Goan Paradise

Goa - Hindu Legends and Mythology

2010-04-17T16:30:00.001+05:30

Goa - Hindu Legends and Mythology

[This is an article from local newspaper in Goa. ]

The origin of Goa or Gomantak as it is also known, is lost in the mists of time. In the later Vedic period (c.1000-500 BC), when the Hindu epic Mahabharat was written, Goa has been referred to with the Sanskrit name Gomantak, a word with many meanings, but signifying generally a fertile land.

The most famous legend associated with Goa, is that of the mythical sage Parashuram (the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu), who several thousand years ago created the entire stretch of Konkan coast by ordering the seas to recede. The Sea God gave up the lands on the the banks of the two main rivers of Goa viz. Mandovi and Zuari (then called Gomati and Asghanasini) for the settlement of the Aryans accompanying Parashurama.

Another legend, less well known, states that the coastal area of Konkan enchanted Lord Krishna, who was charmed by the beautiful ladies bathing in the area. The ladies in turn, were so taken up by the melodious music coming from his flute, that they kept dancing forgetting their daily chores. Lord Krishna, then named the land Govapuri after the cows (gov) belonging to the locals.

The history of the sacred land of Gomantak, 'land of the Gods' is well described in Sahyadri Khand of Skandha Purana, the ancient text of Hindu religion. According to this story narrated in the Chapter Shantiparva of Mahabharat, a Brahmin from the Saraswat family, Parashuram, annihilated the entire community of the warrior tribe Kshatriyas and gifted the conquered land to a sage named Kashyapmuni.

Unfortunately, the Kshatriya annihilation meant that the land was left unadministered and fell into anarchy and chaos. The worried sage Kashyapmuni, requested Parashuram to leave the area and settle elsewhere. Parashuram came south and reclaimed new land by ordering the sea to recede and give up the coastal land. This land known as "Aparant" or "Shurparak" is spread between the Sahyadri mountains and Sindhusagar.

The first wave of Brahmins to settle in Goa, were called Saraswats because of their origins from the banks of the River Saraswati, an ancient river that existed in Vedic times. The subsequent drying up of the river caused large scale migration of Brahmins to all corners of India.

A group of ninety-six families, known today as Gaud Saraswats, settled along the Konkan coast around 1000 BC. Of these, sixty-six families took up residence in the southern half in today's Salcete taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word "Sassast" meaning the number 66.

The other thirty families settled in the northern area in today's Tiswadi taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word for the number 30. The Saraswat Brahmins worked in partnership with the local indigenous people, the Kunbi tribals who still exist today. Around the year 740 AD, the Brahmins established their first Matha (religious centre of learning) at Kushasthali (present day Cortalim) .

An interesting sidelight in this legendary origin of Goa is that Lord Parashuram is supposed to have shot an arrow from the top of the western ghats into the sea to command the Sea God to withdraw till the place where the arrow fell and claimed that land to be his kingdom. The place where the arrow landed was called Bannali (in Sanskrit for 'where the arrow landed'; Bann: arrow, ali: village), or today's Benaulim.

Parashuram arrived in the new abode with other Saraswat Brahmins and sages in order to perform the Yadnya and other rituals. These Brahmin families of Dashgotras from Panchgoudas of Trihotrapura in northern India came along with their family deities and settled themselves in this land of Gomantak or the land of the Gods as it came to be known thereafter.

They initially settled at Mathagram (Margao), Kushasthal (Cortalim) and Kardalinagar (Keloshi). The main deities which also came along with them were Mangirish, Mahadeo, Mahalaxmi, Mahalsa, Shantadurga, Nagesh, Saptakoteshwar besides many others. According to local legend, the ash found at Harmal beach in Pernem Taluka is cited as the ash of the Yadnya or holy ritual performed in Goa.

Today a temple of Parashuram exists in Painguinim village of Canacona Taluka in South Goa. There is no concrete proof to determine the exact date of the arrival of Saraswats or Parashurama in the area, nor is it conclusively proved that Saraswats or other Aryans were the first to arrive in Konkan.

Even if the legends are considered as only myths, the residence of Saraswat Brahmins in Goa since ancient times along with their family deities is an undeniable fact. And most probably they arrived in Goa under the leadership of a towering personality named Parashuram.

The Art of Delegating - I

2010-02-03T12:50:00.000+05:30

The Art of Delegating

When we talk of delegating, our thoughts mainly turn to work, and yet all areas of your life--personal and professional--can benefit from delegating. You can delegate numerous tasks and responsibilities, ranging from hiring someone to do your paperwork, to asking your children to help with household chores, to using a computer to automate certain processes.

What are the benefits of delegation?

You have certain skills and qualities in which you're especially gifted. When you delegate the remainder, you'll increase your effectiveness.

Positive results of delegation include:

You'll have more time and energy for the most important things.

You'll have less to do, less clutter and less pressure.

You'll be supported by responsible people working together.

You'll benefit from others' experience, wisdom, thoughts and perspectives.

The people you spend time with will feel more confident and increase their skills.

You'll demonstrate to others your professionalism and effectiveness.

You'll get tasks done rather than adding them to your to-do list.

You'll achieve your results in less time.

You'll create a win-win situation.

Why aren't you delegating?

What's keeping you from delegating? Probably, it's either believing you're the only one who can do a task correctly, feeling like you need to be in control, attempting to address unmet needs, desiring the adrenaline rush of being busy or feeding your ego.

Have you ever said, "No one can do it as well as I can." The truth is, there are many experienced people who can perform certain tasks as well as, or even better than, you. Another statement would be more effective: "I can find someone who can do it as well as me." When you stop trying to do everything, you can focus more on your true gifts.

Sometimes your need to be in control stops you from delegating. When you need to be in control, you're effectively giving away much of your personal power. You can reclaim this power when you let go of your need to be in control. Then you'll be able to delegate more easily.

If you really want to free up some space and time, look at the areas in which you're controlling and see how you can change. You'll know if you're trying to control others if you try to take over, have your own personal agenda and get other people to do what you want whether it's right for them or not. You're wanting to control when you believe that it has to be done your way and aren't open to other suggestions or possibilities. What will it take for you to let go of being in control?

Delegating can also be difficult for people who have unmet needs, such as the need to please everyone, to keep people happy, to be liked by everyone, and to do everything. You'll be able to delegate better when these needs are satisfied. When you resist delegating, ask yourself, "What is my need in this situation that's stopping me from delegating?" If, for instance, your answer is the need to please everyone, consider in what other ways you can meet this need and free yourself to delegate the task.

Another reason you might avoid delegating is that you enjoy having lots to do and are always pushing yourself. You end up relying on adrenaline to keep going. This is unhealthy. Using adrenaline to get through life causes lots of ups and downs. You need to shift from adrenaline to a healthier and steadier source of energy.

Your ego may also be stopping you from delegating. When you expect other people to agree with you, when you stop listening to feedback, when you have disregard for people, and when you need time, money and attention from others to feel fulfilled, your ego's getting in the way. You need to set aside your ego and start living from your true self. Invest in your mind, body and spirit for a healthier life. You'll receive what you really want in your life in a healthy way without demanding from other people. Where in your life is your ego getting in the way of delegating? What will it take for you to shift from your ego to your true self?

How to delegate effectively

Now that you've identified what's stopping you from delegating, you need to learn how to delegate. Before you decide to delegate a task, make sure it's not one that could be eliminated or automated instead. Also, don't delegate tasks that you're really good at. You want to continue handling the tasks that call on your brilliance.

Great delegation is about delegating an outcome rather than dumping a problem on someone else. So, when you're delegating a task to someone else, give them plenty of information about your desired results. Offer clear and measurable objectives. When you're discussing how the task can be achieved, listen to the other person. They may have different ideas on how this can be handled fairly for everyone involved.

To whom should you delegate? Choose a person who would really enjoy the task and who has the appropriate skills or willingness to learn them. Also, select people that you trust rather than choosing just anyone and hoping it'll work out okay. Trust them to do their best and leave them feeling an important part of the process.

Be available to receive reports on how the delegated task is going and let the person know that you're there to discuss any problems early on, rather than letting the problem get out of hand.

Start by delegating small tasks and when these have been done correctly, increase the tasks. Teach the person the tasks and assist them in discovering the best way to carry them out for themselves. Allow yourself three times as long with this, so that you can really be with the person, understand their concerns or challenges, and assist them as fully as possible. Encourage them to set goals as they progress with the task. This will increase their ownership of the process. Let them know you confidence in them. Establish a deadline to build responsibility in the other person and to allow them to see the importance of the task. Communicate fully the consequences to everyone involved if the task is not carried out successfully. Let them see the end understand the bigger picture. Celebrate with and acknowledge each person's contribution. We all like to hear that we've done well.

Did you know that delegation doesn't just make your life easier--it also helps those to whom you delegate? Consider what you give to other people when you choose to delegate:

Responsibility

A sense of achievement

Enjoyment and fun in the sharing process

Income

Trust

An opportunity to grow, learn and contribute

An opportunity to be part of a team

The chance to increase their skills and self esteem.

Okay, so now you know the benefits of delegating, you've unblocked what's been stopping you delegating in the past and you know how to delegate effectively. What's the next step? My suggestion is to just take that next step, the action that's going to move you towards delegating more. This step will be different for all of you as you are individuals. It may be making a list of what you could delegate, thinking about what you would want in your life when you delegate more or finding someone to support you in this process. What are you now willing to delegate or automate in your life? You can all get to the place of delegating effectively and it's up to you to make that choice.

The Gift of leadership

2010-01-21T20:19:00.001+05:30

The Gift of leadership

1.       “Leadership does not happen, it is taught, learned and developed,-I don’t know whether foot ballers are born or made. But, I do know the more I practice, the better I become

2.       Leaders relentlessly upgrade their teams, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence

3.       Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it

4.       Leadership has 3 dimensions and is product of: Vision x Inspiration x Momentum

5.       Vision is the positive image that Leader possesses of what organization could become and its path towards destination.

