Bill Jensen's Blog, page 9

Doubling Productivity: It Ain't the Tools

One of the best, simplest, most helpful sets of advice I've seen recently is Jacob Shriar’s 6 Shockingly Simple Ways To Double Your Productivity At Work .





Yes, one of his six is about tools. And his 12 recommended tools are all great: Evernote, Workflowy, Trello, Sqwiggle, Google Hangouts, Google Docs, Grooveshark (music), Pomodoro.me, Greenshot, Feedly, Yammer, Officevibe. If you aren't already using these, you most definitely should try them out! (Also check out OmniFocus)



But here's what's most important about his six shockingly simple ways to double your productivity...

1. Manage Time in Small Blocks

2. Learn How to Say No

3. Find the Right Environment (Workspace)

4. Create More Alone Time

5. Use the Right Tools

6. Delegate Simple Tasks

...Five of the six have nothing to do with technology, apps or tools.

Five of the six are all about your attitude, your beliefs.

Five of the six are about the choices you make.

Five of the six are about you deciding to take more control when it comes to all the stuff coming at you.



Five of six is 83%. That's about right.

Super-simplified: Here's how to double your productivity...



Follow the 80/20 Rule

80% is about the choices you make and how you think.

20% is about using the best tools/enablers/support.



For 80% of being productive, when anybody says "there's an app for that"... 

The app is you!


Let's try that again, this time with a different list...


11 Expert Tips to Help You Help You Be More Productive in 2014

FastCo's author of this list said she uses a kitchen timer (tool) and occasionally blocked her Internet service and email (choice to avoid tools) to force herself to stay focused, then shared this list:

1. Focus on One Big Task at a Time (choice)

2. Organize Your Day Into Time Blocks (choice)

3. Do Things You Don't Want to Do (choice)

4. Don't Get Paralyzed By Perfection (choice)

5. Stay in the Moment (choice)

6. Put Your Brain on Autopilot for the Small Stuff (choice)

7. Write an Old-Fashioned To Do List (tool)

8. Get an Accountability Partner (support)

9. Don't Check Facebook (choice)

10. Deal With It Only Once (choice)

11. Escape Into Single-Tasking (Be in the Moment) (choice)

9 of 11 = 82% choices

Or, including her intro: 10 of 13: 77% choices




No matter how you look at it, the 80/20 Rule applies:

80% of your personal productivity is about the choices you make and how you think.

How to Be a Best Employee

Wouldn't it be great if we all could work at one of the 100 Best Places to Work For ? 

Every year, the list is studied for shining examples of leadership and corporate excellence. Every year, every one of us who isn't working at one of those places wishes we were.




But what if we turned that list inside out? 

What if we examined the heralded best company practices for and reverse-engineered them to see what it takes to be a Best Employee?




Here are five inside-out practices: best company practices covered within interviews with Best Places CEOs and a FastCo article as well as Best Place criteria — flipped to be from the employee's-responsibility perspective. (Not a complete list. More in future postings)...




HOW TO BE A BEST EMPLOYEE

(even if you don't work at a 100 Best Place)





1. Happiness is the new productivity.

That's the title of a speech given by Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder of MindValley.com, whose goal is to be the Best Company to Work For On the Planet! (Still not on the 100 list, but working on it. He's also one of the 100 Disruptive Heroes interviewed for Disrupt!)

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The happier you are the more you're in the productivity zone. And the best of the best work hard at keeping their people happy!

• SAS (#2) has consistently ranked as one of the top companies for years. CEO Jim Goodnight keeps his people happy by providing lots of benefits and perks.

• Zappos (#38) CEO Tony Hsieh says "Some companies talk about work/life balance. Our focus is on work/life integration, 'cause at the end of the day, it's just 'life'."

