People Move Organizations: Recent Episodes
PMO Coaching
We believe that every employee makes a difference within their organization. Everyone wants to learn and improve - regardless of title or position. We know that everybody is busy - and personal development can easily take a back seat. That's why we put together a weekly podcast focused on personal development and core business skills. In about 10 minutes a week, you can learn something new and start to put it to use at your job immediately. Your personal growth is important to us - come join our community of life-long learners!
Do you know the difference between delivering information and delivering a message for influence?
My guest today, Deb Coviello will break this down for us. Her tips will help you be seen, heard, and invited to the table at your company or organization.
To deliver a message that influences, your message needs to include:
- Data
- Trend
- Risk or Opportunity?
- Impact or Magnitude
All in the language that the person understands
How to have confidence when delivering a message:
- Tone of voice – be firm, don’t use sing-songy delivery
- Use affirmative language
Drop In CEO website
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- The difference between delivering information and delivering a message that influences
- The core components of a message that influences
- How to start acting at the next level
- How to have confidence when delivering a message that influences
Today, I want to talk about Agile. It is a term that gets misused and misunderstood a lot. If you are not a software developer, my goal is to help you better understand what this term is and how it is best used at companies. If you are a software developer, please listen to the episode anyway. I know you think you know what Agile is, but I want you to be able to help others understand it as well, and you’ll walk away from this episode with a better understanding of where agile DOESN’T work well. And if you are a project manager, same thing applies. You need to be able to explain to people when Agile is appropriate and when it is not.
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
-
What is the Agile Software Development methodology
-
Why Agile is not right for project management
-
The difference between software development and software implementation
How willing are you to be coached? Are you open to letting of others help you grow? My guest on this episode is Leslie Shea and she talks with me about why it is important to be coachable. We talk about why it is a really important skill for career advancement, and how we can build this skill: * Look for opportunities to grow your confidence * Become self aware * Cultivate your curiosity
Here are some episodes that tie into our conversation:
Episode 35: Fixed vs Growth Mindset
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- How to be more coachable
- Why learning agility is important
- How you can be more valuable to your employer
- Skills for building your coachability
- How to create a growth mindset
- How to talk to your manager about being coached
I'm passionate and inflexible when it comes to working during my vacation. And you should be too. In this episode, I give you my process for being able to go on vacation without putting my phone number in my out of office message.
Meetings, meetings, meetings. My guest this week for People Move Organizations is an expert at helping people create exceptional meetings. You’ll learn a lot this week from Greg Harrod when he shares the 3 fundamentals of effective meetings:
- Purpose – why are you bringing people together?
- People – who are the people needed to accomplish the purpose?
- Preparation – both as the leader of the meeting and to help the participants prepare
Here are some episodes that tie into our conversation:
Greg’s podcast: Connect Mobilize Deliver
Episode 10: Time Blocking
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- 3 fundamental tips for running effective meetings
- Why it is important to know the purpose of the meeting
- Why it is important to invite the right people to the meeting
- Why it is important to prepare for the meeting
- What counts as a meeting
- How to be an effective participant in a meeting
- How to decline the meeting
Being vulnerable and authentic at work is sometimes hard to do. It takes courage. In this conversation with Ryan Seematter, we discuss why he feels that being vulnerable and authentic at work has been a part improving his confidence, passion and energy at work. Ryan’s tips for being authentic at work:
- Start small – with the people closest to you
- Ask for feedback
- Reach out to someone you haven’t spent time with but would like to know better
- Don’t be afraid of the differences – appreciate them for what they are
Here are some episodes that tie into our conversation:
Episode 17: Understanding Myers Briggs
Episode 49: Introduction to Enneagram
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- Why being vulnerable at work can improve your confidence
- Why people are afraid to tell their story at work
- How to build courage through authenticity
- How authenticity and networking are connected
- How to be authentic with your manager
We all get paid to solve problems. This week, my guest on People Move Organizations is giving us some great tips for problem solving at work. We talk about taking the emotion out of problem solving, listening, and giving someone time to vent before jumping in to solve their problems.
Here are some episodes that tie into our conversation:
Episode 7: Influencing Others
Episode 39: Self Control
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- How to take emotion out of problem solving
- Why it is important to listen when you are solving a problem
- Why you shouldn’t try to solve the problem too quickly
- Why it is important to understand your audience
What do I want to be when I grow up?
It is a question we’ve all asked ourselves.
In this episode, I talk with Elaine McClure about how we can achieve our career goals.
Elaine has a lot of great, practical tips for things you need to consider when you are thinking about what your next career step might be.
If you want more episodes about career growth, check out our career growth curriculum:
http://www.pmocoaching.com/careergrowth.html
Help us spread the word:
- Share this episode with your LinkedIn contacts. Go to our LinkedIn page, select a post, and hit share.
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- Improve your productivity with my Productivity Journal
What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- How to take your career to the next level
- Steps to determine what your next career step might be
- Why mentors are important in career development
- Things you should consider other than just money when looking at your career
- How to figure out what you want to do with your career
- A common misconception about being a manager
In this episode, I’m talking with Susan Wolfgang about why it is important to have a customer experience mindset regardless of the position your hold at your company. Customer experience is sometimes misunderstood, and Susan gives us a master class on the subject.
If you have one take away from this episode, it should be ‘does your customer have a seat at the table?’
In the episode, we talk about the important of understanding the full process. You might learn more from Episode 11 where I covered this topic in more detail:
Episode 11: System vs Process
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- What is Customer Experience and why it is important
- Why customer loyalty is important
- How customers look at your company
- How you can have a customer mindset in any role
- Why it is important to think through the entire system before making policy or process changes
In this episode, I’m talking with Luke Mentzer about how each of us can look at our process and improve it in order to reduce the pain points you are feeling in your process. If you have a process that you think could be improved, you’ll get some great practical tips from Luke about how you can make improvements starting this week.
Episode 11: System vs Process
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What You'll Learn in this Episode:
- How to look at your process holistically when improving your process
- Why it is important to consider the constraints for the individual pieces of the process
- How to get buy-in from other stakeholders when you want to change your process
This week we get a lot of great tips about networking and building relationships from Steph Neu. Networking is such an important skill for anyone - regardless of what you do for your career. You are certainly going to have some actionable tips you can put into place this week!
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What are your best tips for presentation skills? This is the question we cover this week with Diana Acuna. Whether you are presenting to 1 person or 100, having some basic presentation skills is going to make you more successful in your career. Diana has a lot of great tips for you. Help us spread the word:
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It has been a while since I published a new episode of People Move Organizations. In this episode, you'll find out why and learn about where the podcast is going in the future.
This week, I'm reposting my episode about building your intuition skill. Yes, intuition is a skill that you can improve using the Decision Primed Recognition Framework.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Intuition is a skill that can be built
- Why Intuition is important in business
- The fundamentals of Decision Primed Recognition Framework
- How to identify areas in your job that can be improved with the framework
Help us spread the word:
- Share this episode with your LinkedIn contacts. Go to our LinkedIn page, select a post, and hit share.
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Did you know that there are different strategies when building hard skills and soft skills? In this episode of People Move Organizations, I cover the differences so that you can be more productive when building your skills in the future.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/096
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The difference between hard skills and soft skills
- The best way to improve hard skills
- The best way to improve soft skills
- How to identify a hard skill or a soft skill
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This week, I’m talking about how the simple phrase ‘I Don’t’ can help you define who you are or who you want to be in a way that will help you achieve your priorities. It is pretty easy to use the power of identity to help overcome the need for willpower, so give this episode a listen and I think you’ll get something out of it you can use.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/095
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to achieve goals by defining your identity
- How to stop struggling to improve
- How you can use your identity to overcome the need for willpower
Help us spread the word:
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It's Career Day! In these episodes, I’ll be interviewing someone about their job with the goal of helping you learn:
- What the career is all about from an insider’s perspective
- What skills are best suited for the position
- What experience will help you get into the position
Even if it isn’t a career you aren’t interested in for yourself, it is always helpful to have a better understanding of the roles that people around you may fill.
Today’s career is Recruiting and I’m interviewing Chad Roudebush, who is an experienced recruiter, having worked for more than 13 years in the industry. Chad brings a great insight into what makes a successful recruiter and helps give an understanding of what a potential career path may look like.
This week is a repost of Episode 31: Productive and Unproductive Multi-tasking.
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It’s a very rare thing to find someone who has never been dissatisfied with their job. There are, of course, a range of intensities when it comes to dissatisfaction.
On one end, you might have a bad encounter with someone at work and feel dissatisfied with the situation. On the other end, you may have the Sunday Night Blues – dreading the thought of going into the office because you are so dissatisfied with your job.
What I want to do today is give you some tips for how to effectively deal with dissatisfaction. No matter how intense your feelings of dissatisfaction are, having some tools you can use will help you get past it faster.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/092
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to recognize when you are feeling dissatisfied
- Why labeling emotions is important
- The Dissatisfaction Cycle
- How to move from dissatisfaction to Satisfaction
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As you progress in your career, one of the things that is important for you to be successful is to network.
What makes this process challenging is that it takes work and, although important, it isn’t urgent so it is easy for you to let it go. You don’t maintain the relationship because it isn’t right in front of you and then when you need it, you are starting off from a less than ideal situation.
In this episode, I’ll be giving you a very simple way to ensure you are keeping in touch with your network regularly so they’ll be there when you need them.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/091
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How urgent is the enemy of important when it comes to networking
- An easy tip for keeping in contact with your network regularly
- How to effectively network
- How to build a habit of networking
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This week we are taking a look at what a career in Accounting is all about.