6.       Inspiration for individuals, team and what moves people to take action.

7.       Momentum to carry organization to its destination and meet goals with successful projects, initiatives

8.       Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism

9.       Leaders enroll, Leaders have a shine in their eyes

10.       Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit-Leaders create an environment where every member is able to speak out his/her thoughts honestly, sincerely and without any reservations- Leaders work with a focused group of individuals to establish trust with candor, transparency and credit and encourage the group to take forward the values to every member in the team

11.       Leaders prefer to include every members opinion in a decision making process on critical issues faced by team

12.       Leaders believe in promoting the strength of every individual, rather than enforce members to be a well groomed professional in every aspect

13.       Leaders are principles centered and they live by principles or interchangeably values. One of the principles is “being proactive”. Leader knows if he is proactive when he has full control on whatever he wants to achieve. It makes him predictable and as planned. He enjoys joy and peace. If he is not proactive, things fall on him and he becomes reactive. This is stressful leading to no control and no predictability.

14.       Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls

15.       Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.

16.       Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example

17. Leaders celebrate

How to be “The Best Manager You Ever Had”

2009-11-21T23:30:00.000+05:30

How to be “The Best Manager You Ever Had”

By Martin Z willing

Everyone can recognize a great manager a mile away, so why is it so hard to find one? We all remember a few that are “legends in their own mind”, but that doesn’t do it. In fact, the clue here is that the view in your mind is the only one that matters, rather than the other way around.

Almost every one of us in business can also remember that one special manager in their career who exemplifies the norm, who commanded our respect, and treated us like a friend, even in the toughest of personal or business crises.

I’ve asked many for the traits or attributes they saw in that person, and most will list the positive functional traits of a good manager:

• Leadership - outstanding skills in guiding team members, encouraging them towards attainment of the organization’s goals and the right decisions at the right point of time. As Drucker said "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

• Plan and delegate – foresight and skills to understand the relevant capabilities of employees, and then scheduling tasks and delegating to get tasks done by the employees within deadlines.

• Domain expert - complete knowledge of his field and confident about that knowledge, with the common sense to make quick productive decisions and think outside the box.

• Set clear expectations - employees should always know what is expected of them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set deliverable milestones for each employee over a set period of time. Then review the performance vs. the roadmap or deliverable at least six months prior to a performance review and discuss ways to improve and set new goals.

• Positive recognition - when employees complete something successfully or show initiative, recognize it. Congratulate them on a job well done. Most employees are not motivated by sheer money. They need recognition even if it is not public. Good managers know that employees feed off acknowledgement that their job is being done well.

In my view, these are all “necessary” attributes, but are not “sufficient” to put you in that ‘great’ category. Most people recognize that it takes more to be ‘great,’ but the attributes are a bit more esoteric, and harder to quantify. Here are a few:

• Active listener - shows traits such as listening with feedback, an optimistic attitude, a motivating ability, and a concern for people. Listening to what is said as well as what is not said is of the utmost importance. Instrumental in the listening process is the environment. It can be most demoralizing to an employee to be speaking to a supervisor and be interrupted for a phone call. All interruptions should be avoided.

• Shows empathy - refers to the ability to "walk in another person's shoes", and to have insight into the thoughts, and, more importantly the emotional reactions of individuals faced with change. Empathy requires that you suspend judgment of another's actions or reactions, while you try to understand them, and treat them with sensitivity, respect, concern, and kindness.

• Always honest – simply put, today’s managers live in glass houses. Everything that a manager does is seen by his employees. If a manager says one thing and does another, employees see it. Managers must be honest and straightforward in words and in actions. A manager must “walk the talk.” That also means recognizing weaknesses, and admitting and learning from mistakes.

• Sense of humor - people of all ages and cultures respond to humor. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and see an irony. One of the most frequently cited attractions in great personal relationships is a sense of humor.

• Keep your cool - does not lose his/her cool even while facing a difficulty. He/she is able to correct the team members without emotional body language or statements. A good manager is an effective communicator and a composed individual, with a proven tolerance for ambiguity.

Whole books are written on this subject, but hopefully you get the picture. Great managers must do the technical job well – and they also must do the people job very well. Now that you understand these things, I’m not sure why it is so hard to find a great manager. I guess an even harder question I should ask is why is it so hard to be one?

Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO, Startup Professionals, Inc.

IT: It's Not Just About Technical Skills

2009-11-11T23:45:00.000+05:30

IT: It's Not Just About Technical Skills

by Mike Schaffner, 11.11.09, 06:00 AM EST

Why interpersonal skills may be more important now.

While perusing the online versions of some of the more well-know information technology journals recently, I was surprised to find one that had quite a few stories on the stupidity of users. While these stories ostensibly were presented as humor, they also represent a dark side of IT behavior: The IT guys really are the smartest guys in the room, and users are dumb and annoying.

A closer reading of some of the stories shows the fallacy of this: Users were having problems, and the IT person was more concerned with showing his superiority than in providing customer service. This type of stereotypical behavior has long been an impediment to IT's success and acceptance in the corporate world.

The good news is that this attitude among IT workers isn't nearly as prevalent as it used to be. We've made great strides in improving customer service. These stories, however, show that our job is not complete. There is more to do.

The biggest part of developing the right attitude is realizing that it isn't all about us. The IT guys really may be the smartest guys in the room, but nobody cares. It is more about what gets done than about what you know. It is more about making the team (IT and business) successful than it is about individual accolades.

Information technology has become more self service. It used to be that you had to get everything through the IT department. IT built the databases, and you could only get the data out or get it analyzed by asking IT to do it for you.

Over time, the role of IT has shifted from knowledge provider to knowledge facilitator. We no longer extract and analyze data. Instead we provide tools enabling users to do this themselves.

With this shift in roles, IT support must shift from doing to enabling. This means IT has to focus on understanding the user's needs and providing training and tools. It also means understanding the business in order to suggest ways to use technology that meets needs. It involves, dare I say it, empathy, a word not always associated with IT.

Being successful in this role depends on personal skills, such as:

--Being a good listener to learn what the user needs and a willingness to listen completely without jumping in with the answer.

--Being a good interviewer to draw information from our users.

--Being good at explaining and teaching.

These skills can be as important and perhaps more important than raw technical skills.

Accordingly we, as IT leaders, need to change our perspective. We need to work to develop these skills in our people. Technical ability alone is no longer enough. We cannot continue to hire people and do personnel evaluations based solely on technical skills. Likewise, the training we provide has to go beyond just technical training.

When we do personnel evaluation or are hiring, we should include our user community in the process. Having our users interview candidates can provide some useful feedback on how the candidate relates to people outside IT, how well they communicate, how well they listen.

Users also can provide valuable insight into just how good our customer service really is. Getting this insight is extremely important for personnel evaluations. Perhaps we should rate this just as highly as technical skills.

If we expect people to change, we also have to help them. Rather than sending people to a software conference or the latest programming class, perhaps we should send them to classes on team dynamics or finance for non-financial people.

As the role of IT has shifted over time, the skills of our people need to shift, and we as IT leaders need to be actively involved in making this happen.

Mike Schaffner directsinformation technology for the Valve and Measurement Group of Cameron in Houston and aims to infuse a business-based approach to IT management. He also blogs regularly at Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms, and you can follow him on Twitter at mikeschaffner.

Eat That Frog

2009-09-06T14:34:00.000+05:30

Eat That Frog
BY: Brian Tracy

Introduction

This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more possibilities and opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals than exist today. As perhaps never before in human history, you are actually drowning in options. In fact, there are so many good things that you can do that your ability to decide among them maybe the critical determinant of what you accomplish in life.

If you are like most people today, you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks and responsibilities just keep rolling in, like the tides. Because of this, you will never be able to do everything you have to do. You will never be caught up. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities, and probably in many of them.

For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop.

An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but who gets very little done. It has been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your "frog" is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment. It is also been said that, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first." This is another way of saying that, if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

Think of it as a "test." Treat it like a personal challenge. Resist the temptation to start with the easier task. Continually remind yourself that one of the most important decisions you make each day is your choice of what you will do immediately and what you will do later, if you do it at all.
There is one final observation. "If you have to eat a live frog, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long."

The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is for you to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning. You must develop the routine of "Eating your frog" before you do anything else, and without taking too much time to think about it.

In study after study of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster, the quality of "action orientation," stands out as the most observable and consistent behavior they demonstrate in everything they do. Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single mindedly until those tasks are complete.

In our world, and especially in our business world, you are paid and promoted for getting specific, measurable results. You are paid for making a valuable contribution and especially, for making the contribution that is expected of you.

"Failure to execute" is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings and make wonderful plans, but, in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

Fully 95% of your success in life and work will be determined by the kind of habits that you develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again, until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do.

You are designed mentally and emotionally in such a way that task completion gives you a positive feeling. It makes you happy. It makes you feel like a winner. Whenever you complete a task, of any size or importance, you feel a surge of energy, enthusiasm and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident and powerful you feel about yourself and your world.

Important task completion triggers the release of endorphins in your brain. These endorphins give you a natural "high." The endorphin rush that follows successful completion of any task makes you feel more creative and confident. Here is one of the most important of the so-called "secrets of success." It is that you can actually develop a "positive addition" to endorphins and to the feeling of enhanced clarity, confidence and competence that they trigger. When you develop this "addiction," almost without thinking you begin to organize your life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more important tasks and projects. You actually become addicted, in a very positive sense, to success and contribution.

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career and feeling terrific about yourself is for you to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs. At that point, this behavior takes on a power of its own and you find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them.

