I recently watched a magician named Derek Hughes perform… he was amazing! To the casual observer, he was empowered with supernatural abilities. The truth: although well practiced and eminently skilled, what the audience experienced were some tricks of his trade. I’m thankful magicians aren’t the only ones who have a few tricks up their sleeve.
Tag: productivity
There’s a lot being written these days about being productive. I read several posts this morning containing ideas on how to Hack Productivity. These articles contained many useful ideas. My concern is that most were about form not substance.
A leaders’ time is their most important asset. If we are effective as leaders, where we invest our time yields a return. However, many leaders, myself included, have often pursued a different path. We chased the holy grail of improving our time management skills. We were wrong.
Do you travel a lot? I don’t consider my travel load to be excessive. I know many men and women who travel more than I do, but I have racked up more than a million miles on Delta over the years. Perhaps that’s enough to qualify me to answer today’s question: How can you and I be more productive while we travel?
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time in meetings. This can be quite painful – but it doesn’t have to be. As we’ve been talking more and more about the team concept at Chick-fil-A, it has put the spotlight on one of the major challenges many teams face: How do we make our meetings more productive?
Categories
Plan to Focus
In a recent post, Big Rocks First, I mentioned Focus Days as something I put on the calendar well in advance of the day-to-day activities that cry out for my time. I’ve been asked to say more about Focus Days. What are they? Why are they important to me?
My previous two posts dealt with what to look for in an administrative assistant and how to work with a shared assistant. This post is for leaders who don’t have administrative support on their payroll. My first suggestion, try to get it in the budget. I believe the investment in a professional administrator will generate a tremendous return on investment. Until that time arrives, there are two strategies you may want to consider.
One of the Team Skills I mentioned in my last post was Effective Meetings. Does the idea of a great meeting sound like an oxymoron to you? Let’s face it; most of the meetings we attend are not the model for productivity and efficiency. However, if done well, meetings multiply our time, increase our productivity, tap into the collective wisdom and creativity of the group, yield better decisions and better results. Done poorly, they are a colossal waste of time. So what can a leader do?