Clarity of Purpose

Anna Wintour: “People respond well to people who are sure of what they want.”

We somehow think that a clear purpose will come to us from above, as the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, or as Buddha achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi  tree.  Some people are lucky enough to know early on their where their talents and interests lie.  Anna Wintour reckoned she was just 15 when her career in fashion was fixed[1].    For the rest of us, being clear about our purpose is hard work. 

There is no escaping the fact that a clear vision is essential to the success of any organisation, and essential to the success of those within the organisation.  

If being clear about your purpose was easy, though, everyone would be highly focused on their specific goals.  Sadly, that’s not the case for one very simple reason: being clear about your purpose means making a choice.  By choosing one path you close off others.  For many people that is very difficult; the grass always looks greener someplace else, particularly when things don’t turn out as you planned.  So our attention wanders to something we think might be more profitable, more interesting, or just plain different from the problems we are facing.  However, that is exactly why clarity of purpose is so powerful; choosing forces you to focus your time, resources, and energy on one thing.  And doing one thing vastly improve your chances of success.  The old saying that the hunter who cases two rabbits catches neither one is as true in business as it is in the woods.  

When we are sure we are doing the right thing, we can sink ourselves fully into the activity.  Free from distractions, we become absorbed in our work.  Disturbances that would normally cause annoyance are ignored as we focus on the job.   Concentration and effectiveness are at their highest when we have absolute clarity about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

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[1] When Anna Wintour was just 21 years old she told her co-workers that she wanted to be Editor of Vogue.  She achieved her ambition in 1988 and 24 years later she is still Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour.

Be Sure of What you Want

Driven, ambitious and competitive; this is hardly the description you would expect of someone born into a wealthy family.  But it might be more understandable when you know the person’s father.  Charles Wintour was editor of the London Evening Standard following a decorated military career.  His daughter Anna obviously inherited his coolness under fire.

Anna Wintour is, of course, the legendary editor-in-chief of American Vogue who was savagely depicted in The Devil Wears Prada.  Ms Wintour is characteristically unruffled by such things.  She has been editor of Vogue since 1988 and has a loyal following from friends and staff.    She is unrepentant about her management style, saying[1] “people respond well to people who are sure of what they want”.  Her skill of course is both knowing what she wants, and being mostly right.   Her track record is impressive and Vogue continues to be an icon for all that is desirable in fashion and lifestyle.  It has made and broken many promising careers.

Being sure of what you want sounds simple enough, but reaching the point of clarity and being able to communicate it clearly isn’t always easy.  Without that clarity, however, decision making becomes laboured and people confused.  Your decisions may or may not be popular, as is the case with Ms Wintour, but at least people know where they stand.

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[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-5013905.html?pageNum=3&tag=contentMain;contentBody

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Most people have dreams, ideas and ambitions that they hope they will achieve one day.  I’m no exception and I doubt you are either.

The only trouble with dreams is that it’s a little tricky turning them in reality.  Our ambitious dreams often get trodden on by the little sceptic at the back of our minds who tells us we can't do whatever it is.  And too often we listen to the sceptic in us, instead of the dreamer.

Randy Pausch, who was  Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, USA until he died in 2008, once wrote “Get tenure” on his to do list.  He laughed about it and said it was probably naive to write such a big thing on a To Do list.  He said should have broken it down into smaller chunks.  Maybe he was right, but he did become a Professor at Carnegie Mellon and did turn his dream into a reality.  His book “The Last Lecture” talks a lot about achieving dreams and is well worth a read.

There is a nugget of an idea here, though.  If we were to put our dreams onto our To Do lists, we might start doing more to achieve them.  We might start breaking them down into smaller tasks, and get on and do something about them.  Because unless we start doing something, we will definitely NOT achieve our dreams - that much is certain.

Just about every time management course I’ve ever been on, and I’ve attended a few, has always asked the same question.  What did you do today to achieve your most important goals?  What have you done this week, or this month?  Sadly, many people admit they haven’t done anything in a long time.  Many people admit they forget, for long periods of time, about their dreams and ambitions.

It’s worth more than a passing thought as we jot down what we intend to do today.

4 pointers to make better decisions

Good decision making is crucial for a happy life and building successful businesses. So how do we guard against poor decisions? Whilst some bad decisions are just annoying, others can have truly dreadful consequences. So why, when often others can see a mistake is being made, do people sometimes bash on so determinedly?