You remember the story of the man who stops the musician on the street of New York and asks how he can get to Carnegie Hall. The musician replies, "Practice, man, practice." Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration. They are all learnable. They are decision, discipline and determination. First, make a decision to develop the habit of task completion. Second, discipline yourself to practice the principles you are about to learn over and over until you master them. And finally, back everything you do with determination until the habit is locked in and becomes a permanent part of your personality.
There is a special way that you can accelerate your progress toward becoming the highly productive, effective, efficient person that you want to be. It consists of your thinking continually about the rewards and benefits of being an action oriented, fast moving, focused person. See yourself as the kind of person who gets important jobs done quickly and well on a consistent basis.

Your mental picture of yourself has a powerful effect on your behavior. Visualize yourself as the person you intend to be in the future. Your self-image, the way you see yourself on the inside, largely determines your performance on the outside. As professional speaker Jim Cathcart says, "The person you see is the person you will be."

You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn and develop new skills, habits and abilities. When you train yourself, through repetition and practice, to overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly, you will move yourself onto the fast track in your life and career and step on the accelerator.

Eat That Frog!

Putting It All Together

The key to happiness, satisfaction, great success and a wonderful feeling of persona power and effectiveness is for you to develop the habit of eating your frog, first thing every day when you start work.

Fortunately, this is a learnable skill that you can acquire through repetition. And when you develop the habit of starting on your most important task, before anything else, your success is assured.

Here is a summary of the 21 Great Ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. Review these rules and principles regularly until they become firmly ingrained in your thinking and actions and your future will be guaranteed.

1. Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin;

2. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five or ten minutes in execution;

3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for eighty percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top twenty percent;

4. Consider the consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else;

5. Practice the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities:

6. Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long;

7. The Law of Forced Efficiency: There is never enough time to do everything but there is always enough time to do the most important things. What are they?

8. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance;

9. Do your homework: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done;

10. Leverage your special talents: Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well:

11. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or chokepoints, internally or externally, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals and focus on alleviating them;

12. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time;

13. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left;

14. Maximize your personal powers: Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at your best;

15. Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive;

16. Practice creative procrastination: Since you can’t do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count;

17. Do the most difficult task first: Begin each day with your most difficult task, the one task that can make the greatest contribution to yourself and your work, and resolve to stay at it until it is complete:

18. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into bite sized pieces and then just do one small part of the task to get started;

19. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks;

20. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well;

21. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task and then work without stopping until the job is 100% complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

Make a decision to practice these principles every day until they become second nature to you. With these habits of personal management as a permanent part of your personality, your future will be unlimited.

Just do it! Eat that frog.

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

2009-09-05T23:31:00.000+05:30

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day

By Peter Bregman How We Work

2:27 PM Monday July 20, 2009

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people's problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I'd been ambushed. And I know better.

When I teach time management, I always start with the same question: How many of you have too much time and not enough to do in it? In ten years, no one has ever raised a hand.

That means we start every day knowing we're not going to get it all done. So how we spend our time is a key strategic decision. That's why it's a good idea to create a to do list and an ignore list. The hardest attention to focus is our own.

But even with those lists, the challenge, as always, is execution. How can you stick to a plan when so many things threaten to derail it? How can you focus on a few important things when so many things require your attention?

We need a trick.

Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru, knows all about tricks; he's famous for handcuffing himself and then swimming a mile or more while towing large boats filled with people. But he's more than just a showman. He invented several exercise machines including the ones with pulleys and weight selectors in health clubs throughout the world. And his show, The Jack LaLanne Show, was the longest running television fitness program, on the air for 34 years.

But none of that is what impresses me. He has one trick that I believe is his real secret power.

Ritual.

At the age of 94, he still spends the first two hours of his day exercising. Ninety minutes lifting weights and 30 minutes swimming or walking. Every morning. He needs to do so to achieve his goals: on his 95th birthday he plans to swim from the coast of California to Santa Catalina Island, a distance of 20 miles. Also, as he is fond of saying, "I cannot afford to die. It will ruin my image."

So he works, consistently and deliberately, toward his goals. He does the same things day in and day out. He cares about his fitness and he's built it into his schedule.

Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That's not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

I think we can do it in three steps that take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour workday.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did.

In another study, drug addicts in withdrawal (can you find a more stressed-out population?) agreed to write an essay before 5 p.m. on a certain day. 80% of those who said when and where they would write the essay completed it. None of the others did.

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you're going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It's simple.

This particular ritual may not help you swim the English Channel while towing a cruise ship with your hands tied together. But it may just help you leave the office feeling productive and successful.

And, at the end of the day, isn't that a higher priority?

* * *

Peter Bregman speaks, writes, and consults about how to lead and how to live. He is the CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm, and advises CEOs and their leadership teams. He is the author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading a Big Change.

* * *

Information and Study Skills

2009-05-31T22:00:00.000+05:30

Information and Study Skills

Good information skills are essential for successful professionals.

Early in your career you must successfully study and digest a huge volume of information, simply to become effective. As you become increasingly successful, you will need to digest huge numbers of documents, data and reports just to do your job, as well as assimilating all the information you need to keep up-to-date in your field.

The articles on reading help you to increase your reading speed and become highly selective in what you read. The item on review techniques helps you to keep information fresh in your mind. The article on note-taking gives you a powerful tool for recording useful information.

Enjoy the articles!

Introduction to Information and Study Skills
Effective Note-Taking with Mind Maps
SQ3R - Increasing your retention of written information
Speed Reading - Substantially increase your reading speed
Reading Strategies - Reading efficiently by reading intelligently
Review Techniques - Keeping information fresh in your mind
Learning Styles - Learn in a way that suits you
The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Introduction

The techniques in this section help you to manage information better. By using them you will be able to improve:

Your reading skills, so that you can find the information you need quickly and easily
The way you make notes, so that they become clear and easy to understand, and quick to review
Your review techniques, so that you can keep information fresh in your mind.

These techniques will help you to assimilate information quickly. This may involve keeping yourself up-to-date on events within your field, absorbing information within reports or learning specialist information needed to complete a project.

These are also very useful tools for mastering course material where you are studying for exams.

Techniques discussed are:

How to take notes effectively - Mind Maps
Fully absorbing written information - SQ3R
Speed Reading
Reading faster by thinking what to read - Reading Strategies
Keeping information fresh in your mind - Review Techniques
Learn in a way that suits you - Learning Styles
The Conscious Competence Ladder - Making learning a happier experience

Mind Maps are powerful tools for recording and organizing information. They do this in a format that is easy to review. Once you understand and start using Mind Maps, you will never again want to take notes using conventional techniques.

The next three techniques (SQ3R, Speed Reading and use of Reading Strategies) help you to assimilate and understand written information quickly and efficiently.

The section on Review Techniques will help you to keep information that you have already learned alive in your mind.

Finally, the article on Learning Styles will not only help you develop the ways in which you can learn, but you'll be able to tailor what you do so that others can learn from you more effectively.

Leverage

2009-05-31T21:26:00.000+05:30

Leverage

Achieve Much More with the Same Effort

"Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the Earth."
- Archimedes

To lift a heavy object, you have a choice: use leverage or not. You can try to lift the object directly – risking injury – or you can use a lever, such as a jack or a long plank of wood, to transfer some of the weight, and then lift the object that way.

Which approach is wiser? Will you succeed without using leverage? Maybe. But you can lift so much more with leverage, and do it so much more easily!

So what has this got to do with your life and career?

The answer is "a lot". By applying the concept of leverage to business and career success, you can, with a little thought, accomplish very much more than you can without it. Without leverage, you may work very hard, but your rewards are limited by the hours you put in. With leverage, you can break this connection and, in time, achieve very much more.

Note:
We're not referring to financial leverage here. Financial leverage, using "other people's money" to grow your business, can be a successful growth strategy. However, it's outside the scope of this article.

Levers of Success

So how can you apply leverage to your career? And how can you achieve much more, while – if you choose to – reducing the number of hours that you work?

To do this, you'll need to learn how to use the leverage of:-

Time (yours and that of other people).
Resources.
Knowledge and education.
Technology.

Time Leverage

Using the leverage of time is the most fundamental strategy for success. There are only so many hours in a day that you can work. If you use only your own time, you can achieve only so much. If you leverage other people's time, you can increase productivity to an extraordinary extent.

To leverage YOUR OWN time.

Practice effective time management. Eliminate unnecessary activities, and focus your effort on the things that really matter.
As part of this, learn how to prioritize, so that you focus your energy on the activities that give the greatest return for the time invested.
Use goal setting to think about what matters to you in the long term, set clear targets, and motivate yourself to achieve those targets.

To leverage other people's time.

Learn how to delegate work to other people.
Train and empower others.
Bring in experts and consultants to cover skill or knowledge gaps.
Outsource non-core tasks to people with the experience to do them more efficiently.

Providing that you do things properly, the time and money that you invest in leveraging other people's time is usually well spent. Remember, though, that you'll almost always have to "pay" up front in some way in order to reap the longer-term benefits of using leverage.

Tip 1:
This is why delegation is such an important skill: If you can't delegate effectively, you can never expand your productivity beyond the work that you can personally deliver. This means that your career will quickly stall, and while you may be appreciated for your hard work, you'll never be truly successful. Use these skill-builder resources to learn to delegate: Delegation, Successful Delegation, The Delegation Dilemma, and Bite-Sized Training: Delegation.

It's also one of the reasons that micromanagement is such a vice: You spend so much time managing a few people that you constrain the amount of leverage you can exert. See our Avoiding Micromanagement article for more on this.

Tip 2:
As you learn to use the leverage these things give you, you'll find that using them involves some up-front costs, such as the investment of time and resources you'll need to make to get someone started with a job that you'd otherwise need to do.

While it's natural to want to conserve these resources ("I don't have time to train him - it's got to be done by next Tuesday!"), if you don't make these investments, you'll lock yourself into the old way of doing things - and this will limit you to achieving only those things that you can do by yourself.

Resource Leverage

You can also exert leverage by getting the most from your assets, and taking full advantage of your personal strengths.

