5 Ways to Reduce Time on Email
I recently shared a Harvard Business Review article bemoaning the inefficiency of email with my team. The article recounts the story of IBM’s initial intent with email and the surprising and disappointing results. Cal Newport wrote: In the early 1980s, IBM decided to deploy an internal email system. In typical careful IBM fashion, they began […]
Two Ways to Create Urgency
John Kotter, Harvard Business School professor, has written extensively about the need for leaders to first create a sense of urgency when attempting to implement change or launch a new initiative. Kotter has stressed that most change efforts fail because leaders are unable to create sufficient urgency. Urgency helps foster both focus and action. Without […]
Three Differences Between Busyness and Productivity
There is a mammoth difference between teams and leaders who run around being busy and those that are truly productive. Busyness can give the allusion of productivity as people are doing things, as meetings are happening, and as emails are being sent and read. But not all busyness is valuable. In fact, busyness can mask […]
My Five Favorite Personal Productivity Tools
People often ask me what tools or systems I use to maximize productivity, to stay organized, or to complete tasks. My answer is typically perceived as underwhelming, as I don’t have a project management system (though I am not against them) and the tools I do use are a bit “old-school.” The five productivity tools […]
Leaders Must Create More Capacity, But How?
Wise leaders apply their best thinking to the most important things. This is, of course, easier said than done because of the sheer volume of things that leaders are asked or required to think about. Because we are finite and flawed, we have a limited amount of mental capacity. For a leader, there are always […]
The Eisenhower Matrix and Three Thoughts for Leaders
Dwight Eisenhower is noted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” He is credited with the quote because of his emphasis on planning and strategy. From this quote, the Eisenhower matrix was born, which Stephen Covey later popularized. Here is my sketch of it: The matrix has […]