The answers make uncomfortable reading. Uncomfortable because I recognise them in my decision making, and I bet you will recognise them too. Just knowing this list, however, helps us make better decisions. When we recognise them, we can double-check ourselves.

1. Intuition. Generally, we have a great belief in something we call gut feel or having a “nose” for something. But good decisions are rarely, if ever, made on intuition. Good decisions are based on evidence and data, in many different forms.
2. Emotion. We get overly engaged with our decisions. Somehow if someone is challenging our decision we thinking they are also challenging us as a person, our judgement and our very worth. And isn’t it just true that the more emotionally involved we are, the more certain we are that we are making an objective decision? Emotion is the second sign of danger when it comes to good decision making.
3. Attachment. Attachment is when we care more for people or things more than we care about whether a decision is right or wrong. We rationalise why we are right, knowing in our hearts that we are really attached to something that we may not want to even articulate.
4. Self-interest. Making a decision based on what’s in it for us. More money, more power, more kudos as a leader. Bigger, better, more beautiful. More, more, more. There are too many examples of where greed and self-interest have led to disastrous decisions. Self-interest does nothing for clear headed decisions.

All four traits lead us into subjective decision making, rather than objective decision making.

Of course that’s not to say that buying the pretty, but dilapidated old cottage, isn’t the right decision for example. But our objectivity should at least enable us to realistically budget for renovations instead of potentially making an expensive mistake.

How Many Benchmarks in your Day?

Benchmarking might appear to be a pretty academic concept, yet it’s amazing how much we use it at work and at home.

Are you happy with what you are paid? Having a rough idea of the national average or how much people earn in our line of business makes a difference: so much of a difference that this benchmark affects how happy we are with our work.

What time do you set your alarm for in the morning? Knowing that you will function well on 8 hours sleep affects your attitude and demeanour the following day. A daily benchmark we use without even thinking about it.

How many hours a day do your colleagues work? Having a rough idea also affects how satisfied you are with the number of hours you have to put in to get your work done. Benchmarks are everywhere, even though they don’t have that label.

I was looking up how many telephone calls professional telesales people make a day. 100 calls a day gets bandied about on forums that discuss this sort of thing. 100 calls a day! Wow! That’s a huge number. Well it might seem that way to me, but to some it’s a normal day in the office, and they fit in other work besides.

Benchmarking is important because it gives us an idea of what’s possible, what’s exceptional, and what’s sub-optimal. When managing a business, that’s hugely important.

Being able to measure and benchmark people’s capabilities and achievements enables everyone to reach for their best. And that’s when people are at their happiest – when they are striving for something that’s worthwhile, difficult but achievable.

Benchmarking is also a way to solve problems. Once you can measure the current position, and compare that to some sort of benchmark, you can start to figure how big or small a problem you have. And even where you might look to start solving it.

So keep a look out for where you are, and are not, guided by benchmarks. Some of them might surprise you.

Working through consensus

Collaboration is very much on my mind at the moment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that a new book caught my eye. "Smart Swarm" by Peter Miller suggests that the business world can learn from the behaviour of bees, ants and other animals. These groups communicate and make decisions by consensus, rather than follow-the-leader.

It isn’t the only book of its kind: Wikinomics by Don Tapscott considers mass collaboration across the internet.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was introduced to the concept of crowd sourcing – a concept which has appeared on my radar several times since – but was previously unknown to me.

All of these ideas highlight what we already know – that we work better together than we do alone.

The idea isn’t without its detractors: some believe that intelligent, trained specialists will always make better decisions than a large, generalist group. That may well be true, but there appears to be an ever increasing number of examples, from an increasing number of authors, suggesting that overall groups fare better than individuals at making good decisions.

All of which has big implications for the workplace. Wikis, discussion forums, team collaboration software are ways to facilitate communication, discussion and better work. Twitter is the latest in a long line of innovative ways of digitally getting people together. Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn also spring to mind.

Of course great work doesn’t have to be the product of a sizeable group, evidence suggests that many successful endeavours are built on partnerships. Crick and Watson, of DNA fame, are a good example. Bill Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard are another famous duo. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I could go on, but you get the idea.