In these episodes, I’ll be interviewing someone about their job with the goal of helping you learn what the career is all about from an insider’s perspective, what skills are best suited for the position, and what experience will help you get into the position. Even if it isn’t a career you aren’t interested in for yourself, it is always helpful to have a better understanding of the roles that people around you may fill.
Help us spread the word:
- Share this episode with your LinkedIn contacts. Go to our LinkedIn page, select a post, and hit share.
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- Improve your productivity with my Productivity Journal
This week, I'm replaying Episode 11: System vs Process.
Each of us has a set of processes that we follow every day in order to accomplish our job. The longer you are in your job, the more proficient you get at each process. But, you can be the most proficient person at the process, and it could still be a problem.
Why?
Each process is a part of a bigger system. No matter how efficient each process is, if it doesn't work well within the system that it is a part of, there could still be problems.
You are more valuable to your company if you can look at the system as a whole rather than just your process within the system.
Systems are typically:
- Cross functional (cross departmental)
- Made up of many processes
- Spanning many different disciplines
The best way for you to improve your understanding of a system is to look at a process that you are a part of and then look backward to determine the processes that impact you and look forward to determine the processes that you impact.
Being productive means accomplishing your most important goals. For most of us, we need daily reminders in order to make progress toward those goals. In this episode, I cover 5 Daily Questions that will help improve your productivity.
See the full show notes here
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How 5 Daily Questions can improve your productivity
- That achieving your goals takes planning
- By focusing on the next 30 days, you can ensure you are being productive toward your goals
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Logical fallacies are errors in thinking that weaken or discredit an argument. We all use them, and they impact our critical thinking skills. In this episode, I talk through the common types of logical fallacies so that you can start to recognize when you are drawing bad conclusions.
See the full shownotes here.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Logical Fallacies impact your ability to make good decisions
- That Logical Fallacies are part of the critical thinking process
- The 8 types of logical fallacies
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Are you a specialist or a generalist? The world needs both, so I’m not going to argue for one over the other.
The thing is, when you specialize in an area, you begin to look at everything in a certain way. You fall into patterns or routines. You know the saying ‘to a hammer, everything looks like a nail?”
But, there is a way for you to learn to think about things outside of your particular bias. Today, I’m going to talk about the practice of selecting an Area of Focus to help you improve your ability to solve problems.
See the full show notes
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why your area of specialty could be limiting your ability to solve problems
- How learning about other areas of business can help you become more creative when solving problems
- How to use Area of Focus to expand your horizons
- How I recently solved a problem because of an area of focus
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This week, I’m replaying Episode 18: Building a Reserve. It is a topic I’ve been talking about for over 10 years, and I really feel that it is core to managing stress in your life.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to keep yourself from going over the edge because of stress
- How to build a reserve so that you feel less stressed
- How to identify where you need to build a reserve so that you are less stressed
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- Share this episode with your LinkedIn contacts. Go to our LinkedIn page, select a post, and hit share.
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Regardless of your specific job, the ability to use critical thinking is an indicator of being successful. Today, we are going to take a look at this skill and give you some ways to put it into practice more often.
See the full show notes
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What is critical thinking?
- What are the steps for critical thinking
- The difference between an assumption and an inference
- How to collect evidence to support your conclusion
- How to evaluate evidence you’ve collected
- How to become a better critical thinker
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Today I’m going to lay out a case for a philosophy that I’ve believed in for a long, long time. I believe it solves a myriad of problems, so I think it’s a tool everyone should have at the ready. The philosophy is – do one thing differently.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/083
#personaldevelopment #scalemyskills #peoplemoveorganizations
Today, I want to introduce you to an approach for tackling problems that works well when you are feeling stuck.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/082
#personaldevelopment #scalemyskills #peoplemoveorganizations
This week, I’m going to share 5 tools that got me through a very stressful week. I think one of the hardest things to do when you are stressed is to be able to think about these strategies. So, make sure you put this week’s guide somewhere you can reference it the next time you find yourself hitting your stress limit.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/081
Everything we do, everything we hear, or see, or participate in has a context within which it happens.
How do you consider context when making decisions, creating processes, addressing change? This week, we’ll talk about the importance of context.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/080
Sometimes, making something personal makes it easier. I think objectives at work can be this way. This week, I talk about how you can make your objectives more personal, and more fulfilling by looking at them in terms of making your manager’s life easier.
When it comes to our job, sometimes we can be hesitant to ask for help. This hesitancy can be caused by our own personal beliefs, or it can be caused by the culture that we are part of. We covered the personal beliefs about asking for help in Episode 78, and I encourage you to go back and give that episode a listen.
Today, we are going to talk about the cultural aspects of companies that can lead us to resist asking for help when we need it.
There is an art to asking for and giving help. The key is to find a balance so that you are both comfortable asking for help when you need it and generous about giving help when it is needed. If you do one without the other, there will be negative consequences. Today, we are going to talk about how you can better balance this skill.
I’m excited to introduce a new intermittent segment that we are adding to the podcast called Career Day. In these episodes, I’ll be interviewing someone about their job with the goal of helping you learn what the career is all about from an insider’s perspective, what skills are best suited for the position, and what experience will help you get into the position. Even if it isn’t a career you aren’t interested in for yourself, it is always helpful to have a better understanding of the roles that people around you may fill.
Today’s career is Project Management and I’m interviewing Chris Schain, who is an experienced project manager, now in a role where he is managing project managers. Chris brings a prospective that will help you understand what makes a successful project manager, and helps give an understanding of what a potential career path in project management may look like.
Understanding the different levers that impact margin for your company helps you understand how healthy the business is. It may also help you understand ways that you can help impact margin by either improving revenue or reducing cost so that margin is increased. This week, I cover the basic concepts of margin and I promise you’ll never think the same way about pickles again!
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/075
#personaldevelopment #scalemyskills #peoplemoveorganizations
Customer Experience is everybody’s job, although sometimes it might be hard to see how you can influence it. It may seem like you can’t make an impact if you aren’t in a leadership position, but that isn’t the case. Today, we are going to talk about some ways you can make an impact on customer experience, regardless of your role or title.
Every job has a process – whether it is well documented or not, effective or not, enforced or not. And, whether you are the kind of person who likes process or not, you still follow a process. For those of you who get itchy when talking about a process, we might also call it guidelines. You have some set of guidelines you use to get yourself from point A to point B each day.
I have a saying that I say frequently to my team: trust the process.
What I mean when I say it is that, when you question why something is the way it is, you must trust that the process handled it appropriately, and therefore there is a good reason for it.
Trust that there are rules and guidelines in place to help get each process from point A to point B in a manner that results in the best possible solution given the situation.
Trusting the process doesn’t mean that there is no room for improvement. To design a process you can trust, there are a few guidelines you can follow, which is what we will cover in this week's episode.
We can all use some tips when it comes to managing meetings better. Whether you attend the meeting or host it, this week, I’m covering tips that will help you ensure you are being as productive as possible.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/072
I ready The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People not long after it was originally released, and then not again until last year. I was blown away. I think it is a book you can learn from over and over again.
This week, we talk about Habit #2: begin with the end in mind. I think it is really important to make sure you build time into your life to step back and make sure your vision is still the right vision for you.
http://www.pmocoaching.com/podcast/071
I find the social science of the brain to be a very interesting topics, which means I read a lot of books about it. It is a fairly new science, and scientists admit that there is still a lot to learn, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take what is known and apply it to the way we work.
Work, by its definition, involves other people. So, the more you know about how other people think, the more you can tailor your work in a manner that will be more likely to be positively accepted by the people you work with.
Our social connections are necessary for our survival – not just at work, but in life. If you think about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the lowest level is the physiological stuff, and then comes safety, and next is social. Without social connections, you can’t move up into the hierarch where you get into esteem and self-actualization.
Do you have a job description for your life?
This week, we are going to talk about a tool that you can use to keep your priorities at the top of you mind at all times. Because, when the rubber hits the road, it is sometimes easier to react to the urgent than it is to follow the priorities you’ve set for yourself.
Today, we are going to talk about identifying busy work so you can get onto being productive. I guess I’m making the argument that being busy – fake busy – is standing in the way of being productive.
What I want to do today is give you a framework for thinking about the work you are accomplishing and to help you move away from busy work and toward being more productive. It means working in a mode for most of your day that contributes to your priorities.
It is called the Productivity Mode Optimizer – and yes, that is PMO hidden in the title. Pretty cleaver, huh?
Navigating the corporate world means you are always negotiating. You may be negotiating with a coworker about a project deadline. Or, with a client about how to resolve an issue. Or, you may be negotiating with your boss about a promotion or a raise. Whether you think about it consciously or not, you are always negotiating. And, because our goal is to help you be successful in your career, we want to spend 10 minutes with you this week teaching you one component of negotiation.
The concept we are going to be covering in this episode is called BANTA. It stands for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.
Everyone in your management chain – and everyone in a leadership position at your company is making decisions based on your company’s financial position every day. So, it is important for you to have some basic understanding about some of the core building blocks of financials.
Today we are going to talk about the difference between fixed and variable cost. If you can really understand this concept, you’ll have a better ability to analyze business strategy. So, this is fixed and variable cost 101.
There is one thing that will, without a doubt keep you from being successful in your career. If your coworkers and bosses don’t have trust in you, you will be like Sisyphus, pushing your career up the mountain only to see it slip back down.
Mahatma Gandhi said it very well, “The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.”