You have a wide range of skills, talents, experiences, thoughts, and ideas. These can, and should, be used in the best combination. What relevant skills and strengths do you have that others don't? How can you use these to best effect, and how can you improve them so that they're truly remarkable? What relevant assets do you have that others don't? Can you use these to create leverage? Do you have connections that others don't have? Or financial resources? Or some other asset that you can use to greater effect?

A good way of thinking about this is to conduct a personal SWOT analysis, focusing on identifying strengths and assets, and expanding from these to identify the opportunities they give you. (An advantage of SWOT is that it also helps you spot critical weaknesses that need to be covered.)

Tip:
As you do this, think about how you can help others with your strengths and resources. Remember, when you can give to others, the more you're likely to get in return. (Just make sure that you're clear as to how you will be rewarded!)

Knowledge and Education Leverage

Another significant lever of success is applied knowledge. Combined with education and action, this can generate tremendous leverage.

Learning by experience is slow and painful. If you can find more formal ways of learning, you'll progress much more quickly. What's more, if you select a good course, you'll have a solid foundation to your knowledge, and one that doesn't have high-risk gaps. This is why people working in life-or-death areas (such as architects, airline pilots, medical doctors and suchlike) need long and thorough training. After all, would you want to be operated on by an unqualified surgeon?

While few of us operate in quite such immediately critical areas, by determining what you need to know, and then acquiring that knowledge, you can avoid many years of slow, painful trial and error learning.

In the same way, it's inefficient if many people in an organization have to learn how to do their work by trial and error. A much better way is for organizations to capture the knowledge gained by the first few in some way and pass it on to others. This is the core of the "knowledge management" concept. Premium Members of the Career Excellence Club can hear more about this in our Book Insight on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management.

The keys to successfully leveraging knowledge and education are: firstly, knowing what you need to learn; secondly knowing to what level you need to learn it; thirdly, being very focused and selective in your choices; and fourthly, in taking the time to earn the qualifications you need.

Even then, having more education or more knowledge isn't necessarily a point of leverage. These become advantages only when they can be directly applied to your career goals and aspirations--and when they're used actively and intelligently to do something useful.

By hiring, consulting with, and outsourcing to other people, you gain the leverage of their knowledge and education as well as their resources. This only works if you choose the right people - the wrong ones can slow you and drag you down. Don't let this happen!

Technology Leverage

Finding technology leverage is all about thinking about how you work, and using technology to automate as much of this as you can.

At a simple level, you might find that all you need to keep you in touch with home and work is a laptop computer. Alternatively, a personal digital assistant (PDA) can help you maintain a single, convenient, properly-backed-up time management system. Cell phones that access email and browse the web are handy tools for making the best of your downtime during working hours or while traveling.

If you're a slow typist, voice recognition software can help you dictate documents and save time. Tools like Google Desktop Search can help you manage and find documents in such a way that you no longer need to file digital documents. And Google itself provides a great, quick way of finding relevant information online.

At a more sophisticated level, you may find that you can use simple desktop databases like Microsoft Access to automate simple work processes. If you do a lot of routine data processing (for example, if you run many similar projects) you can find that this saves you a great deal of time. More than this, you only need to set up a process once with a tool like this - afterwards the process will be executed the same way each time, by whomever initiates the process (this reduces training, meaning that new team members can become productive much more quickly, meaning that you can scale your operations – and your success – more quickly.)

Businesses can choose from a wide array of software solutions. Some of these can automate or simplify tasks that are otherwise very time-consuming. Customer relationship management (CRM) databases can bring tremendous benefits for sales and customer service organizations, as can point-of-sale (PoS) inventory systems for organizations that need to track and manage inventory. Websites and web-based catalogs can give clients easy access to up-to-date product information, and help them place orders simply and easily. And blogs and email-based newsletters help people stay in contact with thousands of people quickly and easily. All of these use technology to provide tremendous leverage.

Key Points

Using leverage is the art and science of getting much more done with the same, or less, effort. At a simple level, this can free up your time to concentrate on things with the highest priority. At a more sophisticated level, it helps you achieve at a much higher level.

When you invest time and resources to leverage technology - as well as to leverage time, resources, and knowledge (both your own, and that of other people) - you have a recipe for unprecedented success. Use what you and others have to your advantage, and see how far it will take you.

Apply This to Your Life:

Complete a personal SWOT analysis. This will help give you a real sense of what you're good at and what activities might benefit from some outside help. From there, you can start to build a leveraging strategy to maximize your productivity and performance.
Look for a mentor who understands and uses leverage, and learn from his or her experiences. This is an example of using leverage to learn more about leveraging - so that exponential factor kicks in again.
Increase your personal expectations. Take a look at your current goals, and ask yourself how much further you could push those goals by using leverage on a consistent basis. You may far surpass your pre-leverage goals once you commit to "working smart."
Surround yourself with a network of great people who have skills, knowledge, and expertise that you don't possess. Look for opportunities to create synergy, and leverage the talents of everyone involved. When you work together, you can accomplish so much more than going it alone.

In Flow

2009-05-31T19:31:00.000+05:30

In Flow

Maximizing Productivity Through Improved Focus

What is focus?

Let's take an example. Have you ever seen a hassled mom trying to get her young daughter to leave whatever she is doing and do something else? It's a common enough sight: Young children can get so wrapped up in whatever they're doing that it takes a lot of persuasion to get them to switch their attention.

This ability to focus totally on one thing comes naturally to young children, but it's one of the biggest challenges that most of the rest of us face. We struggle to concentrate and, because of this, fail to get on with the work we're doing.

Some people, though, seem able to focus intensely on what they're doing, and perform exceptionally well as a result. Modern psychologists refer to this state of absolute absorption or concentration in what we are doing, as being "in flow."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first described the concept, suggests that this state of being able to achieve total focus applies to almost every field of activity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow involves "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost". So how do we enter this "ecstatic" state?

Creating the Right Environment

Flow is easiest to achieve when:

You have enough pressure on you to stay engaged, but not so much that it's harming your performance.
You believe that your skills are good enough to perform well.
You have distraction under control.
You are attending to the task in hand, rather than analyzing and critiquing your performance.
You are relaxed and alert.
You are thinking positively, and have eliminated all negative thoughts.

Some of these are hard to achieve in a busy office environment. Your phone rings, your e-mail beeps to indicate that a new message has arrived, and co-workers pop by to ask you questions. At the same time you can't stop thinking about a whole range of personal and work issues that are causing you stress, not least of which is the sheer quantity of work which is piling up.

So if you're to have a good chance of getting into flow, you need to sort out all of these distractions first. Here are some practical things you can do:

Get comfortable, and eliminate distraction from your environment. Rearrange your working environment so that you eliminate as many distractions as possible. Change the orientation of your desk, so that people passing don't distract you. Use plants and screens to damp noise. Adjust furniture so that it's comfortable. If untidiness distracts you, tidy up. Make sure the temperature is comfortable, and that your work area is well lit.
Keep interruptions at bay. Put up the "Do not disturb" sign, switch off your cell phone, close your email reader and web browser, and do anything. anything that will block the most common things that distract you from work. You'll be surprised at how much you can get done in just one hour of uninterrupted work, which may be the equivalent of plodding on for several hours if you're handling interruptions at the same time. For more on this, read our article on managing interruptions.
Manage your stress. Identify the sources of stress you experience with a Stress Diary, and then work to reduce or eliminate the greatest stressors. One of the most common sources of stress at work is feeling that you have too much to do. See our section on time management to find out how to deal with this. And if you're under so much pressure to perform that this is distracting you, use relaxation imagery to calm yourself down.
Keep a To-Do List or Action Program. Empty your mind of those distracting things you have to do by writing them down in a to-do list or action program. You'll be amazed how much this can clear your mind! Do the same for worries - write them down and schedule a time to deal with them. And don't try to multi-task: Just concentrate on doing one thing well.
Think positively. It's very hard to concentrate if you have negative thoughts swirling around your mind. What's more, the negativity they cause undermines the way we deal with work, with people and with issues, often making things more difficult. So the final step in preparing to concentrate is to stop thinking negatively and start thinking positively.

Successful athletes commonly use relaxation and positive thinking techniques as they face the challenge of competition. They deal with their feelings of nervousness with relaxation techniques, and by reminding themselves that they have the skills needed to succeed. And when they are out there running, jumping, or throwing, they concentrate on what they're doing, rather than on the distractions around them.

Getting Into the Flow

With all of that in place, you can start to practice your concentration skills. Try to focus on one task at a time to the exclusion of others, as far as you can.

Before you know it, you will be in flow. You'll be so involved in any activity you undertake that nothing else seems to matter. Not only will your productivity increase, you'll find that your work is more rewarding. Flow is productive, flow is fun, and flow is essential for real success!

Key Points:

When you achieve a state of flow, you're able to achieve more because all of your thoughts and energy are focused on the task in hand. To get into a state of flow, you need to eliminate interruptions and distractions from your environment.

More than this, you need to empty your mind of worries, anxieties, negative thinking, and all those little "mental notes" that flit in and out of our consciousness. This sounds hard, but in reality is quite easy if you take the time to get into the right habits.

Apply This to Your Life:

Look for ways in which you could improve your work environment so that you can get into the flow more efficiently and more often. If you work in an open-plan office, consider using a meeting or rest area when you need to concentrate. Alternatively, use headphones to block out the noise when you're working at your terminal.
Be disciplined about shutting down your web browser, and only checking your e-mail once you have completed a task.
Follow our advice, set up an effective time management system, and get on top of the stressful thoughts buzzing around your mind. You'll be amazed by how much better you can concentrate if you get everything down on paper!
If you get stuck with a certain part of your task, don't succumb to self-distraction and hurry off to get a cup of coffee. Instead, remind yourself that you have the skills to break through the problem, and maintain your focus on finding a solution.

Backward Goal-Setting

2009-05-31T19:28:00.000+05:30

Backward Goal-Setting

Using Backward Planning to Set Goals

If your goal is to become an account executive within the next five years, where do you start your planning process? Or if your team needs to redesign the company's organizational structure, where do you begin?

