Author: fwadmin_chron

As a person who has lived and worked overseas, it’s hard for me not to compare: there is a big difference between the way local and foreign professionals maintain business relationships. My conclusion? To keep up with modern demands we Jamaicans must change our practices. Here’s how.

A colleague from overseas once led a few courses in Kingston. She received a few complaints—it appeared as if she were in a rush, trying to push people to act immediately. She agreed with the criticism—”The way I see it,” she said, “my time is limited.” We discovered that this view was at odds with that of her participants who expected her to be in their lives forever. In their minds, the interaction was the first of many. Not the last.

This clash of worldviews gets repeated every day. When we pay attention to each one we can illuminate the ways in which we under-perform the rest of the world, and why.

One reason begins with the fact that we live on a small island with no visible neighbours. Furthermore, the citizens of the closest countries are culturally distant, speaking languages we don’t understand. We only notice them when their boats float up on our shores in a navigational error.

The overall effect is that we are relatively isolated, under little pressure to communicate with others who are different. In our relationships both domestic and foreign, we relax, taking things easy. It’s an attitude beloved by our tourists, but it in business it holds us back.

One way we limit ourselves lies in our tendency to treat Jamaicans who are “off the island” as if they are on Mars—so far away they cannot possibly be reached for anything but life-or-death emergencies. This contrasts with the wider world, where forming and maintaining business relationships isn’t a casual affair. Instead, it’s a deliberate, conscious strategy executed in three parts.

Step 1—Make yourself available

The obvious first step in the internet age is to ensure you are visible online with an updated profile on Linkedin. A few years ago, this was optional. Today, it’s a requirement, yet I find that out of ten local business-people I interact with, two have active accounts and only one bothers to keep it timely, relevant, and interesting

Those who claim to be modern professionals but don’t have an account are fooling themselves. Instead of looking to an international standard they are probably busy following their friends. That’s hardly a proper comparison: collectively, it leaves us far outside the mainstream, islanders who couldn’t care less how the world sees us.

Step 2—Reach out

Many professionals who are serious do much more than create a profile; they use it as a showcase for their best work.

No idea where to start? Write an article with the following title: “The Top 3 Secrets People Who Want to Do My Job Well Need to Know Before Starting.” Once the draft is done, customise the heading to suit your profession.

Then, share it with your friends after doing the necessary grammar and spell checks. When they give it a green light, post the article on Linkedin. I’m not making this up… it’s very close to the process I followed for about five years before becoming a paid columnist for the Gleaner.

You may not aspire to that level, but it doesn’t matter. Creating content is a professional obligation if you have any commitment to your career’s future. It’s the modern way to gain the notice of the best people in your field, anywhere in the world. After all, it’s how you got to know them… via their content. As thought-leaders, they actually may enjoy hearing your perspective and so might many others.

Step 3—Invest time to stay in touch

I regret not following this advice earlier—foolishly, I lost track of colleagues from my early business years. Today, you simply shouldn’t allow this to happen. The resources you need to maintain career-long relationships are all at your fingertips and you must spend time learning how to use them.

Once you do so, use our geographical advantage. Jamaica’s stature in the world is strong. When someone tries to link with you from the other side of the globe, appreciate the asymmetry: you may never have heard of their country, but yours has a positive reputation.

Use it to your benefit. Be bold in reaching out to persons whose work you admire, no matter how “big” they seem to be.

Someone who is planning to migrate may immediately see the value of these three steps, but don’t wait until then. To thrive in the larger world of business now, build a global reputation plus a network that will last your entire career. They could be essential elements to your future success.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170312/francis-wade-holding-long-distance-business-relationships

 

 

Why managerial restraint is so important in protecting employee productivity

When should managers restrain themselves from taking advantage of employee fears? Since the days of slavery, those in power have faced the temptation to use workers’ anxiety as a way to get work done. These recessionary times are no exception, but today this behaviour comes at a cost: a possible drop in employee productivity.

While our economy is showing some welcome signs of life, few believe that employment will improve in the short-term. As a result, over several hard years, employees have become pliable: more likely to follow orders.

Unfortunately, this situation also hurts managers. Robbed of critical feedback needed to do their jobs effectively, they make simple mistakes that add up, reducing the company’s productivity. Here are three everyday examples.

1. Grabbing personal time from employees via smartphone.

A growing number of managers have figured out a tricky shortcut. Giving you, their employee, the gift of a smartphone is seen as an investment with a hefty ROI. The logic is simple. As a senior HR manager explained to me: “When the company gives you a smartphone the ‘obvious’ expectation is that you must make yourself available at all times to answer it.”

