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In order to manage your time effectively, consider your answers to the following time management best practices:

1. Do I hold planning sessions with myself every day (for ex: at 4:30pm) to review today’s “to do” list and draft the next day’s “to do” list and to review tomorrow’s appointments making notation of what I need to bring to those appointments?

2. Do I determine which tasks are of high priority each day?

3. Do I effectively reduce and handle interruptions?

4. Do I habitually finish all the items on my “to do” list?

5. Do I tackle the jobs for the day in priority order?

6. Do I delegate both authority and responsibility well when assigning tasks to others?

 Typical symptoms of poor time management may include:

• missing deadlines
• regularly working long hours
• regularly taking work home
• feeling pressured by a lack of time
• not spending enough time with family or friends
• often unable to get everything done

Set up a time every morning to review your day’s commitments, for example, 7:30 am.  Review appointments, phone calls, tasks, etc.  Make sure that what you determined yesterday at your 4:30 scheduling time still makes sense. If not, change priorities, appointments, and tasks so you can achieve your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.  Try to stick to your daily plan as best as possible.  If you can’t get to something during the day, and cannot delegate it to someone else, send an email or make a quick call to anyone who needs to know.  Then, schedule that task for whatever nearest day in the future you will be able to attend to it. 

DO THE PEOPLE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION THINK STRATEGICALLY?

Strategic Thinking capability throughout the organization is on the minds of CEO’s these days.  The need to execute the organization’s strategy and respond to evolving  environments with rapid response is requiring that all employees think strategically. 

Do your employees think strategically?  To think strategically, employees should understand the “bigger picture” as well as understand future trends.   The “bigger picture” elements of the external system within which the organization resides as well as the internal organizational system. 

If we look at nature as a metaphor/analogy, and consider an apple seed planted in the ground as the analogy to a start-up organization, then the seed resides in a system that includes the soil, the climate, and the surrounding plants and animals.   Within the seed itself is the DNA of the seed and the nutrients that are necessary for the growth of that seed until it can grow roots to bring in new nutrients.  All of these elements, external and internal  have an impact on the success of the seed.  

In the business world, the acronym we use to discuss the elements of the external business system is: PESTEL. 

• P = Political
• E = Economic
• S = Social 
• T = Technological
• E = Environmental
• L = Legal

The internal organizational system contains elements such as the following:

• key business drivers (e.g. market indicators, competitive advances, product attractiveness, etc.)
• the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• internal stakeholders
• organization structure and culture
• assets in terms of resources (such as people, systems, processes, capital etc)
• intellectual assets like patents/ process knowledge
• goals and objectives and the strategies already in place to achieve them

 If CEO’s want their employees to think strategically, they will want to communicate on a regular basis

“The Earth is running out of energy resources, but there is a source of special energy which has scarcely been tapped.  It is the power available in groups, the power of group synergy.  Tapping into group synergy is made possible through powerful group facilitation.” – The Art of Facilitation by Hunter, Bailey, & Taylor[1]

Powerful group facilitation is achieved in part by the ability to notice “what is going on here”.  Twenty-five years ago, when I worked for Great American Bank facilitating team building, I was introduced to a concept called “WIGOH”, i..e. “What is going on here?”  This concept has been one of the most important skills I have learned in my career as a facilitator.  What it speaks to is the attention one needs to pay to group dynamics in addition to the content of what a group is discussing.  This skill and the corresponding group process intervention, can make or break a group’s ultimate success. 

In order to facilitate group synergy effectively, you need to pay attention to the emotional state of group members, their body language including tone of voice, what they choose to focus on, their perspective, their mental models, how they are relating to other members, whether they are contributing or not, how their problem solving and decision making process is working or not working, their level of resistance to a suggestion, etc.  A facilitator is processing many things at the same time not the least of which is whether or not the agenda, and consequently the desired outcomes of the group discussion, is being achieved.   Everything that the facilitator is able to attend to is taken into consideration for possible intervention/redirection.  The facilitator has to quickly assess “What is going on here?” and then determine what actions he/she needs to take in response to what is being witnessed.  If you are a person who can only attend to the content of the discussion, and therefore cannot pay attention to WIGOH, in many cases, you will not be able to optimize group synergy.

In a week-long course at National Training Labs, a premier organization development training company, I learned another important aspect of group dynamics.  People will sometimes agree to the direction the majority of the group has determined it should go, when in fact they are opposed to the vision, the goal, and/or the plan.  This is what is called “pseudo-consensus”.  Pseudo-consensus can totally sabotage the success of a group/team.  When someone says they will go along to get along, this should be seen as a potential red flag signaling possible resistance and even sabotage to the group’s mission in the long-run.  A facilitator needs to sense when this is happening and draw out the fears/concerns/facts that the person has not yet expressed or has not been adequately addressed to their satisfaction.  Sometimes, a whole new direction can come about because someone has finally expressed  a key missing element that no one else had thought about.

Active Listening Skills:

Have you been listening lately? Do you ask questions instead of responding with your own thoughts? Do you wait until the other person has completed their thought/story?

Zig Ziglar said “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care…about them.” If you are a business owner, CEO, community leader, manager, or supervisor, how much do you show you care about the people around you by actively listening to them? Do you paraphrase what you hear them saying? Do you reflect back the feelings behind their words? Do you summarize the key points of what they have just said? Building rapport through active listening skills has benefits that keep on giving over time.

Take a minute today and listen actively to someone on your staff or on your leadership team. You may be pleasantly surprised by the returns on your investment.

Tri-coastal Living by Catherine Cleary

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This page under construction.