Well, today is the last day of school for my son Finn. He starts his HSC in a few weeks, and then takes on the World. I am so excited for him. And just a little sad. Just yesterday I was walking him to kindy!

Here are three productivity lessons I hope he takes out of his schooling and into the real world. I think we can all apply them to our work.

I recently helped a team create a more productive culture around email usage. They were all past alumni of Smart Work, and all passionate users of the system, but they still struggled with the high volume and poor quality of email communications they received each day. 

One of the big breakthroughs they had on the day was to agree on a set of email subject abbreviations that would focus their email subject lines and help the reader understand what the email was about and what was required from the email at a glance. 

Their experience was that many of the emails they received had ‘fuzzy’ subjects which made it hard to work out what the email was about, or what was required of them. This caused them friction, especially when they had limited time at their desks, or were looking at emails on their phone. 

So, some simple agreements were put in place around subject lines: 

1. We will all write a subject line that accurately describes the content of the email; and 
2. We will start the email subject with an agreed set of abbreviations to indicate what is required from the email (ACT, FYI and so on). 

The subject line of your email is like the headline of a newspaper article. It helps the reader to understand the content and hopefully engages them to read on. This simple change to how a team communicates with each other can have a profound impact on productivity. People can process emails more quickly, and as the sender, you are more likely to get your email actioned in a timely way. 

Are your email subjects fuzzy or focused? 

I recently worked with the head of a consulting team in Sydney. He was receiving a large volume of emails every day and was struggling to keep up. During our discussions I discovered that he was CC’d on every email sent to his clients by his team. This resulted in him getting over three hundred emails every day!

When I asked why he felt the need to be copied in on everything, he said that he wanted to stay ‘in the loop’ on what was happening with their clients. He was in the loop alright, and the loop was beginning to feel like a noose to him!

I reckon that in today’s email driven workplace, we risk sacrificing our ability to stay in control of our Inbox by asking to be in too many loops. For the partner involved in this example, he was totally in the loop, but his Inbox was totally out of control, causing him to experience a sense of overload.

But what if he asked his team to stop copying him on everything? Would that help? Maybe, but the risk is that his Inbox would be in control, but he would feel out of the loop. This would result in him feeling exposed to risk. Not an ideal position either.

If he left it totally up to his team to decide on what to copy him in on, he might end up confused, as they could end up copying him on the wrong things. He would feel neither in the loop nor in control.  

But what if he sat down and had a conversation with them about what kinds of issues he should be copied in on and what issues he didn’t need to be copied on? What if he coached them to make better decisions when emailing? I reckon then they would copy him with purpose. He would feel in the loop, and in control of his Inbox. In this scenario, they would be supporting him.  

The CC function in email is a very useful tool when used with purpose. But like any tool, it can be used in the wrong way, causing problems for others. Let’s be mindful about how we work with our colleagues, and try to make sure we reduce the friction we create for them. As leaders, let’s open up the conversation in our team and help everyone to be more productive. 

My good friend and colleague Donna McGeorge has just published a new book that I can’t wait to share with you. It is called The 25 Minute Meeting and shows you how to double the impact of your meetings in half the time. If you’ve have been following my recent blogs, especially since I released Smart Teams, you will know that this is right up my alley!

The basic premise of Donna’s book is that many workplace meetings are scheduled for one hour or more, which is too long in most cases, and in fact, can be counter-productive. Taking her inspiration from the Francesco Cirillo’s book, The Pomodoro Technique, which promotes short bursts of work for 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break, Donna suggests that you can get more done in a focused 25 minute meeting, than you could in an unfocused hour. Who would have thought?!

What I really like about this book is that it doesn’t just focus on how to make your meetings shorter, but also how to create more impact with the time that is used. Meetings are such a luxurious way of spending group time, and it is critical that they have a purpose and achieve outcomes that are worthy of the collective time invested. Donna unveils a three-step process to achieve this:

1. Set up
   
2. Show up
   
3. Step up

I love practical books that deliver an end to end strategic solution if you read it cover to cover, or lots of tactical strategies that you can implement that day if you just dip in and out. The 25 Minute Meeting works on both levels and is so aligned to both the Smart Work and Smart Teams approach to productivity.

Do yourself a favour and order a copy for each of your team members today.