While the policy she described wasn’t written anywhere, as its unlikely victim you would quickly come to realize that your new gift comes with strings. Now, you are expected to carry the device with you, answering it on weekends, vacations, sick days and overtime hours… at home, in church, during parties and even while you are lying in bed. Like many behaviours of this kind, you may not be able to see the problem by yourself. In extreme cases, it may take a spouse or friend to point out the obvious: “You have become a modern-day slave to a 24-7 obligation.”

When I make this observation to executives, it’s usually impossible to find someone who is willing to take responsibility for the problem even though it’s not irreversible. Managers have a powerful weapon in their arsenal—restraint. With mindful behaviour, they can turn the tide. When they go further and advocate proper policies, they can make a difference for everyone, preventing the worst from happening… such as a bitter war waged by email which breaks out one Sunday morning at 5:00am.

 

2. Forcing employees to respond to email quickly.

This particular problem starts slowly. A manager expresses annoyance because you, her employee, has not responded to a message in her Inbox in a timely manner. She demands better performance. Unfortunately, your answer is to develop the new habit of checking email up to 15 times per hour, just in case.

This has an immediate effect – your manager is happier, especially when other employees follow suit in  order to avoid her wrath. But it’s a pyrrhic victory. After a while, you and your colleagues develop a worst-practice that’s hard to shake: multi-tasking.

The manager who is aware of these repercussions learns to restrain her annoyance. She adopts a best practice: refusing to use email for urgent communications. Instead, she reserves time-sensitive conversations for two-way channels, such as in-person meetings, phone conversations or Whatsapp.

The best managers understand that without this practice, it’s easy for one annoyed manager to set off a contagion of time-wasting. Once again, the only way to turn back the tide on this dangerous expectation is to implement explicit written policies that protect everyone.

 

3. Insisting on lowering walls to watch employees and cut costs.

A top executive once told me that she ensures that staff has low cubicle walls so that she can “keep an eye on them.” It’s a popular technique used by managers in environments of low trust, even when workers have multiple university degrees. The root causes are never truly explored. Instead, they are justified by comparing the out-of-pocket expense of low versus high walls. When a recession is raging, any reason to cut a cost becomes a good one.

Unfortunately, there’s a high price to pay. Recent research shows that open office plans destroy productivity by offering up a slew of visual and audible distractions. They prevent employees from entering the flow state where their best work is done. Instead they are forced into “Continuous Partial Attention” where one distraction interrupts the other, leading to a host of unfinished tasks.

Frustrated employees learn that the only way to do good work is to come in early and leave late, or give up weekends, holidays and even sick days to work from home. Ultimately, low cubicle walls represent a “shortcut which draws blood”—a long-term obstacle to high productivity and engagement.

It’s all too easy for the clueless manager to operate in the dark, inflicting these three behaviours on a fearful staff. Fortunately, neither restraint nor explicit policies are expensive remedies, but they do require a level of enlightenment that is far too rare in the 21^st century Jamaican workplace.

 

 

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

 

 

 

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170226/francis-wade-managerial-restraint-important-protect-employee-productivity

Why developing personal habits is more important than intelligence or force

Why is there such a gap between average and high performing employees? While there’s no simple solution, recent research suggests that your company may be looking in some of the wrong places for answers.

The difference between the best and worst companies is huge, according to The Economist: the top 25% of companies are a full 40% more productive than their counterparts. It’s not luck – they have learned how to inculcate repetitive behaviours.

Most of us don’t relate to habits this way. We are surprised by their power and unaware of their origin. Generally, we refer to them as negative practices we want to get rid of, but cannot.

This popular but limited understanding blocks us from a higher realm. For high performers, habits are actually a creative enabler.

Unfortunately, habit-building is not a part of our schools’ curriculum. Instead, we are encouraged to get results by being smart, or forceful.

The Limits of Being Smart

As Jamaicans, we have a propensity to “big up” intelligent people who establish a track record of academic success in GSAT, CAPE and university exams. Typically, we encourage them to enter established professions such as law, medicine, accounting or engineering.

However, if you have ever sat waiting in a doctor’s, dentist’s or lawyer’s office wondering how they manage to keep any of their customers, you may know why intelligence is not enough. It’s necessary, but not sufficient to run these tiny, one-person business ventures.

As a tool, being smart doesn’t scale very well. A small company which fails to develop the habits required for good customer service or time management is one which needs more than book smarts. It requires a very different approach.

The Limits of Using Force

We Jamaicans have a love-hate affair with the use of force. Strongman leaders ranging from Bustamante to Dons gain our admiration when they intimidate others into action. We want more.

However, when we are on the receiving end of forceful treatment, we complain about injustice and resist. This makes force a double-edged sword. Even though a few bosses bully their way to success, it’s always short lived. Over time, they develop a well-earned reputation for abuse which repels good people.

The fact is, force only works with those who are fearful so like smart-ness, it’s only effective in a few narrow situations – it just doesn’t scale.

