Notebook.
Productivity, connecting with people, good questions, feedback and decisions. Notes I keep coming back to.
Productivity & The Goal
Figure out what “the goal” is.
A lot of work in our personal and professional lives happens just for the sake of happening. Stop, and figure out what your end goal is, what are you actually trying to achieve? What are you being measured on? How is success being defined?
In most companies, money is the goal. It’s seldomly admitted, and companies of course may aspire to achieve more than that, such as give back to the community, serve their customers. But at the end of the day, if there’s no money coming in, there’s no company. In your personal life, the goal may be to have a family, have more time for yourself, or simply, to be happy.
Being productive, just to be productive is like running around in a circle, just to make footprints in the sand.
It’s critical to understand that being productive is only a valuable use of time if you’re working to achieve a goal, and it has to be the right goal too! Productivity is anything that helps achieve the goal.
Money coming in
to the company
Money tied up
in the company
Money going out
of the company
Design the workday.
Research suggests that in an eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for two hours and 53 minutes.
Design workday to maximize productivity with focus time. Limit meetings. Focus time in the morning 7-9am, 10-11am. Meetings in the afternoon 1-3pm. Process email 2 times a day, 9am, 12pm.
Always start with the most difficult and important task.
What is the 1 thing I can do today that will make everything else irrelevant?
- Task #1. Must do, this absolutely needs to be done today. This might be preparing or submitting something for an important deadline or planning and scheduling an important event/meeting.
- Task #2 is also important, but it’s important to differentiate Task #1 from anything else.
- Task #3 too. Block off 2-4 hours of focus/heads down time to get the three most important things done and then be done for the day. Just available for meetings or team.
Unplug from email and chat.
Turn off all notifications (do not disturb mode/snooze notifications) except phone calls, calendar/tasks/alarms. Wear headphones and listen to mellow music or focus music. Physical sign or close office door to prevent being interrupted.
Set short deadline and be effective.
Get something valuable done.
Work at the right things.
80/20 rule. Effective and efficient are not the same thing.
Mindset is so important.
Start off every morning in an alert way with brief activity (such as walking) and listen to, watch, or read something to stimulate the brain to think in a productive and effective way.
Prioritize, then punch through.
Spend 5-10 mins prioritizing the list then spend the rest of time punching through to get as many done, no interruptions.
Keep meetings to 15 minutes.
Don’t let meetings or conversations drag on, as soon as you’ve gotten bored, it’s time to go. You have a responsibility to keep meetings and conversations focused, and goal oriented.
Every meeting is optional.
Ask what the outcome of a meeting is and what my role is, before attending so I can decide if it’s a good use of time.
Goodhart’s Law.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
In other words, when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure in order to receive the reward.
Government authorities attempted to control the rat population of a city by hunting them down and created a bounty programme that paid a reward for each rat killed. To collect the bounty, people would need to provide the severed tail of a rat. Officials, however, began noticing rats with no tails. The rat catchers would capture rats, sever their tails, then release them back into the sewers so that they could produce more rats.
Connect.
Email is overused. Pick up the phone!
BCC in email breaks trust.
People treat you as you train them to treat you.
You can say anything to anyone when trust is present.
Talk to people. Not about them. Do not gossip.
You don’t connect in the meeting, you connect before & after the meeting.
The most important word is someone’s first name.
It is better to look uninformed, than to be uninformed. Curb ego and ask questions!
If you have something to say, say it directly to the person involved. For in-person meetings arrive early, for virtual, join early!
Good questions.
For leading people, teams, hiring, performance, 1:1s, customers and new working relationships. Pick a topic.
- What are you best at doing?
- What are three things that will keep you with this organization? What’s one thing that would make you leave?
- What is something you want to do that you have not had a chance to do?
- What three things do you need in a job to be satisfied?
- What’s your career deal breaker? ie. If this happens, you would leave this organization or job?
- What skills do you have that the organization is not currently using?
- What do people in the organization think, but don’t say?
- What are employees talking about in the break rooms, hallways, and at happy hour?
- What meetings are effective and add value? What meetings are ineffective and need to change or be eliminated?
- What would improve your performance?
- What’s working about how we work together? What could be improved?
