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Laura Stack’s Productivity Pro eNewsletter, September 22, 2015

Posted on 09/22/2015 by ·
Laura Stack The Productivity Pro

Here is the weekly roundup of activity from Laura Stack’s blog, columns, podcast, and other featured articles. Scroll down to read the complete roundup of productivity resources to help you create Maximum Results in Minimum Time. This week on the Blog Email Communication and Etiquette: How to Use Email Productively with Your Team  Email has revolutionized global business, allowing for detailed 24-hour communication where telephone communication isn’t practical, freeing us from bending over backwards to match up times zones across a large planet. Most of the same people who understand its advantages probably also consider email the bane of their existence, since they receive hundreds of messages a day. Like most technology, email has proven a double-edged blade, its nearly miraculous … [Read more...]

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Email Communication and Etiquette: How to Use Email Productively with Your Team

Posted on 09/21/2015 by ·
Email Communication and Etiquette: How to Use Email Productively with Your Team #Productivity

"One look at an email can rob you of 15 minutes of focus." – Jacqueline Leo, American magazine editor and media producer. Email has revolutionized global business, allowing for detailed 24-hour communication where telephone communication isn't practical, freeing us from bending over backwards to match up times zones across a large planet. Most of the same people who understand its advantages probably also consider email the bane of their existence, since they receive hundreds of messages a day. Like most technology, email has proven a double-edged blade, its nearly miraculous advantages often offset by pure annoyance. With a few precautions and a modicum of care and protocol, email offers invaluable benefits for team communication ( ←CLICK TO TWEET), whether your team works together in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Productivity · Tagged: , ,

Avoiding Micromanagement

Posted on 09/18/2015 by ·

Micromanagement is a productivity killer. How do you avoid it? Tune in today! (C) 2015 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com … [Read more...]

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Looking Ahead: Acting as Your Team’s Visionary Thinker

Posted on 09/17/2015 by ·
Looking Ahead: Acting as Your Team's Visionary Thinker by Laura Stack #productivity

"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world." – Malcolm Gladwell, Canadian writer and theorist. Over the last two decades, authors have written hundreds of books and articles about how and why leaders must be visionary thinkers, able to pull reasonable expectations of the future out of their crystal balls and implement plans to guide their teams appropriately. But why don't more publications urge all team members to act as visionaries? This lack of initiative probably stems from fossilized ways of thinking. Both leaders and business theorists have begun to realize the roles of team leader and average worker have begun to converge, at least within the white-collar sector. Leaders more readily consider worker ideas nowadays; increased power and … [Read more...]

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Laura Stack’s Weekly Productivity Pro eNewsletter – September 15, 2015

Posted on 09/15/2015 by ·

Here is the weekly roundup of activity from Laura Stack’s blog, columns, podcast, and other featured articles. Scroll down to read the complete roundup of productivity resources to help you create Maximum Results in Minimum Time. This week on the Blog Quick and To the Point: Texting and Instant Messaging Protocols in the Workplace Communication may be the most important factor in any partnership, and it’s certainly a glue that binds a team together. But it comes in many forms, especially in the workplace. Two of those are texting and Instant Messaging (IM), which are common means of modern business communication today. How do we make the best use of each in a teamwork environment? Read the full article. This week on LinkedIn: Pairing Up: The Advantages of a Team of Two at Work Though … [Read more...]

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Quick and To the Point: Texting and Instant Messaging Protocols in the Workplace

Posted on 09/14/2015 by ·
Quick and To the Point: Texting and Instant Messaging Protocols in the Workplace by Laura Stack #Productivity

"Email, instant messaging, and cell phones give us fabulous communication ability, but because we live and work in our own little worlds, that communication is totally disorganized." -- Marilyn vos Savant, American newspaper columnist. Communication may be the most important factor in any partnership, and it's certainly a glue that binds a team together. But it comes in many forms, especially in the workplace. Two of those are texting and Instant Messaging (IM), which are common means of modern business communication today. How do we make the best use of each in a teamwork environment? At first glance, IM and text seem very similar, and sometimes we use the terms interchangeably. But they actually refer to distinct methods of electronic communication. Text is of course phone-to-phone, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Productivity, Personal Productivity · Tagged: , , ,

Assessing Your Productivity Status Within Your Team

Posted on 09/11/2015 by ·

Teamwork is essential to productivity. How does your productivity affect the team and vice versa? Listen in! (C) 2015 Laura Stack, All Rights Reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com … [Read more...]

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Pairing Up: The Advantages of a Team of Two at Work

Posted on 09/10/2015 by ·
Pairing Up: The Advantages of a Team of Two at Work by Laura Stack

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller, American deaf-mute activist. Though we rarely think of them as such, a duo is still a team, and it can have many advantages. When your team is only two people, it’s much easier to communicate and agree on everything, from project requirements to what to have for lunch. Small(er) teams also tend to produce more per capita (per the two-pizza rule). However, two-person teams must be more careful about avoiding groupthink and poor decision-making. Some business duos have become household names: just a few examples include Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in computing, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg in social media, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (the silent partner) in investing, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page in … [Read more...]

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Weekly Productivity eNews – September 8, 2015

Posted on 09/08/2015 by ·

This week on the Blog The 15 Characteristics of a Productive Team: What Matters Most In the 25 years since I started my company The Productivity Pro, Inc., I’ve worked with literally hundreds of teams on improving their performance and collective productivity. Here are the 15 characteristics I’ve seen in those that are the most successful. This week on LinkedIn: Respectful Creativity: Encouraging Different Viewpoints on Your Team Effective teams are most often led by leaders who expect innovation and therefore encourage diverse viewpoints. (click to tweet) This is no secret, despite the fact that—as cynics will surely point out—we rarely practice the concept adequately, and I would agree. However, we also let pettiness, bureaucracy, groupthink, disengagement, laziness, and other … [Read more...]

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The 15 Characteristics of a Productive Team: What Matters Most

Posted on 09/07/2015 by ·
The 15 Characteristics of a Productive Team: What Matters Most by Laura Stack #productivity

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” –  Paul J. Meyer, American motivational speaker In the 25 years since I started my company The Productivity Pro, Inc., I’ve worked with literally hundreds of teams on improving their performance and collective productivity. Here are the 15 characteristics I’ve seen in those that are the most successful:   Productive teams celebrate social events like holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries in order to increase cohesion. They also celebrate their wins, especially when they complete a tough project.  Committed to results vs. activity. It's easy to confuse busyness with productivity. Only outcomes and results matter. Running around being … [Read more...]

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