What Works – Habit Creation

A habit is defined as an action which is performed without conscious effort. It’s a cognitive freebie which is triggered by something in our physical environment or by a specific event.

Unfortunately, the skill of developing positive habits and practices so that they drive business processes isn’t taught. We certainly are never shown how to develop them consciously. The lack of this knowledge hamstrings your company in several ways.

1. Underestimating the slow, steady approach to learning and training

When you don’t understand the power of habits, you rely too much on smarts and force, believing that a sudden flash of brilliance or a single decisive action are remedies to complex business problems. They are just “shortcuts which draw blood.”

Even most training has the same fault. We are impatient, putting faith in a solitary day of instruction, while studies show that a behaviour change which starts in the classroom is just the beginning. A full 60% is driven by what happens after the class, rather than during it.

2. Not uncovering key behaviours

In my work with companies I am often surprised to learn how little effort is spent to decode the keys to their success. As a result, managers are blind to places where their idiosyncratic actions lead to unique, positive results.

By not deciphering their hidden code, they dishonour it; the first step towards losing it altogether. Over time, unexplained, preventable failure sets in.

3. Not showing employees how to teach themselves new habits

Perhaps the biggest failing of all is that companies don’t instruct employees how to pick up and learn new behaviours, then turn them into habits. Instead, this skill, which benefits every single area of corporate life, is left to chance.

When you teach employees the mechanics of habit-creation, they learn how to baseline their current behaviours. This baseline becomes a starting point for developing higher-level skills. Then, habit development is far more than a matter of luck – it’s a conscious act which, when repeated, sets employees up for success.

Over time, an organisation filled with such people outperforms its peers who are looking for short-term improvements. There’s no need to outmuscle or outsmart the also-rans. Instead, focus your attention on specific behaviours which can be turned into habits. Collectively, they represent a unique source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

Why do managers fail to get people moving in the right direction? More often than not they blame their staff, even as they lack the drive to push themselves to communicate outside their chosen comfort zone. The answer to being a better motivator? Know your limits and exceed them.

If you supervise the work of others, consider my observation: most managers chronically under-communicate.

While I can’t prove the above assertion with research data, my anecdotal evidence suggests that many of your employees may find themselves stranded. Without sufficient dialogue and adequate answers, they arrive at their own conclusions with only the help of others who share their skewed thinking. A yawning gap emerges which can only be spanned if you take the initiative.

You must do more than sit in your office or meetings, feeling safe in the belief that your intentions are being well-understood. They aren’t. The only reason you don’t realize the problem is that most employees are reticent, reluctant to confront you. Only after a disaster strikes, do you see the truth: some time ago, you left them far behind.

To prevent this outcome, borrow a trick from weight-lifters who accept that their development only comes from “progressive overload”—the addition of extra pounds. The principle is simple. Muscles become bigger and stronger when they are subject to increasing loads. Added stress produces growth. It’s the very opposite approach taken by the typical manager who is trying to reduce pressure, not increase it.

One solution is to engage in the following three practices to be executed by you, as a manager, with a kind of systematic, ruthless diligence.

1. Use New Technologies

When I started in the corporate world as a 20-year-old, internal communication occurred via the printed word or in speeches. Today, if you stick to those approaches, employees are likely to associate them with you and your message: i.e. as stale.

Use improved, enriched forms of communication if you hope to steal your employees’ attention away from their devices with their continuous barrage of multi-media distractions. To keep up, you must learn how to adopt the latest popular technologies.

For example, today it’s as important to master social networking tools as it is to know Word or PowerPoint, with one difference. The social network’s features are evolving more quickly, implying that you need to be a permanent student, experimenting and learning how to communicate with today’s employees.

2. Use Interactive Channels

As new hires, my colleagues and I understood that information was meant to be sent in one direction. Down. Thirty years later, this just won’t do. Now, employees who are the targets of one-way communication offer up bored, blank looks, especially if they are Millennials.

The fact is, they have been raised with an expectation that problem-solving is a joint activity, regardless of who initiates the interaction. Don’t think of a sermon. Instead, study Facebook, Netflix and Snapchat to understand their addictive, game-like qualities. Their interactive design is the new norm.

To thrive in today’s world, you must be persuasive, using blogs, podcasts, live dialogs and the written word in ways that provoke employees to interact. Like masterful Internet marketers, you have no choice but to keep pushing the envelope in order to inspire others to action.

As you do so, expect these interactions to change you as well. No longer is communication about “delivery.” Now, if you aren’t being transformed during these dialogs, both live and virtual, then you should suspect you are either being boring or irrelevant.

