"When employees and employers, even coworkers, have a commitment to one another, everyone benefits." — Donald Trump "You can lead an employee to water, but if you find one who knows a better path to the water, shut up and get a bucket." —business writer Dale Dauten. Last but far from least, let's take a look at the ultimate employee category in my Productivity Management Matrix: the Productives. These are the extraordinary people who manage to combine high engagement with high performance in a synergistic way that makes them the superstars of just about any organization. How to Spot a Productive Productives are the employees you wish everyone could be. The combine a firm sense of engagement with high performance, making life easier for everyone else on the team—which usually makes … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Dour Defector
"I consider it the highest compliment when my employees go out and start their own companies in competition with me. I always send them a plant to wish them well. Of course, it's a cactus.” —Norm Brodsky, entrepreneur and author. "The actively disengaged employees are the "cave dwellers." They're "Consistently Against Virtually Everything." They're not just unhappy at work; they're busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, actively disengaged workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish." -- Curt Coffman, author of First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently If you've been reading my blog recently, you're no doubt familiar with my Productivity Management Matrix , a method by which I categorize employees based on two factors: performance … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Chirpy Cheerleader
"Save the cheerleader, save the world." -- An often-repeated phrase on the NBC-TV series Heroes. "In the early days, I didn’t have the money to pay decent salaries, so I didn’t get good people. I got nice people, but I didn’t get good employees." -- Louise Hay, self-help author Recently, I introduced you to my Productivity Management Matrix, a quick way of categorizing your team members that compares an individual's competence with their level of work engagement. When constructing the matrix, I realized that workers tend to fall into four basic types, which I call Campers, Cheerleaders, Defectors, and Productives. Last time, I described Campers: the low-performance, low-engagement chair-huggers who come to work for one reason and one reason only: to get a paycheck. This time, I'll … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: Dealing with the Camper
"Since my last report, he has reached rock bottom and has started to dig." -- Anonymous report from an employee evaluation (possibly apocryphal) "American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors." -- Dave Barry, humorist In September's newsletter, I introduced you to a new idea: the concept of group productivity management, based on the six Productivity Keys I outlined in my most recent book, SuperCompetent. Now, I created SuperCompetent for those individuals who want to raise their personal productivity to the maximum possible level; so as written, … [Read more...]
Productivity Management from a SuperCompetent Perspective
As you probably know, John Wiley and Sons released my latest book, SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best, this past August 9. Like my previous books, SuperCompetent addresses productivity from an individual viewpoint, in this case describing how the reader can achieve career success by applying six specific productivity keys in the workplace. Within days of its release, a client asked me how SuperCompetent applies to managing people, not just individual productivity. In other words, how does the Six Keys philosophy work in a team environment? This set me to thinking, especially when I considered the issue of employee engagement (last month's newsletter article), and how that factor impacts productivity. Formulating the Matrix Because engagement is a … [Read more...]
Business Productivity: The Myth of Getting It All Done
There will always be more things to do than there is time to do them. How do you concentrate on what is really important? How do you prioritize your tasks? Laura Stack talks about the myth of "getting it all done." (C) 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. https://theproductivitypro.com … [Read more...]
ACCO Brands, Branded Office Products Leader, Kicks Off Everyday Heroes Contest
ACCO Brands, a leader in office products through industry- leading brands such as Swingline, GBC, Day-Timer, Quartet, Wilson Jones and Kensington among others is scouring the country in search of Everyday Heroes. What is an Everyday Hero? It’s a person who knows how to use his/her office tools to make things run smoothly; a person to whom everyone turns to pull it all together in a pinch; an individual who quietly gets the job done – often without being recognized. Everyday Heroes can enter the contest now at accoheroes.com. ACCO Brands will award a grand prize of $1,000 redeemable at office product dealers to one winner in each of three categories – business, home/home office and school. Often, the hustle and bustle of everyday life overshadows difference-making contributions or … [Read more...]
Business Productivity: Is Mind Mapping All It’s Cracked Up to Be?
Radiant Thinking reflects your internal structure and processes. The Mind Map is your external mirror of your own Radiant Thinking, and allows you access into this vast thinking powerhouse. -- Tony and Barry Buzan, The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential If you're like me, every once in a while you get stuck on a problem and just can't seem to go any farther with it—no matter how many ideas you bounce off the wall, or how many angles of approach you try. Call it writer's block, creative dysfunction, or what you will, it can be like pulling teeth to tease those ideas out of the far wrinkles of your brain. Sometimes all you need is a little rest or relaxation to shake things loose; then you can come back strong enough to smash through … [Read more...]
Work Life Balance: Video – Getting Ready for the Next Day at Night
Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R) shares how to make mornings easier by planning at night. (c) 2010 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved … [Read more...]
Increasing Productivity: If You Think It, Ink It!
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. -- John Steinbeck My father had a saying he used to repeat often. He always carried around one of those little Mead spiral notebooks, which he liked to call "his brain," and whenever an idea would strike him he'd write it down and say, "If you think it, ink it!" That used to just drive me crazy…but Dad was absolutely right. You can't depend on your meat brain to remember everything, especially when you're in the middle of another task. Nor is it a good idea to drop the task you're working on and go haring off after the new idea. Oh, you can do that, but if make a habit of it you'll never finish anything—and your productivity will be shot to heck. So when you have a random thought … [Read more...]
