My new book Urgent! was published on 1st August. In this series of videos I am going to unpack some of the key strategies for moderating unproductive urgency.
In this video, Avoid Creating Unnecessary Urgency, I talk about not leaving things to the last minute and therefore creating unnecessary urgency for others.
With the launch of my new book Urgent! this week, I have been talking to the media a lot about, you guessed it, urgency. One of the most common questions I get from journalists is, “How can we reduce reactivity when we are working in highly reactive environments?” Even though they are interviewing me in an objective way, I cannot help but feel there is a personal interest in the answer to this question.
Journalists are under constant time pressure with deadlines, and with today’s 24/7 news cycle requirements, are often under the pump to deliver new content at the drop of a hat. So, the discussion about urgency must feel very relevant to them.
Many of my clients also feel under the pump and under constant pressure to deliver on urgent deadlines. Reactive environments are not that unusual, and not exclusive to the media industry.
We start by making a choice. Reactivity is a choice. So is proactivity. And we always have a choice. Train yourself to not react, but instead to evaluate the situation and make the best decision about your next step.
Paramedics are trained to never run into the scene of an accident. No matter how bad it is, they are trained to walk into the scene in a measured, calm fashion. This serves two functions. It allows them to assess the situation to work out what is happening, and what risks might be present to them and to others. Secondly, it inspires confidence in the people on the scene. You don’t want to see the paramedics panicking!
I reckon we could take a lesson from this. We could work on how we react to urgency and try to take a more measured approach to incoming issues and requests. We can coach our teams to do the same. This does not mean that we will stop responding to urgent work in an appropriate way. It simply means that we will begin to differentiate between the productive urgency that requires our attention and the unproductive urgency that can derail our day.
It is your choice.
If you and your team feel you are working in a reactive environment, and would like to explore some practical strategies that can help you to moderate the urgency and to create a more proactive culture, let’s have a chat about how our Smart Teams Urgency Culture session would help.
We run this 2-hour session online for groups of up to 25 participants as a part of our Smart Teams series. The session comes with an Urgency Playbook, and 10 team agreements that will start to shift your team culture from reactive to proactive.
Reach out to me personally at dermot.crowley@adaptproductivity.com.au if you would like to discuss how this practical online session could help your team in these challenging times.
My new book Urgent! was published on 1st August. In this series of videos I am going to unpack some of the key strategies for moderating unproductive urgency.
In this video, Use Urgency with Care, I talk about using urgency in a mindful, thoughtful and responsible way in order to minimise the negative impact on those around you.
My new book Urgent! is being published on 1st August. In this series of videos I am going to unpack some of the key strategies for moderating unproductive urgency.
In this video, Don’t Cry Wolf, I talk about not making work out to be urgent if it is not, or more urgent than it needs to be.
My new book Urgent! is being published on 1st August. In this series of videos I am going to unpack some of the key strategies for moderating unproductive urgency.
If you have been following my posts you’ve probably heard me talk about getting in control of your Inbox. Just a few times! While there are many facets of productivity that I have explored over the years, I keep coming back to this powerful productivity strategy. And here’s why.
In Smart Work I outlined a productivity framework based on three simple circles. Your Actions, where you manage your commitments and priorities. Your Inputs, where you manage your incoming work and requests. And your Outcomes, where you focus on the bigger picture, and the work that really has an impact at the end of the day.
The challenge for many of us is that we are so overwhelmed by incoming work like emails, we spend more time firefighting in our Inbox rather than proactively working on our outcomes. We need to get the balance right and make sure we are spending as little time in our Inbox as possible, whilst still being responsive to the important requests that need our attention. This requires us to reduce the noise levels in our Inbox, streamline our filing and retention systems and become ruthless at processing emails.
The research around this suggests that the average Australian worker spends 3.2 hours per day dealing with email. That is just too much time spent in your Inbox. If you can reduce this, you can invest that time on more important activities that drive your outcomes.
Make this your mantra over the next few weeks, and see if it shifts your thinking and your behaviour around this.
Talking about getting into my outcomes, I am super excited to be releasing my new book Urgent! on the 1st August. Over the next few weeks my newsletter will focus on some of key strategies from the book. If you would like to pre-order a copy, click here. Otherwise it will be available from August 1st in all good bookstores and online.