In planning, most of us would usually start building our plan from start to finish. What do you have to do first, second, third, and so on? What milestones do you have to reach before you can continue on with the next step in the plan? By what date does each step need to be completed?

This is a solid form of Personal Goal Setting that works very well. When combined with the Golden Rules of Goal Setting, you have a motivating formula that can help you actively move yourself forward.

A New Approach

However, there's another, simple but lesser-used method of goal setting that can be equally as powerful. It can show you other ways to achieve the same result, and it can help you deal with the necessary unknowns of goal setting that can so often cause you to give up on your plan entirely.

It's called backward planning, backward goal-setting, or backward design, and it's used quite often in education and training. The idea is to start with your ultimate objective, your end goal, and then work backward from there to develop your plan. By starting at the end and looking back, you can mentally prepare yourself for success, map out the specific milestones you need to reach, and identify where in your plan you have to be particularly energetic or creative to achieve the desired results.

It's much like a good presentation, when the presenter tells you where he's headed right at the beginning. Then, as the presentation unfolds, it's easy for you to follow the concepts and think critically about what's being said. If you have to figure out the main points as they come, your energy is often used up by just trying to keep up.

The Backward Planning Process

Here's how it works:

Write down your ultimate goal. What specifically do you want to achieve, and by what date?

Example: "By January 1, 2013, I will be the key accounts director for Crunchy Chips International."
Then ask yourself what milestone you need to accomplish just before that, in order to achieve your ultimate goal. What specifically do you have to do, and by when, so that you're in a position to reach your final objective?

Example: "By September 30, 2011, I will successfully complete the executive training program offered by Crunchy Chips International."
Then work backward some more. What do you need to complete before that second-to-last goal?

Example: "By March 1, 2011, I will submit my application for the executive training program, outlining my successes as a key accounts manager, and I will be accepted into the program."
Work back again. What do you need to do to make sure the previous goal is reached?

Example: "By January 1, 2011, I will complete my second year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will earn the prestigious Key Accounts Manager of the Year award."
Continue to work back, in the same way, until you identify the very first milestone that you need to accomplish.

Example: "By January 1, 2010, I will complete my first year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will be rewarded for my performance by gaining responsibility for clients purchasing over $10 million per year."

"By January 1, 2009, I will be promoted to key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will have responsibility for clients purchasing over $1 million per quarter."

When you read a backward plan, it doesn't look much different from a traditional forward plan. However, creating a backward plan is VERY different. You need to force yourself to think from a completely new perspective, to help you see things that you might miss if you use a traditional chronological process.

This can also help you avoid spending time on unnecessary or unproductive activities along the way. Furthermore, it highlights points of tension within the plan, showing where you'll need to be particularly creative to make the next step successfully.

Key Points

On the surface, backward planning doesn't seem much different from traditional goal-setting processes. You start with a basic vision, and then you ask yourself what needs to be done to achieve that vision. You can read your plan from the beginning to the end, or from the end back to the beginning.

Backward planning, however, is more than reversing the direction of your traditional plan. It's about adopting a different perspective and, perhaps, identifying different milestones as a result. It's a great supplement to traditional planning, and it gives you a much fuller appreciation for what it may take to achieve success. After all, the more alternatives you have, the better your final plan will likely be.

Golden Rules of Goal Setting

2009-05-31T19:26:00.000+05:30

Golden Rules of Goal Setting

Five Rules to Set Yourself Up for Success

Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?... Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?... Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?

If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: Having a million dollars in the bank is only proof of success if one of your goals is to amass riches. If your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is suddenly contrary to how you would define success.

To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want." and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between there are some very well defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish.

Here are our Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting:

The Five Golden Rules

Rule #1: Set Goals that Motivate You When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: This means making sure it is something that's important to you and there is value in achieving it. If you have little interest in the outcome, or it is irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of you putting in the work to make it happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.

Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one. Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude. When you don't have this "must do" factor, you risk putting off what you need to do to make the goal a reality. This in turn leaves you feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself, both of which are de-motivating. And you can end up in a very destructive "I can't do anything or be successful at anything" frame of mind.

Tip:
To make sure your goal is motivating, write down why it's valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, "If I were to share my goal with others, how would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?" You can use this motivating value statement to help you if you start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your ability to actually make it happen.

Rule #2: Set SMART Goals
You have probably heard of "SMART goals" already. But do you always apply the rule? The simple fact is that for any goal to be achieved it must be designed to be SMART. There are many variations on what SMART stands for, but the essence is this - Goals should be:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time Bound

Set Specific Goals
You goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are not achievable because they don't provide sufficient direction. Remember, you need goals to show you the way. How useful would a map of the United States be if there were only state borders marked on it and you were trying to get from Miami to Los Angeles? Do you even know which state you are starting from let alone which one you're headed to? Make it as easy as you can to get where you want to go by defining precisely where it is you want to end up.

Set Measurable Goals
Include precise amounts, dates, etc in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as "To reduce expenses" how will you know when you are successful? In one month's time if you have a 1% reduction or in two year's time when you have a 10% reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you actually achieved something.

Set Attainable Goals
Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.

However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. Accomplishing a goal that you didn't have to work very hard for can be an anticlimax at best, and can also make you fear setting future goals that carry a risk of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals you hit the balance you need. These are the types of goals that require you to "raise the bar" and they bring the greatest personal satisfaction.

Set Relevant Goals

Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time - and your life - away.

Set Time-Bound Goals
You goals must have a deadline. This again, is so that you know when to celebrate your success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.

Rule #3: Set Goals in Writing
The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might". For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." Not, "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an out if you get sidetracked.

Tip 1:
Frame your goal statement positively. If you want to improve your retention rates say, "I will hold on to all existing employees for the next quarter" rather than "I will reduce employee turnover." The first one is motivating; the second one still has a get-out clause "allowing" you to succeed even if some employees leave.

Tip 2:

If you use a To Do List, make yourself a To Do List template that has your goals at the top of it. If you use an Action Program.

Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself everyday of what it is you intend to do. Put them on your walls, desk, computer monitor, bathroom mirror or refrigerator as a constant reminder. You can even post them in the Mind Tools Career Excellence Club forum and share them with other members, for added motivation.

Rule #4: Make an Action Plan
This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. Read our article on Action Plans for more on how to do this.

Rule #5: Stick With It!
Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep you on track and remember to review your goals continuously. Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly. Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.

Key Points

Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. Unless you clearly define exactly what you want and understand why you want it the first place, your odds of success are considerably reduced. By following the Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting you can set goals with confidence and enjoy the satisfaction that comes along with knowing you achieved what you set out to do. What will you decide to accomplish today?

Locke's Goal Setting Theory

2009-05-31T19:24:00.000+05:30

Locke's Goal Setting Theory

Understanding SMART Goal Setting

Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people. The value of goal setting is so well recognized that entire management systems, like Management by Objectives, have goal setting basics incorporated within them.

In fact, goal setting theory is generally accepted as among the most valid and useful motivation theories in industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, and organizational behavior.

Many of us have learned - from bosses, seminars, and business articles - to set SMART goals. It seems natural to assume that by setting a goal that's Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound, we will be well on our way to accomplishing it.

But is this really the best way of setting goals?

To answer this, we look to Dr Edwin Locke's pioneering research on goal setting and motivation in the late 1960s. In his 1968 article "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives," he stated that employees were motivated by clear goals and appropriate feedback. Locke went on to say that working toward a goal provided a major source of motivation to actually reach the goal - which, in turn, improved performance.

This information does not seem revolutionary to most of us some 40 years later. This shows the impact his theory has had on professional and personal performance.

In this article, we look at what Locke had to say about goal setting, and how we can apply his theory to our own performance goals.

Goal Setting Theory

Locke's research showed that there was a relationship between how difficult and specific a goal was and people's performance of a task. He found that specific and difficult goals led to better task performance than vague or easy goals.

Telling someone to "Try hard" or "Do your best" is less effective than "Try to get more than 80% correct" or "Concentrate on beating your best time." Likewise, having a goal that's too easy is not a motivating force. Hard goals are more motivating than easy goals, because it's much more of an accomplishment to achieve something that you have to work for.

A few years after Locke published his article, another researcher, Dr Gary Latham, studied the effect of goal setting in the workplace. His results supported exactly what Locke had found, and the inseparable link between goal setting and workplace performance was formed.

In 1990, Locke and Latham published their seminal work, "A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance." In this book, they reinforced the need to set specific and difficult goals, and they outlined three other characteristics of successful goal setting.

Five Principles of Goal Setting

To motivate, goals must take into consideration the degree to which each of the following exists:

Clarity.
Challenge.
Commitment.
Feedback.
Task complexity.

Let's look at each of these in detail.

Clarity
Clear goals are measurable, unambiguous, and behavioral. When a goal is clear and specific, with a definite time set for completion, there is less misunderstanding about what behaviors will be rewarded. You know what's expected, and you can use the specific result as a source of motivation. When a goal is vague - or when it's expressed as a general instruction, like "Take initiative" - it has limited motivational value.

To improve your or your team's performance, set clear goals that use specific and measurable standards. "Reduce job turnover by 15%" or "Respond to employee suggestions within 48 hours" are examples of clear goals.

When you use the SMART acronym to help you set goals, you ensure the clarity of the goal by making it Specific, Measurable and Time-bound.
Challenge
One of the most important characteristics of goals is the level of challenge. People are often motivated by achievement, and they'll judge a goal based on the significance of the anticipated accomplishment. When you know that what you do will be well received, there's a natural motivation to do a good job.

Rewards typically increase for more difficult goals. If you believe you'll be well compensated or otherwise rewarded for achieving a challenging goal, that will boost your enthusiasm and your drive to get it done.

Setting SMART goals that are Relevant links closely to the rewards given for achieving challenging goals. Relevant goals will further the aims of your organization, and these are the kinds of goals that most employers will be happy to reward.

