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.

Weekly Meetings

Meetings get a lot of bad press: too many, badly run, no preparation and of negligible value.  Yet meetings can be tremendously valuable.  A weekly meeting is an opportunity to plan and review, and to set the tone for the upcoming week’s work. 

Steve Jobs had a meeting each Monday with his executives to review all the products in development.  “Eighty per cent is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week,” Jobs said in an interview with Fortune in 2008.  “We don't have a lot of process at Apple, but that's one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."

I know if I were an executive at Apple I’d make sure I was up to speed by the end of Friday on what progress had been made, and what the plan was for next week because if I didn’t know, I’d be getting a roasting on Monday morning.  So not only did Jobs create accountability and visibility with these meetings, but he also made sure that all his executives had reviewed the past week and planned the upcoming week.  Sure, this was something they should have been doing anyway, but that Monday morning meeting made sure of it.  Not bad for 60 minutes of everyone’s time. 

Steve Jobs: An Unconventional Leader, The Sunday Morning Herald, Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/steve-jobs-an-unconventional-leader-20111007-1lcmo.html#ixzz1l2AZC5il 

How to concentrate for longer

It seems the modern world is designed to de-focus and distract us from whatever we are trying to do.  E-mail pops into our inbox every few minutes, or the phone rings.  Thoughtful people don’t call, but text, so the phone is never far away.  Of course a text is far too interesting not to read, even if it’s only the bank or when the shopping will be delivered.  So we are distracted anyway.

I see mothers walking their children and talking on the phone.  We can’t get out for a refreshing walk without staying in contact. 

We are now so used to constant interruptions and distractions that if there are no emails, no texts, or no phone calls, we double check our email, or go online for diversion.

Welcome to the digital age – designed to make our lives easy.   Now three screens is the norm, and our attention span is short and getting shorter. 

Concentrating on what we are doing is hard work.  Focusing requires discipline.  The brain wanders easily and often.  Thoughts and ideas pop into our heads all the time.  Try sitting still for 5 minutes and thinking about just one thing; a candle, a diamond or a flower.  Notice how many times your mind wanders.  Each time it wanders bring it back to the thing you are focusing on.  Notice how it wanders off again.  And again.  You will lose count how many times you have to bring it back to the task in hand, in just 5 minutes.

Focusing may be difficult, but it is also very necessary to produce anything worthwhile.

20 minutes seems to be the generally accepted length of time that a healthy adult can focus on something, although it will be longer if you are comfortable and proficient in the work.  So difficult things, problem solving, things you are learning for the first time or trying to master are more difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

So if you are unfocussed and distracted, you are not alone.  But crucially you are not as productive as you could be, which means you won’t achieve as much as you would like. 

So what’s to be done?  How can distractions be cut down and concentration improved?  Here are 7 ideas:

1. Turn off email (yes, I know, but do it anyway)
2. Take time to get become more proficient in your field
3. Put your phone in a drawer for a couple of hours (you can pick up messages later)
4. Be clear about the purpose of your task (this takes a bit of pre-planning, but increases your productivity)
5. Use a stop watch.  Start the timer when you start work, and stop it when you get distracted.  Note how long you spent concentrating, and then little by little try to increase your concentration time.
6. Get out of the office and work in the library, park or zoo
7. Reward yourself for 1,000 words written, half the job done, or the phone call made.  Your reward could be a 10 minute break in the fresh air, or picking up flowers on the way home depending on how difficult the task was, and how long it’s been on your “to do” list.

One final thought on this vexing matter of improving concentration.  If we accept that good quality, focused work is difficult, we may want to be a little pickier about what we tackle.  Saying “no” to some, not doing others, or simply checking out how useful they are could save time for something more important.  And when you are sure you should be doing something, you will find concentrating a great deal easier anyway. 

What’s the Big Idea?

We are all working for something; whether it’s to pay for our children’s education, buy a house near the sea, or build a worthwhile business.  Everyone’s big ideas are different, but we all have them. 