I’m going to start by talking rubbish but will get to an important productivity point a bit further on.

Plastic bags are a huge burden on the environment and the healthy future of our planet. This is a big issue in NSW at the moment as many shoppers wrestle with the prospect of bringing their own reusable bags to the supermarket. I reckon for this level of behavioural change to succeed, real leadership needs to occur across every level in the community.
Government needs to show leadership by legislating against the use of single use plastic bags. The media can lead by shining a spotlight on the issue. And, as heavy users, the supermarket giants must take a leading role.

We also need to see leadership at the family level, where we discuss this issue as a household and make decisions about what we will do to help with the problem. Lastly, we need to demonstrate personal leadership, and change our behaviours every time we shop. When we all take ownership of the issue and change our mindsets and our behaviours, a cultural change will sweep across the country which will have a lasting impact on the environment.

The same concept can be applied when it comes to creating cultural change within your organisation. I’m currently working with several companies keen to change how they use email, how they meet, and how they collaborate. This is challenging, as the poor use of email and meetings has become the norm, and many people feel that ‘this is just the way it’s done around here’. The status quo feels too hard to change. But it can be changed if we demonstrate leadership on every level.

Firstly, the leadership team need to get on board to not only support the change, but also to lead it by example. Human Resources need to champion the issues and the solutions. Managers and team leaders need to talk to their teams about the required changes, as well as walking the talk. And every worker needs to demonstrate personal leadership by changing their behaviours and working hard not lapse back into old habits.

Now, some would agree that I started this newsletter talking rubbish, but hopefully I ended up making some sense! If I did, ask yourself, what is your organisation doing to create a more productive culture? And equally important, what are you doing to create a more productive culture?

The early 2000’s brought the worst drought in recorded history, which in Sydney meant severe water restrictions. We couldn’t wash cars, water the garden, or allow the kids to play in the sprinklers on hot days. Hard as this seemed at the time, it made me change my behaviour around water wastage, and to this day I am much more mindful about how I use it.

Before the drought, I was wasteful with water. Coming from Ireland, I never really considered water as a limited resource and was not particularly mindful about how I used it, or how much I used it. I used it lavishly because it seemed limitless and free.

Last week I was in Singapore meeting with a client whose leadership team reckoned the average number of emails received into their inboxes was 400 per day! That’s huge. How on earth can you stay on top of what’s important if you’re battling that volume of information and noise coming at you daily?

I believe many of us treat email as a limitless resource that can be squandered mindlessly. But while email itself might be free and limitless, the impact it has on our collective productivity is not. For organisations to thrive in the information age, we must become more mindful about the volume of emails we send, the unnecessary noise we generate, and the time that’s wasted as a result.

With a little effort I changed my habits around how I use water, and have never gone back to my old wasteful ways. With a little effort I believe your team could change how they use email, and as a result, create a more productive culture that everyone benefits from.

You might recall my last newsletter was written in the sunny glow of a holiday in Europe. Well, I’m back in Sydney, with sand in my shoes and emails in my inbox!

Returning home got me thinking about my ‘back-to-work’ process.  I like it because it ensures I start back in a focused and productive way.  Here’s what I do:

For starters, I always protect the first day back by making sure there are no meetings scheduled.  My only exception to this might be a few short informal catch ups with my team.  I know this may seem impossible for some, but protecting the first day is critical if you want to ensure you are working on the right stuff, and not just getting sucked back into busy mode. If a full day is not possible, protect at least the morning.

Next, I get myself up to date. This involves clearing my inbox to zero and updating my daily action plan. During this time I won’t be doing actual ‘work’.  Instead, I will be deciding what work needs my attention today, and what work I can forward schedule into the future.

Finally, I think about the bigger picture. My inbox and task list have generated a lot of actions for me, but are they the ones that will really have an impact over the long term? By taking some time to reconnect with my objectives, my projects and my key people, I am sure to generate additional actions that will drive important priorities forward.

Unfortunately, I work with many people who don’t have a consistent ‘back-to-work’ process in place.  For them, the benefits of the holiday quickly disappear as they get sucked into the chaos of their overflowing inbox, and hectic meeting schedule.

For me, day one back from holidays is about organising, prioritising and planning. It feels counter intuitive after being away, because your instinct tells you to just get stuck in and get stuff done. But the risk is you just end up being busy rather than truly productive.