3. Over-communicate

As I mentioned at the beginning if you are a manager it’s likely that you are not communicating enough. You may talk a lot when given the chance (perhaps even drowning out others) but that’s not the same. Most managers aren’t equipped to deliver the high frequency of communication required to proactively answer employees’ questions and concerns. Understand that if they are using WhatsApp to touch bases with every other important person in their life several times per day, then your monthly update meetings fall far short.

The worst managers resist such requirements, convincing themselves that “I am paying these people, so they should listen, be content and perform.” It’s old, outdated Bakra thinking. He also believed that feeding and housing slaves was enough to earn their loyalty.

Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, use new technology, interactivity and over-communication until you find yourself far outside your comfort zone.

When it starts to hurt consider that a good sign. It’s what you need to grow into the kind of manager who is meeting employees where they are, rather than where you wish they were. Embrace the new level of receptivity, sensitivity and openness which is now required to be a great communicator.

 

 

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170129/francis-wade-why-managers-now-need-communicate-until-it-hurts

What can local companies do when faced with backlogs of any kind? From lists of overdue phone calls to folders of email messages, this nagging issue is difficult to solve. In this article I argue that we are better off staying away from pop-psychological diagnoses in favor of process-oriented solutions.

Case in point: Our justice system shows evidence of several, alarming backlogs. As citizens we agree that they partially cause our increasing crime rate. When suspects never become inmates, criminals are emboldened. When an unsolved murder takes five years to come to trial, people lose hope.

Like folks in other Caribbean countries we find it easy to provide psychological reasons for these problems. This tendency might just be a function of the times: the twentieth century defined a new focus on mental states – their origins, manifestations and abnormalities. In time, managers followed suit. The hypothesized happenings in employees’ heads, invisible to the eye, gained a new primacy that arose after Freud’s theories regarding the unconscious became popular.

Today, we ascribe a wide range of workplace ills to these mysterious hidden forces. Low performance is due to laziness. Black people’s true role model is not Marcus Garvey but Bredda Anansi. A backlog is caused by rampant disloyalty and even by “poor ventilation.”

That’s not a misstatement. Recent Gleaner articles on the topic of backlogs in Supreme Court matters, divorce cases, public sector audits, PPV licenses and elective surgeries have offered a wide variety of causes.  One blamed the lack of efficiency in some government offices on the need for better louvre blades. (I’m not making this up.)

Setting aside the dubious link between window treatments and performance, let’s focus on the more popular belief that workers produce backlogs because of their psychology. It’s a mistake. While this notion makes for interesting verandah talk, the research indicates that the truth is more nuanced. Apart from a few hardy souls, most of us who join an organization for the first time readily conform.

In other words, if you put the most motivated workers in the middle of a backlogged department, it won’t take long for them to start contributing to the problem. But it’s not because their mindset is faulty. Instead, credit a more natural occurrence well understood by industrial engineers.

As specialists in factory processes, they solve these challenges every day without the use of headspace remedies. On the contrary, they have learned that backlogs are naturally caused by a mismatch between volume and capacity. For example, as I have shared in previous articles, when someone fails to reply to your email, they usually don’t leave you hanging because of “Bad Mind.” Unfortunately, their 10,000 unprocessed messages are a product of inappropriate behaviours. They do their best: it’s just not sufficient.
If we extend that simple analogy to your organization, it implies that the answer to your backlog also does not lie in tackling psychological objects. Instead, look to make the kind of changes industrial engineers would implement, such as the following.

1. Understand the Process
It’s hard to improve the actions of a system you haven’t analyzed. As individuals, we do it often, purchasing the latest gadget without knowing its impact. Fortunately, the damage is minor. However, on a much larger scale a lack of analysis produces hundreds of thousands of backlogged items. In these cases found in most big organizations, introducing a major change initiative can even make things worse. Laying off staff, implementing a new piece of software, automating tasks, cutting budgets, culture transformation efforts: these are all attempts that often fail to meet their goals because they ignore the underlying processes by which work is done.

2. Check for Wasted Steps
In-depth process knowledge gained from an analysis reveals problem spots immediately. Before you rush into a big change effort, put in metrics to ensure that it produces the result you want. This is a must in complex systems where invisible cause-and-effect loops lurk in the background, ready to produce unpredictable mal-effects. They destroy your finest intentions.

3. Improve and Then Automate
Be cheap. Discover the impact you can have without spending a penny. A costly intervention should be your last resort after exhausting all other human-centred, behavioral solutions. Don’t be enamored by what you find in other companies, especially those overseas. Long before they put in place a flashy solution employing the latest technology, they took the necessary steps to remove waste in a steady, unglamorous effort that didn’t attract headlines.