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, how does one become happy, stay happy? While the perks and atmospheres that the Lakhiani's and Goodnight's and Hsieh's provide are wonderful... Ultimately, every CEO, every parent, every religion, every self-help guru, and every coach and mentor will tell you the same thing: True happiness is not extrinsic (dependent on things outside of yourself), it is intrinsic (dependent on you, the choices you make, your values, your beliefs, your attitudes).

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Being a Best Employee. That means regardless of whether you work at a 100 Best company or someplace you really need to leave, you own your own happiness.

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2. Create your own growth opportunities.

China Gorman, CEO of Great Place to Work, says that the 100 Best offer nearly double the hours of on-the-job training to their employees as everyone else.

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Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, your must immediately your personal growth opportunities!

• Go to your manager or HR and get yourself into every training module and Lunch'n'Learn you can

• Become a member of LinkedIn and Google Hangouts and your favorite university discussion groups. If there's something you want to learn, there's already several groups sharing their best practices!

• Become a member of Khan Academy. Sign up for professional development and management coaching at e-Work, AthenaOnline or SoundviewPro. Or other alternative educational experiences like the Minerva Project and Draper University of Heroes. Study your ass off — for your career and for life and fun!

> >

Being a Best Employee. Ultimately, you are the sole owner of your own personal growth.

> > >

3. Do your own succession planning.

All 100 Best companies are great at succession planning — nurturing and building the talent for next-level-up opportunities.

> > >

Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, you should do your own succession planning.

• If you manage others, one of your primary responsibilities is training/coaching them to be your replacement. Making oneself replaceable is the goal of everyone who wishes to advance throughout the organization

• If you want more succession planning for yourself than your organization is giving to you, go to your mentor and others you respect and trust. Ask them for guidance on "stretch" career moves — those that will require you to develop new skills and take on new and challenging projects. Doesn't matter whether you take those on within your company or as freelance/entrepreneurial efforts — just do it!

> > >

Being a Best Employee means not waiting for The Man to plan your next developmental moves. Plan them yourself.

> > > >

4. Live your values, no matter what.

China Gorman says the top ranked companies always do a great job of integrating their corporate values into everything they do — from hiring to their strategy to rewards and recognition. You need to do the same for you.

> > > >

Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, your values and principles and passions need to woven into everything you do! For example...

• Anyone who receives three or more of your emails: Would they get a sense of your passions, or sense of humor, or empathy, or whatever's important to you — as a person?

• Same thing for anyone who attends a few of your meetings?

• If you have an issue with the way something is being done — do you handle it in the same manner with as much determination and concern if it was about your family or your home or your own finances?

> > > >

Being a Best Employee means there's no difference or inconsistencies between your values and passions at work and your values and passions in your life. You practice them the same in both settings.

> > > > >

5. Meritocracy rules!

Ideas matter more than seniority.  

Why is it that we all love viral music or videos or Pinterest pins or commercials — (where the idea and creativity and emotional reactions matter most) — and then when we go to work, many of us religiously follow hierarchical relationships and actions? That's not the way it is at the Best 100. In those places, the strength of great ideas and the willingness to make them happen is what matters. Not who reports to whom.

> > > > >

Regardless of whether you work at the top 100 or not, you need to start acting like ideas matter more than seniority.

• Alec Ross, who was Hilary Clinton's innovation and tech advisor, and is on most every Top 100 list of tech influencers, and who was a Top 100 Disruptive Hero, says "Audacity matters. If you have a measure of audacity and a willingness to be aggressive with your idea, that idea has a far great chance of finding a toehold at the tables of power. You don't need to go rogue. Just be very aggressive about your beliefs and be unabashed and don't necessarily follow the minutia of protocol — that's what's necessary to ascend."

• If politics rule at your place of work, hack a workaround

— Shop your ideas with the boss's friend and get him/her to present it to the boss

— Pull together a group of people who will sponsor the idea together, with you

— Do your homework, so you can make a compelling business case

— Make the case to pilot the idea at little to no cost

> > > > >

Being a Best Employee means, as Ross puts it, having a willingness to get aggressive with your ideas — and being willing to ask for forgiveness more than asking for permission.