So, when is your next holiday? Take some time now to block out the first day back. Protect this day fiercely, and I guarantee you will feel better, and be far more productive as a result.

I’m in the middle of an amazing holiday in Europe, with just a few work commitments needing my focus, including this blog.  Not too bad though – I’m writing this from sunny Dublin, with a good coffee in my hand!

One of the things I’ve noticed over the past few weeks is how few emails I have received while away. When checking my mailbox every couple of days, the volume of incoming mail has been much less than I would normally expect. After a mild panic attack and a test to make sure my email was working, I worked out why I was getting less emails. I was sending less!

Research suggests we receive three emails for every one we send. So, when you’re not actively generating outgoing email traffic, you reduce the response rates enormously.

So, if you’re struggling with a large volume of daily emails, maybe one solution is to use email less to communicate with your team and colleagues. Think carefully before forwarding information on, and maybe pick up the phone instead of shooting off an email.

Now, back to the heatwave in Ireland, and a pint of Guinness which I thoroughly deserve after writing this!

We have so much information to manage these days, and it can be hard to work out where to put it all. Most of us default to keeping our emails in folders in our mailbox, and documents in folders on our computer. This is fine in most circumstances. However, it can be frustrating for your colleagues when they need information relevant to their work, which is being hoarded by you.

In my new book Smart Teams, I talk about the need for us to collaborate and work in a way that serves. Not to be selfish, not to be selfless, but to be serving. This means thinking about what is best for you, AND thinking about what is best for the team – a win/win scenario. This mindset increases both our own personal productivity, but also the productivity of the group. When we keep information that is useful to the wider team in our personal folders, that can be selfish rather than serving.

A good way to think about your information is to consider whether it is private or public. If it is private, it is information that only holds value for you in your role. If you are going to bother keeping this information, by all means store it in your email filing system, or in your personal document folders.

But if you consider it to be public, it is information that may serve the wider team, and should be stored in a place that provides easy access, if and when they need to see it.

So where is the best place to keep this public information?06his is where you need to look at the suite of tools available in your organisation to store, manage and share information. Many of our client organisations are now using Office 365, which has a host of different tools available to do this. In our team, we love the simplicity of MS OneNote for storing business critical documentation that everyone needs to easily access.

If OneNote isn’t enough, OneDrive or SharePoint might be the appropriate place. If you are collaborating with others across the organisation on a project, you might post information on MS Teams or Yammer. If you are working with clients your team may have a CRM tool that should be used to keep everyone across what is happening with the client. And if you work in a law firm, you might have a matter document management system for centrally storing all documents and emails related to each client matter.

As you can see, we are now faced with more and more choices, which can be part of the problem. Most people just don’t know where to put the information, so they default to keeping it private. So, the simple solution is to have a conversation with your team, and work out what information should be made public, and the best tool to use to share it.

Put this on the agenda for your next team meeting or offsite, and get everyone on the same page.

I was running a workshop recently in a large financial institution when three of the participants started talking to each other in whispers. This went on for a few minutes, and they eventually shared with the group that someone in their wider team had sent an email to the entire group of three hundred. People then started to Reply All to this email, and their inboxes started to fill up with response after response. None of this was relevant to the people in my workshop, so their inboxes were just filling up with noise.

Eventually a senior manager stepped into the conversation and asked everyone to stop Replying All. Hilariously, someone then responded to the group with ‘I agree’! Crazy stuff, but not unusual in the corporate world.

I think Reply All should be considered a ‘nuclear option’. Remember the old cold war movies where the button to launch the nuclear missiles would be protected by a range of safeguards? Two officers would have to insert their missile launch keys at the same time, then a cover would have to be released before the launch button could be activated. Well I reckon you should have the same safeguards on the Reply All button! It should not be available on every email, or so easy to just press instead of Reply

As most IT departments are unlikely to remove the Reply All button in MS Outlook across your organisation, the best I can do is encourage you to think hard before you Reply All. There are few circumstances where it serves the group. Consider just replying to the sender, or the few people who really need to know your response. A more thoughtful approach to email will improve the productivity of many people in your team. And if you discuss this strategy with your team, they might even start to improve your productivity too!