In organizations of all sizes, there is no escaping the fact that backlogs are often produced by process failures. As an executive or manager, don’t fool yourself by insisting on psychological solutions. Instead, uncover the hidden system that connects the concrete, visible actions your people take. Give them the means to fix them and problems like your nagging backlog will disappear.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170115/francis-wade-struggling-backlogs-use-process-not-psychological-solutions

As an executive in a large Jamaican company, how do you ensure that good strategic ideas spark the right conversations between important stakeholders? Too often, these dialogues get trapped at the top or bottom of organisations so that fruitful meetings between leaders and those being led never take place. Sadly, poor corporate results ensue leaving everyone mutually mystified, annoyed and disenchanted.

By contrast, small companies have it easy. In a start-up in which I’m involved, a person with a bright idea is never more than one or two steps away from someone who can implement it. There’s lots of opportunities to explore ideas in deep conversations, tearing suggestions apart in order to improve them. Obviously, this can’t be done via email, memo or in a speech. These channels just don’t get the job done.

If your company employees hundreds or thousands, quick water-cooler or coffee conversations simply don’t take place. They take too much work. It’s easier to let the Status Quo remain, along with stubborn, distant feelings. The top-down, one-way communication that remains is stilted, dry and dull. Over time, you’ll also see the following three problems crop up.

Problem 1 – A key exercise used to spur transformational ideas involves carving out a preferred 20-30 year future for the company. When this exercise is restricted to the top leaders, it becomes a predictable affair. They gravitate to short, comfortable horizons in which plans are limited to merely “The same thing we did last year, plus a bit of difference.” Also, they fail to take into account the impact their decisions (and indecision) have on the next generation of employees. After all, current leaders are close to retirement and won’t be around to experience the 20-30 year consequences of steps they failed to take.

Problem 2 – Many leaders fall into the trap of treating their younger staff like some die-hard followers of political parties – loyal to the point of stupidity. The result is predictable: the least able (who don’t think for themselves) remain in the same jobs while the most capable leave. The departed understand that long term trends are being ignored and question the ability of leaders to incorporate concepts they barely understand. Cloud computing? The mobile Internet? Robotic automation? Artificial Intelligence? Leaders pretend to have a grasp of these concepts, avoiding uncomfortable questions from young employees who should, in their minds, be just following orders.

Problem 3 – When there are communications gaps, chosen strategies become confused when leaders try to “cascade” them down the organisation. It’s only human nature. By definition, a fresh strategy involves a new course of action. It’s a cognitive and behavioural intervention, but many CEO’s under-estimate the challenge employees have upon hearing a new strategy for the first time. Whereas the top executive may have considered the new strategy for years, it’s folly to expect employees to grasp it after a mere one-hour presentation. It’s also crazy to ask them to believe it will work, then act on it with full motivation. Dialogue is required. Sometimes, making the strategy “stick” means encouraging staff to challenge it.

The net result of these problems is that key information and strategies never make their way from the top of your organisation to the bottom, and vice versa. Left to fester, this condition makes the company vulnerable to disruption by smaller, nimble competitors. A typical example? Jamaica’s Cable and Wireless in 2001 had leaders who ignored the threat of Digicel, even as many of their own employees knew better. How can your company and other large firms reduce the risk inherent in their size?

1. Offer internal strategy conferences
Conduct an internal symposium in which employees present critical trends and ideas. Demand a high standard of content and use it to shape the firm’s strategy. Where necessary, teach employees the complexity lying below the surface via structured learning opportunities.

2. Create long-term brainstorming sessions
In structured workshops, give employees a chance to look 25-30 years ahead to select a preferred future.

3. Conduct research
While companies often rely on outside experts to tell them which direction an industry is heading, motivated employees can often do a great job if given the same time and resources. Their findings may have higher quality as they will be informed by their exposure to daily reality.

When these three activities are performed well, including the right blend of leaders and employees, your company can provide the missing conversations essential to planning and implementing strategy. People at both the top and bottom of the organization benefit from in-depth, dynamic conversations which do a far better job than static, one-way presentations.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20170101/francis-wade-how-close-communication-gaps-new-corporate-strategy

In most companies, “email” means more than having a messaging app on your computer. Its ubiquitous nature, plus its tendency to be addictive has turned it into a productivity killer most people abhor. Gaining control has become more than a personal choice for individual benefit – it’s a matter of boosting corporate capacity.

Readers of this column may know that controlling one’s environment is a skill that’s essential to high productivity in the digital age. Visual distractions, audible disruptions, and haptic alerts are the modern contrivances of clever designers, intent on pulling your attention away at random times.

Email is no exception. It exerts a unique influence due to its central role as a communication medium used by all companies. It cannot be avoided: all professionals must teach themselves to cope with ever-increasing volumes of email if they hope to grow their business or ascend the corporate ladder.

Unfortunately, as I have explained in prior columns, most don’t cope very well at all. Using stale techniques, they struggle, falling short of expectations. The evidence? Inboxes filled with thousands of unprocessed messages.

