How to Create a Culture of Speed

"If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti, American race car driver. "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow." -- Rupert Murdock, Australian-American media mogul. "I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team." -- Lee Iacocca, former CEO and Chairman of Chrysler Corporation. Though we like to think of ourselves as living in the Space Age or the Information Era, future historians may well label this the "Hurry Up Epoch." For decades now, we've scrambled to keep pace with technological change, ramping up our productivity to startling levels, which helps us further advance our technology, leading to greater productivity...and so on in a rising spiral. Nowadays … [Read more...]

I’ll Pat Your Back

When you’re part of a team, each person impacts your productivity and contributes to how quickly or slowly things get done. When others are late in getting answers to you, you’re late in producing the final product. When you’re relying on your coworkers to review a document before proceeding, a month can go by before you have everyone’s input. It’s in your best interest to help your team members speed up and get things done more quickly, so you can produce better results, in less time, with less frustration. I learned this streamlining lesson from a flight attendant, who taught me a lesson in steamrolling obstacles. As a professional speaker, travel is a job hazard; I fly over 100,000 miles each year on United. I travel so much that sometimes I have to wait until the USA Today gets … [Read more...]

Do We Really Need 32 People at This Meeting?

"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything." -- Thomas Sowell, American economist and social theorist. "Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings." ― George Will, American journalist. Meetings may just be the bane of our workplace existence. I don't mean events like professional conferences; those generally represent valuable educational experiences. No, I refer to those self-proliferating time-wasters that bring co-workers together to discuss ways to maximize team productivity, but instead accomplish the exact opposite. They seem to expand as time goes by; and when everyone has to have their say, they can drag on for hours, killing productive momentum. Yet meetings remain absolutely necessary if … [Read more...]

Scoring Synergy With Outside Sources

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed." -- Napoleon Hill, American motivational guru and author of Think and Grow Rich. "Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success." -- Stephen Covey, author, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People In chemistry, a "synergistic reaction" occurs when two substances interact to generate a greater effect than either would alone. This can have dangerous consequences, as when bleach and ammonia mix to produce chlorine gas. On the other hand, adding specific impurities to a silicon semiconductor can greatly boost its performance. In a situation like this, the whole proves greater than the sum of the parts. This principle can apply to human … [Read more...]

Acknowledgement in All Directions

My father is a retired USAF Colonel, and I spent many of my childhood years living on the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. Growing up in the military environment, I soon learned that a soldier or sailor (or child) who receives a verbal order from an officer must repeat it immediately, often word for word, to acknowledge that he or she received it accurately. This especially holds true for the Navy, as you may have noticed in war movies like Battleship and Crimson Tide. While this practice may make for some dramatic moments on the silver screen, that's hardly its purpose. The military developed this particular Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for a simple and sobering reason: If a poorly relayed message results in the wrong action taken, the results can literally prove … [Read more...]

How Can Partnerships Create Leverage?

"In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself. You have to form alliances." -- Carlos Slim Helú, Mexican business magnate (and wealthiest person on Earth as of 2012) While individual effort serves as the foundation of all human activities, true accomplishment requires partnership. The trick here lies in figuring out how to cooperate in such a way that 1 + 1 = 3 or more. We call such leverage points synergy, wherein the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. So before you take on a prospective business partner, ask yourself these questions first: 1. How well do our strategic priorities align? Aligning strategy within one organization is hard enough, much less between two. The better your missions match up, the more likely you'll be able to leverage off each other. But don't … [Read more...]

Good Enough Is Never Enough! Encouraging Improvement Through Change

"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher. Just about everyone has experienced the "new broom sweeps clean" effect. We've watched, and often suffered, as a fresh leader came onto the scene and changed everything just because they could—regardless of how well the existing system functioned. Whenever this happens, chaos reigns and productivity plummets for a while. Sometimes it never recovers, whereupon another broom soon appears to start its own ambitious cleaning project. However, many changes are inevitable and desirable. Otherwise, old inefficiencies may pile up until workflow grinds to a halt...or worse, something explodes and flies apart in a … [Read more...]

2013 Productivity Workflow Makeover

Due to a special plea from a reader, I am hosting a New Year’s productivity workflow makeover on Friday, February 1, 2013. Eight people will come to my home office in Denver, CO, to revamp their organization, email, and time management systems. To ensure everyone will get one-to-one hands-on instruction, this opportunity is limited to the first eight people who register. No exceptions. In this hands-on workshop, you'll spend a full day in my home office with your smartphone, laptop, tablet and time management system. Find out more about my special 2013 Productivity Workflow Makeover and register today before all the slots fill up.   "This is not a sit-and-watch seminar. This is a hands-on, overhaul-your-system, implement-new-techniques work session, where I will grill the new habits … [Read more...]

Encouraging Productive Team Behavior

"In motivating people, you've got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example—and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved." -- Rupert Murdock, Australian-American media mogul. "Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause." -- Nathaniel Branden, Canadian psychotherapist and author. One of the best things about being a leader is being responsible for the productivity of an entire team. That's also one of the scariest things about being a leader. Your team's accomplishments (or lack thereof) reflect upon you, so you have to run a tight team. Now, that doesn't mean you have to channel a military commander. My father, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, taught me that … [Read more...]

Think Beyond Your Desk: Applying Cross-Functional Thinking to the Workplace

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it." -- H.E. Luccock, former Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School. In 1988, the great Peter Drucker predicted in a famous article, "The Coming of the New Organization," that most organizations would have embraced cross-functionality within 20 years. In contrast to the purely functional ethic defined by Adam Smith and Frederick Taylor, businesses would more readily coordinate and share tasks across all levels, increasing response time for the customer's benefit. As visionary as he was, Drucker missed the boat here. While most business schools do emphasize the cross-functional approach nowadays, relatively few real-world organizations practice it in any significant way. Indeed, corporate training often teaches the … [Read more...]