All of which flies in the face of the traditional CEO as leader and saviour of an organisation.

Are times a changing? Is software genuinely helping us work together more effectively? Could we prevent disasters such as the financial meltdown of 2008/09 by listening to the group, rather than the few? The little crowd of recently published books on the subject suggest there is something in this concept, but only time, and consensus, will tell.

The gentle art of working together

People can be prickly sometimes, can’t they? We easily get upset when left off the email distribution list for one of our projects, or when someone doesn’t invite us to a meeting. Rightly so – work is an important part of everyone’s lives.

As work becomes more complex, and pressures build to do more, we need better ways to collaborate and share. Email gets a message from one machine to another, but does nothing to help organise and prioritise. The internet has done a great deal to put more at our finger tips, but sometimes the result is overwhelming – so much information, so much to do, and so little organisation.

Within Anatec we use Microsoft SharePoint to share information and coordinate goals. That’s not a great surprise as we are Microsoft Certified Partners. But I think everyone’s needs concerning collaboration are pretty similar. Here is my top ten list of what’s important to get the best out of other people:

1. Be clear. Collaboration sites need to have a good hierarchical structure so information is easy to find. Colour coding by department can help orient people in a large site.
2. Make it attractive. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean to say that the look and feel of your collaboration site isn’t important. The better it looks, the more likely it will be to be used. Have a house style so that fonts and headline sizes are used consistently: it’s a lot easier on the eye.
3. Consistency of purpose. Make objectives consistent and visible and ensure company communications reflect current priorities.
4. Time to think. Make key documents or discussions available to everyone involved. The more time people have to mull over a problem, the better their input will be.
5. No surprises. Ensure key dates are visible well ahead of time. A shared company calendar with dates for exhibitions, people’s holidays, key presentations, etc. helps to keep people focused on the major events during the month.
6. Make it inspirational. Whatever your line of work there are people who will live better lives as a result of what you do. Share the inspiration with your co-workers though words or pictures.
7. Keep content up-to-date. Intranets are a great place to share things, but they need to be kept up-to-date and they need to keep people’s attention. If they always see the same old stuff, pretty soon they will stop reading. If there is a key report you can share though your intranet, then do. People will get familiar with the structure and content by using it more.
8. Make it interesting. Is there a relevant RSS feed you could include on your home page? Can you use appropriate and attractive pictures to help get your message across? It all makes work more enjoyable, and collaboration more effective.
9. Don’t make it optional. Whenever a new system is introduced, there is always resistance. Don’t be tempted to keep emailing documents, just because it’s easier. Put the document on your collaboration site and then email the link. Keep on eye on what people are accessing to make sure its being used.
10. Get everyone involved. Collaboration is exactly that – people working together to create something more than one person could do alone. Ensure there is a structure to the way you work, then use it at every opportunity - in meetings, as a way of discussing things, even as internal presentations.

Collaboration through intranets is not new, but options are opening up for smaller companies to use tools that the big boys have enjoyed for years.

What is a data warehouse? And do you need one?

The language of business intelligence can be confusing. Cubes, data warehouses, OLAP, and data mining are all terms that are not exactly self-explanatory. One of the most often used terms in business intelligence is the Data Warehouse, which conjures up images of vast spaces filled with digits. As if 5’s and 8’s all had their own bin in a super-efficient warehouse.

So what is a data warehouse, and how is it different from other databases?

Just about every company has at least one transactional database, and most have many. They store accounts data, contacts, stock or project data. Transactional databases are the ones we use to run our businesses:

• Those that get updated on an hourly, daily or weekly basis
• The systems (whether we recognise them as databases or not) that we could not do without.

But not every company has a data warehouse. They are often considered the domain of very large companies, even though that is not necessarily true.

A data warehouse holds historical information. It’s where the data goes after it’s been used in a transactional database system.

As an example, a hotel reservation system is used to let customers know whether there is availability for their preferred dates, and to produce an invoice for hotel services used during their stay. A data warehouse for the same hotel might hold this information summarised by day, month and season so as to better understand customer booking behaviour.

Transactional systems hold detailed information such as the alarm call time for the guest, whereas a data warehouse summarises several years’ data to get a more accurate picture of how promotions or seasonality affect bookings.

In addition, data warehouses can bring data together from several different transactional systems to gain new insights into a particular problem. In the hotel example, costing information might be added to find out which customers are most profitable.

