Nicholas Bate

Mmmm

How Good Is Your

multi-tasking?

And You Thought Your Calendar/Schedule

was all innocent?

He Was Running, Jumping And Leaping: His Favourite Day!

Mmmm

On Productivity

As with so many areas, the study of productivity has been successfully reduced to its component parts: lists, triggers and schedules for example. But just as the human body is not a stack of chemicals nor the Mona Lisa a collection of well balanced colours and perspectives, there is something missing: the passion which drives will which drives real productivity.  Too much study of the chemicals removes what is Life. Too much study of techniques destroys great art and too much concern about the component parts of efficiency and effectiveness can ironically destroy the real productivity we seek.

21 Ways To Have More Effective Meetings

Part III, 15-21, The Kick-Butt Ones.

15. Stand for the meeting and don't sit down until it's 100% completed.

16. Cascade and mini-team. Rather than a meeting of 22 people, have sub-meetings of maximum 4 people and send representatives to a decision-making meeting. Hence all views are gathered and yet the meeting is not slowed by the sheer 'weight' of people and discussion.

17. Close down many of your meeting rooms. Stop it being easy to have meetings.

18. Ask for a RoI assessment to be calculated at the end of the meeting. This is given to the Finance Director who reads it out at the monthly company briefing. Your meeting cost is number of people times length of meeting times average employee cost.

19. Ask of every regular meeting. How else could we be doing it? And if we do have to hold a meeting could it be done in half the time with half the people?

20. Implement 1-7 fully.

21. Implement 8-14 fully.

21 Ways To Have More Effective Meetings

8-14. The slightly more radical ones.

(1-7: the fundamentals, here).

8. Reduce the meeting length e.g. 1h to 45 minutes to boost the sense of 'we need to focus'.

9. Keep the numbers attending to manageable groups. Seriously consider not having meetings with more than 4 people.

10. Every 15 minutes take 1 minute to summarise progress and actions to date.

11. Apart from an obvious requirement (e.g. projection of a spreadsheet for group discussion) ensure the room is technology free. Interrupts destroy focused thinking.

12. Accept that meetings cannot necessarily be 'fully' inclusive and do need to create balance actions. Lead the meeting.

13. Ask for feed-back on your meetings. Not content but process. Decide to improve them.

14. Get better and better at the fundamentals rather than forgetting them as many senior people are wont to do.

21 Ways To Have More Effective Meetings.

Part I (1-7): The Common Sense but not necessarily Common Practice Tips.

1. Start and end on time.
2. Clarify the meeting's purpose before starting.
3. Have a facilitator.
4. Have a clear visible time-line for the agenda.
5. Close actions before the close of the meeting.
6. Check the RoI for the meeting
7. Have the meeting notes documented and circulated within 3h.

tbc.

How To Totally Disorientate & Demotivate Your Top Technical Team 7

1. Deprive them of sleep.
2. Tell them it's 'just for this client'. 'Just this once'. 'Really'.
3. Over-load them with caffeine.
4. Force-feed them pizzas at their screen at well past midnight.
5. Put small boxes in their pockets and on their desks which vibrate at frequent but random intervals just when they need to think. Call them 'smart' phones.
6. Insist they sit in over-heated rooms with people they don't know discussing virtual projects to which they are virtually connected and partly linked to the US team via a virtual conference system which needs an upgrade when they are virtually exhausted.
7. Tell them 'just one more thing and you will be made a team leader'.