A lack of trust is something you can’t afford in your career. And, the thing is, trust is something other’s get to decide. Do they trust you or not? Of course, it is based on your actions, but the decision to place trust is still theirs.
So, how do you increase your chances of ending up in a place where your coworkers and bosses make a decision to place their trust in you? On this episode, we are going to talk through the different components of trust. By understanding the components, you can determine if there are any levers you can pull that may help you improve your trustworthiness in other’s eyes.
Every single one of us has a lot to learn. You may be an expert at something, but a complete novice in another area. Or, maybe you have only been out of school for a short time and you are pretty much a novice at everything. So, whatever your situation, you are going to be put into a scenario where you are not the most knowledgeable person on the topic, and you are going to need to rely on the advice or feedback of someone else. When this happens, one of the most important things you can do is accurately assess how much weight you should give to their advice.
This week, we talk about how you should determine whether or not you should give weight to the advice you are getting.
Have you ever thought of your skills as a portfolio? A portfolio is more often associated with investments or creative careers than business careers, but the reality is – we each build our portfolio of skills.
In this episode, I help you think of your skills in terms of a portfolio and to become more strategic about how you are thinking about them and deploying them. I’m going to give you a very concrete tool for thinking through your portfolio in a way that helps you decide what skills you should invest time in.
Our objective on People Move Organizations is to make you successful in your career whatever your definition of success looks like. One of the things that will make you stand out from your peers is your ability to improve your customer’s experience with your company. Even if you are in a role where you don’t interact with your customer directly, you should always have customer experience in the back of your mind.
If you’d like to get a basic introduction to the concept of customer experience, check out episode 19.
You may have heard of the problem solving technique of asking Why 5 times. This technique helps you dig deeper into a problem by ensuring that you don’t accept the first answer to a problem. The idea is that if you keep asking why five times, you’ll dig deep enough to really understand the root cause of an issue.
I took that basic concept and adjusted it to address the idea of customer experience. I was looking for a way to help all employees within a company keep customer experience in the back of their mind as they contemplated a change to their process. I originally posted this framework as a blog post on LinkedIn in 2016.
I call the framework the 5 How’s.
There are 5 How Questions that you should always consider if you are going to implement a change to your process. Alternatively, if you have a process that you suspect could be improved, you could use these 5 questions to help you assess if a change is needed.
One of my favorite tools is the RACI matrix. Although this is commonly considered a project management tool, it has applications to all business processes. This week, I talk you through the way to use a RACI matrix and why it is beneficial for you.
Having clarity of your personal purpose is a foundation to having strong self-awareness. Being clear about who you are and who you aren’t gives you the confidence you need to make hard decisions. But, unfortunately we are not all very clear about our purpose.
I also believe that your purpose changes over time. When you are early in your career, you are focused on establishing your career. As you start a family, your focus shifts, and as you near retirement, your focus shifts again. So, it isn’t necessarily a one-and-done situation. If you haven’t thought through your purpose recently, it may be time to take another look at it.
In this week's episode, I share a recent decision I made wit confidence because I was clear about my personal purpose.
Our topic today is a little bit unusual – it is definitely something you don’t learn in school. But, surprisingly, I have found it to be a very useful tool in my career.
A verbal shortcut is something between you and another person that you use to quickly communicate a full idea using shortened words. You’ve established up-front a specific context for the short cut that means that everyone understands the underlying context when the agreed upon short cut is spoken.
You probably already have some that you use without even realizing it. But, by thinking about it as an efficiency tool, you may find that you could purposefully implement more of these shortcuts into your work and find an improvement.
There are a lot of different opinions about brainstorming. As with just about everything, you can find people who think it is the best thing since sliced bread and people who think it is the devil incarnate.
I believe it is an important tool to have in your toolbox, but not that it is the right solution for every scenario. What I want to do today is to give you an idea about a variety of brainstorming that I find to be a great option. It uses a combination of traditional brainstorming tactics with some aspects of agile development methodology and a good dose of individual problem solving.
Today, we are going to talk about paradigm, and how it has a profound impact on your career.
A paradigm is a model, theory, or frame of reference. It is the way you see the world. Each of us has a different frame of reference because each of us brings a different set of experiences and values to our perceptions of the world. This fact has really come to the forefront recently with the global discussion that is going on about equality in the world.
This week, I want to focus on helping you think in a new way about achieving your longer-term goals. We all get so caught up in our daily lives that sometimes it can seem impossible to make any meaningful progress toward longer term goals. These longer term goals are usually important, but not urgent which makes them easy to deprioritize when you are facing a weeks’ worth of meetings, problems, and deadlines.
What you need to learn how to do is to be able to separate the urgency of the day-job from the importance of the longer-term goal. You need a way to keep your eye on the ball while keeping your head above water each day. There is a combination of very tactical activities that can help you achieve that, and that is what I want to cover today.
Willpower is a funny thing. We all have willpower – we just all have it in different areas. Improving your willpower obviously helps you in life, but it will help you in your career as well. Understanding willpower can help you influence others, which can also help you in your career. So, there is a lot to be gained by better understanding it. There are a lot of different topics we can cover related to willpower, but today, we are going to focus specifically on the concept of social proof.
Do you have a One on One meeting with your manager? If not, why not? If you do, do you feel like you are getting value out of it?
In this episode of People Move Organizations, we are going to cover the reasons 1:1 meetings are important to your career success, and what you should consider as you set the agenda for your meeting.
The circle of influence is a concept popularized by Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Although Covey takes no credit for the idea, he was a master at explaining it in a way that is so clear and actionable that it has become part of our business lexicon. Today, I’m going to do my level best to explain it to you in a manner that will allow a light bulb to go on and for you to be able to walk away from this episode and put a new habit into practice. Even if you think you’ve got the concept down, I encourage you to listen to this episode. It is always good to have a refresher.
LinkedIn is the social platform for business networking, and if you are part of the business world, you really must have a LinkedIn profile. Many companies are even asking for your LinkedIn URL as part of the application process. So, on today’s episode, we are going to cover my top tips about using LinkedIn.
Today’s episode is about the false conclusion effect. The false conclusion effect says that we tend to believe the world at large shares our beliefs and point of view more than they actually do. We tend to use our own perspective as a proxy for the likely perspective of others.
The false conclusion effect is pervasive in companies. Not because of any bad management or nefarious intentions, but because of good old fashion human nature. We are just naturally included to think that other think the way we do and if we don’t exercise some self-control, we can really miss important inputs into our process. Why is self control important here? Because it takes self control to set aside our perceptions in order to look at things from other perspectives.
A job search is a stressful time for people. Even if you have a job, it is stressful. If you don’t have a job and the bills are looming, there is another level of stress – a bit of urgency added to the mix. On today’s episode, we are going to talk about managing your mental state during a job search. These are practical tips about actions you should be taking, or skills you should be focusing on during your job search. Although a good dose of positive attitude or positive self-talk may also be necessary during this time, I’m going to let other podcasts give you those. I want to give you some actionable business skills that will help you though the process.
Let me start by saying that a job search is a time that requires a high level of emotional intelligence. We talk about emotional intelligence a lot on this podcast because I believe it is a fundamental factor in success. Emotional Intelligence is defined as: the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Its always important, but even more so during a job search.
First of all, you are under a lot of stress and stress will uncover any weakness you may have when it comes to the building blocks of emotional intelligence. Second, a job search can put you in a very vulnerable spot. If you’ve just been laid off or made redundant, you may also be dealing with feelings of betrayal or grief. If you lost your job for performance reasons, you are likely dealing with confidence issues. And, if you’ve made the decision to look for a new job while still employed, you may be dealing with stress that your current manager may find out, or feeling that you may being letting your current team down. You may also lose motivation to keep working for your current job. I know that I go through a stage of disengagement from my current job once I’ve decided it is time for me to move on.
So, for many different reasons, a job search is a time of high stress, which can be really challenging for even the most emotionally intelligent. Because of this, I think it is important to have a set of skills that you remind yourself about regularly during the time of a job search.
There are a lot of different ways that we look at personality types. The reason we have all of these different categories is because it helps us to understand ourselves and others. Why we behave the way we do. Why others behave in ways we can’t understand.
I’m an introvert, which means that I get my energy from being alone. I can’t imagine what it would be like to get energy from others, but because I understand the idea that there are other personality types, I can recognize an extrovert as an extrovert even though we have a fundamental difference in personality.
Different personality type indicators have different focus. Today, I’m going to introduce the Enneagram Types. I’ve also covered Myers Briggs if you want to listen to that episode as well. Its episode 17.
In this episode, we are only going to be able to cover the Enneagram at the highest level because there are 9 personality types and you can’t cover them all in a 10 minute podcast. Enneagram is primarily concerned with your instinctual motivators. Another way to say it is to talk about it in terms of habits. We all have an instinctual way we interact with the world based on our underlying motivators. Someone who is motivated by fear is going to react differently than someone who is motivated by shame.
Enneagram starts by lumping the 9 types into 3 triads, each of which is defined by its underlying motivator:
The Instinctive Triad. The 3 types in this category are driven by anger. They respond to life at the gut level and are typically very honest and direct. What sets the 3 types apart within the triad is how they manifest the anger.
- Type 8, the Challenger, externalizes it.
- Type 1, the Reformer internalizes it.
- Type 9, the Peacemaker, avoids it.
The Feeling Triad. This group of people are driven by feelings and instinctually motivated by shame. They develop habits that help them cope with their feelings of shame in different ways.
- Type 2, the Helper, externalizes the shame by focusing on the feelings of others.