So whether or not you need a data warehouse depends on what your business priorities are. Whether, for example, you want to:

• Better understand customer behaviour
• Understand which customer segments are most profitable
• Send more appropriate marketing communications to your customers

There are many, many more uses for data warehouses, but understanding customers and profitability better is a good start if you haven’t started planning your data warehouse.

Asking the right questions

So often in life we search for solutions. We look for the answers to our problems, both in business and our private lives. Yet so often it isn’t the right answer that is eluding us, but the right question.

I’ve recently finished reading The Snowball by Alice Schroeder, the biography of Warren Buffett. Readers from nearby planets should know that Warren Buffett is one of earth’s richest men, and an astonishingly successful investor. She paints a vivid picture of his approach to investing. Rather than ask “Should I buy this stock at this price?” Buffett asks “What is this stock worth?” The difference may appear subtle, but the effect is dramatic.

The first question assumes the stock price is reasonable, and the decision hinges around whether you believe it will rise in value or the company will maintain its dividends. The second question is more arrogant: it attacks the very heart of the system. By going back to first principles Buffett ignores the market, and comes to his own independent conclusions as to the value of what is on sale.

It is clearly a successful approach because Buffett’s net worth has more zero’s on the end than this blog has space for.

Putting in a new software system also prompts questions. I see many companies approach the decision by asking “Should we install this software in our business? What benefits will we get by using it?”

Whereas perhaps the question could be better phrased as “What do we need to achieve in our business, and how are we going to get there?” The answer might or might not include software, but the process of figuring out what the objective is, and what the best steps are to achieve it, will produce a better result than concentrating on the functionality of any or even several software packages.

Peter Drucker famously asked “If you weren’t already in the business [you are already in], would you enter it today?”

It’s a tough question that requires some hard thought. And is likely to provide some valuable insights into your business, your competitors, and the direction the market is heading. It encourages independent thought, not a follow-the-leader mentality. I think that’s a useful skill in life and in business.

Want to be successful? Have a plan!

Oddly enough the most difficult thing about being a success is figuring out what you want to be a success at. It’s strange, isn’t it, that we are as a species so undecided. I know a few people whose talents were so obvious at a young age that they have just followed their dream. But it’s certainly not the case for everyone. But working hard at figuring out what you want to excel at is so worthwhile. Because once you have a goal you have a chance of being successful.

Of course the difficulty is the choice. There are so many things we can do, could do, or perhaps would do if we had the time/money/figure for it. But there are relatively few things we can really excel at, and it’s figuring out what we love doing, and can be really good at that enables us to enjoy real success.

Assuming you know what you want, a big assumption I know but let’s assume for the second, the next stage is to plan. Plan in detail what’s needed to be successful. Plan what could go wrong. Look at other people doing what you want to do. Consider the risks. Figure out how long things might take. How much they might cost. What assumptions you have made that might be incorrect. Go through the whole shooting match of thinking through what will be required. It takes time, quite a lot of time, but will pay you back a thousand fold.

Gandhi said “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes”. Planning is a formalised and proven way of thinking through and refining thoughts into something actionable.

Pooh Bear said “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

As a bear of little brain I know exactly what Pooh Bear meant. I’ve spent a few days this week on business planning and its tough going, but oh so worthwhile.

I’ve bought Richard Stutely’s book “The Definitive Business Plan” and highly recommend it. He’s seen businesses come and go, worked on plans and budgets for UK plc (he worked at the Treasury) so comes at the subject with some authority.

So if being successful at something matters to you, have a plan!

Measuring and managing performance

Why measuring financial performance matters

Business performance is financial performance, make no mistake about it. The companies with the largest turnovers, the biggest market capitalisations, highest profits are the most successful. These are the companies that make good strategic decisions and create value for their customers, as well as ensuring their shareholders are financially rewarded.

The business of business is business, and unless a company generates sufficient profit there is no opportunity to achieve softer objectives such as creating a good working environment for staff, or being a good corporate citizen.

Not-for-profit organisations also have important financial considerations. Whether financed by grants, taxes or charitable donations there is a duty to provide value for customers and stakeholders. At the very least not-for-profit organisations must demonstrate good financial control and appropriate use of funds.