Death of Email?

According to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, in a recent Wired magazine interview, 

Email is about to die!

It's in its final, fatal decline.


You surely feel it should have been taken out and shot a lot time ago! Jensen Group and others' research show that corporate workers can spend up to one-third of their day managing email, and it is one of the things that makes work so complex!







Moskovitz and others claim that the current social media craze is NOT the answer, but they know what is. Social media's focus and purpose is to connect people to people. What is called for, instead, is actually a work graph — which connects the work (tasks, ideas, clients, goals, agenda items... as well as information about that work and how it all fits together.) The people (who's responsible for what, etc.) are subsets of the work itself.



This WILL happen! Sometime very soon you'll be reading about many apps that will do exactly that. But don't hold your breath waiting for email to die a quick death! You'd die first.



Why? Because attitudes of senior executives, corporate IT infrastructures, business practices and embracing new ideas at work moves much slower than the consumer marketplace does. Diversity and empowerment have been corporate priorities for decades, but we still have inequality for women and the desperate need for far greater empowerment. Performance reviews have been a train wreck for decades, yet most of us STILL suffer through them. We STILL have corporate IT wizards suppressing mobile phone abilities from 2009, '10, '11, '12 and '13 because they can't figure out the security issues.



For most of us, email will die a slow and painful death. 

Here's what you can do to get ahead of that change... 

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1. Put on your BigBoy and BigGirl Pants

You already know the biggest reason that email is such a pain in the ass! YOU! You feel obligated to answer far too much crap! You're not as disciplined as you should be. You feel obligated to zero-out your in-box. STOP IT! NOW! Stop letting your inbox control you!

• Know your top 20 people and your top five priorities and put 80%-90% of your focus on them. Period.

• Ignore a lot more than you do now. If you missed something that's truly important, don't worry: the sender will send it again.

• Repeat the above every minute of every day

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2. Use your frickin' filters!

Even Email2009 had all the filters you needed to filter out most of the crap! Use them!

• Know your top 20 people and your top five priorities: Make them High Priority status. There is NO Middle Priority!!! There's only High Priority and "Everybody Else Who I'll Get To ASAP" (And you'll find that 80% of that category should have been deleted anyway. Guaranteed.)  

> > >

3. Know what matters.

Is this what you want on your tombstone? "She zeroed out her inbox every day. She never let her kid's needs get in the way of that." Of course not. Know what matters. Most of what does is NOT in your inbox.

> > > >

4. Shift to Gmail and use killer apps  

Gmail already has most of what you need without Corporate IT's restrictions. Get out of Corp IT Hell. Also try apps like Mailbox to manage email better.

> > > > >

5. Be an early adopter of Work Graph apps   

Moskovitz's vision will surely soon become reality. Multiple apps will compete to be the winner. Don't wait for that eventual winner. Pick one as soon as it comes out. If it doesn't work for you, discard that and try another. What's important is NOT the app, but you training you to build and use different habits. That's the real benefit of being an early adopter.



The punchline...

Change your habits. Now.

Most of the problem with email isn't email. 

The solution is each of us changing our habits, being more disciplined.

Failing Forward: 5 Difficult Truths

So, I'm doing a webinar on How to Lead, Work and Manage in a Disruptive World. About 50 attendees. All senior executives from all around the globe, most reporting directly into the C-suite. 



As I'm discussing the need to speak up, ask tough questions and be willing to fail forward, one of the executives asks "How do we get the CEO and his team to accept this? Can we change them from the bottom up?"



I'm thinking (but didn't say): "Really? You got to this point in your career and in your company and you're STILL asking for 'them' (anyone but oneself) to make it safe for you to fail and to speak up? Really?"







This kind of question is not uncommon. I hear it most every keynote I give, most every workshop I do. Time to address it with some basic truths.