Yet although these big ideas are important, often we don’t give them much attention.   It’s rare for them to be written down, or looked at from month to month.   Often they stay in the back of our minds as “someday-maybe” ideas; perhaps because we’re not sure we can achieve them we don’t dare hope.

Yet one of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that high achievers write down their goals, and make plans to progress them. 

Jim Collins called them BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals.  Stephen Covey referred to it as “Begin with the End in Mind”.  Many writers and successful people have, over many years, stressed the importance of knowing what you want to achieve.  So figuring out what is most important to you is a good first step in making them happen.  Then you need to commit them to paper or hard disk.

Of course there are many different types of people.  Whilst some people will recognise this reluctance to commit big, important ideas to paper, other people have lots of big ideas and write them down all the time.  They have so many ideas and dreams and plans, they can barely keep track of them all.  Their list of “Big Things To Do” is long, and gets longer by the day.

The Chinese wryly point out that “The man who chases two rabbits, catches none”.    So whilst it’s great to be creative and generate ideas, it’s vital not to get lost amongst the noise of what could, should or might be done.  Decide what's most important, even if it takes some thinking, reworking and crossings out. 

This list may have about half a dozen items on it, maybe a few more or perhaps a couple less - certainly no more than nine.  Why?  Because we can only focus on a couple of things at a time, so the more that goes onto the list, the less likely it is you will achieve them.  It’s better to have fewer, big ideas and get them done, than to have a shopping list as long as your elbow that gets ignored.

The value of knowing where time goes

Time and tide, as we all know, wait for no man.  There’s no better time of year to be reminded of that as we review the past year.  What projects did you complete?  Which ones weren’t even started?  What should have got done, but didn’t?  What was important to you?  What was your greatest success?  What was your greatest failure?  What would you do differently if you could replay the year again?

It’s an interesting exercise, and if you haven’t yet reviewed the year I’d urge you to do so.  I gained a number of insights from reviewing my 2011.

Certainly, the big things that I accomplished during 2011 were done with the aid of quite a bit of planning, focus and time.  Now that’s not to say that everything that gets planed, focus on and time to will have a successful outcome, unfortunately, but it does increase the chances.  And when I look back over my life at my major successes, I also recall the planning, focus and time that went into them. 

Which brings me to the value of knowing where time goes.  Because of the nature of my work, I analyse how my time is spent.  It provides an invaluable additional dimension to reviewing the year.  I can see how much time I spent on various different activities, and how much time I spent on my important projects.  It gives me another lever to make changes – whether I should be giving more or less time to certain activities or projects.

I don’t think many people do this, perhaps because it reminds us of “clocking in and clocking out” and “command and control” type management systems.  No one likes someone breathing down their necks to see what they are doing every minute of the day.  And sometimes we don’t want to see the unpalatable truth ourselves.  But, certainly for me, unless I know where my time goes, I’m in danger of not giving enough attention to the important-but-not-urgent things. 

Eisenhower apparently remarked that “what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”  Which may go some way to explain why important things don’t always get done.

So one of my New Year resolutions is to track my time more carefully, and analyse it side by side with the big things I’ve want to do this year.  As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a big fan of measuring things.  It will be interesting to see whether increased focus in this area brings about improvements.

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.

Being Productive when Tired

There are different types of tiredness at work.  Like:

• No sleep last night because of noisy neighbours/  baby crying/ didn’t get in till 3am (delete as appropriate) tiredness
• Been in the office since 7am, now it’s 5pm and I’m running out of steam tiredness
• Had a super productive day, got loads done, and now tailing off fast
• Just got back from a business trip and I’m jet-lagged or just plain tired from several days intensive work
• Got a cold/ headache/ hangover/other type of unwellness
• Not got a good reason, just firing on much less than three cylinders and don’t seem to care …. tiredness
• You probably know other types of tiredness at work.  It’s a universal problem. 

