by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-American Father of Productivity. Making solid decisions is key to effective and productive work at all levels—individual, team, division, or corporate. Most of us make a remarkable number of decisions daily; some researchers claim we make thousands, if we include every little choice, like what to eat and which task to do next. In the case of routines, most represent decisions made in advance or enforced by deliberately limited choice, so we spend time more efficiently. Most decisions are personal and have limited impact on others. But the decisions you make during work hours can impact thousands or even more, depending on your position—not … [Read more...]

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it." -- Scott Allen, American computer programmer and author. In business, there are two types of "closers," both of which boost the organization's performance in different ways. The more common type of closer is a salesperson or marketer who's adept at closing deals with potential clients, bringing new projects on board. Let's call them deal closers. Without deal closers, we'd all be without work. The second type of closer is less obvious, but in their way is also imperative to effective, profitable business performance. The project closer, usually (but not always) the project manager, makes sure a project ends neatly, with no confusions or loose ends. He or she gets … [Read more...]

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE "Here's my timesheet, filled out in increments of 15 minutes. As usual, I coded the useless hours spent in meetings as "work," whereas the time I spent in the shower designing circuits in my mind as "non-work." Interestingly, even the time I spent complaining about my lack of productivity is considered "work.""—Dilbert to an HR colleague, in the comic strip Dilbert by Scott Adams, September 15, 1995 Anyone who's ever labored in a corporate environment has been required, at one time or another, to track their work time. You've probably been there, scrambling to figure out what the heck you did from 1:15 to 1:30 last Thursday afternoon. Were you working on Project A, B, or C? Were you cleaning your cube or organizing files to enhance your long-term … [Read more...]

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE Even after more than a century of R&D, the human brain is the still the most efficient computer on the planet. That's likely to remain true until we invent quantum computers, assuming that's even possible. Pound for pound, nothing beats the brain's processing and command-and-control ability. It finds patterns where mechanical and digital computers don't, can make intuitive leaps, holds astounding amounts of information, and to some extent can even fix itself when damaged. Its only limiting factors are the speed of synaptic connections, and how fast the body can respond to its commands. That said, your brain has limitations. The old saw about using only 10% of your brain is a myth; you may use only 10% of your brain consciously at any time, but the … [Read more...]

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” —Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. While a journey of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step (whether you're hiking, driving, or flying), what you do before taking that step is crucial. There are always at least a few things you'll need to prepare before you head out. For example: you wouldn't go camping without packing a tent, sleeping bags, food, and a lighter, would you? So why go off half-cocked on a work project? When starting a new project or task, few things are as crucial as the "front-end" work. Often, this is the sort of thing where you can adapt existing methodologies or create new ones before moving forward. … [Read more...]

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”—Elie Wiesel, American-Romanian writer, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel laurate Indifference is the death of productivity. We've all seen the employee disengagement figures, with more than two-thirds of all American workers partially or completely disengaged from their jobs. When you don't care, you let your work degenerate into routine, mindfulness abandoned, so you can just survive the day. Your job becomes little more than a paycheck, so you do just enough to keep that paycheck coming in. This is something many observers of the rank-and-file overlook: most … [Read more...]