TRUTH 1: Yes, it is easier and better for all if the senior team "gets" it. 

All people should be empowered. All leaders should make it easier to speak the truth to power. All leaders should create a culture where everyone has the right and freedom and responsibility to fail forward — where failures are celebrated as the best/shortest path to innovation, creativity and true success.



TRUTH 2: For most of us — ain't gonna happen! 

At least not as quickly or easily as we would like. 

There is no accurate study on how many leaders "get" all that and behave accordingly, and how many don't. But all the supporting studies (e.g., Globally, only 13% of all employees are engaged, while 63% are disengaged) have been trending the same way for decades. Yes, there are wonderful, amazing executives who have led the way on these issues — (see Fortune's 100 Best Places to Work For) — but, statistically, most of us will not experience that bliss from above.



TRUTH 3: That means you face a choice:

A) Be a Wendy Whiner

B) Be the change you want to see

If you choose A), please...at least have the integrity to declare that! Wear a Scarlet WW name badge that declares "Only hang with me if you love finger-pointing and hate taking accountability."

If you choose B), accept that you WILL get dinged and negative feedback and knocked down on occasion. Fact of life. Sticking your neck out means that WILL happen sometimes.



TRUTH 4: Urban Myth Debunked: 

People don't get fired for speaking up or screwing up. 

(Unless it's a super huge, really bad screw up! People do get fired for those!)

Most everyone who has chosen A) states that their reason is because people get fired for speaking up, asking tough questions and being willing to fail forward. While there may be isolated instances of that, statistically you have about as much chance of getting fired as being hit by lightning. Again, people do get dinged and do get the occasional hairy eyeball and do suffer the occasional demotion to Work Purgatory. But, if one wanted to cite fear, let's be honest about naming it: Fear of looking bad. Fear of being perceived poorly. Which no one ones but that individual. 



TRUTH 5: The choice about whether to speak up, ask tough questions and to fail forward is yours — yours alone.

Regardless of what those above you do or don't do, the responsibility for what you will do next is yours, not theirs. If you choose to speak up, etc, accept that sometimes you'll get dinged and be OK with that. If you choose to wish that "they" would lead differently and "they" would "get it," please accept whatever happens next graciously, respectfully and quietly.



TOOLS: If you'd like some Getting Started Tips: Check out Click, the free How-to Addendum to Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic. as well as these (cheap) tools: Managing Your Manager, How to Say No and Get Ahead, and How to Work Smarter by Asking the Right Questions.   

Expand Your Risk/Reward Boundaries

Back in the Stone Age — my freshman year in college — I needed to make a change. I was in a new place where nobody knew me, and I wanted to "rebrand" myself differently than the shy, insecure, always-the-follower person my high school buddies knew me to be. 



So I began taking strolls through the dorms and was boldly my un-shy-self. One time I heard loud classical music coming from an open door. I walked in, said nothing, wildly conducted the music, then walked out.



That moment completely changed my future. I became known around the quad as goofy, outgoing Beethoven Bill. I became Brother Bill to several of the women in that room — their driver to bars and protector when they were hit on. And one of the women became my girlfriend and eventually my wife.



Photo © Paul Cyr / Barcroft USA via UK Mail Online



I was reminded of that moment when I read Sean Smith's post on 3 Necessary Experiments of Risk and Reward: Control risk, learn to hustle, provide value, earn reward.



Smith writes about three of his un-shy experiments — pretending to be a washroom attendant, being someone's chauffeur through Lyft, and sharing his pad on AirBnB.



He then unpacks each of those experiments into what each one involved:


1. Resources I had.

2. Processes I needed to put in place.

3. Hustle to make it happen.




And then he deftly outlines an awesome approach to expanding one's risk/reward boundaries:


1. Commit to an un-familiar (or otherwise risky) experience.

2. Hustle — using the resources available to you.

3. Use your own process as you see fit, find out your own way using prior observation.

4. Engage with a customer you have never met before.

5. Earn money in real time for the service (or product) you offer.

6. Face possible rejection. (As in pretending to be a washroom attendant: The person could have easily worked at the restaurant and called him out on it immediately.)

