Time Management

Shaping Your Future

Andrew Cooke Growth, Leadership Development, Management Development, New Managers, Time Management , ,

What you can do to bring the future back to today.

In the current business environment leaders are subject to increasing demands on their time, requiring faster responses, with less information in shorter time-scales. In this age of infinite information and endless distraction, it’s easy to spend an entire day reacting and responding to what others want as opposed to what we want or need to do.

Here is a question for you.

Do a quick calculation of the percentage of time you spend responding to things in a typical day (answering email and phone calls, etc.). Compare this with the percentage of time you spend initiating actions.

Where do you spend most of your time? In most cases, a reactionary time greatly outweighs proactive time.

The problem is that you spend most of your time dealing with the past in the present, making it difficult to prepare, plan and act for the future.  And it is what you initiate today that will shape the future.  It might be a conversation that leads to a new friendship, sharing an idea that leads to a new product or service etcetera.  Your ability to create a positive charge for others is almost directly proportional to the amount of time you can spend initiating instead of responding.

Leaders look to the future, deal with people, and lead change. So, with your team, allocate time to reflect and look to the future to determine what you can and need to initiate that is aligned with your purpose and goals. Talk with others, and encourage your team to do the same, to gain insights into their perspectives and thoughts and to start the process of developing opportunities for the future. Look to initiate rather than respond, this will help you to be proactive and to take control of the future for yourself.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

How to Use Deadlines to Your Advantage

Andrew Cooke Management, Time Management , ,

How to use deadlines to your advantage

We often live in fear of deadlines or see them as the main source of our stress. You know how it goes: “Only two months left to make your annual target”, “The report has to be completed and on the boss’ desk by Friday morning”, or “The customer has to have this by the close of business today”.

Here is the thing; it is how you frame deadlines that will determine how you perceive them. Do you see deadlines as something which is there which will disturb your work-life balance or something that can you achieve a better balance? Do you want deadlines to be a source of stress or a source of energy? The choice is yours.

Here are some of the ways you can reframe deadlines to help you become more effective and efficient by adopting a perspective of:

  • Deadlines provide a means by which you can easily and quickly prioritize your work.
  • Deadlines help you and your team to focus, align your efforts and improve collaboration
  • Deadlines help you to determine when and why you “just say no”.

Deadlines can help you be more productive when used properly. In doing this:

1. Don’t give everything a deadline.  Not all work is important and urgent – only give deadlines to work that is. If you create a deadline for everything then if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

2. Plan around the deadlines. You need to make sure that you allocate people, time and resources in a suitable way to ensure the work gets done. This is especially true with deadlines that are further out in the future, and where we are often more prone to procrastinate and then we panic to complete the work in time.

3. Create contingency plans. We have all experienced the problem of being behind schedule. We know it can happen, so create contingency plans so that know what to do and how to recover the lost time.  Especially if your work is dependent on others doing the work on-time. If you don’t have a contingency plan you will be forced to react, this usually results in poor decisions being made and poor results realized.

4. Have mini-deadlines. If the deadline is a long way off, then create mini-deadlines for smaller pieces of the work. This helps you to monitor progress and ascertain where the plan and deadlines might be at risk.

5. Let people know what is happening.  Your work is often impacted by the work (or lack) of others and in turn your work (or lack) of impacts other. Make sure you let others know what is happening or not, and the associated upside and risks – similarly others need to reciprocate.  Doing this helps you to determine what needs to be done to keep to the deadline, what might be needed a change in the scope of work being done, or if the deadline needs to be shortened or lengthened.

Deadlines are a tool. Using them properly they can help you get more of the work done, and more of the right work done. Use these guidelines to help you leverage the power of deadlines and get more done, more easily with less stress.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

3 Steps to Develop Your Team

Andrew Cooke Employee Development, Growth, Performance, Personal Development, Teams, Time Management, Tool , , ,

Stop-Start-Continue – 3 Steps for Individual & Team Growth

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

3 Steps to Develop You and Your Team – Raise Performance, Achieve Outcomes.

Stop-Start-ContinueHow often do you take the time to stop, look at what you are doing and carry out a “self-audit”?  To reach our potential, or to help others to reach theirs, we need to do this periodically.  This can be used in your business, social or personal life.

Stop-Start-Continue 

There are three parts to this process:.

1.   Stop.

What are you doing that you can stop doing or need to stop doing? 

These might be things that you stop doing yourself, delegate to others, or is no longer required. This frees up time which you can utilise in the next two parts.  Time is limited, so make sure you use it on those things that matter, have priority and help you (or others) to grow and develop.

2.   Start.

What do you need to start doing that you are not currently doing? 

What are those things which will help you (or others) to grow, develop and achieve those things that they are looking for.  You can begin to do these things with the time you have freed up in the first step of Stop.

3.   Continue.

What are those things you need to continue doing?

Identify those things which are currently working for you, and which you can improve that will help you realise what you are looking to achieve. How can you leverage these things and the time to do more of them?

What to Do Next?

For yourself, think of three things for each of the three parts – STOP, START and CONTINUE.  Using the template below, especially if you are a leader or a manager in your business then try this to help your team and reports:

  1. Identify what each person should STOP, START and CONTINUE as regards their role and contribution.
  2. Get each person to do the same for themselves.
  3. Meet with each person and get them to share their ideas with you, and share your ideas with them.  This will create engagement, ownership and commitment for team members who are looking to grow and develop successfully.