So if finance is the overriding consideration for most organisations – why measure anything else?

The answer is simple. Excellent financial performance is the result of good decision making and creating value for customers, not the cause. Financial performance is a measure of how well a company has done from a number of different viewpoints: marketing, production, financial control, research & development, training, etc.

Unless financial results are measured, however, there is no objective way of assessing how effective an organisation is. It is clear that sound measurement and management of business activities such as marketing campaigns, new product development, improving productivity, or training staff are the way to achieve better financial performance.

So the burning questions remain – how do you measure and manage the performance of all these constituent parts in order to create value for customers? How do you ensure these initiatives reap the appropriate financial returns?

Why measuring non-financials matters more

As far back as the 1950’s major corporations were realising that measuring the financials was essentially a backwards looking activity. For organisations to perform better, they had to look forwards and measure the full range of activities that contribute to their success.

Perhaps the most influential writers on the subject in recent years have been Robert Kaplan and David Norton. In 1992 they published an article in Harvard Business Review called The Balanced Scorecard in which they argued that four key aspects of a business must be measured and managed in relation to the organisation’s strategy:

1. Financial performance


2. Customer focus


3. Internal business process


4. Learning and Growth.

This has been an enormously influential model – not least because it links measurement and management to strategy. Since their ideas were first published it has been adopted to a greater or lesser extent by many leading organisations.

There are undoubtedly other ways to divide up the activities of businesses and organisations, but the four quadrants of the Balanced Scorecard provide an excellent start.

Even with such a framework there are a host of possibilities, initiatives, projects and measurements to consider. Once decisions have been made as to what to progress and what to discard initiatives then have to be managed, monitored and evaluated to assess their success.

Performance management, measurement, and evaluation is a rich and varied set of disciplines that enable organisations to put a framework on the complex business of improving performance.

Data Centred Decision Making

Making decisions can be tough: so many choices and no guarantees of making the right one. I’ve recently seen the decision-making process behind two decisions and both were instructive.

The first was for a social group where an interesting ethical question came up. The question and replies batted backwards and forwards. There was no right or wrong answers, but plenty of indignation and lots of opinion. Then someone sent a simple email containing the data relating to the problem. They had gone to the archives and dug up the relevant history and presented it clearly and dispassionately in an email. It was strong stuff and illustrated beautifully the uncomfortable feelings that everyone had about the dilemma. Getting the information took a bit of time but the effect was convincing and helped the group enormously.

The second was a decision at work where again feelings ran high. My co-Director had one opinion and I a different one. We discussed and argued the point but couldn’t get agreement. We decided to break the meeting to go do some research and analysis. When we came back together the decision was obvious – the data spoke volumes. We went away with a clear decision and no hard feelings.

Data centred decision making takes more effort because you have to go and get the data. Sometimes that takes quite a long time, but better decisions come out of the process. When you look at the two examples above, I think both were solved faster and more amicably by having good data.

Not all decisions lend themselves to data-centred decision making, but it’s worth asking “what data is available?” even if it only contributes to the process. Sometimes the results are surprising.

Aspects of improving performance

There is a strong feeling that the business world is changing. Social media is rushing towards us at an uncomfortable pace, the internet is evolving and financial crises of varying types are still with us. Added to which, many people’s jobs have changed over the last 10 years. There are many more information workers, people who frequently know more than their line manager within their field of expertise.

Yet the fundamentals of business apply. The business of business is still business. To make a healthy profit in today’s fast changing and difficult economy it is necessary to have eyes everywhere and good information. Perhaps it was ever thus, it just feels more important than ever right now.

The 4 E’s are a good starting point:

• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Economy
• Ethics

Effectiveness is whether we are furthering our goals. Obviously, you can’t measure effectiveness unless you know what your goals are. Having the right strategy is still Top Dog.

Efficiency is getting things done in a time and resource efficient way. Doing the wrong things efficiently won’t help you be more effective, and doing the right things too slowly will make you uncompetitive, which is why efficiency comes after effectiveness. In our “Getting Things Done” culture, it pays to remember to pay attention to Effectiveness before turning to Efficiency.

Economy is making sure you don’t spend too much on being effective or being efficient. Most organisations, large or small, have good systems to keep tabs on this one.

And ethics is ensuring you don’t trample over other people or squander the earth’s resources in pursuit of your dreams. An increasingly important dimension to business and living in the new world order.