The Adapt team and I have been very lucky during this challenging time in lockdown as we have been able to successfully switch to high quality online delivery of our programs. Thank you to all our clients who have placed their trust in us to deliver great outcomes through our webcams!
However, we have noticed that things have become a lot more complicated during this time. Training delivery has lots of moving parts at the best of times, but in this online environment, there are far more moving parts to mange and keep an eye on. Our standard one-day Smart Work program is now a set of two webinars, run about a week apart. This means twice the logistics and twice the organisation required. Add to that the need to post workshop resources to the participants rather than just bring them on the day, the need to get them to do more pre-work, and the need to schedule the online activities into several systems, and things get very busy.
We had a chat about this as a team the other day. It turned out that we were so busy just managing these operational activities, we were not getting to some of the important project work we needed to. But if this COVID-19 situation has done one positive thing, it has made us more adaptable in the face of issues like this. So as a team we brainstormed what we could shrink, streamline, suspend or stop.
Shrink
First, we reviewed the key processes in the business and worked out which ones we could shrink by eliminating unnecessary steps or deliverables. By reducing the scope of what we had to do, this freed up time to focus on the critical steps in the process. We found that there were a few steps in our process that were not critical, so we have stopped doing them (at least for the moment – we will revisit when things get back to normal).
Streamline
Next, we looked at things that could be streamlined or simplified, so that they were quicker and easier to do. This was a big time-saver, as over time our processes had become a bit cumbersome without us realising it. We also looked for anything that could be automated, which has a leveraged impact on productivity.
Suspend
Then we looked at any regular activities or tasks across our business that we could suspend for the moment. Just like how your brain stops the flow of blood to your fingers and toes when you are extremely cold so it can direct blood to your vital organs, we looked for any non-critical activities we could temporarily stop doing so we could focus on the business critical activities.
Stop
Finally, we asked ourselves if there were any activities being done that did not serve anymore and could be stopped permanently. This is so healthy to do from time to time, not just in times or extreme busyness. You would be surprised how many activities, including regular meetings, are done just because we have always done them. But our work and objectives evolve over time, and our activities may need to change to reflect this.
I am sure you are facing similar issues in your role. Everything is a bit harder than normal, a bit more complex than we are used to, and a bit more overwhelming. Why not make some time this week to talk to your team about the things you could shrink, streamline, suspend or stop?
I was speaking to my mate Nick recently and he reminded me about some of the challenges we’re facing in maintaining productivity whilst working remotely. Last month, I wrote about how we can leverage Microsoft tools like Outlook, Teams and Planner to stay organised and connected when working remotely.
Nick runs a small IT business and called me to ask how he should manage a particular type of activity. He’s had a few clients call him with work requests that are more than a task, but not quite a project. He uses Tasks in Outlook to manage his day-to-day actions, and he uses Planner for his projects. But these pieces of work seemed to fall in the middle. He wanted to know the most effective way to manage these jobs to completion, and to manage the communications around each job over the few weeks he was likely to be working on them. He wanted to ensure he had everything at his fingertips when he needed it.
My suggestion for jobs like this was to set up a Notebook in MS OneNote. Each job could have its own section in the notebook, which means that he could capture pages of information about the job in that section. The pages themselves could contain any of the following:
This was the perfect solution for him. When he received an email related to the job, he could simply press the Send to OneNote button in Outlook and the email would be copied to a new page in the section he pointed to. He could also capture tasks in OneNote, and then send them to his Outlook task list when he needed to.
If you are working remotely, you too could benefit from simple strategies like this to manage your more complex work. If you are not fully taking advantage of tools like OneNote, there is no better time to get on board.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about the need to stay productive while working remotely. Now that many of us are working from home, the work spaces we were used to have changed. The open plan office space, physical meeting rooms, huddle boards and even the communal kitchen area are out of bounds to many of us for now. Instead we are looking at our peers and clients through a screen. This is the reality.
Some of you may be feeling a bit lost without the normal contact opportunities you once had. The ability to drop by someone’s desk to ask a quick question. The intel you gathered at meetings and in the hallway. Even the social chat over the water cooler is much harder to do now that we are all more remote. One of the consequences of this disconnection can be a lack of visibility with what you and your team are doing. Because you are not interacting face-to-face there is a risk that you lose a sense of what people are working on, where they are up to, and what the team might be falling behind on.