No matter how many books get bought on Time Management, it’s a simple fact of life that we get tired and work gets a lot more difficult.  So how can we be productive when dog-tired?

As Philip Pullman once said – “A bad day’s work is a lot better than no day’s work at all”.

So here are my ten tired, tried and tested ideas:

1. Work on your To Do List – and prioritise it.  Make sure everything you need to do is written down and then decide what needs to be done next.  The act of sorting out what needs to be done, and in what order, is motivating in itself, and more often than not prompts thought and action on the task.
2. Set your stop watch to 15 minutes and work on your Most Important Task.  Just 15 minutes, even if you work slowly.  Getting started on a task, even a little bit, moves things forward and will make the next 15 minutes easier to do.
3. If you can, take a nap.  Even a short nap can make a huge difference in your productivity and might make the difference between a decent day’s work, or a totally wasted day. 
4. Work on routine admin stuff, like expenses, filing, accounts or something that doesn’t take too much brain power.  I often that I can get quite engrossed in little tasks, and get quite a lot done despite initial tiredness.
5. Track your time.  You are most likely to waste time by web surfing, reading the paper or generally wasting time when you are tired.  And most likely to lose track of time when you are tired.  We do it without thinking, or realising how much time has gone.  If you track your time then at least you get reminded where the time is going, and can use another technique to try and get back on track. 
6. Learn something new.  Reading is productive, and a good way to learn about important but not urgent things.  So if you’ve been meaning to learn a new software package, or get up to date on industry trends, tired time might be perfect timing. 
7. Give yourself a deadline.  Not having a deadline for tasks can be a huge problem – when everything is urgent, but nothing absolutely has to be done today.  Work ahead and figure out deadlines for mini-tasks and work in hour long chunks, tracking your productive time in each hour.
8. Work with someone else.  Hold a meeting, a telecom or something that requires interaction with someone else.  It’s amazing how you perk up when reacting to someone else’s ideas and views.  Just be careful not to waste someone else’s time in the process of trying to rescue your own day.  I like holding meetings at the end of the day because it helps everyone keep going a bit longer, and the ideas are just as relevant.
9. Work on something you love.  It’s always easier to work on something that naturally inspires you.  It may be better to get something done in an area that flows easily during tired time, and work on more difficult things when you are fresh.
10. Remind yourself of your ultimate goals.  Not giving in to tiredness is difficult, and often the only way to do it is remind yourself why you do what you do, and why you love it.  It’s easier to motivate a tired brain when you know why it’s worthwhile. 

What are your top tips for working when tired?  I’d love to hear them.  And I promise not to disappear for such a long time again!

Thoughtfulness

I was standing in line in a café on Saturday afternoon when I saw a sign hanging above the counter: “Drink Coffee – Do Stupid Things Faster with More Energy”.  It made me laugh and brightened an already sunny afternoon.

It made me stop and think, though, about the number of things we do without thinking; and how infrequently we do things slowly and thoughtfully.  Getting through a lot of stuff makes us feel good, but doesn’t necessarily move things forward.  Whereas doing a well-chosen thing a little more slowly and thoroughly is likely to produce a better result.

Of course so much depends on what work needs to be done, and what your objectives are.  Despite my long battles with reducing caffeine, this isn’t a rant against coffee; I personally don’t drink the stuff, though, as I’m quite capable of doing stupid things without any chemical additives.

What really got me thinking was a visit to a local National Trust property some weeks previously.  It was a house I had seen on a number of occasions because it is so close to where I live.  This time, however, I visited with someone who isn’t quite as mobile as he was in his younger days.  So the visit was longer than normal, and we saw only half the house.  Did this spoil the day?  Au contraire!  It was twice as interesting as I had chance to look and think about what I was looking at.  I got more out of that visit than I had done in all the previous visits put together.  Yet given the choice, I would have bashed on at my normal speed.  Clearly, I had been missing so much.  And there is still more to go back and see.

