Reducing Inefficiencies and Breaking Bottlenecks

Productive people are on a quest for constant reevaluation and change, so you can reduce all inefficiencies inherent to your job. Never assume the way you do things is the best possible way to do them; in fact, it probably isn't. There's almost always a better way. So take the new information you've acquired, use it to create more efficient processes, and put those processes to work. Even as you implement the new processes, you'll find some are more effective than others. So actively evaluate what works and what doesn't, and weed out the poor producers. In many cases, a broken process isn't flawed. A few tweaks may transform it into something useful and productive. So when something fails you, start by asking questions to figure out why: What changes can you make to improve the … [Read more...]

Awesome Efficiency: Five Ways to Maximize Team Productivity

Awesome Efficiency: Five Ways to Maximize Team Productivity by Laura Stack #productivity

"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." -- Peter Drucker, Austrian-American management guru. "The highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage." -- Jawaharlal Nehru, former Indian Prime Minister. What comprises true efficiency, at least in a useful business sense? That's a question worth pursuing, because the answer isn't necessarily what you might expect. Business "efficiency" has evolved beyond its classic dictionary definition, which is essentially minimizing the resources required to do something. That's fine as far as it goes—but what if the thing done right isn't the right thing? If your mechanic changes the wrong tire on your car, it doesn't matter how efficiently he does the job; you've … [Read more...]

Go, Speed Racer, Go! How to Think Faster on Your Feet

"A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace." -- Ovid, ancient Roman poet. "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." -- Wyatt Earp, Old West gunfighter and lawman. As a professional speaker, I’m frequently faced with questions I haven’t been asked before and must think quickly on my feet. Or suppose you’re the team expert on Boxlets, your company's proprietary spreadsheet program. If your boss needs a quick fact or a doubtful customer starts grilling you on why he should buy Boxlets and not Lotus 1-2-3, you'll require the capacity to think fast and produce accurate answers. If you feel like your brain doesn’t move as quickly as you need it to, here’s what I’ve found has helped me make it THINK faster: 1. Take care of yourself. This should always come … [Read more...]

Pulling Action Out of Information

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher. "An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." -- Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. Do we already have a cure for cancer lurking somewhere in the huge mass of uncorrelated medical data accumulated in books, journals, and computers worldwide? How about a solution for global hunger? Or a way to knit broken bones in days? These may all sound like fantasies to you, but some scientists suspect such solutions might already exist...if we could just fit the data together correctly. But our ability to accumulate data has long since outstripped our ability to digest and correlate it. Worse, no single person … [Read more...]

Weeding Out the Inefficiencies in Your Workplace Garden

"There can be economy only where there is efficiency." -- Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister. All leaders wear multiple hats, with their roles as Coach, Overseer, Mentor, and Good Example fairly obvious to anyone willing to look. But another function often goes unnoticed: that of Caretaker. Leaders don't just juggle projects and push people to work harder; they also protect their team from any factor that might jam the gears of productivity. While no analogy can survive over-analysis, you can consider any organizational unit (whether team, department, or division) a kind of garden, where a good leader works to weed out the inefficiencies in the system. This holds true whether those inefficiencies take the form of unproductive employees, bureaucratic red tape, or poorly … [Read more...]

Check Your Six: Practical Measures of Workplace Success

"If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us." -- Jim Rohn Even after a century of constant refinement, flying an airplane remains a hazardous occupation. Pilots must pay constant attention to altitude, direction, speed, and potential obstacles. This holds true whether they can see for a hundred miles, or no farther than the cockpit's windshield. So how do pilots maintain contact with reality when they can see nothing but clouds? By flying with instruments—a requirement every pilot must master before soloing. They monitor compass, altimeter, horizon indicator, speedometer, and a dozen other instruments, while using radio and radar to check their … [Read more...]

Unstylish Efficiency: On Delivering Substance Over Style

"The closest thing to a law of nature in business is that form has an affinity for expense, while substance has an affinity for income." -- Dee Hick, founder and former CEO of VISA. "Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance." -- Wynton Marsalis, American jazz musician.   If you've been working in your chosen profession for more than a few years, then you've probably run into your share of co-workers who seem to value style over substance. To these individuals, perception trumps reality—and sometimes even defines it. Remember comedian Billy Crystal's stint on Saturday Night Live back in the 1980s? Among other things, he portrayed a smarmy talk show host who liked to say, "It is better to look good than to feel good. And dahling, you look...mahvelous!" That captures the … [Read more...]

Overcoming the Paralysis of Analysis

"You've heard the saying, 'Analysis creates paralysis.' You can't be 100 percent sure of anything." -- Mark Burnett, British television producer. "The maxim 'Nothing but perfection' may be spelled 'Paralysis.'" -- Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister. As a reader of this blog, I suspect you take your professional development quite seriously. No doubt you've dedicated yourself to constantly refining your time management skills, blocking distractions, trimming task lists, and otherwise doing whatever it takes to maximize your personal productivity at work. That's only logical, since honing your workplace productivity to a keen edge represents the best way to move your career forward without abandoning the "life" part of your work/life balance. Therefore, you'll want to use … [Read more...]

The “Work Less, More Success” Guide to Time Management – Step Five

Continuing with our series on the Productivity Workflow Formula™ (PWF) Step 5: Close the Loop: REDUCE INEFFIENCIES Next, reduce your inefficiencies by determining what does and doesn't work for you. Constantly refine your workflow processes, reworking or replacing components if they break down or just don't seem as efficient as they might be. Other people may present your most difficult barriers to closing the loop. Since you can't control the actions of your co-workers, try to make your interactions with them easier. Start with precision communication that cuts down on unproductive "noise" like hedging and passive language. Get right to the point and ask for acknowledgement on everything. If you don't completely understand what someone asks of you, keep asking questions … [Read more...]

Productivity Minute Video: Discrepancies Occur When Work is Returned To You

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), talks about the importance of coaching and training to avoid mistakes. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved. https://theproductivitypro.com   … [Read more...]