- Type 3, the Performer, doesn’t recognize the feelings, which manifests itself as busyness.
- Type 4, the Individualist, concentrates the shame inwardly and uses their uniqueness to avoid shame.
The Thinking Triad. This group of people are driven by fear or anxiety. They relate to the world through their mind and plan carefully before acting.
- Type 5, the Investigator internalizes fear and anxiety by seeking to understand.
- Type 6, the Loyalist, externalizes their anxiety by looking for others who can help them feel more secure.
- Type 7, the Enthusiast, stays occupied at all times in order to distract themselves from their anxiety.
The reason you should become familiar with Enneagram types is because it helps you understand your overall patters and behaviors. If you understand that you are fundamentally driven by shame, it helps you understand why you make some of the decisions or take some of the actions, or react to others in the way you do.
It also helps you understand that not everyone has the same motivation as you. We all have a tendency to assume others react the same way we do. Logically, we know this isn’t true, but in the moment, as we work ourselves through the day and week, we fall into the more comfortable, or maybe more expedient mental approach that our way is the only way.
But, if you can recognize that your coworker, who has a talent for seeing potential problems and dealing with them before they get out of hand is a Type 6 – and is driven by their fear and anxiety, you can better understand that you and he have a different filter on life.
I’m a big believer that anything you can do to better understand yourself and others is worthwhile. You will be more successful at work the more self-aware you are. Getting to know the Enneagram types will help you identify your coworker’s motivations and filters. It helps you understand the unique way they relate to others, what their perceptions and preoccupations are, and what their values are and how they impact the way they relate to life.
As I said at the start, there is no way for me to cover each of the types in detail, but there are extensive resources that you can use to learn more. Here are the ones I covered in the episode:
Episode 17: Understanding Myers Briggs
Enneagram Institute
The Road Back to You Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile
Discovering Your Personality Type Don Riso & Russ Hudson
You are probably familiar with the saying “the glass is half full.” Just like people are either cat people or dog people, I think people are either glass half full or glass half empty people. One means you have a tendency toward seeing the positive and the other means you have a tendency toward seeing the negative.
Well, it turns out that goals are the same way. Goals can be classified as Promotion or Prevention.
Promotion goals are all about what you can achieve. They are about what you’d ideally like to accomplish and how you can maximize your gains. Promotion goals are the glass half full goals. “I’m going to finish writing that novel” is a promotion goal.
Prevention goals, on the other hand, are about safety or obligation. They are the things you feel you ought to do in order to minimize loss and avoid pain. Prevention goals are the glass half empty goals. “I really need to start looking for a job because I heard layoffs may be coming” is a prevention goal.
Understanding the type of goal is helpful because there are different strategies and motivators that you should use depending on which type of goal it is.
There is a concept called Expectancy Value Theory. It says that people are motivated to do something as a function of 1.) how likely they are to be successful (this is the expectancy part), and 2.) how much they think they will benefit (this is the value part).
For promotion goals, the Expectancy Value Theory is generally driven by how likely you think you will be to succeed. Because promotion goals are achievement or accomplishment driven, it makes sense that you are going to give more consideration to your chances of success. When you complete a promotion goal, you feel a rush of success. A promotion goal makes you smile from ear to ear.
For prevention goals, you are on the other end of the Expectancy Value spectrum. Because prevention goals are more about minimizing loss or avoiding pain, you focus a lot less on the expectancy part of the equation. How likely to are to succeed has less impact because the alternative – doing nothing and suffering the expected loss – is the motivation. Whereas promotion goals result in a feeling of accomplishment, prevention goals result in a feeling of relief.
So, take a look at the goals you are currently pursing and think about them with this new filter. Is there something different you might do to accomplish them now that you know which kind of goal they are?
If you want to dive deeper, listen to our episode on Making Sense of Your Goals
Time Mindset can have a profound impact on your productivity. Productive people don’t have more time than unproductive people. But, they do have a different mindset about it. If you want to see an increase in your productivity, one of the things you need to think about is your relationship with time.
How much time have you spent thinking about your relationship with time?
Do you approach it unconsciously, or do you know where you stand with it?
I think a lot of people are really unconsciously dealing with time.
The symptoms of someone who doesn’t consciously understand their relationship with time are things like getting to the end of your day and not getting the most important things done.
Or starting every conversation with “I’m so busy” or “sorry I couldn’t get you what I promised, I’ve just been so busy.”
Another common symptom is negative self talk about your productivity. Telling yourself you just aren’t accomplishing what you want to accomplish. Being down on yourself or – even more diabolical, making yourself a victim of time.
These are all symptoms that occur when you aren’t conscious of your relationship with time. And, the simple way to fix them is to become conscious of it. Once you become conscious of it, you will begin to see that you can become more productive because your mindset sets you up to be more productive.
Notice your mindset about time. Are you making decisions about how you spend your time or are you unconsciously letting your time get by you?
Do you feel good about your time mindset?
Do you have a mindset about time that serves to make you more productive, or is it limiting you to a life where you feel like there just isn’t enough time?
Become someone who takes responsibility for your time mindset.
Expand your understanding of this topic by listening to Words Matter.
Today, we are going to cover the topic of choosing the right communication style when communicating change. This is something that is a very simple concept, but companies get it wrong so often. If you learn this concept today and commit it to your memory, I promise it will pay off at some point in your career.
Let me start by giving a quick lesson on the change curve. This is the process we all go through when faced by change. Everybody goes through these steps every time. Some people go through the steps faster than others. Even the same person might go through the seps at a different pace for different changes. We did a series on each of these phases, so if you want to dive deeper into the phases, I encourage you to go back and listen to episodes 13-16.
Think about a major change that you’ve gone through in your past. When you became aware of the change, how did you feel? You may have felt betrayed or you may have been in denial. Your head was probably spinning with thoughts of ‘what does this mean?” and all of the different concerns you have about the change. Your mind is going 80 miles per hour – with lots of questions. You are in a bit of a fog best case, and you could be really emotional worst case.
Because of the state of mind you are in at the time you become aware of the change, the best communication style is an informative one. Just the facts. Keep it simple. With everything else going on in your mind, there isn’t room for a lot of additional information. And, in the event the change is really big, you don’t want to hear a lot of inspirational talk. It will feel insincere. So, at the start of a change curve, communication needs to be informative.
As you work through the Desire phase and into the Knowledge phase, you begin to move into what is called Identify Crisis. At this point, your head isn’t spinning about the change and you are starting to understand what your new world will look like, but there are still a lot of unknowns so you are still unsure of your ability to step into the change. During this identity crisis phase, the best communication style is supportive. Communication needs to be softer than just the facts. It needs to give a sense of support for the impact it is having on employees. It should reinforce that the change process is normal, everyone goes through it at their own pace, and that nobody is going to be left behind. It should also be supportive in the literal sense. Provide resources people need to gain knowledge about the change and clearly outline the process they should follow if they need more support.
Finally, as you move out of knowledge and into ability, you are starting to gain a new identity. You are searching for solutions about how you will operate in the new normal. At this point, communication should be inspirational. This is when you start to paint a picture of the new world and how much better it will be than the old one. This is the time to celebrate the change. Trying to communicate inspirationally when you first announce a change will fall on deaf ears because there are more immediate needs at that time. But, one everyone has gotten through their initial shock and been able to get a better picture in their mind about how their world is going to change, they will be ready for an inspirational message to help propel them forward with confidence.
You don’t have to be in a position of authority to have an authoritative personality type.
People with Authoritative personalities are generally:
- Confident
- Take Charge
- Direct
- Clear on their own opinion
- Know what they want
- Have a propensity for action
However, authoritative personalities come in different flavors. Understanding these variations can help you better understand how to work with someone more effectively.
Authoritative & Creative – they come up with a million great ideas and will inspire others. They have an aversion to routine. You will not be very successful trying to get them to follow a process.
Authoritative & Relationship oriented – they are highly attuned to their relationships. They are able to lead teams through change because they know how to collaborate, getting others onboard with the change.
Authoritative and Standards oriented – they set high objectives for themselves and expect every step to be met with high quality. They are going to give you the specific details of how they want things done.
Authoritative and Quiet - they have ambitious goals, but work more independently. They will let their teams work more independently. They are more methodical, and will not spend a lot of energy rallying others to get on board with their ideas.
If you want to be recognized as an employee who positively contributes to your organization, one of the things you need to understand about your company is the basic financial metrics that drive it. But, that is only one reason to familiarize yourself with the finances.
By understanding the financial metrics that drive your company, you will have better insight into the reason decisions get made the way they do and potentially even be better able to look into the future and anticipate change that may be coming.
To some extent a company’s culture is driven by the finances that underly the business. For example, does your company make its revenue by selling something that is relatively low priced to many, many people? Or, does your company sell something relatively high priced and rely on only a few sales per year?
In the first case, you have something like Walmart. Millions of small transactions per year to millions of different customers each year. Compare that to something like an architecture firm that specializes in building airports. High price tag, and I imagine only 1 or 2 customers per year even come available.
All of the underlying decisions, strategies, and processes for these two organizations stem from how they make their revenue. So, if you want to understand your company better, you need to understand where the revenue comes from.
This applies to the cost side of your business as well. What makes up the cost structure of your business? Do you have costs associated with raw materials? How volatile are the costs of those materials? Or, are the majority of the costs related to labor? For example, software companies and professional services organizations have very little costs outside of the people who work there. If you work for an accounting firm and revenue decreases by 25%, the only real way to get savings to offset the lost of revenue is by letting people go.