There seems to be so little space for thought in our busy coffee-fuelled lives.  Yet slowing down and thinking always produces a better result.  The old saying: “there’s not enough time to do it well, but there’s always time to do it twice” sort of comes to mind.  Another coffee anyone?       

Make the process your goal, not the outcome

Making the process the goal, rather than the outcome, seems like strange advice. Indeed in my last blog post I set myself the goal of running a half marathon in 2.5 hours or less. But what if I get injured before the race? What if I’m ill? Even if I don't run the race it doesn't mean there won't be another, or that my training will be wasted ...

Goals mostly focus on outcomes: winning business, running marathons in a certain time, achieving a certain outcome in a meeting, etc. But these goals rely on a host of external events: customers wanting to implement a solution when you have the staff available, being fit to run, or other people agreeing with your views. To a large degree we have little influence over these external factors.

What we do have control over is the process. The quality of our proposals, the amount of training we do, being open and fair in meetings. Focusing on the process is what really gives us the advantage. Yet when we are focused on the goal we can sometimes forget the importance of each of the tiny steps along the way. Managing time, creating opportunities, being thorough in preparation all add strength to whatever goal we are trying to achieve.

Gretchen Rubin in her wonderful Happiness Project blog has written some wise words about paradoxes. Sometimes to achieve the outcome, we have to focus on the process and forget about the goal.

Running Lessons

With five very short weeks before the Reading Half Marathon, I met up with my (virtual) running buddy on Saturday to compare notes. I say virtual, because it has been almost a year since we met in person – even though we’ve exchanged many email excuses for why we couldn’t make a running session!

We both bemoaned a whole number of well thought out and credible excuses – including injuries and some big life changing stuff that got thrown at us. But the fact remains that during a full year, neither of us lost any weight, neither of us is as fit as we should be, and neither of us feels prepared for this half marathon. That’s despite a year of so-called preparation. Wow – how could that have happened?

We agreed we’d learnt some lessons. So here’s my list:

• Running isn’t a substitute for eating well. I have to eat sensibly if I want to lose weight – running won’t melt excess weight away. I hate to say it, but I think this might be an age thing.
• To get better at running I have to show up: at practice, on a Saturday morning, for races, for training runs.
• A great coach helps a lot. Providing I show up on a Wednesday…. thanks Tom!
• Having a committed running buddy helps a lot. Doing it together is always easier; thanks Jacqui!
• Get the right kit. Running shoes that don’t rub, light-weight jacket for the rain (how useless is it that I still won’t go running when it’s raining?), warm weather kit, the right socks, a calibrated distance measurer (and I thought it was a cheap sport!!!).
• Make a checklist for race day
• Keep a training log
• Have races in the diary to keep focus and momentum on training
• It takes time and patience to form a new running habit; to lose weight, to get fitter, to build up stamina, to get to like (ha ha!) running.

Looking back at my notes before the Henley half marathon, I weighed 5 kilos less, and was running a 5K distance 5 minutes faster than I’m running it right now. Crumbs, that’s a bit of a wakeup call. Time to put those lessons into practice!

Goals in Theory and Goals in Practice

January is a time for resolutions. I’m not immune to Thinking Big about all the things I will achieve in a New Year. But this year I have a more pressing problem – a goal I set myself almost a year ago. 10 months ago to be precise. Because it seemed like A Good Idea at the Time, I also roped in a couple of friends so that I couldn’t squelch my way out of the commitment.

Only now, 10 months later, can I see the full brilliance of my dreadful plan. Yup, it’s almost half marathon time again!

Last March I set myself the goal of running Reading Half Marathon. Although I ran (including a bit of walking, limping and moaning like mad) the Henley Half Marathon, that was A Long Time Ago. Three months ago in fact; that’s three months of focusing almost entirely on holiday and Christmas Carbohydrate Loading.

So now all my goals in theory have caught up with me, and the true horror of goals in practice is staring me blankly in the face.