7. Succeed or fail, receive feedback to improve processes.



Smith is advising fellow entrepreneurs, and with minor tweaks the same advice is solid for anyone who works.



Similar advice comes from Charlie Connely in Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable . Connely's advice is the same I hear from every leader I've ever interviewed or worked with...

If you look at anybody who has ever achieved success, you will quickly see, they didn’t achieve that by staying within their comfort zone.





No, instead, they continued to push themselves and were willing to risk failure, knowing that the biggest risk is not taking any risk at all.





Can you do that? Can you push past all the "Yeah, but"s? Of course you can. You must!



Where to start? As Smith noted, you can begin outside of your day-to-day job. You can begin with a personal adventure, a goofy moment, and let that moment carry into the rest of your life...




It all starts with a simple “what if I...” — this is where brilliance starts. Where it ends is up to you.

100 Ways to YOUR Happiness

In my past life, I was the Creative Director at Workman Publishing, publishers of the original page-a-day calendar, a gazillion books of lists, and lots more.



I learned to deeply appreciate Peter Workman's brilliance — people LOVE lists! 



But this post isn't just a compilation of my list for happiness or others' lists. The problem with just copying other people's lists is that we love and identify with each item, but we rarely internalize what's there.



If you want 100 Ways to YOUR Happiness, that list must come from inside you!



1. Get a journal, paper or e-based.



2. Fast: Spend one weekend composing your list. Slow And Steady: Once a day, for 100 days, write down something you realized made you happy.



3. When done writing: Skim through others' lists and see if they have a few tips you wish you thought of. (No more than 10-15.)



4. Edit your final list



5. Start ticking off items as you practice them.



Live YOUR list!



A sampling of others' lists:

• 100 Tips to Improve Your Life

• 90 Best Practices: Unleashing Personal Greatness

• 100 Ways to Simplify Your Life

• 100 Tips About Life, People and Happiness

• 75 Ways to Be Happier

• 100 Ways to Be Happy

• 100 Ways to Happiness

• 12 Secrets of Being Happy

One Step at a Time

How does one begin a long and hard and big journey?



One step at a time. 



By now, most of us know the story of Salman Khan, whose Khan Academy is now a powerful force in changing education, but started in 2004 by tutoring just one person. Khan began tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in mathematics over the Internet using Yahoo's Doodle notepad. 



Khan's viral success is the exception. In the workaday world, most of the true heroes get only tiny snippets of the recognition they deserve (if at all), and most of their efforts will never go viral. Yet their efforts make as much difference to the lives they touch as anything that has gone massively viral. 





For instance, Mini Balachandran. She's Production Lead for Naval Air Systems Command Manufacturing and Quality Division. You may not know her. But those she teaches and mentors do. She makes a world of difference to them! 



Balachandran was selected to receive  Women of Color Magazine’s  Career Achievement Award for her efforts to help young women with pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) studies and careers.



Through the community group Expanding Your Horizons, she recently helped over 70 students at an EYH STEM event. She also regularly tutors girls in math and science via Skype.



So.... How do we tackle the massive STEM crisis facing our workplaces?

• One student at a time



How do we do that?

• One volunteer at a time, one day at a time



How can YOU solve a massive problem that's far bigger than you?

• One step at a time. One mentoring hour at a time. 

One volunteered hour at a time. One person at a time.



Start small.

Start now!

Seeing What No One Else Does

Innovation requires those who see things that others do not.



It requires looking through new lenses and envisioning possibilities when all others have doubts. 



I am reminded of this every day.



People who drive through my hometown, Morristown NJ, first pass by statues of three men who met here and who were innovators of their day — George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. 





Then, 50 yards away, they encounter a bizarrely life-like statue. 