The last thing I want cover in this episode is margin. Margin is defined as revenue minus costs. You can think of it as profit.
Understanding the margin that your company achieves will also help you better understand the drivers of your business. There isn’t 1 answer about what a good margin is. For example, grocery stores operate on a 1-2% margin, and that is considered good. Professional Services organizations operate on a 30% (ish) percent margin.
By understanding the level of margin, you better understand the size of the tightrope your leadership team is walking when they make financial decisions.
Investigate your company’s financials. Get familiar with the drivers of your revenue and costs. Understand the landscape that makes up the financial health of your company. Understand how it impacts you. Understand how it impacts your leadership team and the decisions they are faced with.
If you’d like to get a guide to the questions we cover in the episode, sign up for our newsletter here.
Strategy is something that is traditionally left to the C-Suite or other executives. This is a podcast for those who are early in their career or are not interested in leadership positions, so you may think that strategy isn’t important for you to understand. But – you are the CEO of your career, so you do need to understand it. And, one of the things that you should think about is whether or not your company has a strategy that will make it viable in the long run.
What I want to do in this episode is give you another criterion to consider about whether the job you have or are looking at taking in the future is a good fit for you – it is called the inflection point.
The inflection point is a point in the future where the fundamentals of the business are going to change.
Fundamentals.
Meaning, everything the current business is built on becomes obsolete and a whole new set of rules apply. A good strategy will
- Keep an eye out fare enough in the future to see an inflection point coming
- Identify a strategy for embracing the change, and
- Time it correctly
You want to work for a company that gets this.
In addition, you, as an employee, should be able to recognize and accept change that may come if your company is in the middle of executing a strategy to change the fundamentals of the business. Prepare yourself for changes that may come by assessing:
- What does the change mean to you personally?
- What do you need to do to prepare yourself for the inflection point?
- Do you need o retool your skills?
- Do you need to look for a new job at a different company or in a different industry?
Stakeholder analysis is a good tool to have in your tool belt because it can be used to solve a lot of different problems. Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying your stakeholders and analyzing them to understand their unique position.
The value of this tool is that it walks you through the process of identifying your stakeholders and their positions in order to make informed decisions. It helps you open your eyes to the different actors in the play and forces you to think about each one as a separate, unique person.
Who are stakeholders?
For any given situation, stakeholders are anyone who has a vested interest, or a stake, in your process.
When you want to get something done, you need to have your stakeholders onboard. In order to do that, you need to understand who they are and how you can best influence them. To do that, you should understand:
- Their key characteristics
- Whether they are a supporter, champion, or detractor for you. This helps you understand their level of resistance, and you can tailor a resistance plan accordingly
- How they prefer to communicate so that you can develop a communication plan that will improve your ability to influence them (for more, listen to Episode 7: Influencing Others)
- The level of influence that stakeholders have to help you prioritize
If you’d like to get a free Stakeholder Analysis Map, you can sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll give you access to it, and all of our other tools.
Being successful in corporate America means being good at teamwork. You aren’t going to be able to work effectively without basic teamwork skills.
Teamwork is something that you never master, so today, we are going to cover 5 things you can do to improve teamwork.
Being Open
To new ideas, perspectives, people. When a team is working well, it is because of the openness of the team members to bring their ideas to the table without worrying about any negative consequences.
Transparency
Everyone on the team needs to be transparent. This is tricky because some people, by nature, are not comfortable with transparency.
Teams are transparent when they say what they mean, when they listen to what others have to say, and when they don’t gossip.
One Mission
Sometimes the mission gets lost because each department has their own objectives. But, every team in a company should be supporting the overall mission of the company. Great teams remember this.
Be Inclusive
Many companies fall into the trap that they go to the same people over-and-over. You should purposefully include people from adjacent departments to ensure you are getting different perspectives.
Accountability
Good teams have a culture of accountability. They build into their framework tools that help with accountability because they recognize that it isn’t everybody’s strength.
Getting ready to leave for a vacation, and coming back to work after vacation are usually very stressful. Sometimes you feel like you need a vacation after your vacation just to catch up. In this episode, we cover some tips for how to productively manage the time leading up to your vacation and the day you return from vacation.
The process starts 2 weeks before your schedule vacation:
- Add an out of office notification to your signature. This is going to alert people to the fact that you are going to be out. It will nudge them to take action on something that they might need before you leave.
- Review your calendar for the time you are away. Make a list of any deliverables that you need to prepare during you r absence
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Block time on your calendar over the next 2 weeks to prepare everything on your list. For example, if you have a meeting where you are responsible for preparing a presenting a slide, you would block time on your calendar to both prepare the slide and make arrangements for someone else to present the slide at the meeting.
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Block an Inservice Day, or half day for the day before you leave and the day your return. An inservice day is when you block your calendar as if you are out of the office, but you are actually working. It gives you the time and space you need to catch up because people think you are still out.
- If you have the type of job where someone will be covering for you while you are out of office, block time on the calendar for a meeting with them to manage the transition. You should block time for before you leave and when you return.
One week before you leave, you will start to:
- Say no to any new request that comes your way – don’t take on more work when you know you have a hard stop in advance of your vacation.
- Be extra diligent about your priorities. You are going to go into hyper-vigilant mode. If it isn’t absolutely necessary, it can wait.
Some other tips:
- Consider whether you should remove yourself from email distribution lists. This varies depending on your scenario, but if you are part of a high volume distro, removing yourself will keep your inbox from filling up with notifications during your vacation.
- Get yourself into the vacation mindset. It is important that you take time away from work in order to rejuvenate, renew, and refresh. Take your vacation. Don’t work. Your company will be able to operate without you for the time that you are gone.
At People Move Organizations, we believe that you will be more successful if you are self aware. Knowing your internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions is what makes you self aware, which makes you better at making decisions, interacting with others, and more productive.
Self Control is one aspect of self awareness which we will dive into in this episode.
Self Control = keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
People who are good at self control:
- Stay composed
- Positive
- Unflappable
- Think clearly
- Stay focused
Self control is invisible – it is the absence of drama.
There are tools that can help you keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check:
Give it perspective
Think about your situation in terms of who will die as a result. This really gives you perspective to realize that although you are currently feeling stressed, it isn’t – literally – the end of the world.
Recognize your personal filters
Something that may be devastating to you might be a great opportunity to someone else. Every situation can have multiple, legitimate responses. Your response may be legitimate for you, but remembering that it isn’t the same for everyone can help you stay composed.
Each week, we send out a free guide to the episode. If you’d like a copy, sign up for our newsletter.
Sometimes, when you aren’t being as productive as you want to be, it is hard to put your finger on the reason. Here are some tips that might help you identify what may be holding you back:
What should you not be doing?
Over time, we become progressively less productive because we let a bunch of things that have become unproductive take over our time. It was probably serving a purpose when you started doing it, but over time, it lost its value and you’ve just kept doing it because you’ve always done it.
Consider what you are doing that is no longer necessary and stop doing it.
Are you following your priorities?
What are the highest priorities in your life? We call this your North Star List. If you want to be productive, you need to ensure that you are only doing things that support your priorities. As a matter of fact, we’ve even done an episode just about this topic: The Foundation of Productivity is Priorities.
Mindset
Recognize that mindset can impact your productivity. Have you ever said this:
I can’t get everything done, there just isn’t enough time.
This is a mindset issue. When I catch myself saying this, I change my words to:
I don’t need to get everything done, just the next thing.
Take away the power that the thought has over you.
Become aware of the mindset that is impacting your productivity.
Productivity is a way of life – not a set of hacks.
You can be a productive member of society and not actually be very productive.
In this episode, we are going to focus on the type of productivity that, when you get to the end of your day you know that you worked on the most important things.
But, for those of you who are looking for a productivity hack, let me tell you mine: being crystal clear on my priorities.
When you know what your priorities are, you are more productive because you spend your time on things that support your priorities. You don’t spend your time on things that don’t support your priorities.
In addition to knowing your priorities, you also have to learn to prioritize your priorities. Sometimes, work is the most important priority. Sometimes, its family. The priorities are always changing, and you need to consciously think about which of your priorities are taking the spotlight.
North Start List episode
Status Quo Bias is the tendency to stick with the status quo even when presented with a better option involving change.
Inertia is real! We all fall victim to it. The lack of motivation to make a change because what you are doing is working fine is natural.
When there isn’t an issue with the way things are working today, you don’t even think about how it could work better.
It takes action to break the status quo. But, first, you must recognize the need to take action.
There are processes in every company or organization that are a victim of status quo bias.
“we’ve always done it that way”
In the agile development methodology, there is a concept called the ‘retrospective’, sometimes called lessons learned. It is a process that serves to look at the activities of the last several weeks and determine what worked well and what didn’t work well.
At it’s core, the concept is designed to challenge status quo bias.
The question is— within your process, what can be defined as a sprint?
How can you build in a process at the end of each sprint to challenge the status quo?
Ask yourself what worked and what didn't for each sprint. Then look for something that you can do differently to improve the process. At the next sprint, you’ll review again and find out if your change lead to improvement.
Usually an exclusive benefit for our patrons, we are sharing this behind the scenes view of a book review for The Worry Cure. If you'd like to learn more about becoming a patron of the podcast, and getting book reviews and other exclusive benefits, check out our patreon page.
Something I fundamentally believe is:
Positive Mindset + Effort = Achievement
Positive Mindset Only = Rosy Glasses
Mindset takes effort in order to make a difference in your life.