Stop-Save-Continue Template

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Two Questions to Attain and Maintain Focus

Andrew Cooke Performance, Time Management , ,

Two Questions To Attain and Maintain Focus

Achieving and maintaining focus is a key skill in modern business.

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

In a time-poor environment in which more demands are being made of us it is more and more important that we focus on what we do.  This is especially true as the business environment becomes increasingly volatile, uncertain and complex resulting in managers having to make decisions more quickly, with less information and greater risk.focus

Focusing allows you to concentrate your efforts, time and resources on what needs to be at the center of your attention and your activity.  To do this you need to be able to ensure that you have prioritized what needs to be done and to avoid unnecessary procrastination.

There are two questions to ask yourself when you are about to start a piece of work or, as occurs more and more frequently, people interrupt you with a request for your assistance.

  • Is this piece of work important to me?
  • Is this piece of work urgent for me?

If the answer to both is then you might accept it – or guide it to the right person if it is not you.  If the answer to either question is “No”, then you don’t need to focus on it now. You can either refuse it, accept it conditionally (you might do it later or delegate it to someone else, for example), or if you are not sure then you can ask for more information (often a good idea if it is your boss who is interrupting you!).

This is a simple technique by which to maintain focus on what is important and what is urgent, and by which you can consider tasks which you are only important or urgent, and to reject those that are neither important or urgent.  Try it out for yourself, and find out how much time you free for yourself and how much easier it is to do the work that matters!

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3 Factors for Fast Prioritization

Andrew Cooke Time Management

The three factors by which to prioritize quickly and easily.

People, when listing their top issues, often include time management as the cause of many of the problems.  This is not an issue.

Put plainly, the issue of time management is a fallacy.  We all have 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week and 61,320 hours a year.  No more, no less.  The underlying problem for what people call ‘time management’ is the ability to prioritise and making choices.  If something is important to you, then you may choose to do something about it – conversely, you may not.  Importance does not equate to action – how many times have you procrastinated over something even if it was of importance?

You need to establish your priorities, for that you need to have clear criteria so that you can properly assess between your options.  One way that I use is to apply 3 criteria:

  • Seriousness – how important is the matter that you are evaluating (1=Low, 5=Average, 10=High);
  • Urgency – how quickly does this matter need to be attended to; is there a window of opportunity that it needs to be addressed in (1=Low, 5=Average, 10=High);
  • Growth – if you do nothing then will the matter get worse, stay the same or improve (1=Improve, 5=Stay the Same, 10=Worsen)

Score each item for each of the 3 criteria out of 10.  Multiply the 3 numbers – this will give you a value which you can compare with that of the items being evaluated so that you can initially establish the relative priorities of all the items.

Once you have established your priorities you then choose which ones to address or not.  It is your choice, no-one else’s.  So step up, make your choice and be honest with yourself – you have made your choice, so take responsibility for it.  If you choose to work late and miss your child’s first concert then be prepared to take the consequences, whatever they may be.

Time management is not the problem – the real problem is you setting your priorities and making your choices.  Only you can determine them, so let’s be honest and not blame an imaginary problem of time management.

What do you feel?  How do you prioritise and make your choices?  Share your ideas, insights and experience!  Share the knowledge, share the wealth.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Getting People to Meet Their Goals

Andrew Cooke Behavior, Learning, Psychology, Time Management, Uncategorized

“I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.” – OSCAR WILDE

deadlinesHow often have you found yourself in a state of anxiety rapidly approaching a deadline or goal that needs to be achieved?  Most people have been in this state, some seem to live in this state on a perpetual basis.

There are two ways you can deal with a goal or deadline. You can start early and small, or late and big. ‘Early and small’ means you start at the earliest possible time with the minimum possible investment of time; ‘large and big’ occurs when you start at the last minute and invest a disproportionately large amount of efforts and resources – think of when you were at college and pulled an all-nighter to get an assignment in on time.

In research carried out by Dan Ariely, a leading behavioral economist, students who were starting a class, were told they would have to submit three papers over the twelve-week semester.  The deadlines for when these papers were due were to be determined by the individual students themselves, however, they had to be in before the end of the semester.  However, the students had to commit to their deadline for each paper and these could not be changed. Any deadline that was missed would be penalized at the rate of one percent off the grade for each day it was late.

Now a perfectly rational student would set all the deadlines for the last day of class. But what if the students procrastinated? What if they knew that they were likely to fail? If the students were not rational and knew it, then they might set early deadlines and by doing so force themselves to start working on the projects earlier in the semester.

The majority of students committed to earlier deadlines and the research found that this ability to commit resulted in higher grades.  More generally, it seems that simply providing students a tool by which they could pre-commit publicly to deadlines helped them achieve their goals.

So what does it mean for you if you are looking to achieve a goal or meet a deadline?

There are two things you can do:

1. Make a public commitment as to when you will achieve the goal or meet the deadline before it is due.

2. Make a start now – take your goal or deadline and ask yourself “What is the minimal amount I could do right now to prepare?” Whatever your goal or deadline start now, just spend five minutes and put down your ideas.  This will help you to get ahead and to meet your goals and deadlines.

Try this for yourself and share it with your colleagues and team.  Just doing something small can help you realize goals and meet deadlines without having to resort to being rushed.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.