will not get it wrong!

I simply created a number of texts that I was repeating in emails and assigned a QW number to them.

Et Voila, I am able to create standard repetative texts with just a ‘QW’ code and a a tap of the enter button. Once the text is generated in your email or document you can edit it with specific changes if you wish.

Click OK 3 times to exit. If you need to think about the standard texts you wish to create you can enter them onto a Word doc and then follow the navigation above and create your QW code AutoCorrects over a quick cuip of coffee when the heat of the daily battle has died down a little.

In Outlook 2010:

From top tool bar in Outlook click ‘File’ > in left side navigation panel click ‘Options’ > in left side navigation panel click ‘Mail’ > Click ‘Editor Options’ button on top right of form> Make sure you are in ’Proofing’ in left side navigation panel > Click ‘Autocorrect options’ button at the top of the form > Make sure the following 2 options are activated by checkmark: ‘Show AutoCorrect Options button’ and ‘Replace text as you type’ > Click OK 3 times to exit.

Before you exit the last dialogue box you can create any replacement text you wish right now.

I use a number of what I call my ‘QW codes’. I use QW1, QW2 etc simply because I do not know any English words that start with ‘QW’ so AutoCorrect will not get it wrong!

I simply created a number of texts that I was repeating in emails and assigned a QW number to them.

Et Voila, I am able to create standard repetative texts with just a ‘QW’ code and a a tap of the enter button. Once the text is generated in your email or document you can edit it with specific changes if you wish

Click OK 3 times to exit. If you need to think about the standard texts you wish to create you can enter them onto a Word doc and then follow the navigation above and create your QW code AutoCorrects over a quick cuip of coffee when the heat of the daily battle has died down a little.

I hope this helps, let me know if it does!
Of course, you can always contact us directly to tailor a support programme to your needs.

It was at the top-right-corner of the Brit Club bar in Bahrain shortly after the end of Gulf War 1. Our usual crew of British Advisors to Bahrain Government ministries and senior Banking and Insurance market people was well installed in ‘our’ corner.

The conversation migrated to the best sound in the world. The scream of Italian exotica was pitched against the low rumble of Yank V8 muscle. Fighter aircraft like F16 pitched against Concord. All very macho, it was an all-male group, and the game got quite competitive.

It came to my turn to pitch in – and I offered up a swerve ball.

My second son, who arrived with indecent haste after his brother, was still a baby.

‘Gentlemen, we are missing something here’ I said. ‘It’s not about volume – My best sound in the world is the rhythmic deep breathing of my 2 baby boys when they are in a contented deep sleep together.’

I’d like to say that I bought that motley crew to their senses – but I didn’t. All I got for my efforts was a bar-tab forfeit.

I can still hear my boys breathing deeply as 12 and 18 month old babies – and yes, it is still the best sound in the world to me.

Happy Mother’s day to all mums and dads.

OK we are in to mid March. How are we doing against what we decided was important for the year?

Whether we strategise solo, or insularly within our own team / business or expansively with outside support, the strategic thinking that we commit to a document is simply a story.

It can be an engaging Ripping Yarn or a thriller or a gritty tale of triumph over adversity. On the page, in the Board Papers, or in the minutes of the Management Meetings, no matter how well written and communicated it is simply a story.

Until……

We transform it into deliberate, specific commitments within our overall workload and priority management system.

At the very least, every milestone on the various strands of the agreed strategy should appear on the calendar of every team member contributing to the strategy.

It is simple to do this with all popular calendaring tools. In Microsoft Outlook, for example, the agreed Milestones can be entered into calendars through the ‘All Day Event’ area at the top of each day. Team members can be invited to these events in the same way as they are invited to regular meetings.

Better still, all key Tasks should be scheduled into our workflow and workload management system alongside the day job but differentiated from it through whatever filters are available within our email / calendar/ tasking tool. In Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes this is ‘Categories’.

Of course, the decision has still to be made, the resolve strengthened, the time and energy mustered and protected, to turn the Calendar or Task item into delivered work without having to get it done just in time before the next ‘Strategy update meeting’, or worse still – make excuses about being busy.

Planning and delivery of critical results is the mark of character of a true Priority Manager, a trait I find in most of the people I have trained long after the workshop is done.

Real priority managers   weld their strategic purpose to their daily priority decisions, get more of the right stuff done and are more efficient in their workload management behaviours.

To find out how, give me a call or get in touch

I had a great experience with UPS last week. It highlights practical business truths and is worth retelling here.

We had to get a high priority shipment of training manuals to an international office of one of our clients. We booked the shipment, created the waybills and booked the collection online through our UPS account.

Job done – or so we thought. We were wrong.

You probably appreciate that UPS, like many other just-in-time services, places a high priority on time management. It is fair to assume that speed, time utilisation and schedules are important performance metrics for ALL their people.

Our delivery guy duly arrived with a ready smile and a purposeful pace about him; he picked up the 2 parcels and took them to the van. Moments later he returned. We had made a mistake and needed to re-enter the order online, which would mean we would not get the shipment out that day.

He could see our concern and immediately offered a solution.

He had 3 other pick-ups locally and could pass by again. He gave us a paper Waybill and a couple of barcoded labels to complete manually because that would be quicker than reentering our online account, cancelling out the previous action and reentering the information again. We completed the forms just in time for his return.

His care and flexibility saved our reputation.