When setting goals, make each goal a challenge. If an assignment is easy and not viewed as very important - and if you or your employee doesn't expect the accomplishment to be significant - then the effort may not be impressive.

Note:
It's important to strike an appropriate balance between a challenging goal and a realistic goal. Setting a goal that you'll fail to achieve is possibly more de-motivating than setting a goal that's too easy. The need for success and achievement is strong, therefore people are best motivated by challenging, but realistic, goals. Ensuring that goals are Achievable or Attainable is one of the elements of SMART.

Commitment
Goals must be understood and agreed upon if they are to be effective. Employees are more likely to "buy into" a goal if they feel they were part of creating that goal. The notion of participative management rests on this idea of involving employees in setting goals and making decisions.

One version of SMART - for use when you are working with someone else to set their goals - has A and R stand for Agreed and Realistic instead of Attainable and Relevant. Agreed goals lead to commitment.

This doesn't mean that every goal has to be negotiated with and approved by employees. It does mean that goals should be consistent and in line with previous expectations and organizational concerns. As long as the employee believes the goal is consistent with the goals of the company, and believes the person assigning the goal is credible, then the commitment should be there.

Interestingly, goal commitment and difficulty often work together. The harder the goal, the more commitment is required. If you have an easy goal, you don't need a lot of motivation to get it done. When you're working on a difficult assignment, you will likely encounter challenges that require a deeper source of inspiration and incentive.

As you use goal setting in your workplace, make an appropriate effort to include people in their own goal setting. Encourage employees to develop their own goals, and keep them informed about what's happening elsewhere in the organization. This way, they can be sure that their goals are consistent with the overall vision and purpose that the company seeks.
Feedback
In addition to selecting the right type of goal, an effective goal program must also include feedback. Feedback provides opportunities to clarify expectations, adjust goal difficulty, and gain recognition. It's important to provide benchmark opportunities or targets, so individuals can determine for themselves how they're doing.

These regular progress reports, which measure specific success along the way, are particularly important where it's going to take a long time to reach a goal. In these cases, break down the goals into smaller chunks, and link feedback to these intermediate milestones.

SMART goals are Measurable, and this ensures that clear feedback is possible.

With all your goal setting efforts, make sure that you build in time for providing formal feedback. Certainly, informal check-ins are important, and they provide a means of giving regular encouragement and recognition. However, taking the time to sit down and discuss goal performance is a necessary factor in long-term performance improvement. See our article on Delegation for more on this.
Task Complexity
The last factor in goal setting theory introduces two more requirements for success. For goals or assignments that are highly complex, take special care to ensure that the work doesn't become too overwhelming.

People who work in complicated and demanding roles probably have a high level of motivation already. However, they can often push themselves too hard if measures aren't built into the goal expectations to account for the complexity of the task. It's therefore important to do the following:

Give the person sufficient time to meet the goal or improve performance.
Provide enough time for the person to practice or learn what is expected and required for success.

The whole point of goal setting is to facilitate success. Therefore, you want to make sure that the conditions surrounding the goals don't frustrate or inhibit people from accomplishing their objectives. This reinforces the "Attainable" part of SMART.

Key points:

Goal setting is something most of us recognize as necessary for our success.

By understanding goal setting theory, you can effectively apply the principles to goals that you or your team members set. Locke and Latham's research emphasizes the usefulness of SMART goal setting, and their theory continues to influence the way we set and measure performance today.

Use clear, challenging goals, and commit yourself to achieving them. Provide feedback on goal performance. Take into consideration the complexity of the task. If you follow these simple rules, your goal setting process will be much more successful and your overall performance will improve.

Personal Goal Setting

2009-05-31T19:19:00.000+05:30

Personal Goal Setting

Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way.

Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.

The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.

More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.

Achieving More With Focus

Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.

We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.

Your Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):

· Artistic:
Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?

Attitude:
Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
Career:
What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education:
Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Family:
Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Financial:
How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical:
Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure:
How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
Public Service:
Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)

Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.

Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Staying on Course

Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

Goal Setting Tips

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:

· State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'

· Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.

· Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.

· Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.

· Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.

· Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.

Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:

S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Relevant
T Time-bound

For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Achieving Goals

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:

If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.

Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.

Key points:

Goal setting is an important method of:

Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
Motivating yourself; and
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.

If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!

Effective Scheduling

2009-05-16T17:07:00.000+05:30

Effective Scheduling

Plan Your Time. Make Time for Yourself.

So far we have looked at your priorities and your goals – these define what you aspire to do with your time. Scheduling is where these aspirations meet reality.

Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:

Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time;
Plan to make the best use of the time available;
Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do;
Preserve contingency time to handle 'the unexpected'; and
Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others.

A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your commitments, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you. It is therefore your most important weapon for beating work overload.

How to Use the Tool:

Scheduling is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:

1. Start by identifying the time you want to make available for your work. This will depend on the design of your job and on your personal goals in life.

2. Next, block in the actions you absolutely must take to do a good job. These will often be the things you are assessed against.

For example, if you manage people, then you must make time available for coaching, supervision, and dealing with issues that arise. Similarly, you must allow time to communicate with your boss and key people around you. (While people may let you get away with 'neglecting them' in the short-term, your best time management efforts will surely be derailed if you do not set aside time for those who are important in your life.)

3. Review your To Do List, and schedule in the high-priority, urgent activities, as well as the essential maintenance tasks that cannot be delegated and cannot be avoided.

4. Next, block in appropriate contingency time. You will learn how much of this you need by experience. Normally, the more unpredictable your job, the more contingency time you need. The reality of many people's work is of constant interruption: Studies show some managers getting an average of as little as six minutes uninterrupted work done at a time.

Obviously, you cannot tell when interruptions will occur. However, by leaving space in your schedule, you give yourself the flexibility to rearrange your schedule to react effectively to urgent issues.

5. What you now have left is your "discretionary time": the time available to deliver your priorities and achieve your goals. Review your Prioritized To Do List and personal goals, evaluate the time needed to achieve these actions, and schedule them in.

By the time you reach step 5, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first four steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way.

Remember that one of the most important ways people learn to achieve success is by maximizing the 'leverage' they can achieve with their time. They increase the amount of work they can manage by delegating work to other people, spending money outsourcing key tasks, or using technology to automate as much of their work as possible. This frees them up to achieve their goals.

Also, use this as an opportunity to review your To Do List and Personal Goals. Have you set goals that just aren't achievable with the time you have available? Are you taking on too many additional duties? Or are you treating things as being more important than they really are?

If your discretionary time is still limited, then you may need to renegotiate your workload. With a well-thought through schedule as evidence, you may find this surprisingly easy.

Key points:

Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness. This makes it one of the most important time management skills you can use.

Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.

Scheduling is then a five-step process:

1. Identify the time you have available.

2. Block in the essential tasks you must carry out to succeed in your job.

3. Schedule in high priority urgent tasks and vital "house-keeping" activities.

4. Block in appropriate contingency time to handle unpredictable interruptions.

5. In the time that remains, schedule the activities that address your priorities and personal goals.

If you have little or no discretionary time left by the time you reach step five, then revisit the assumptions you have made in steps one to four.

Prioritization

2009-04-08T22:06:00.000+05:30

Prioritization

Making best use of your time and resources

Prioritization is the essential skill you need to make the very best use of your own efforts and those of your team.

It is particularly important when time is limited and demands are seemingly unlimited. It helps you to allocate your time where it is most-needed and most wisely spent, freeing you and your team up from less important tasks that can be attended to later. or quietly dropped.

With good prioritization (and careful management of deprioritized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress, and move towards a successful conclusion. Without it, you'll flounder around, drowning in competing demands.

Simple Prioritization

At a simple level, you can prioritize based on time constraints, on the potential profitability or benefit of the task you're facing, or on the pressure you're under to complete a job:

Prioritization based on project value or profitability is probably the most commonly-used and rational basis for prioritization. Whether this is based on a subjective guess at value or a sophisticated financial evaluation, it often gives the most efficient results.
Time constraints are important where other people are depending on you to complete a task, and particularly where this task is on the critical path of an important project. Here, a small amount of your own effort can go a very long way.
And it's a brave (and maybe foolish) person who resists his or her boss's pressure to complete a task, when that pressure is reasonable and legitimate.

Prioritization Tools

While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other prioritization and time management tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:

While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:

1. Paired Comparison Analysis:
Paired Comparison Analysis is most useful where decision criteria are vague, subjective or inconsistent. It helps you prioritize options by asking you to compare each item on a list with all other items on the list individually. By deciding in each case which of the two is most important, you can consolidate results to get a prioritized list.

Grid Analysis:
Grid Analysis helps you prioritize a list of tasks where you need to take many different factors into consideration.
The Action Priority Matrix:
This quick and simple diagramming technique asks you to plot the value of the task against the effort it will consume.

By doing this you can quickly spot the "quick wins" which will give you the greatest rewards in the shortest possible time, and avoid the "hard slogs" which soak up time for little eventual reward. This is an ingenious approach for making highly efficient prioritization decisions.
The Urgent/Important Matrix:
Similar to the Action Priority Matrix, this technique asks you to think about whether tasks are urgent or important.

Frequently, seemingly urgent tasks actually aren't that important. And often, really important activities (like working towards your life goals) just aren't that urgent. This approach helps you cut through this.
The Ansoff & Boston Matrices:
These give you quick "rules of thumb" for prioritizing the opportunities open to you.

The Ansoff Matrix helps you evaluate and prioritize opportunities by risk. The Boston Matrix does a similar job, helping you prioritize opportunities based on the attractiveness of a market and your ability to take advantage of it.
Pareto Analysis:
Where you're facing a flurry of problems needing to be solved, Pareto Analysis helps you identify the most important changes to make.