A few try to keep up by remaining hyper-alert to every notification, checking for new messages over 100 times per day. It’s called a FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. By contrast, the best alternative is to shift to batch processing: going through all your messages a few times per day, emptying the Inbox each time. Here are three steps that may help you implement these two difficult changes.

Step 1 – Learn how to control your personal flow of messages
One way to gain control is to avoid checking your email outside pre-scheduled times. To stay focused, turn off all email-related notifications so that you aren’t tempted to break the practice.

To help accomplish this discipline, use software to pause email downloads between visits. In Outlook, this trick is achieved by hitting Ctrl+Alt+S. Up pops a screen with each account displayed. Select the one(s) you use, and un-tick the setting for “Schedule an automatic send /receive every [ ] minutes.” Now, when you revisit your Inbox to process messages, hit the Send/Receive button and all your unread email will be downloaded in a single batch.

If you are a Gmail user an add-on such as “Inbox Pause” can be used to the same end. In either case, you may discover a new ability to focus on the task at hand. How can you maintain it?

Step 2 – Start to Manage Your Mind
Many of my productivity trainees argue that their notifications cannot possibly be turned off. Repeating the same arguments, they announce the need to be available to respond to a possible “emergency.” As proof, they cite stories of instances when they picked up an important, urgent message and avoided a disaster. It’s all the proof that’s needed, in their eyes.

Unfortunately, they are committing a cognitive error called the “Availability Heuristic.” It implies that an action which works once shouldn’t necessarily become a regular habit. According to several studies, being hyper-responsive to electronic notifications carries a tremendous cost.

Once you decide to turn off notifications in order to focus, you must learn to manage your mind by not falling prey to a FOMO. If your anxiety won’t go away, I recommend techniques such as meditation or Byron Katies’ “4-Question + a Turnaround” technique.

However, in the typical company, these personal changes are not enough: you must involve other people.

Step 3 – Launch a Movement
By far the biggest obstacle to overcoming this problem is one that’s social. In a prior article I showed that it’s maddeningly easy to destroy the productivity of others: just insist that people respond immediately to urgent email. This ties up untold amounts of attention as people check their Inboxes over and over again, just in case something important happens to have just arrived. This wasteful habit is made worse by the fact that some 10-15% of messages get lost in cyberspace.

The problem that gets created affects people at all levels, so your movement must include them. Don’t waste time looking for a single person – no individual ever owns this issue. Instead, become the educator-in-chief even as you look for people who are already implementing the right solution: insisting that other channels be used for urgent communication instead of email. Encourage them to make the switch, even as they gain control over their Inbox.

Even though this may make sense, be aware that things won’t change overnight. Although the problem is widespread, your real enemy is not people, but their ignorance. As such, be prepared to act as a lonely voice of reason until you can build a critical mass. Only then can you join others who have also produced this transformation which, in the end, benefits everyone.

 

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20161218/francis-wade-controlling-email-flow-can-transform-your-company

A juicy Request for Proposal (RFP) could be a dream or nightmare. As a business-owner, how can you tip the scales in your favour so that you end up winning a higher percentage of better opportunities?

It comes as a pleasant surprise. A casual scan of the Gleaner reveals an RFP that fits your company’s work. From all appearances, it’s an easy shortcut: a lead which has fallen into your lap without any marketing effort.

Unfortunately, “easy” is a misnomer. By definition, each RFP wastes the time, money and resources of losing respondents, who are in the majority. In the worst cases, they fail to be awarded so no-one benefits. How can you protect your firm from costly distractions? Here are three suggestions.

1. Adapt Your Approach to Your Offering
There’s a big difference between responses to the following kinds of RFP’s:
(a) a delivery of five computers.
(b) the installation of a new plumbing system.
(c) teaching a farm how to use different kinds of soil to grow better crops.
(d) helping a business overcome the sudden loss of its founder.

RFP’s are ideal for commodities like example (a) which involve a tangible object delivered via a single transaction. Usually, price is the main criterion. In the case of its extreme opposite (d), that factor is modified by the length of the engagement. In this case, a mutual relationship of trust with the client organization is critical.

Understanding these differences is the first step.

2. Read an RFP Critically
If your product or service offering has a high relationship component (c) and (d) you must be wary about RFP’s which are poorly written. They are the ones which treat all products or services as if they were just like a commodity (a).

Also, keep an eye out for the RFP which makes no attempt to stimulate your interest. The most basic ones are little more than cut-and-paste jobs from prior projects, intended for desperate vendors with a lot of time on their hands. They are the ones happy to gamble on an RFP, even though they know the odds of winning are low. They ask nothing of the prospect, even when obvious facts are missing.

