Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola

Productivity Case Histories | Productivity improvement articles | Time Tips Articles
 

Productivity Knowledge Base: Why Productivity?

There you are with 1,000 things to do, most of them high priority. And now, you're expected to address productivity and come back with a good plan? It's a lot of work. And it may cost money. Why should you do it?

In a word, survival. As your competitors become more productive, they can more easily beat you on price while possibly even making a fatter margin. That means they can hire better help (possibly away from you), get the jobs that lead to other jobs, and basically elbow you aside. As a farmer might say, "They'll push you away from the feeding trough." That doesn't make for a very good business situation for you.

One "answer" to this problem is to work harder or longer. Many project managers or crew supervisors will demand more from their front-line employees. This is not a sustainable strategy. Most people, in our Western culture, have been brought up to put in a good day's work for a good day's pay. This work ethic is deeply ingrained and goes back for generations. Yes, some of these people will slack off sometimes. But the typical worker works pretty hard. And if you insinuate otherwise, then you will insult and demotivate your workers. It is possible you have hired all slacker type individuals who lack the basic work ethic so prominent in our culture. But, that is not very likely.

Another answer is just to pay people less for what they do. Many companies have decided this is a good strategy. So, they play games with performance reviews, demand routine overtime (unpaid) from their salaried employees, and find other ways to cheat their workers. This strategy shows complete disrespect for the people who deal with your customers and represent your company. It is not a sound business strategy, and it reveals a character flaw in your management. Don't use this strategy.

A third answer is to increase productivity. To start this effort, you conduct an examination of all the inputs to production. By examining these inputs and correcting deficiencies, you can increase productivity. You must also look at these inputs in three dimensions--not a simple task. That's something our productivity seminars will help you do. You'll understand how to compare different inputs, shorten the spaces between them, eliminate some, add others, and so on.

In short, productivity enhancement is a requirement for surviving in today's cut throat marketplace. Substitutes for an intelligent productivity effort lead only to failure.  The right effort, with the right information, however, can ensure you are the one feasting at the feeding trough.

 

 

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.