Another thing I believe: Mindset and Assumptions are cousins. Let me explain:
Assumptions are a set of beliefs or rules that have gone unsaid. These unacknowledged beliefs may be different than someone else’s or different than reality, which can lead you to take a wrong action.
Mindset is similar – you can make decisions and take actions everyday based on your mindset. An unexamined or unacknowledged mindset can drive you to take wrong actions.
Understanding your mindset is critical in order to recognize the actions you are taking. There are 2 types of mindset:
Fixed Mindset
When you believe you either ‘have it’ or you don’t. What you have is what you have, so no additional effort is required. This mindset is about the outcome.
Growth Mindset
When you believe there is always room to learn. That what you were born with is just a starting point. This mindset is about the experience.
We all have times when we get into a funk – something in our life isn’t where we want it to be – our job, our marriage, or community involvement. When the funk is about your job, we sometimes call it the Sunday Night Blues.
So, how do you get out of the funk? The goal is to become unstuck.
Step 1: Recognize that you are feeling stuck
Getting stuck usually happens little by little, and you don’t always recognize that you are feeling stuck.
Step 2: Focus on the objective of getting unstuck
Tell yourself that getting unstuck is possible. Say it out loud. It helps with your mindset.
Step 3: Figure out what is causing you to be stuck
You may need to dig deep. The reason may not be obvious at first.
Step 4: Take Action
Use your unconscious mind to help you solve the problem.
- How can I solve this problem?
- How have I seen other people solve this problem?
- What would success look like for me?
Don’t wait until you know the answer to start moving in the right direction.
We all have a long list of goals longer than the amount of time we have to be able to accomplish them. This can be overwhelming and even discouraging.
In this episode, we are going to cover 4 tips that can help you make sense of your goals.
Someday Maybe List
A list of all of the ideas that you have but that you can’t get to immediately.
- Keep one list for work and a separate one for the rest of your life. When you change jobs, the one for your work can just be tossed.
- At least once per year, review the list to remove anything that you’ve already accomplished or that isn’t relevant anymore. In addition, determine if there is anything on the Someday/Maybe List that should be moved to your current projects list.
Get Clear About Your Priorities
Create a North Start List. What are the areas of your life that you must fulfill?
- Family obligations
- Work obligations
- Community obligations
- Personal obligations
Every goal you undertake needs to tie back to your North Start List.
Review Episode 1: North Star List
Understand What Type of Goal it is
“Why” Goals: Goals where you need motivation to keep you moving toward your goal
- Longer term
- Future oriented
For example: I want to lose weight so that I have more energy to play with the grandkids.
“What” Goals: Goals that are more concrete, difficult, or complex
- Detail oriented
- Shorter in duration
- Happening in the near future
For example: I am going to eat 3 vegetables today.
Know When to Give Up
Finding the balance between persistence and knowing when to give up is not easy. Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself to help you determine if you’ve reached the point where it may make sense to give up on a goal:
- Is it a good use of your time? Given the limited amount of we all have, is this something that you should continue to invest your time in?
- Is it costing you too much? Money, relationships, or some other opportunity cost. When you got into this goal, did you realize how much it would cost you? If you had know, would you have made the same decision to pursue the goal?
Words matter. The language you use matters. It impacts your mindset. It gives you a definition of yourself that can become limiting.
Have you ever noticed the different ways that waiters introduce themselves to you?
“I’m Rachel, and I’ll be your server tonight.”
“I’m Rachel, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”
A subtle difference, but one communicates that my responsibility is to serve you your food and the other communicates that my responsibility is to take care of you – completely.
Have you ever said, or heard someone say ‘I’m bad at math”? What does that tell you? Do they know that it takes 4 quarters to make a dollar? Do they know calculus? For most of us, knowing calculus isn’t important or necessary for our daily lives. So -if you don’t need to know calculus and you don’t know calculus, then why would you say you are bad at math?
Become aware of the words you use. How do they impact your mindset? What do they communicate to others about you? Are they serving you well?
We all multi-task. It is a vital part of the world we live in. What we need to become better at is learning how to determine when the multi-tasking that we are doing has become unproductive.
Productive multi-tasking is when the completion of two competing tasks don’t require your focus. For example, listening to a podcast while working out. You can do both without detriment to either. Generally, you do not need to focus on the treadmill in order to walk on it. That leaves your focus on the content of the podcast.
Unproductive multi-tasking is when the completion of two different tasks at the same time results in one or both of the tasks suffering. Answering email while on a conference call is an example. When you are focused on answering email, you aren’t listening to the conference call. Both things – reading and listening – require focus.
Examine your multitasking habits to determine which ones are not serving you well.
Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
In business, it is more standard to rely on analysis than intuition.
Intuition is a skill that can be built. You can learn to adjust your behavior to a set of cues in a manner that is more successful. As a matter of fact, there is even a term for it: Recognition Primed Decision.
A situation generates clues. You recognize a pattern in those clues and activate action scripts that affect the situation.
In order to build your intuition at work, you can improve your intuition by learning this process:
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Identify the decisions that are part of your job.
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What makes those decisions difficult
- What are common errors
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How does someone with more experience than you make decisions
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Practice making decisions in context
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Think back to a situation you were in—what were the cues you picked up on and what did you miss?
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Practice with a co-worker who was in the situation with you to see what they picked up on that you didn’t
- Analyze your decision steps to identify what you would do differently next time
There are several types of presentations, and the best practices for each type are different, so it is important to understand the type of presentation you are creating. In this episode, we are going to specifically focus on how to create of a presentation for a meeting.
At some point in every career, we reach a point where we are good at what we do, and it doesn’t really challenge us anymore. And, at different points in your career, you may be good at certain things and still learning others.
A lot of people fall into the trap of not actively managing this process. It is important to be conscientious of where you have mastered your role and where you still have room to grow.
Understanding where you are in your overall career growth will help you plan a way forward. You can start by understanding what Todd Henry calls the aspiration gap.
Aspiration Gap: The difference between the work that you want to create and the work that you are capable of creating at this moment.
Look for an area where, if you learned a new skill, you could take your career to the next level. This will help you focus in on objectives that make sense for your career at your particular point in your career.
By thinking about where your skills, interests, and strengths can be improved to take your career to the next level, you are giving your career its own unique flavor. Nobody else is going to do your job exactly the same way you do.
Take stock of your current job and where you want to be. What can you do to move yourself toward your goal?
Our worksheet for this week contains a list of questions to help you think through this. If you’d like to receive, it, sign up for our newsletter.
It is a natural cycle to want to improve yourself. The question is—when do you reach the point where you’ve stopped learning and you need to become a freshman again?
When you are an expert—you don’t get a day off.
When you are a freshman:
- You can ask questions that an expert wouldn’t ask for fear of looking stupid
- You can take risks that would look like career suicide for an expert
- You can try things and not worry about failure— because for a freshman, it is about learning
- Use the phrase “I’m no expert here...”
- Use the phrase “Let’s try this and see if it works...”
For your current job or area of expertise:
How can you look at it with a fresh set of eyes?
What experiment can you do to see if it improves your job?
Outside of your current job:
What is something you don’t know much about that you could learn more about?
We’ve all had a failure at work. It is inevitable, so the most productive thing you can do is to have a set of tools to draw from when you are faced with the fall-out, which we will outline here:
Look at the failure as a learning opportunity
Although it doesn’t take the failure away, if you can reframe it in your mind, you can more easily move past it.
What did you learn from this failure that you can benefit from in the future?
Look at what behaviors DID succeed
Identifying what behaviors worked within the failure can help point you to areas of strength.
Understanding the areas where you are strong will help reinforce those behaviors in the future.
Don’t feel like you have to be good at everything
Failure may be an indication that you need to move on to something else. Is this area something you really need to succeed at?
Put the failure into perspective
Think about failures from the past. With hindsight, are they as bad as you thought they were at the time?
Rank the failure from 0 to 100 where 100 is nuclear holocaust.
Remember that other people are caught up in their own lives
Worrying about what others think about your failure is usually a waste of time because other people probably don’t even notice what you’ve done.
Those that do are likely close to you. In that case, project the failure onto them. What you your reaction be if they had been the one who failed?
Take Action
What can you do to create a positive outcome?
Recognizing the type of worrying you are doing can help you get out of the worry loop by understanding what steps you can take. In this episode, we cover some common types of worry and how you can tackle them:
Mind Reading
When you find yourself worried about what someone else is thinking, you are mind reading. To fight this worry, you need to find the thing that you can control.
For example, you think Henry doesn’t like you. You don’t know this for sure because you can’t read Henry’s mind. So, what can you do? You can ask Henry if he doesn’t like you. If you aren’t willing to do that, you can decide that there is nothing you can do to change Henry’s mind and move on with your life.
Focus on what you can control.
Fortune Telling
When you are worried about what the future might bring, you are fortune telling. There is no way that you can know what the future might bring because you aren’t a fortune teller.
For example, you might worry that your company is going to have layoffs and you are going to lose your job and end up homeless.
Not only do we worry about the future, we usually expect the future to bring the worst possible outcome.
Cognitive Distortion— people have a tendency to worry about a future that is bleak.
Ask yourself how probable the outcome is. Think about the chain of events that would have to be true for the outcome to occur. In our example, first, your company would have to have layoffs. Next, you would have to be on the list of people who are being let go. That means that you have to either be a poor performer, or in a role that is no longer necessary. Then, you’d have to be unable to get another job. And you’d have to run out of money. And you’d have to have nobody else to go to. And, and, and.
Once you see that the probability is a tiny fraction, you can stop worrying about it.