• Two months to lose some weight.
• Two months to run further than the end of the road.
• Two months to find some running shoes that don’t give me blisters.
• Two months to salvage some small amount of self-respect amongst family and friends who listen to me talk as though I actually can run.

So this is where theory meets practice. Having set the goal, persuaded my friends to join me, and paid the entrance fee, the whole lunatic idea has got a momentum that I can only follow, huffing and puffing and wishing I were anywhere else instead.

As an old colleague once said “Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true”. Oh, my!

Be remarkable – or be invisible

“Be remarkable, or be invisible.” Seth Godin of Purple Cow fame throws down the gauntlet to the ordinary everywhere. Being remarkable sounds great in theory, but in practice it involves risk.

I was chatting to the Over 60's World Champion of Bog Snorkelling last night, which in itself is pretty remarkable. I suppose he carried his share of risk by taking part, but not quite much risk as the bright sparks who thought up this unlikely sport. The story goes something like this …

Locals in the pub were chatting about how to attract more tourists to the pretty Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells. Having decided that consonants were not necessarily a selling point, someone had the great idea of digging a ditch in a field and hosting the Bog Snorkelling World Championship. I think they must have had a few pints ….

As remarkable (in every respect) as this sounds, the idea was and is a great success. Over 200 entrants take part in the annual event held every August bank holiday, and the sport has spread to Australia and Ireland. Contestants wear snorkels and flippers and are not allowed to swim. Wet suits are usually worn but I believe the current Over 60 World Champion ruined a beautiful white T-shirt during his attempt.

Tourism is not an easy business to promote. Yes, you have beautiful hills, sandy beaches and friendly locals, but so does Scotland, Spain and France. And at least two of those places has a lot less rain. It is easy to be ordinary, safe and ineffective.

No doubt a great many people scoffed at the idea of bog snorkelling. But by being remarkable, the people of Llanwrtyd Wells got themselves on the world map, got an entry in Wikipedia and the Over 60’s champion has been on TV in Brazil. None of those things would have happened if they had carried on promoting beaches. Or consonants. Or the fact that the pubs close on a Sunday.

Slow and steady progress to your goal

The lessons that business can learn from sport are well documented. I’ve written before about sports psychology in business, in particular about goal setting. At the time of my previous post I had only just started running. I was bright-eyed with my new running shoes and a great deal of enthusiasm.

My running shoes are now rather muddy and annoyingly prone to giving me blisters. And I am decidedly frustrated at my slow-coach style. I had to pull out of the track exercise last night because my legs just wouldn’t respond when my brain said accelerate. There was no more go in them. No matter how positively I thought about it. It’s a wry lesson.

In business, as sport, there is no substitute for slow and steady progress with an eye held firmly on the target. In business, as in sport, progress is often painfully slow.

Confucius is credited with saying:

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

I repeat that advice to myself almost constantly as I run (completely ignorant of Confucius and his musings): just run, don’t stop, keep running. As you can tell I’m not what you might call a natural at this running lark, but after 6 months of plugging away at it I have just completed my half marathon. When I started I couldn’t run a mile without medical assistance.

So when I read Gretchen Rubin’s blog post quoting Vincent Van Gogh, it got me thinking:

“If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.”

It is beginning to dawn on me just how difficult it is to make real progress with my running. Difficulties in business can be equally frustrating. Yet keeping on going, continuing to make small steps may be the answer to both. Maybe understanding my limitations with running will help me understand my business better too.

I wouldn’t have believed 6 months ago that I could run a half marathon, and now I don’t believe I can run one in anything like a decent time. But if I continue to train, maybe I won’t be quite as hopeless in another 6 months. Maybe.

Dig deep for Ovarian Cancer Action

Many of my long suffering readers already know that I completed my first half marathon last Sunday. Indeed many of them have been encouraged to support Ovarian Cancer Action - the charity I was running for. They have already heard me moan about how unbelievably difficult it was to run 13.1 miles.