Simple? On paper, sure! In practice? Well that’s where the art, science and monitoring of business starts.

It is down to each person, each team and each organisation to figure out what the 4 E’s mean for them, and how to measure them.

Do one thing at a time

Only yesterday I was reading tips about how to make better use of standing in line at the supermarket by texting or phoning business contacts. As I read the article I felt rather ordinary. When I stand in line at the supermarket I don’t do anything much, I just queue. Yet another part of me wondered what sort of experience these business contacts might be getting from these calls or texts. I concluded it couldn’t be that good to have to share time with grocery shopping.

It seems as though doing one thing at a time is out of fashion. Harvard’s Management Tip for Today is to Prioritize Value over Volume. Research shows that multitasking produces mediocre results, however single-tasking is not recommended either. It’s too slow, argues the author, for today’s world.

I say bunkum to that, and here’s why.

1. Thinking time is valuable. The times when we appear to be “doing nothing” like queuing in the supermarket or taking a shower are often the times when our brains come up with the best ideas. Valuing downtime, rather than trying to cram it full of more “doing” things is ultimately more successful. Allow the brain to worth through problems and find good solutions in a relaxed way.


2. Most things have scope for error. Writing proposals, answering emails, figuring out systems, paying for groceries all can go wrong in small or large ways. Concentrating on the task in hand reduces the possibility of error. Doing things without error means you only do them once, which is a great deal faster than doing them twice.


3. Many things are difficult. Finding the right words to convince someone of your point of view, ensuring your communications are not misinterpreted, or ensuring the numbers add up all require focus and double-checking.

My two favourite Swiss artists, Fischli and Weiss, produced a simple list entitled “How to Work Better.” It hangs on my wall close enough to my desk so I can glance up from time to time to read it. And I do. I often glance up and I do read it. The first item on the list is “Do one thing at a time”. More often than not I don’t get past that first item because it reminds me to focus and go back to the task in hand.

Single-tasking is surely the fastest way to accomplish anything, despite what management gurus would have us believe.

Email me if you would like a copy of Fischli and Weiss’s list, then you too can have one for your office wall.

Eat and sleep routines

Seth Godin wrote a short blog post the other day entitled “Make A Decision.” He suggested that imperfect decisions are better than no decision at all: quite right too.

He went on to say that we should make more decisions, and that making more decisions will make more of a difference, even if the decisions turned out to be the wrong ones. It made a neat little blog post, but I’m not at all sure he is right.

I would go as far as to say that we should work to be making fewer decisions, so that the big decisions have more room to be well thought through.

There are many things in day to day work that should be done, but are not always. These could and perhaps should be made into habits, because when they go onto autopilot they get done regardless of what else is happening. They get done faster and more efficiently. So the more things you can decide in advance must be done every day, or every week, or whatever, the less thinking is required and the more gets done.

Every time I hear of someone who has “lost the entire contents of their hard disk” and that they don’t have a backup, I wonder about their daily habits. An ex-boss used to call them “eat and sleep routines”. You wouldn’t forget to sleep, she would argue, so why forget to backup your computer? There was very little wriggle room when put like that! The same principle applied to many things she considered to be part of our core work.

Decisions are needed, and many things can’t go onto autopilot, but the things that can should. Give some thought to what should be part of your eat and sleep routine, and get more done, more easily.

6 big benefits to working tidy

The world is happily divided on working tidy.

Many people are proudly disorganised. I spoke to one such contented individual the other evening. “You wouldn’t be able to find a thing in my office”, he boasted, “but I can find everything!” I had a mental image of what his desk might look like, and wasn’t entirely convinced by the argument. There was clearly no point in debating the point; maybe he is extremely creative/efficient/happy with his working style. He probably is.