It firstly asks you to group together the different types of problem you face, and then asks you to count the number of cases of each type of problem. By prioritizing the most common type of problem, you can focus your efforts on resolving it. This clears time to focus on the next set of problems, and so on.
Nominal Group Technique:
Nominal Group Technique is a useful technique for prioritizing issues and projects within a group, giving everyone fair input into the prioritization process. This is particularly useful where consensus is important, and where a robust group decision needs to be made.

Using this tool, each group participant "nominates" his or her priority issues, and then ranks them on a scale, of say 1 to 10. The score for each issue is then added up, with issues then prioritized based on scores. The obvious fairness of this approach makes it particularly useful where prioritization is based on subjective criteria, and where people's "buy in" to the prioritization decision is needed.

Action Programs

2009-04-06T23:08:00.000+05:30

Action Programs

Becoming Exceptionally Well Organized

You are probably familiar with the idea of "To-Do Lists."

To-Do Lists are great for managing a small number of tasks. The problem is that, for most of us, our To-Do List is not really a planned, focused action list. Rather, it is a sort of a catch-all for a lot of things that are unresolved and not yet translated into outcomes.

Specific entries, such as "Call Tina," exist along with vaguer aspirations, such as "Get started on house painting project." Often, the real actionable details of what the list-maker has "to do" are actually missing. (Take, for instance, the house painting project: more precise entries would be choose color scheme, buy paints, and so on.)

What this means is that you tend to do the specific tasks, and fail to make progress with the big, important projects. And even if you do get beyond the quick actions, having a complete project as a "to do" can lead you to focus all of your attention on it. This makes multi-tasking difficult.

This can be a serious problem in a job where you need to make progress on many different projects at the same time - and this is exactly the situation most senior managers find themselves in.

This is where Action Programs are useful. Action Programs are "industrial strength" versions of To-Do Lists.

Because they incorporate short-, medium- and long-term goals, they allow you to plan your time, without forgotten commitments coming in to blow your schedule apart. Because priorities are properly thought through, you'll be focusing on the things that matter, and not frittering your time away on low value activities. And because they support delegation, they help you get into the habit of delegating jobs where you can. All of this lets you save time - and get away on time - whilst also significantly increasing your effectiveness and productivity.

How to Use the Tool:

Follow this four-step procedure to create your Action Program:

Step 1. Collection

First, make a list inventory of all the things in your world that require resolution. Try to collect and write down everything - urgent or not, big or small, personal or professional - that you feel is incomplete and needs action from you to get completed.

To an extent, this collection is taking place automatically. E-mail requests are getting stored in your email account, memos demanding attention are being delivered to your in-tray, mail is reaching your mailbox and messages asking for action are accumulating on your voice mail.

But there is other stuff - stuff that is idling in your head, projects you want to run, things you intend to deal with lying at the bottom of the drawer, ideas written down on stray bits of paper - that need to be gathered and put in place too. Bring all of these actions and projects together and inventory them in one place.

And - this is really important - make sure that your personal goals are brought onto this list.

Tip 1:
You can experience tremendous stress if you have too many mental "To Dos" floating around in your head. You never know whether you've forgotten things, and you always have that terrible feeling of not having achieved everything you want to achieve.

By writing down everything on your Action Program, you can empty your mind of these stressful reminders and make sure you prioritize these actions coherently and consistently. This has the incidental benefit of helping you improve your concentration, simply because you do not have these distractions buzzing around your mind.

Tip 2:
The first time you create your Action Program, you're going to spend a while - maybe two hours - putting it together. This is the up front cost of organizing your life. However, once you've done it, you'll be amazed at how much more in control you feel. Also, it will take relatively little effort to keep your Program up-to-date after this.

Tip 3:
You'll find it easiest if you keep your Action Program on your computer as a word processor document. This will make it easy to put together, update and maintain on a routine basis without a lot of tedious redrafting.

Step 2. Pruning

Now, process the list you made in step 1, by looking carefully at each item.

Decide whether you should, actually, take action on it. A lot of what comes our way has no real relevance to us, or is really not important in the scale of things. If that is the case, then delete these things from your inventory.

Step 3. Organizing and Prioritizing

This comes in three parts.

First of all, review your inventory of items. For any which are separate, individual actions that make up part of a larger project, group these individual actions together into their projects.

For example, at home, you may want to improve your bathroom, and repaint your living room: these can go into a "Home Renovation" project. At work, you may be providing input into the requirements for a new computer system, and may be expected to test and then train your team on this system at a point in the future: all of these go into a "computer system" project.

What you'll find is that once you start, items will almost seem to "organize themselves" into coherent projects.

You also need to make sure that your personal goals are included as individual projects.

Second, review these projects, and allocate a priority to them (for example, by coding them from A to F) depending on their importance. Clearly, your personal goals are exceptionally important projects!

Third, insert your projects into a formatted Action Program.

The Action Program is split up into three parts:

A "Next Action List," which shows the small next actions that you will take to move your projects forward.
A "Delegated Actions List," which shows projects and actions have delegated to other people.
A "Project Catalog" that shows all of the projects you are engaged in and the small individual tasks that you have identified so far that contribute to them.

The great news is that, by this stage, you've already created the largest part of this: the Project Catalog! This is the list of prioritized projects and activities that you've just completed.

Typically, the Project Catalog is at the back of the Action Program, as it's often only referred to during a weekly review process.

Next, create the Delegated Actions List by working through your Project Catalog, and identifying tasks that you've delegated. Record these under the name of the person who you've delegated the activity to, along with the checkpoints you've agreed.

Tip:
If you haven't yet delegated anything, or you haven't yet agreed checkpoints, don't worry! What we're doing here is creating the right framework - you'll have plenty of time to use this framework properly!

Typically, the Delegated Actions List sits in front of the Project Catalog in your Action Program document, as it's referred to quite often.

Finally, create your Next Action List by working through the projects to which you've given the highest priority - the projects that you want and need to move forward on straight away - and extracting the small, logical next actions for these projects.

The Next Action List goes on the front page of your Action Program, as you'll refer to it many times a day.

Tip 1:
If the Next Action is going to take less than a couple of minutes, then why not do it right away? Make sure, though, that you come back and complete your Action Program!

Tip 2:
It's this selection of appropriate next actions that takes a certain amount of judgment. If one of your projects is of over-riding importance, then have several Next Actions from this project on your list, and keep other Next Actions to a bare minimum. However, if you need to keep a lot of projects "simmering away", have Next Actions from each on your list.

Tip 3:
Keep your Next Actions small and achievable, ideally taking no more that a couple of hours to complete. This helps you keep momentum up on projects and strongly enhances your sense of having had a productive, successful day.

If Next Actions are larger than this, break them down. For example, if your Next Action is to write an article, break this down into research, planning, writing, fact-checking and editing phases. Then make the research phase your Next Action, and put the rest of the stages in your project catalog.

Tip 4:
Where you have several Next Actions, prioritize them from A to F, depending on their importance, value, urgency and relevance to your goals.

Then monitor your success in dealing with these actions. If you find that actions are "stagnating" on your list, consider whether you should either cancel these projects, or whether you should raise their priority so that you deal with them.

Whatever you do, make sure you don't have too many actions on your Next Action List.

Tip 5:
As you work through this process, ask yourself if there are any tasks that you can delegate or, if appropriate, get help with. As you identify these, put these on your Next Action List, with the action being to delegate the task.

When you've delegated the task, move it onto your Delegated Actions List, along with the checkpoint times and dates you've agreed.

Now review the Next Action List. If it is too cluttered, move some of the less urgent/important jobs back into the project catalog. If it is thin and under-challenging, pull up some more Next Actions from the Project Catalog.

Also, it makes sense to prioritize the items (for example, from A-C) in the Next Action List so you know what to focus on (it's unlikely you'll have any Actions with a priority lower than C on your Next Action List).

Step 4. "Working" Your Action Program

An Action Program is typically fairly long. But you don't have to run through the entire Program every day!

Usually, you'll only be dealing with the top page or pages. Some activities may be day-specific or time-specific. Depending of the way you work, these can be either maintained as the top page of your Action Program or marked on your calendar.

In effect, these pages are just a new form of your old To-Do List. It is just that only specific short actions are outlined here, while the major projects to which the actions belong are stored in your Project Catalog.

What you must do, however, is review your Action Program periodically, for example, every week (put time for this in your schedule). Delete or archive items you've completed, move items from the Project Catalog to the front pages as you make progress on your project, and add any new actions that have come your way.

Summary:

The Action Program is an "industrial strength" version of the To-Do List. It helps you to process the projects you want to run into actionable activities, and then manage them within a three-tier structure.

The "Next Action List" heading lists the precise, immediate actions that you need to perform to move your projects forwards.

The "Delegated Actions List" records details of the projects and actions you have delegated.

The "Project Catalog" heading lists the projects that you want to work on, along with other actions non-urgent you have gathered that will contribute to the completion of these projects.

This approach helps you maintain focus on daily jobs and long-term goals at the same time, and it means that you always have a plan for "next action" at any moment. This puts you in control, and also gives you a real sense of achievement.

More than this, this approach helps you to multi-task effectively, helping you to manage and progress many projects simultaneously. This is particularly important as you progress your career, and as the jobs you take on become increasingly complex and challenging.

To-Do Lists

2009-04-05T23:53:00.000+05:30

To-Do Lists

The Key to Efficiency

Do you frequently feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you face a constant barrage of looming deadlines? Or do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?

All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper "To-Do List". To-Do Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.

While this sounds a simple thing to do, it's when people start to use To-Do Lists properly that they often make their first personal productivity / time management breakthrough, and start to make a real success of their careers.

By keeping a To-Do List, you make sure that you capture all of the tasks you have to complete in one place. This is essential if you're not going to forget things. And by prioritizing work, you plan the order in which you'll do things, so you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can quietly forget about until much, much later. This is essential if you're going to beat work overload. Without To-Do Lists, you'll seem dizzy, unfocused and unreliable to the people around you. With To-Do Lists, you'll be much better organized, and will seem much more reliable. This is very important!

Preparing a To-Do List

To start prepare your To-Do List.