Naturally I wanted to recognise this Customer Service ‘Moment  Of Truth’ so immediately Tweeted my experience and got an immediate response:

I fired off a quick 2 –line email, got a 2-line reply back from a human being (not an autoresponder) saying that the driver’s manager would be informed and his service recognised.

Job done – or so I thought.

I saw the driver again yesterday. He was in his van. He saw me and stopped, wound down his window and thanked me for my feedback, saying that his boss gave him a big slap on the back which made him feel great. That made me feel great.

5 Moments of Truth Lessons

1. Feedback is the food of champions. If Moments of Truth matter to you, you must invest in feedback.
2. Most working  people do not get enough feedback in their busy days – and most of what they do get is issue, crisis, problem-escalation related not nurturing, developmental and encouraging. How much do you give?
3. A feedback and recognition system can be very simple. It’s more to do with human DNA than tools and process. It need not be complex – my example took a few minutes in total for all parties.
4. Speedy and specific recognition works much better than broad, bland statements long after the heat of battle has passed. This is one reason, among many, why I’m an advocate of collaboration platforms rather than internal email for work sharing.
5. What gets recognised gets repeated and everybody is a winner. No prizes for guessing how our UPS driver will approach our door for another delivery next time!

Have you had any recent Moment of Truth experiences? Is why not let us know.

Onwards and upwards
Richard

Anyone listening to some ‘Expert’ speakers or to a work colleague injecting a little motivation-juice into a Team Meeting would be forgiven for thinking that Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb.

He didn’t of course.

The carbon filament incandescent electric lamp was invented by the Englishman Sir Joseph Wilson Swan  in 1860. He demonstrated his Proof of Concept in a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society held on December 18, 1878

Edison innovated. He made improvements to the idea of incandescent light, and, in doing so he is thought to be the ‘Inventor’ of the light bulb.

His Proof of Concept, by the way, was to stand in the Wall Street offices of J.P. Morgan and switch on his Edison incandescent light bulb on 4th September 1882 at 3 in the afternoon.  Edison lit up Wall Street.

Why  this is important for you and me?

Ideas > Innovation > Massive Execution > Results!

We all have ideas – some of them are great ideas.

For most of us, most of the time, our ideas are jostling within the torrent of thoughts. They are individual capsules of potential hurtling down the highway of our incessant mind traffic and competing with everything else for our attention.

Our mind traffic is that internal dialogue of hopes and fears, plans and instincts, dreams and regrets, remembrances and reminders, rushing between our left and right ears that we never seem to be able to turn off – unless, of course, we practice.

So how do we manage our ideas and develop innovations from them?

What tools and processes do we use to capture, communicate and refine our ideas – to innovate?

What do we use to ‘Think Into?’ After all, we use tools for almost everything – what tools do we use to think into?

I’m a fan of mindmapping – especially digital mindmapping and especially Mindmapping software that allows us to turn the co-created big picture into discrete, shared tasks in tools like Microsoft Outlook with a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Does innovation only apply to our commercial product or service offerings? Or does it also apply to our lives, careers and our primary purposes?

How well do we carve-out and protect our time for our most critical work? AND how well is that understood and respected by everyone else who wants immediate and urgent access to us?

We all know that our work involves a mix of urgent and important tasks and we are acquainted with Dr Pareto and the 80/20 rule   (But did we know that it was the management consultant Joseph M. Juran who suggested the principle in 1941 and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population)

Just how committed are we to the massive action that was required by Edison to be eventually super successful?

How big is our thinking? Does our own Proof of Concept light up a small room or the whole of Wall Street?

How deep and rich is the gene pool we use to support our innovation and other deep thinking time? What would an outside perspective bring to the quality of our innovative thinking and planning?

These thoughts and questions were prompted by Philippa Varey at an excellent event run by Rick Peet and Mark Russell over at AVN Picktree in Farnham.
The event was run under the title ‘INNOVATE or STAGNATE! What’s Your Plan For Business Success In 2012?’

Phillippa’s presentation prompted many other thoughts and questions, some of which will probably make it to our ‘Start The Week’ team meeting next Monday morning at 07:30 as well at to our usual Strategy meetings.

Rick outlined a few ways HMRC could help fund the innovation investment …. very interesting!

If these musings resonate with you in any way why not get in touch or add to the conversation below.

Till next time,

It’s all true. It’s not about you.

I was reminded about this again today. You see, last night I created a ‘How-To’ driven, short guide on ‘How to make your Linkedin Profile shine online’.

And I have given it away free to all my business friends who subscribe to my Productivity Pointers email.

A wave of email love has been hitting my inbox last night and this morning and responding to that response has been a priority in my task management for today.

You know it is better to give than to receive simply because when you give you usually get back. That’s a virtuous circle – and I like virtuous circles in all spheres of my life.

One of the kind responses also contained a request to promote a particular charity, which I am happy to.

So, please take a look at this specialist charity dedicated to supporting families whose children have Lowe Syndrome and initiating and funding medical research into the disease.

http://www.lowetrust.com/build/about.html

If hit the ‘Home’ page you will see Jonathan Ross overviewing the Trust but I though it best to point you to the About page just in case you are reading this in the office!

As you know, we make a living by what we get and a life by what we give. Spare a thought (and a fiver if possible) for those living with Lowe Syndrome or donate to something else today.

A smile to someone who needs it might also be a good gift that gives back today.

Onwards and upwards,

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.