After having some success in working tidier on all my projects, however, I think there are some real benefits to working tidy. Agree or disagree, here is my two-pence-worth:

1. Focus. Tidying, filing and clearing allow focus on what’s important, rather than what’s on top on top of the pile. Using email or a postal in-box as a “to do” list does not encourage active planning. Working to a plan ensures the important, as well as the urgent stuff gets done.
2. Calm. Seeing papers, emails or other clutter around constantly pulls the mind away from the task in hand. It’s like having a little voice constantly saying “isn’t this more important?” “why don’t you work on this?” “have you forgotten that?” A clear desk and empty in-box stops the voices and helps concentration.
3. Prioritise. Clutter is just a pile of stuff that hasn’t yet had decisions made about it. By taking time to file and tidy things away decisions are made: whether the decision is to bin it, act on it, deal with it later or file it for reference. The alternative is just a big pile of work waiting to be done. Sorting enables priorities to be established, planned, and acted on in a timely way.
4. Meet deadlines. What I really mean is don’t miss deadlines, because that’s what happens when things don’t go in the right place. Things get missed because they are not on the top of the pile. Not always, but it happens.
5. Make decisions in the here and now. Some decisions benefit from settling time or waiting for more information. Some decisions are just not important enough to deal with at all. But sometimes things get left in the clutter because they are too difficult or it has become default behaviour. Working tidy enables decisions to be made when the job is current, which means the work gets done faster and better.
6. Finding things. This is purposely last on the list rather than first. Although I have occasionally lost something and spent time looking for it, it doesn't happen very often. In my experience many messy people do know where things are – they have secret systems for which pile said item has been placed. So although finding things quickly is a benefit, I don’t rate it as highly as others on this subject, such as Giles Morris writing in The Guardian a few months’ ago.

I have no option but to keep my project work tidy and filed in systems that are designed to ensure important work doesn’t go astray. But not everything is project work, and for me at least being tidier with all my work is paying dividends – big time.

Are you a creative its-somewhere-over-there type who is productive and happy? Or are you obsessively tidy, and reap abundant rewards from your discipline?

Shine like a star with deadlines

Do you like deadlines? Some people love them – they rise to the occasion and shine like stars. Others just stress, panic and get nowhere.

Whether last minute pressure brings out the best or the worst in you, most of us do better work with a sensible amount of time to prepare.

Deadlines, however, are a fact of life and many of us wouldn’t get anything done if deadlines didn’t exist.

So here are six copper-bottomed tips for meeting deadlines:

1. Prioritise – all deadlines are not created equal. Plan ahead and figure out which deadlines are most important to you, your goals, and the people you work with.
2. Plan – plan your most important deadline priorities. Use the 80/20 rule – what is the 20% of work that will produce 80% of the benefit? Take the stress out of deadlines by doing the most important bits first.
3. Schedule – create time slots to do key pieces of work well ahead of your deadline. Create mini-deadlines to get ahead.
4. Expect the unexpected – for important deadlines allow enough time for the unexpected. The unexpected is a misnomer – we know something will go wrong or delay things – we just don’t know what it will be.
5. Polish – reread your report for grammar, spelling and typos. Check figures, iron out the bugs, and rehearse for important presentations. Polishing is important – it enables a good job to shine and look like the great job it really is.
6. False deadlines – you can’t do this too often, but consider false deadlines ahead of the real one if a number of people's work needs to come together. We all know people who have to be invited to dinner an hour early just so they might be on time – use the same trick in your work if hitting headlines isn’t someone's strong suit.

Deadlines can be fun. They can produce creative and fabulous work. Deadlines can provide a welcome change of pace as you drop everything to focus on that One Important Thing.

Life can’t be lived to deadline all the time, but when you are in the eye of the storm its best to have planned to be a shining star and not a headless chicken.

The Feynman Index

Someone asked me an interesting question about measurement:

“If what gets measured gets done, are we measuring the right things? What would happen if we started to measure different things?”

What indeed?

It nicely encapsulates the problem of measurement. For any given objective we can identify things to measure – many of which either have, or appear to have, a bearing on the problem. Sometime they move us closer to our objective, but sometimes not quickly enough.

Those averse to measurement love this, because they take any weaknesses as a reason not to measure. But that’s missing the point. Any valid measurement is better than no measurement, even if it’s imperfect. Why? Because without a measure you are left with subjective views. Subjective views will be different each time you look, and provide no clear benchmark for whether things are improving or not.

But the original question was interesting – what if we started to measure different things? What if we measured things that appear a little crazy?

I have been quite inspired by reading Richard Feynman: a brilliant chap who was constantly curious. What a marvellous quality – to be constantly curious. Most of us work hard at being blasé about how much we know – experts at this, experienced at that. Few of us want to expose how little we know. Yet here was an acknowledged genius who was quite prepared to admit what he didn’t know – and was always curious to find out more.