Take note of these discrepancies. The client’s lack of foresight is your opportunity to shine. For example, the company may not appreciate the trust and partnership required the make the project a success.

3. Act in an Extraordinary Way
Most vendors squander opportunities to forge a relationship with the company issuing the RFP. Don’t be like them: take the initiative to create a relationship as early as possible, much as you would a “normal” prospect.

There are many approaches to take, even when the RFP limits them.

One ethical alternative is to ask the kind of questions that make it obvious your firm has specific insights which are critical to the success of the project. This not only builds credibility, it also allows you to subtly shift the decision criteria. Better yet, conduct such a Q&A session in person. Try to include decision-makers who you need to work with closely if your project is to succeed.

Regardless of what’s written on paper, or espoused, you should understand that no-one wants to work with people they don’t like and trust. Your use of smart, caring questions can enhance both.

Of course, this strategy works if you actually do possess adequate expertise. That’s why I recommend that you avoid RFP’s where you can’t demonstrate a significant difference in capability.

The fact is, your knowledge and experience usually far surpass that of your prospective clients. Their self-diagnosis is often piece-meal, while the decision-making process they intend to follow is likely to be crammed with more legalese than anything useful.

Given your experience, once you have made your best attempts to follow the above steps, don’t rush to write the proposal. Sit back and ask yourself whether or not the project is adequately defined, and if you have significantly improved the odds of winning. If you can create a checklist to help you think through the pros and cons, that would help.

As you may imagine, the greatest risks arise from unwritten, word-of-mouth RFPs. When responding, be prepared for random, unpredictable behaviour – the client may be protecting a pre-selected vendor. To prevent this problem, ask if there are additional bidders who have already been invited. For this and other reasons, it might be wise to cut your losses and walk away from unresponsive, inept, un-clientable companies.

If you proceed to respond, fill your proposal with unique insight and details that make you professionally proud. By eliminating the faults, you have made your best effort to make your involvement in the project a success.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20161204/francis-wade-avoiding-costly-responses-rfps

Most corporate executives and entrepreneurs would agree that true innovation is hard to come by. It’s easier to copy what someone else is doing. In this article, I share an approach that opens the door to innovative product thinking – it starts with an unusual question which I have applied to the simple Jamaican Beef Patty.

The question of patties doing jobs may be a bit strange, but it’s an important one that Clay Christensen, Harvard Business School professor, would ask the owners of Tastee or Juicy Patties. He wouldn’t be facetious. It’s a step he takes to spur his clients to innovative product thinking, a topic he’s spent the better part of three decades researching.

I have no idea how these owners would respond, but here are the three jobs I hire my patty to perform for me.

Job 1 – To Satisfy My Hunger
A patty provides me with a quick feeling of satisfaction. While it’s not my first choice of a meal due to its high calorie and fat content, when my time is short it’s the default.

So I haven’t been happy to see patties get smaller, thinner and emptier over the years.

If this job I want my patty to perform is typical, then owners should be asking: “How can we alleviate immediate hunger?”

I’m no expert in physiology, but a simple cup of water for customers, while they wait in line, could help. So would a single complimentary piece of hard-do bread.

Job 2 – To Provide Fast Relief
A “long line for patties” is an oxymoron. The pastry is meant to be purchased and eaten quickly, which is why we enter a shop to “pick up” one that’s fresh from the oven.

When a company doesn’t manage the expectation of a speedy purchase it violates the job I want to get done: to minimize the gap between decision and consumption. Unfortunately, the staff in most shops appear to be blissfully unaware of this fact. They drift around like the worst civil servants, in a seeming stupor. They affect that “I hate my boring job” facial expression which indicates that they wish they were doing something else with their lives.

Perhaps you have also abandoned a patty shop because the line was too long or moving too slowly. In these cases, we would rather go hungry than be late for an appointment. This act of seeking an alternative is what Christensen would call “firing a patty” because it’s not doing its job.

Job 3 – To Be A Portable Solution
Unlike other meals, a patty is often meant to be consumed on the go. It’s perfect for those awkward moments when you are caught between places: stuck in traffic, walking between meetings, heading out the door. While other meals require you to sit down, concentrate and use two hands, a patty doesn’t get in the way of your physical motion or activity. It doesn’t even need utensils.

However, its crumbs (which make it so tasty) are a problem. When they show up around your mouth, or on your clothes, you hate it. Ask for an extra napkin beforehand and you might be lucky to get exactly one more.

Is the standard brown paper bag the ideal receptacle? It meets some needs (disposable, inexpensive, environmentally friendly) but not others (it hardly stops the crumbs from falling out.) In this case, I am short of answers but the company which can find a way to improve portability could be at an advantage.

