Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola

Productivity Case Histories | Productivity improvement articles | Time Tips Articles
 

Productivity Knowledge Base: Slogans to Boost Productivity

We get a fair number of inquiries asking for slogans that boost productivity.

The truth is that slogans don't boost productivity and can easily undermine productivity improvement efforts. Companies that use the slogan approach risk the typical result of engendering cynicism on the part of employees. Slogans were all the rage some years ago, and the thinking was that slogans would motivate people to change their behavior. This has generally not proved to be the case.

Let's look at industrial safety, as an example. Companies that put up all kinds of signs in the 1990s, such as, "Safety is no accident" did not get increased compliance from this effort. Signs and slogans have a "preach to the choir" effect. They do not change behavior. They did, however, to help reinforce other methods. A case can be made that the resources used for slogan development, deployment, and distribution could have been spent more wisely on the more fruitful methods.

Those methods include employee training, supervisor training, documented personal accountability, and formal programs for safety administration. Similar methods will work for productivity improvement, if you know how to properly execute them (a bad execution can set productivity back by many years).

Companies have been chasing productivity since the days of Henry Ford. They have increased productivity through various means, such as job redesign, automation, and process planning--as well as other methods we will show you in our productivity seminars. They have not increased productivity through slogans.

Put yourself in the place of today's worker. People are afraid for their jobs. Companies in America crossed the line in the sand a generation ago and gave workers the clear message that they were highly disposable. People today do not see a company as having their best interests at heart. And while they know the company benefits from increased productivity, they see productivity--which means fewer work hours needed for a given output--as a direct threat to their continued employment.

In the safety arena, slogans assist other efforts.  But in the productivity arena, slogans have the opposite effect (when used to directly promote productivity). They trivialize the concerns of the worker, and cause a negative reaction. And, these slogans are essentially saying, "Help us eliminate your job." This isn't what people want to hear.

Our productivity seminars will show you how to give an entirely different message. And, you can use slogans to support that message if you are really in love with the idea of using slogans. Just don't undermine your current productivity improvement efforts by relying on slogans. While frosting may taste good on a birthday cake, it will ruin an engine if put in a gas tank. Slogans are frosting.

 

 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do. And, paradoxically, many common "time management" techniques and practices are timewasters because they divert limited resources (such as time) to the wrong things.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.