The Shoulds
Worry about all of the things that you should have done. This means that you aren’t accepting the present as it currently is.
For example, maybe you catch yourself worrying that you should have been promoted by now.
Recognize reality as the place you have to start from. Then, determine what changes you need to make to get where you want to be.
What action can you take to move yourself toward promotion?
What If
Worrying about ‘What If’ scenarios that will never have a satisfactory answer.
What if I have cancer? You can get tested and still not trust the results.
Identify the best possible, most likely, and worst possible outcomes. Then answer each one. What would be the next steps for each?
For more types of worry, sign up for our newsletter.
Also, learn about productive worry in this episode of People Move Organizations.
Being out of balance causes a situation where you are over-emphasizing the pros and cons of one behavior and under-emphasizing the pros and cons of another behavior.
For example:
Analytical vs. Intuitive
If you are too reliant on analysis to make decision, you can get into a state of paralysis where you don’t make decisions or move forward because you will always want more data before making a decision.
If you are too reliant on your gut to make decisions, you might make quick decisions without any facts and find that you fail more often than necessary.
Being analytical isn’t bad and being intuitive isn’t bad—as long as you have balance. The important thing is to understand what your tendency is and to learn techniques to help you balance your tendency. If you are over-analytical, learn to recognize when you’ve gotten to a point of paralysis and force yourself to make a decision. If you tend to go with your gut, set some parameters about a minimum amount of analysis that you’ll accept for yourself before making a decision.
In this episode, we'll explore what it means to find balance in many different areas of your personality, and how it can help you be more successful in your career.
Goals are a unique combination of:
Tactics—what do I need to do to accomplish this goal?
Aspiration— what can I accomplish if I put my mind to it?
Faith— I believe that I can accomplish this goal.
Commitment - I’m going to dedicate part of my resources to making this goal happen.
Setting goals require an ability to balance the need to be realistic while also reaching for something you aren’t quite sure how to get to – something that isn’t within your current comfort zone.
Then, once you’ve set that goal – you need to stop focusing on it. Focusing on the goal – on the end state will not propel you from here to there. Instead, you need to start to identify the steps that you are going to take to get you there. What is the next step you can take to move you toward your goal?
There are also some tools that you can use to help you keep on track:
1% - the concept of 1% is that you will eventually achieve your goal by making 1% progress each week. If you goal seems overwhelming, remember the 1%
Tell somebody—if you tell somebody about your goal, you are going to feel more accountable for following through.
Reward yourself along the way—the goal is the big prize, but each accomplishment along the way should be celebrated in some way.
Collaboration: To work with others toward a shared goal.
Every one of us is reliant on others in order to get our jobs done. That means that collaboration is a core skill that we must develop in order to be successful.
So, what are the core skills you need in order to be a better collaborator?
Build relationships before you need them
When you need to collaborate with someone, you will be more successful if you already have an established relationship with them. To do this, you need to ensure that you:
- Consistently nurture your relationships. Build a practice of taking action on building relationships every day.
- Look for opportunities to expand your relationships. Who can you meet that you might need to work with in the future.
- Build time into each day to get up out of your chair and go talk with someone else. If you work remotely, then you’ll need to get creative—schedule virtual coffee breaks with others.
Balance the task with the relationship
By definition, you are working with someone else to accomplish a goal or task. So, it is easy to get so focused on the task that you forget about the relationship. Use these tips to stay in balance:
- When tensions get high, remember that everyone on the team is doing their best and trying to achieve what they
- Are there competing objectives that are driving the tension? Each person you are collaborating with has their own underlying objectives.
- Look one level up—what is the overarching goal that everyone on the team is trying to achieve. What is the higher purpose of the objective?
Collaborate just for the sake of Collaboration
There are a lot of things that you can do by yourself. But, just because you can, doesn’t mean that you have to do it alone. Create an opportunity to work with someone else so that you can build that relationships. An easy way to do this is to ask someone to ‘poke holes’ in your plan.
The premise of this episode is that we are all interviewing for our job every day. The problem is that most of us don’t think about that after we get through the honeymoon period. We start off a new job and we are on our best behavior, but over time, we get comfortable in our role and don’t give much thought to the fact that every day counts.
My philosophy is that every day is an interview. This may sound like a pessimistic viewpoint, but it isn’t. I’m not coming at it from a victim’s point of view. I’m coming at it from the take-your-fate-into-your-own-hands point of view. I’m doing what is within my control to ensure that, if I lose my job, I have set myself up to be as successful as possible finding the next job.
My philosophy is made up of 4 parts:
Interviewing for my current job – adding value and establishing relationships across my company so that, when management is deciding about which people to cut, my name shows up at the bottom of the list.
Interviewing for my next job – Every person that you work with at your current job is likely to either move to a new job at another company or move to a new job within your company at some point. You want to make the kind of impression on them that, when they do make the move, they recommend you. That kind of impression happens day-by-day, week-by-week.
Keep your resume up to date – Again, if you lose your job unexpectedly, you are probably not going to be in the best frame of mind. Putting together a resume in that frame of mind is not ideal. It is also difficult to remember all of the things that you’ve accomplished that should be reflected on your resume when you haven’t updated it in a long time. Keep your resume up to date so that it is ready for you as soon as you need it.
For resources about how to do this effectively, check out these 2 episodes:
Episode 9 – Preparing for Your Annual Review
Episode 2 – Time Bound Activities
Network every day – Most jobs are found through acquaintances. By staying active with your network, you will be top of mind when someone knows about a job that needs to be filled, and they think you might be a good fit. If you get laid off unexpectedly, you don’t want to spend time warming up your network. Stay active on linked in. Make a practice of reaching out to people within your network regularly. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just say hi. You just want to remind the person that you are part of their network.
Learning to recognize unproductive worry will help you eliminate stress that you are manufacturing for reasons you can’t control.
When you find yourself worried about something, ask yourself:
- Are you worrying about something that doesn’t have an answer?
- Are you making up a chain of events?
- Are you looking for the perfect outcome?
- Do you feel like you overlooked something?
- Are you trying to control everything?
In this episode, we talk about how to identify unproductive worry and turn it into productive worry by taking a few simple steps.
Great Customer Experience is something that a lot of companies aspire to, but not a lot of companies achieve. And, as we know, it is the people within the company that create the experience for their customers, so you have a direct impact on the success of your company.
There is a subtle difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience, but it is an important one. In this episode, we look at the difference and look at a recent experience I had with a company. I called Customer Service to get a piece of equipment returned, but it was the Customer Experience that left an impression with me.
Have you ever had a bad day, where it seemed like each little thing that happened pushed you further and further toward the edge of the cliff and then eventually – BAM – you were over the edge?
Its happened to all of us. But, what I’ve noticed is that some people reach that edge much more quickly than others. Some people are able to recover much more quickly than others. Why is that?
I believe that it partially has to do with the amount of reserve the person has. Here is a simple example:
You have $32 to your name. When the car all of a sudden stops starting and you find out it will cost $500 to fix it, that is a lot of stress. You had no reserve – in this case, of money – to be able to handle the stress.
If, instead, you had $,1000 in the bank and you had the same issue – it may still be stressful, but it doesn’t send you over the edge. You had a bigger reserve, which means that your better able to deal with the stress of the event as well as recover from it.
The idea of reserve doesn’t just apply to money. You also need a reserve of:
- Time
- Space
- Relationships
One of the most important ways you can influence others is by building rapport with them. And, the way you build rapport is to understand the lens that they see the world through. The more you know about how people approach their world, the better able you are to reach them.
And, this starts with understanding your own lens. One of the ways you can do this is to understand your personality traits. There are several personality traits assessments available – all of them have their own approach, but all of them have value in helping you understand the differences between people.
In this episode, we dive into one of the oldest personality trait assessments, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.
This is the final episode in our series on the 5 components of change. One of the things that we’ve tried to emphasize is that you are responsible for your own adoption of the change. We continue that theme in this episode – forming a new habit and making the change stick as part of your everyday routine are the final components of change.
Anytime we encounter a change, it knocks us off our routine, which means that we are likely to take a hit to our productivity. Your responsibility is to recognize that you will likely take a productivity hit, and make whatever adjustments are necessary to accommodate the change.
It may be a mental adjustment—giving yourself permission to be frustrated, but knowing that it will eventually pass as the change becomes your new routine.
It may also be a physical adjustment—recognizing that something is going to take more time than it used to because you are having to learn a new process or routine, and building in extra time to get things done.
You also have responsibility to go after answers to questions that come up that weren’t addressed as part of the training.
By taking an active role in the change, you are ensuring your success.
Knowledge is the 3rd component of change, and it is what most people think of when they think of change management - giving the people who need to make a change the information necessary to make the change. It typically takes the form of training.
Your responsibility in this component of change is to make sure you are giving it the attention it deserves. If training is provided, you need to take responsibility to attend it and pay attention. This isn’t always easy because we are all busy. But, your role is to make sure you make the time necessary to get the knowledge you need in order to adopt the change. Without this knowledge, you can’t be successful.
Every person has their own desire to accept any given change. This means that a single change communicated to a group of people will automatically have different responses by each person in the group. Some will adopt it easily, some will resist. The important thing to remember is that the desire to adopt the change may or may not have anything to do with the change itself.
Your desire to accept a change is within your control. It is your responsibility to get your desire to adopt the change from wherever you are to acceptance. That means you’ve got to put in the work to get yourself there. You’ve got to figure out why you are resistant.
If you need more answers, go get them.
If you need training, find out when the training will be held.