As you may tell, my three responses are just the beginning. Once you start asking the “Jobs to Be Done” questions you can generate powerful new insights, especially if you recognize that customers have a blend of two kinds of expectations.

The first kind is functional, where your product or service meets certain tangible requirements. Job 2 (i.e. a speedy transaction) is a good example – it’s easy to measure and is easily extended to other factors such as “available parking.”

The second expectation customers have is one that’s purely emotional, related to their feelings. For example, some use it as comfort food because it reminds them of their childhood. Patties happen to remind me of my father, who asked for them almost every Saturday.

Unfortunately, many companies don’t dig deep enough, leading them to miss big opportunities to help customers get jobs done. When customers turn around and fire their products, they shrug off the episode, failing to seek fundamental improvements.

For example, few firms make sustained, disciplined efforts to make their products better and cheaper. However, such efforts would fit a job every single customer is trying to get done: to improve the value/price equation. The framework offers an approach that helps companies meet their customers’ needs in unique ways.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20161120/francis-wade-would-you-hire-patty-tasty-take-innovation

There’s a good reason millennials spend so much time playing computer games. These programs are designed to deliver fast, consistent, and objective feedback after every action a player takes, helping them to make rapid improvements. When they also offer carefully crafted levels of achievement, it’s hard not to become addicted. Given their success, what you can you as a manager learn from them in engaging your staff?

In my last column (October 9th, 2016), we saw that companies crowd out employees’ intrinsic motivation when they rely on carrots and sticks. While managers think that these contrivances work, they are weak and unsustainable in the long term. The truth is, most companies don’t want fickle employees who must be “incentivized” at every turn. Instead, they want self-starters. Unfortunately, most do little to encourage them along this path.

My Story

As a young AT&T consultant I found myself with a new boss after a reorganization. Tanya was a smart, likable professional who I had admired from afar. However, she didn’t know that I had quietly made a big decision.

A few months prior, my colleagues and I learned that the difference in raises between the best and worst performers worked out to
less than a dollar per day.

We were stunned. Until then, performance review was held as an important indicator of success. Individual efforts to improve one’s rankings involved acting to be noticed by the “right” people. Now, the gig was up. As I explained to Tanya in our first meeting, I no longer cared about the results of the rating process. I would only focus on doing a great job that met the needs of my clients.

She nodded politely, but when we met a few months later I had to remind her of my decision. As we sat down in a New Jersey cafeteria for my annual performance review she appeared nervous. To put her at ease, I brought up our prior conversation.

“Remember, it doesn’t matter to me. There’s no monetary reason to care and only a few of your peers who judge performance know what I do. So, if you can offer me your advice on how to do a better job, that would be the part I really care about.”

The silence between us was deafening. She was shocked. Caught off-guard, she offered little more than some vague advice. The conversation was over in a matter of minutes.

Now, looking back, that moment was pivotal. It was my first opportunity to become a full “self-starter.” I felt the kind of inner motivation companies like to see.

However, I also placed myself well outside Tanya’s control. As a manager, how do influence employees when they aren’t afraid? Is there something you can borrow from videogame design principles?

1. Provide obvious feedback.
Videogames are designed to give players crystal-clear, unambiguous  feedback on their actions. It’s the only way to induce players to change their behavior and observe the result. By contrast, most corporate feedback is vague and based on flaky opinions. They have more akin to politics than reality. As a result, employees who are self-motivated  learn how to separate signal from noise, fact from fiction,  like I did.

As a manager, the onus is on you to create feedback mechanisms which are impartial. Also, you need to craft measurements which help an employee see and learn to manage the drivers of top performance. Most employees crave this information and without it, they get bored or disillusioned. Work hard to meet the new, highly engaging standard.

2. Set up frequent feedback.
Reluctantly giving employees an annual review just won’t cut it. The recency effect – the tendency for a review to focus on the last few months of the year – undermines the effort. It’s far better to set up regular, frequent reviews so that not a single employee is left wondering how they are doing. Leaving an employee guessing is a sure sign of trouble.

Remember, videogames provide feedback every few seconds. That’s what you are competing against.

3. Make the feedback timely.
Studies show that the best time to give feedback is near to the moments of success or failure. If you pay close attention, you will be able to detect these moments and set up occasions to provide feedback. The quicker, the better.

I imagine that these principles are not new to you. However, today you must appreciate that your staff craves the high quality feedback it gets from Pokemon Go, Angry Birds and other games. When it’s not provided, they probably suffer without complaint, simply waiting for the weekend. That’s when they can become engaged.

Don’t allow this to happen. Your company expects you to bring out the best of your employees during the 9-5 weekday. Not after. Overhaul your feedback methods and get them in line with today’s high standards.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To receive a free document with links to his articles from 2010-2015, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20161023/francis-wade-how-give-video-game-quality-feedback