That's Morris Frank, the founder of The Seeing Eye , and his first dog, Buddy. The Seeing Eye is based in Morristown and celebrates its 85th Anniversary today.



All the dogs train here. Most every shopkeeper is used to several dogs walking in their stores many times a day — first with sighted trainers, then with their new blind owners. NJ Transit commuters are used to boarding trains with dogs learning their commands. 



It's now commonplace for guide dogs to go everywhere we do. Planes, trains, schools, high-end restaurants and malls. Their access is guaranteed by law.



But imagine January 1929. Imagine trying to convince politicians, restaurant owners, bus drivers, elevator operators, librarians and more to let these "pets" in with all the people. Imagine launching this service in the same year as the Great Depression when "normal" sighted people were hurting in unprecedented numbers. 



Morris Frank and his partners had a vision. They saw a world that no one else could see. A future where the blind had as much freedom and independence as everyone else.



We now live in a time where the lives of the deaf and blind and amputees and those with other disabilities are greatly aided by amazing technologies. 



But long before those or any of today's amazing technological innovations were created, somebody had to have a vision. 



Somebody needs to see what others do not.

Will that be you?

Little Things DO Make a Big Difference!

What do The Divine Miss M., plastic bags, and small innovations all have in common?



Combined, they are evidence that little things do make a big difference!





In 1995, Bette Midler and friends had had enough of the garbage in New York City! They began by cleaning up a couple parks in upper Manhattan. Those efforts were then formalized into the non-profit New York Restoration Project , which continued to clean up and refurbish parks and community gardens.



But there was one scourge that eluded their efforts. You've seen it everywhere, but its more prevalent in cities like New York. Plastic bags blown up into, and then stuck in, the trees. In the winter, with the leaves fallen off city trees, plastic bags and lost balloons and even light clothing become winter's foliage.



Something had to be done. So the NYRP developed the Bag Snagger — simply a three-story pole with a retractable grappling hook on the end. (See video below). Not the next hi-tech app. Not tackling world hunger or poverty. Just a simple pole-and-hook device, tackling New York City eyesores 10 blocks at a time.



Can something so small make a difference? I know it can. I experienced something just like it firsthand. I lived in New York City when Times Square was definitely NOT Disney-ized. When graffiti covered every subway car and many of those cars were unsafe because their lights kept going off. Mayor Rudy Giuliani then waged a campaign of cracking down on nuisance crimes — graffiti, turnstile jumping, panhandling, "squeegee men" and more — with the goal of bring back order and pride in the city.



It worked! (Of course, that was only a tiny portion of what was done to reclaim the city. But...) It was one of the first visible signs that began giving New Yawkahs reason to have more pride in their city — giving them more reasons to chip in themselves.



Little things do make a big difference! 

What little things will you do today?

What will be your Bag Snagger project?

Be Brutally Simple

Not necessarily with others. (Although that, too, is often needed. Please employ some tact and grace and kindness there.)



What's required to succeed today, day-in day-out, is brutal simplicity in your own thoughts. 



There are at least five areas in which there can be no lack of clarity, no lack of conviction, no hesitation, no fudging. If you wish to not only succeed, but also do so with as little frustration and overload as possible, those five are...





1. Know what truly matters. (For many, on that list is: friends, family, values, community, spirituality. Making a difference. Being a good person. Being a good parent. Etc. All else may be urgent, but is not really important.)



2. Know your priorities today. 



3. Know your priorities long-term.



4. Know yourself. (What do you need to be your best every day? Time to think? A walk? Time with friends or family? Whatever it is, go get it/do it.)



5. Remember to have fun every day. (Do something silly. Make others laugh. Make yourself laugh.)



Sure, there are others. Maybe you'd swap out one or two of your own for these. 



But stay brutally simple. Five or less. Try to make it simpler. On this list: 1, 2 and 4 might do the trick. Only you know what your core two or three or five needs to be. Be brutally simple with your thoughts, then live them.