- When do you do your best work: early morning, midday, late afternoon, or evening?
- What helps you feel motivated?
- What demotivates you?
- How do you communicate?
- When I’m stressed I…
- How do you plan your day? What does a typical day look like?
- How do you manage your work?
- How can we help you? (be clear on deadlines, don’t book same day meetings, etc.)
- What is your impression of this organization? How would you describe it to a friend?
- What three things will make you stay with this organization? What would make you leave?
- What’s your reputation where you work or used to work? If I asked people you work(ed) with to talk about you, what would they say?
- Tell me about a time you received negative feedback. What did you learn? What did you do with the information?
- Tell me about a previous organization that was a bad fit? How did you know you were in the wrong organization?
- What is the thing I need to achieve?
- What are the expectations for me?
- What am I performing on?
- How am I being evaluated?
- What are my performance targets?
- What’s most important that I get done in the next ninety days, six months, and year?
- Who impacts my reputation and the opportunities that I have?
- Where else in the organization could I be an asset?
- What mistakes have I made that I need to recover from?
- What’s gone well since we last met?
- What could have gone better?
- What do you want to talk about?
- What is important right now for us to talk about?
- What are you working on this week?
- What do you need from me? How can I help?
- And what else?
- Last time we talked, you said X was a challenge. How is that going?
- What is going well? What went well?
- What would you do differently next time?
- How is this issue impacting you/the team?
- What are some options to consider?
- What specifically are you going to do next? When will you do it?
- How will we track and measure results? How will we know if we’re winning?
- Why did you decide to hire our company? Who else did you consider working with?
- How will you know you made the right decision in hiring us? What would make you question your decision?
- Why did you stop using our products or services?
- Why do you continue to use our products/services? What would have you choose another provider?
- What type of work do you do on a typical day?
- What is your past work experience?
- Do you prefer to communicate via email, chat, phone?
- Do you prefer phone, video, or in person meetings?
- Do you prefer scheduled meetings or impromptu conversations?
- When do you do your best work? Early morning, midday, late afternoon, or evening?
- What type of information do you want to receive on shared projects and assigned tasks? Big picture or detailed?
- In what format do you like to receive information? Paragraphs, bullets, spreadsheets, tables and graphs?
- What type of work do you like to do most?
- What type of work do you like to do least?
- What are your expectations?
Accountability.
Magic words for accountability
What happened there?
And that’s it. No lecture. If it keeps happening then we talk about this pattern.
You are 100% accountable for your career.
Values + behaviour = culture
People need to be held accountable and incentivized to follow values.
Feedback.
Ask for feedback. Then say “thank you.”
Don’t get defensive or try to justify anything. Otherwise, people will be less eager to give feedback in the future.
Giving feedback to people you manage
As your manager, my job is to help you be successful. As a result, I’ll tell you what I see, as I see it. I’ll give you both positive and upgrade (negative) feedback in a timely way. Because if I don’t, you won’t grow as a result of working with me.
As your manager, my job is to help you get where you want to go in your career. As a result, I’m going to be giving you balanced feedback and I’m going to give it to you in a timely way. I’m going to give you the good stuff and the not so good stuff. And the reason I’m going to do that is not because I want to make you feel bad but because I want to help you grow and advance and if I’m not honest with you I’m useless to you and I just take up space for you as a manager.
Give feedback when you’re not upset
- Introduce the conversation
- State your motive
- Describe the behaviour, I’ve noticed…
- State the impact of the behaviour, Here’s what happens
- Ask the other person for their perception of the situation
- Make a suggestion or request or ask What can you do differently next time?
- Agree on next steps
- Say “thank you”
New working relationships
Tell people what to expect when working relationships begin. Ask what they expect. Set communication expectations. (The questions are under Good questions.)
Making decisions.
Hell Yes! or No
If it’s not an enthusiastic “hell yes!”, then it’s a no.
Reframe the Default
Imagine starting from scratch, would you still choose this if it wasn’t the default option?
Regret Minimization
Choose the option you’ll regret the least when you look back.
Pro/Con Weighting
List pros and cons, then weight them by importance to see what matters most.
10-10-10 Rule
Consider how you’ll feel about the decision in 10 days, 10 months, and 10 years.