Making Time for Reviews

August 20, 2014

In addition to my own posts, I also contribute to Time Management Magazine. My post for September 2014 has to do with the importance of making time for reviews, including self-assessment. Here is an excerpt:

Back in the 1980’s New York City had a mayor by the name of Ed Koch. He was generally well-liked, and was instrumental in helping clean up the city, and was a very public figure. His trademark greeting was to walk up to average people on the street and say “How am I doing?” This obvious flip-around on the normal way of greeting people symbolized his ongoing desire for feedback from constituents, tourists and anyone who happened to be in the city. It was a request for an impromptu performance review, and it had the double benefit of both an informal poll of his performance as well as a savvy piece of marketing as the mayor that cares.

Mayor Koch, and other political figures like him, take a risk, realizing that the answer will not always be positive. But knowing where dissatisfaction exists represents the first step towards fixing what needs to be fixed, and building what needs to be built. This is doubly important in situations where the source of dissatisfaction – the thing needing to be improved – is currently a total unknown.

Reviews, then, form part of the project management required to get things done. They are an essential component that appear at first glance to take time, but in the long run save much more.

To read the full article for IOS (Apple), itunes…. or for Android bit.ly/….