I guess completing a half marathon is an achievement, even if it did take me a full 3 hours to do it. I only marginally beat the pantomime horse, who seemed to have walked most of the distance. But who cares? I ran most of the distance (yes, I know, I am the slowest runner ever … ) and learnt more about myself than I really wanted to know.

First of all I learnt that not being fully prepared isn’t the greatest idea in the world. I hadn’t done enough training, not lost enough weight and hadn’t really understood what running 13 miles meant. My iPod was overestimating my practice runs, so I was lulled into a false sense of fitness security – thinking I had been covering longer distances than I had. You live and learn. But the psychological trauma of realising I had only run 9 miles when my iPod said 10 miles, and my legs said 24 miles was not something my head was ready for. And the humiliation of needing to be talked up that endless hill by a 14 year old boy on a bicycle is something I will train long and hard to resist next time.

I also learnt something about digging deep. Alliterations always have a jolly ring to them, but when you are living them they look a little different. Digging deep last Sunday meant remembering why I was running (because someone else had to endure the pain of chemotherapy) and why it was important (because I want future generations to have a better chance). Digging deep also meant keeping on going, when all I wanted to do was stop. Digging deep meant trying to think of something other than what might be happening under my socks.

I also learnt that it is worthwhile to stick my neck out to try and achieve something worthwhile. I’ve now got a great deal more respect for people who regularly run, cycle, walk and abseil down buildings for causes they believe are important. Without those people we wouldn’t know half what we know about cancer, how the heart or head works.

So thank you everyone who supported me, and Ovarian Cancer Action. My Just Giving page is http://www.justgiving.com/Caroline-Eveleigh0 if you would like to add to the bellow of voices who want a higher chance of survival for the lovely women in their lives who are unlucky enough to get ovarian cancer.

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.

Five Criteria for Greatness

This is not my list, but paraphrased from someone else’s blog post. She had read about James Dewey Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick. Ruby's original post appeared on Zen Habits and is well worth a read: Why Discovering Your Obsession Can Lead to Your Greatness.

The list apparently came from a speech Watson made on why he deserved to discover the structure of DNA.

1. Go for broke - if you are going to do something important, do it.
2. Have a way to get the answer – if you haven’t a clue, you’re going to waste time.
3. Be obsessive – think about it night and day.
4. Be part of a team – have a partner to bounce ideas off and support you.
5. Talk to your opponents – share your ideas, cooperate and talk to others.
6. Never be the brightest person in the room; so you can always learn something.

I was so impressed with the list that I keep a copy in my notebook. I hope you get something useful from it too.

Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes

There are two advantages to walking a mile in your customer’s shoes. Firstly, you will be a mile down the road before your customer realises you have his shoes. Secondly, you will know a lot more about your customer’s problems, opportunities and difficulties. The second reason is more important, although I don’t really recommend stealing customers’ shoes for either reason.

We spend a great deal of time thinking about our own problems, difficulties and the potential opportunities for our businesses. Then we go out into the world to sell what we have to offer. We just know that the world will beat a path to our door because we’ve spent so long working on it, thinking about it, and getting it right. Meanwhile, our customers have been having their own issues, their own problems and their own worries. When the world doesn’t stampede us in their eagerness to get hold of what we have to offer, we are left bemused.

So turning around and looking at the world from your customer’s viewpoint is tremendously valuable. Our products and services are designed to let someone else to make the best of an opportunity, to solve a problem or to improve their lives in some way. Of course we are in business to make a profit on what we sell, but unless we can really understand why customers need what we sell, we will not build the best possible business - for ourselves or for our customers.

Write Your Own Obituary

Contemplating our limited time on earth isn’t something most of us do willingly. Yet it is the ultimate goal setting exercise. How do we want to be remembered? What do we want to achieve during our lifetime?