One of his life’s ambitions was to visit Tuva – a Russian republic in Siberia. As far as I can make out he had no better reason than that it sounded like a place that didn’t exist, was in an obscure location and therefore had a huge allure for him.

Here was a dedicated and brilliant physicist who devoted a great deal of his life to physics research and teaching. Yet he also had a number of seemingly unrelated obsessions. Did his obsession with Tuva teach him anything about physics? Did his love of playing the bongos help him to relate to his students better? I suggest they did.

Feynman, as a physicist, understood the importance of measurement. In physics measurement makes the difference between something being properly understood or not. As Feynman points out, something can appear to be correct when in fact it is not. It is the accuracy of measurement that exposes the error.

So The Feynman Index takes a sidelong, mischievous swipe at the problem/objective and asks “What Might I Measure Here?” What curve ball or seemingly off-centre measurement might teach me something I don’t already know? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work – replace it with something that works better.

Sometimes the “Feynman Index” type measurements tells us more about the central problem than we might possibly guess from the outset… In addition, not instead of, the mainstream measurements.

4 simple steps to clarifying your objectives

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.” Benjamin Disraeli

Having a clear end point is a fundamental to success: the clearer the vision, the greater the chances of success.

But what if you can’t quite see the end point? What if you are still feeling your way? What if there are unanswered questions and more feedback that is needed?

This is a problem with clarifying objectives – there are always unknowns, always things that change and always unforeseen events.

The key is to identify what is known and what is unknown. When they are muddled up together it is difficult to where you are or how you should proceed. Or indeed, whether you should proceed at all.

1. Clarify what is known. Define the certainties and agreed them.
2. Clarify what is not known. Have a symbol in your planning document that clearly shows uncertainties and unknowns.
3. Prioritise the unknowns. Some may be fundamental to your goals, while others will be incidental. Identifying the uncertainties enables you to start prioritising them.
4. Plan. Figure out a plan of action to deal with the unknowns. This may or may not change what you had previously known, but that’s fine. What’s important is that you have moved forward.
   

Clarifying, sorting, prioritising and planning provide a simple and effective way forward. I use it extensively in systems analysis. During a process of investigation there are many things that are on a continuum from known to unknown. Sorting them out and systematically dealing with them is part of the process of designing a great system. It is also part of succeeding with any type of project.

Try it today with your most important project. It needn’t take long, but will help move you forward more confidently.

100 days to form a habit

Habits are oh-so-useful things. Because they get done automatically, they don’t get missed. So when you make something a habit, you are close to guaranteeing it gets done. Because they don’t require brain-power they are also highly time efficient - you just do them, instead of agonising and wasting time.

Brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, reaching for your first cup of coffee – all get done on auto-pilot whether or not you have added them to your To Do List.

Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

There are many things that we would like to make a habit – eating less, exercising more, doing a task every day. All things that if we only had the discipline to do, we know we would be more effective.

So – if habits can be such useful things – how do create good habits?

To form a new habit you have to ingrain it into your routine. You must do it every day, without missing a day, until the habit has been formed. There are various estimates as to how long it takes to form a habit – ranging from 21 days, 30 days to 66 days. Researchers at University College London have been studying habits as part of their research into weight loss. They suggest that it takes 66 days for a new habit to become ingrained, perhaps longer if the habit is complex. Interestingly, exercise took longer to make a habit than did a healthy eating habit.

I was interested to note that I could give up wine for 48 days over Lent but had no problem reinstating a glass of wine with dinner as soon as Easter came. I had thought I would have difficulty readjusting, but it was frighteningly easy to get back to old ways. So for me, at least, 48 days wasn’t long enough for the teetotal habit to form.

If the new habit is worthwhile, it would seem that overkill is required to try to establish it. In the spirit of The Power of Round Numbers, I am going to try 100 days to ingrain the habit of not drinking caffeine.

I’m hoping that living a caffeine-free life will mean that I sleep better, have fewer headaches and enjoy a more even temperament. My alcohol-free living didn’t produce the performance-enhancing benefits I’d hoped for, and so far cutting out caffeine has done little but given me a headache. But I’m difficult to dissuade once an idea has lodged itself, so this is day 5 and counting ….