And, if you can’t get yourself to the point where you accept the change, then figure out what the next step needs to be. In extreme examples, it might mean moving on.
Free Resource: 4 things you can do to improve your acceptance of change
We are all impacted by change. Some of them we accept easily, others, not-so-much. But, even if it isn’t a change you are excited about, you can make the whole process better for yourself by understanding the components of change and coming up with a process for dealing with change that works well for you. I believe that one of the most overlooked components of change is the fact that it is very personal.
Over the course of 4 episodes, we are going to dive into the components of change, and in this episode, we start where is all begins, Awareness.
One of the most important skills you can develop is your ability to influence people. And, influencing people is tricky, because your natural tendency is to think that it is within your control. But, that isn’t the case. The decisions they make about you are theirs, not yours.
For example, if I say that I own a Prius, what conclusions do you draw about me?
You might think that I’m a tree hugging hippie and that I must be bleeping vegetarian.
Or, you might think that I’m an environmental activist, living in a way that minimizes my impact on the environment, living the ideals that we should all strive for.
But, in either case, that is your conclusion, not mine. You have no idea why I drive a Prius. You don’t know anything about what motivated me to make that decision.
So, when you and I interact, how you see me – as a tree hugging hippie or as an environmental champion will impact the interaction.
This episode examines the filters that we bring to our interactions with others and how we can understand them in order to improve our relationships.
Each of us has a set of processes that we follow every day in order to accomplish our job. The longer you are in your job, the more proficient you get at each process. But, you can be the most proficient person at the process, and it could still be a problem.
Why?
Each process is a part of a bigger system. No matter how efficient each process is, if it doesn't work well within the system that it is a part of, there could still be problems.
You are more valuable to your company if you can look at the system as a whole rather than just your process within the system.
Systems are typically:
- Cross functional (cross departmental)
- Made up of many processes
- Spanning many different disciplines
The best way for you to improve your understanding of a system is to look at a process that you are a part of and then look backward to determine the processes that impact you and look forward to determine the processes that you impact.
Time blocking is a time management method where you put blocks of time on your calendar in order to make sure you can get things done. It seems pretty obvious and straight forward, yet most people don’t do it. We let the urgent, non-important things get in the way of the non-urgent, important things.
The process is simple: when you have something you need to get done by a certain deadline, back up from the deadline, and block time on your calendar to work on it. If you think it is going to take 8 hours to complete, block 8 hours of time on your calendar. It doesn’t have to be one 8 hour block. It could be eight 1 hour blocks, but the key is to make sure you’ve blocked enough time in advance of your deadline to get it done.
Then, you’ve got to honor the blocked time. You can’t snooze or ignore it and spend your time replying to emails. You’ve blocked the time for something that is important, so take care of the important item you have planned, and let the non-urgent stuff wait until later.
Annual Reviews are universally dreaded. There are some good reasons for that, but one of the areas that you can really impact is to reduce the amount of time it takes for you to write your self-review. Our process documents your accomplishments each month so that at the end of the year, you’ve already got a list of everything you accomplished. No need to try and remember back to what you did last February.
Step 1: Put time on your calendar for the end of each month to do the review. By blocking out the time, you’ll 1) have a monthly reminder to document what you did that month and 2) already have the time allocated to getting it done.
Step 2: Document your accomplishments each month. Don’t worry about if they are significant or not – you can determine that at the end of the year.
Step 3: At the end of the year, review all of the accomplishments you documented and determine the best way to summarize them in your review.
- Many of the accomplishments will become examples that support a specific objective
- Some of the accomplishments will not be included in the review at all
- Some of the accomplishments will be an objective of their own
- Some of the accomplishments will be basic expectations – your ‘day job’ and may not get called out in an annual review, but it is important that you list them since you will want to be able to show your manager that you met baseline expectations.
We all love to hate change. But, I believe that change gets a bad wrap because you actually accept a lot of change with absolutely no drama. But, you don’t remember those situations because they weren’t really painful. So, you don’t give yourself credit for accepting all of those changes. When there is a change you struggle with, you remember it. Over time, you forget the changes you accepted easily and remember the changes you didn’t and come to the conclusion that you aren’t good with change.
We have a special offer for anyone who becomes a Patron of People Move Organizations before the end of the day on December 31 2019.
Influencing others is one of the most important thing you’ll need to do over the course of your career. When you need to convince others to buy-in to your idea, you’re going to need to influence them in a way that they are receptive to. You’ll need to tailor the way you present your idea to each person in a manner that they are likely to hear it.
I’m not suggesting you lie about anything. I’m suggesting that, everyone has different personality traits that drive their preferences. Some people are task oriented and others people oriented. Some people are analytical, and others go with their instincts. Your job is to understand their preferences and tailor your message to those preferences. You are providing the same information, just in a format that the other person is more likely to accept.
This is the 6th and final episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.
Do you let email drag you through your day? If you start your day by opening email, then the answer is likely YES! Letting email drag you through your day means that you are prioritizing those emails over all your other work. Everything on your to-do list. Everything on your project list. Everything on your someday maybe list. Is email that important? Unless your job description is to reply to emails (maybe you are a support person and tickets come in through email), then the answer is NO. You have made the choice to make email a priority. I know it sounds harsh, but that’s my job here – to be honest with you.
In order to be as productive as you can be, you need to approach email as you would any other input into your to do list. Set aside time each day to go through your email and process it. By process it, I mean, give it a category and take the appropriate action based on your system. As a reminder, the categories are:
- It can be dealt with quickly
- It will take time or multiple steps
- It can be delegated
- It is not right for now – ‘someday/maybe’
- It is reference material
If it can be dealt with quickly – then deal with it and move on. If it will take time – how do you feed that into your project list? You need to think of email as another input that can be scheduled into your productivity system rather than something that happens to you.
If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.
This is the 5th episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.
We’ve done all the groundwork and now we are ready to build a productivity system that will work for you. We know that productivity isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. You need a system that fits with your lifestyle, and we are ready to pull it all together this week. You’ve got all of the building blocks:
Your North Start List - to help you keep your priorities front and center
Your Time Bound Activities – to help you be in the right place at the right time, prepared
Your Categorized To Do List – so that you know what type of task you are dealing with
What do you have to do this week (time bound)? What do you need to do this week to stay in alignment with your North Star list? How are you going to deal with the items that can be dealt with quickly? Where will you track those items that are going to take time? What kind of a system do you need to track reference materials. What can you delegate? How will you track your Someday/Maybe list? You are going to spend time this week answering all of these questions.
If you’d like a free copy of my system, I’d love to share it with you.
This is the 4th episode in a series on productivity. Go to episode 1.
One of the things that all human beings have in common is that we all have a To Do List. We can let it overwhelm us, or we can take the reigns and manage it ourselves. An easy mistake people make is to confuse non-important tasks with important tasks. This is something that naturally happens. Day-to-day things come up, and at the moment, they feel important and then before we know it, we’ve gotten to the end of the week and we realize that we didn’t get the things done that needed to be done. We’ve let what is in front of us direct us.
That is why we are creating a system that allows you to manage the day-to-day while also keeping an eye on your most important priorities. When you have a system, you are able to confidently say NO to the day-to-day attention grabbers knowing that you would otherwise be addressing them to the detriment of your highest priorities.
Now that you have your To Do List, it is time to categorize them. By categorizing them, you will be able to come up with a system for addressing each category. You’ll find the basis of this concept in David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.
The categories are:
- It can be dealt with quickly
- It will take time or multiple steps
- It can be delegated
- It is not right for now – ‘someday/maybe’
- It is reference material
If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.
This is the 3rd episode in a series on productivity. If you haven't listened to episodes 1 & 2, you should start there.
We are taking the process of creating a productivity system step-by-step in this 6 part series. The step that we cover in today’s episode is to get a full inventory of your To Do List put together in one place. It is a little bit overwhelming because you’ve probably got a list of 100 things you need to get done if you really think about it. But, in order to create a system that works for you, that you can really trust, you need to know what all of the items are.
Your To-Do List changes every day. So, creating this list isn’t a 1-time deal. Once you’ve got the list created, you will need to keep adding to it while we spend time over the next few weeks to create your system.
Set aside an hour, find a quiet place, turn off your phone, and for heaven’s sake, be somewhere that you can’t access the internet. Get out a piece of paper and start writing down your To Do List.
If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.
Have you ever been late to an appointment because you couldn’t leave the office in time? Or, have you ever been unprepared for a meeting because it crept up on you and was here before you knew it?
In part 2 of our series on Productivity, we are going to cover a system for managing timebound activities. These are activities that have to happen at a specific time and date, on a recurring schedule, or by a specific deadline. Creating a system that will ensure you handle these activities will make you more productive, and more importantly, lower you stress.
If you’d like a workbook that will walk you through this process step-by-step, sign up for our newsletter here.
Most people feel like they aren't as productive as they could be, and struggle to find the reason. I believe that most people haven't found a system that works for them. Productivity isn't learning how to use your time efficiently, or using the latest email hack, it is about knowing your priorities, knowing how you prefer to work, and creating a system that brings it all together to ensure you have a system that you trust. This is a 5 part series where I will coach you through the process of creating your own system. One based on your personal situation, priorities, and work style. Sure, I could just give you my system (and I will at the end of the series), but my system won't work for you. Why? Because we are two different people, with two different lives. Surprising, huh?
For part 1 of the series, we are going to define your North Star - what are the priorities that should be guiding what you spend your time on. And then, we will identify all of the inputs that we are going to need to take into account as we build your own personal productivity system.