I reckon we need to reset our thinking on the traditional work space. I believe that the new work space we need to embrace is a digital one. This means we need to harness the tools that are often already at our fingertips to create virtual works paces where we can make work visible, interact with others and ensure that the right work is being moved forward.
A perfect tool for this, that many of you will already have access to, is Microsoft Planner. Planner is part of Microsoft 365, and is a simple project planning and management tool, very much based on the agile sticky-note boards used in many workplaces. It offers a virtual space to visualise and plan project work and provides a powerful platform around which to meet and discuss in the online world.
Here at Adapt, we’ve thrown ourselves into using Planner to help us work effectively together while operating remotely. Whenever we meet, we make sure we share a screen with the relevant project plan in front of us. This helps us to focus and to talk about where we’re at, what’s slipping behind, and what’s coming next.
For the moment, most teams need to work effectively from a distance. I hope that one day soon we can again work face-to-face. But in the interim, do yourself and your team a favour and embrace the electronic tools already at your disposal. You’ll never look back.
So, are you and your team using tools like Microsoft Planner to maximise your productivity?
So here we are in the midst of what looks like one of the most disruptive events many of us will ever face. I hope you and the people around you are holding up and I wish you all the best for the difficult weeks and months that lie ahead.
Even though it’s early days, already COVID-19 is impacting every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. For instance, on the work front, many of our clients have asked their staff to work from home, or for teams to split up, or for people to avoid getting together in groups.
For many, this is a huge and unexpected change, on top of everything else that’s going on in their lives. Overnight, we are faced with figuring out how to get really good at working remotely really quickly.
Fortunately, most knowledge workers already have a range of tools at their disposal which can support them, wherever they are working. Unfortunately, many workers don’t know they exist, or are aware of them, but have chosen to avoid them. It’s much easier to stay in our comfort zones and, for instance, rely solely on emails to get things done. The problem is that when all you have is a hammer, you try to make everything look like a nail.
My feeling is that COVID-19 will force us to leave our comfort zones and explore ways of working that are more suitable to this new environment we find ourselves in. Once the ‘new normal’ has been established it will be vital that you and your team embrace the technology that until now may have sat patiently on the sidelines.
In particular, I’m talking about the collaboration tools Microsoft include as part of their Office 365 suite – MS OneNote, MS Teams, and MS Planner. If you can harness these tools it will enable you and your team to communicate, congregate and collaborate efficiently and effectively, regardless of location.
Personal Productivity with MS Outlook and MS OneNote
MS Outlook and MS OneNote are the gold standard when it comes to personal productivity.
MS Outlook keeps you across where you need to be, and what you need to do. It helps you manage your Time.
MS OneNote helps you store, retrieve and use all the knowledge, ideas, thoughts and data that comes at you via research, meetings, conversations, and emails. It helps you manage your Information.
At the personal productivity level, you will find working remotely much easier if you harness the outstanding capabilities of this powerhouse duo.
Team Productivity with MS Teams and MS Planner
At the team level, MS Outlook and MS OneNote are not enough. More emails and even fuller inboxes are not the answer. We need to work smarter than that, and this is where tools like MS Teams and MS Planner shine.
MS Teams is a collaboration tool that allows a team to create channels for their projects, processes and problems. It enables people to have more effective discussions and interactions by pulling everyone into a central hub. Used well, MS Teams becomes a focal point for the team – a virtual workspace where everyone can easily contribute in a meaningful way. Harnessing MS Teams will also result in a significant drop in email traffic, less reinventing of the wheel, and more value gained from the intellectual capital that often lies dormant across an organisation.
MS Planner is a project planning tool that allows your team to plan and manage everyday projects simply and effectively. It makes team project work highly visible and easier to track and is especially useful when teams work across multiple locations.
One of the best features of MS Teams and MS Planner is they can be linked which means everyone has access to not just the conversations and documents associated with their work, but also the plans and the actions that are needed.
So, we don’t just have a hammer. We have a whole toolkit that can get us through this challenging time, and then beyond. Over the coming weeks I will be deep diving into each of these four tools and providing practical strategies for working and collaborating wherever you are.
In the meantime, stay safe, stay positive and stay productive.