It’s less weird than it sounds (and I know it does sound weird). When forced to consider what we could do during our lifetimes, what we probably won’t or can’t do, we are left with the choice of what we really want to accomplish. Yet the cold reality is that unless we do something about it, our obit is going to read quite differently.

“Here lies Caroline who really meant to get around to doing a whole bunch of stuff she never had time to do …” probably isn’t how I want everyone to remember me. And of course it doesn’t just have to be achievements, but also qualities, time spent with people who are important to you, and values passed on to future generations.

Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol is the ultimate obituary, graphically set out during Scrooge’s own lifetime. The ghost of Christmas Future showed him what would happen unless he changed his ways. It left him a different man, with a wonderfully different outlook on life.

I’ve started to write my obituary and found the exercise a good deal more difficult than I thought. Striking the balance between worthiness and being realistic isn’t easy. And I don’t want my best work to be behind me.

None of us know how long we will live, so forever putting off our biggest dreams until tomorrow probably isn’t the wisest strategy. This little exercise reminds us of exactly that.

Are you focusing on what's important?

We all have things we say are important to us, but somehow we don't get around to working on. We say they matter and we really are going to get around to doing something about them someday. Somehow too many other things get in the way. Weeks, months, and years can go by and we don’t make any progress.

If we are not careful we become one of those people who blame circumstances, pressures with work, or feeling uncomfortable about making the effort when our dreams don’t come true.

If you have something that matters to you, there are some really simple steps that will ensure help make it a reality:

1. Be clear about what you want to achieve. Write it down, talk to other people, iron out the inconsistencies in your goal. Work on it until you understand it so well, are so familiar with its implications and in the process have made it an important part of your life.
2. Set targets, deadlines and other quantifiable goals. Setting a target number or a deadline forces us to think about how realistic our objectives are. Will customers really pay that much? Can I really get everything done by that date? Is the volume sufficient to meet our objectives or do we need to do more? Too often we think things will fall into place closer to the time, but in face all we have done is avoided the difficult thinking.
3. Plan how you are going to do it. Once you know what, and how much, and by when you can then start figuring out how. Planning takes time and isn’t particularly easy, but without a plan you won’t know what to do. Or worse still, you will do the wrong things. Having a written plan, will make sure that the big, pivotal things get included.
4. Track your progress. Include measurable milestones in your plan, and then track your progress day by day, week by week, month by month so you know whether you are on track. This simple act, which is a result of the 3 steps above, will make sure things happen when they should, or get brought back on track if they slip.
5. Review. Sometimes things go well, sometimes not so well, but there is always something to learn and changes that should be made in order to achieve what you want.

I’m not saying these steps don’t take time, because they do. I’m not saying they aren’t intellectually challenging, because sometimes they are. But I am saying that they will make sure the things that are important to you actually happen.

At work they are called KPIs, or key performance indicators: the crucial things that must happen in order to keep business plans moving forward. The concept is universal: at home, school, social groups or pressure groups. It takes some effort, but delivers results.

So what are you waiting for?

So, tell me what you want

So tell me what you want, what you really really want?

Have you figured it out yet? What you really really want? Or are you still looking? Do you think you have it, then you realise it wasn’t what you wanted at all?

Figuring out goals is one of the most challenging, yet most important things we can do, because if we don’t know what we want, the chances of getting it are not high.

As a pilot once had to explain to his passengers:

“I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that we are
lost. The good news is that we have a tailwind behind us, so we are making great time in getting there!”

Isn’t it just the truth that we spend so much of our lives in the same way? Directionless, but working our behinds off to get there.

But just imagine if you won the lottery tomorrow. You would have enough money to live comfortably and not worry about your day to day needs. What would you do? How would you spend your time? What passions would you pursue? What dreams would you chase? What purpose would excite you enough to bounce out of bed every morning? Most of us earn more than a million pounds during our working lives, some very much more than that. So in truth, it isn’t really money that is stopping us - it is clarity of purpose.

Knowing what you really really want, has to be the first step in attempting to get it.