Start by writing down all of the tasks that you need to complete, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything that you have to do, and until tasks are will take no more than 1-2 hours to complete. This may be a huge and intimidating list, but our next step makes it manageable!

Next, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.

You will then have a precise plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face. You will be able to tackle these in order of importance or urgency. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones.

Tip:
Once you're comfortable with use of To-Do Lists, you need to start differentiating between urgency and importance.

Using Your To-Do Lists

Different people use To-Do Lists in different ways in different situations: if you are in a sales-type role, a good way of motivating yourself is to keep your list relatively short and aim to complete it every day.

In an operational role, or if tasks are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to keep one list and 'chip away' at it.

It may be that you carry unimportant jobs from one To-Do List to the next. You may not be able to complete some very low priority jobs for several months. Only worry about this if you need to – if you are running up against a deadline for them, raise their priority.

If you have not used To-Do Lists before, try them now: They are one of the keys to being really productive and efficient.

Key points:

Prioritized To-Do Lists are fundamentally important to efficient work. If you use To-Do Lists, you will ensure that:

You remember to carry out all necessary tasks
You tackle the most important jobs first, and do not waste time on trivial tasks.
You do not get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs.

Draw up a Prioritized To-Do List and use it to list all the tasks you must carry out. Mark the importance of the task next to it, with a priority from A (very important) to F (unimportant). Redraft the list into this order of importance.

Now carry out the jobs at the top of the list first. These are the most important, most beneficial tasks to complete.

Activity Logs

2009-04-05T23:51:00.000+05:30

Activity Logs

Find Out How You Really Spend Your Time

How long do you spend each day on unimportant things; Things that don't really contribute to your success at work? Do you KNOW how much time you've spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, making coffee and eating lunch? And how often have you thought, "I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day."

And are you aware of when in the day you check your e-mail, write important articles or do your long-term planning?

Most people find they function at different levels of effectiveness at different times of day as their energy levels fluctuate. Your effectiveness may vary depending on the amount of sugar in your blood, the length of time since you last took a break, routine distractions, stress, discomfort, or a range of other factors.

Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste! Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time spent on non-core tasks.

How to Use the Tool

Keeping an Activity Log for several days helps you to understand how you spend your time, and when you perform at your best. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them. Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.

As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day. You may decide to integrate your activity log with a stress diary.

Learning from Your Log

Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your daily activity log. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!

You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these variables.

Your analysis should help you to free up extra time in your day by applying one of the following actions to most activities:

· Eliminate jobs that your employer shouldn't be paying you to do. These may include tasks that someone else in the organization should be doing, possibly at a lower pay rate, or personal activities such as sending non-work e-mails.

· Schedule your most challenging tasks for the times of day when your energy is highest. That way your work will be better and it should take you less time.

· Try to minimize the number of times a day you switch between types of task. For example, read and reply to e-mails in blocks once in the morning and once in the afternoon only.

· Reduce the amount of time spent on legitimate personal activities such as making coffee (take turns in your team to do this - it saves time and strengthens team spirit).

Key points:

Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.

By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-yield jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.

Beating Procrastination

2009-04-05T21:11:00.000+05:30

Beating Procrastination

Manage Your Time. Get It All Done.

If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them achieving things they're capable of and disrupts their careers.

The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes.

Why do we Procrastinate?

In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.

They may feel that they're doing the right thing by reacting fast. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest. Either way, by doing this, they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.

Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do.

Other causes of procrastination include:

Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand
A fear of failure or success
Underdeveloped decision making skills
Poor organizational skills
Perfectionism ("I don't have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won't do it at all.")

How to Overcome Procrastination:

Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it must be recognized, dealt with and controlled before you miss opportunities or your career is derailed.

Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating

If you're honest with yourself, you probably know when you're procrastinating.

But to be sure, you first need to make sure you know your priorities. Putting off an unimportant task isn't procrastination, it's probably good prioritization. Use the Action Priority Matrix to identify your priorities, and then work from a Prioritized To Do List on a daily basis.

Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:

Filling your day with low priority tasks from your To Do List;
Reading an e-mail or request that you've noted in your notebook or on your To Do List more than once, without starting work on it or deciding when you're going to start work on it;
Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or check your e-mails;
Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, even though you know it's important;
Regularly saying "Yes" to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.

Step 2: Work out WHY You're Procrastinating

Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task. But it's important to understand what the reasons for procrastination are for each situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.

Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:

You find the task unpleasant; or
You find the task overwhelming

Step 3: Get over it!

If you are putting something off because you just don't want to do it, and you really can't delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. The following approaches can be helpful here:

· Make up your own rewards. For example, promise yourself a piece of tasty flapjack at lunchtime if you've completed a certain task.

· Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works! This is the principle behind slimming and other self-help groups, and it is widely recognized as a highly effective approach.

· Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.

· Work out the cost of your time to your employer. As your employers are paying you to do the things that they think are important, you're not delivering value for money if you're not doing those things. Shame yourself into getting going!

If you're putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:

· Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan.

· Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren't the logical first actions. You'll feel that you're achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.

Key points:

To have a good chance of conquering procrastination, you need to spot straight away that you're doing it. Then, you need to identify why you're procrastinating and taken appropriate steps to overcome the block.

Part of the solution is to develop good time management, organizational and personal effectiveness habits. This helps you establish the right priorities, and manage your time in such a way that you make the most of the opportunities open to you.

Time Management - Start Here!

2009-04-05T21:10:00.000+05:30

Time Management - Start Here!

Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload.

Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function exceptionally well, even under intense pressure.

What's more, as you master these skills, you'll find that you take control of your workload, and say goodbye to the often intense stress of work overload.

At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, because they're not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most.

The 80:20 Rule

This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations.

By applying the time management tips and skills in this section you can optimize your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.

Time Management Tools

In this section, we start off with simple and practical techniques, so that you can get off to a quick start in taking control of your time. The articles on Beating Procrastination and Activity Logs help you quickly eliminate the most common time-wasters, while the articles on Action Plans and Prioritized To Do Lists teach simple techniques helping you focus on the most important short-term activities.

We then move onto the really powerful and life-changing technique of goal setting, and then look at the important, well-known, and usually-neglected technique of scheduling, which is fundamentally important if you're going to take control of your workload.

So start learning!

Discover the tools that can help you - How Good is Your Time Management?
Manage time. Get things done - Beating Procrastination.
Finding out how you really spend your time - Activity Logs.
Tackling the right tasks first - Prioritized To Do Lists.
Deciding your personal priorities - Personal Goal Setting.
Planning to make the best use of your time - Effective Scheduling.

2009-04-04T15:36:00.000+05:30

Time Management

Beat Work Overload. Increase Your Effectiveness. Achieve Much More.

This section of Mind Tools teaches you personal time management skills. These are the simple, practical techniques that have helped the leading people in business, sport and public service reach the pinnacles of their careers.

The skills we explain help you become highly effective, by showing you how to identify and focus on the activities that give you the greatest returns. Investing in these time management activities will actually save you time, helping you work smarter, not harder. What's more, these same techniques help you beat work overload – a key source of stress.

You'll finish by learning about goal setting, a vitally important skill for deciding what you want to achieve with your life.

Enjoy the articles!

Introduction to Time Management

How Good is Your Time Management? - Discover time management tools that can help you

Beating Procrastination – Manage your time. Get it all done.

Activity Logs – Know where your time goes
Prioritized To Do Lists – Taking control of your time
Action Programs – Becoming exceptionally well organized
Prioritization – Making best use of your time and resources
Effective Scheduling – Bringing your workload under control
Personal Goal Setting – Planning to live your life your way
Locke's Goal Setting Theory – Understanding SMART goal setting

The Golden Rules of Goal Setting – Five rules to set yourself up for success

Backward Goal Setting – Using backward planning to set goals
In Flow – Maximizing productivity through improved focus
Leverage – Achieve much more with the same effort

Conflict Resolution

2009-04-04T14:37:00.000+05:30

Conflict Resolution

Resolving conflict rationally and effectively

In many cases, conflict in the workplace just seems to be a fact of life. We've all seen situations where different people with different goals and needs have come into conflict. And we've all seen the often-intense personal animosity that can result.

The fact that conflict exists, however, is not necessarily a bad thing: As long as it is resolved effectively, it can lead to personal and professional growth.

In many cases, effective conflict resolution skills can make the difference between positive and negative outcomes.

The good news is that by resolving conflict successfully, you can solve many of the problems that it has brought to the surface, as well as getting benefits that you might not at first expect:

Increased understanding: The discussion needed to resolve conflict expands people's awareness of the situation, giving them an insight into how they can achieve their own goals without undermining those of other people;

Increased group cohesion: When conflict is resolved effectively, team members can develop stronger mutual respect, and a renewed faith in their ability to work together; and

Improved self-knowledge: Conflict pushes individuals to examine their goals in close detail, helping them understand the things that are most important to them, sharpening their focus, and enhancing their effectiveness.

However, if conflict is not handled effectively, the results can be damaging. Conflicting goals can quickly turn into personal dislike. Teamwork breaks down. Talent is wasted as people disengage from their work. And it's easy to end up in a vicious downward spiral of negativity and recrimination.

If you're to keep your team or organization working effectively, you need to stop this downward spiral as soon as you can. To do this, it helps to understand two of the theories that lie behind effective conflict resolution techniques:

Understanding the Theory: Conflict Styles

In the 1970s Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann identified five main styles of dealing with conflict that vary in their degrees of cooperativeness and assertiveness. They argued that people typically have a preferred conflict resolution style. However they also noted that different styles were most useful in different situations. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) helps you to identify which style you tend towards when conflict arises.

Thomas and Kilmann's styles are:

Competitive: People who tend towards a competitive style take a firm stand, and know what they want. They usually operate from a position of power, drawn from things like position, rank, expertise, or persuasive ability. This style can be useful when there is an emergency and a decision needs to be make fast; when the decision is unpopular; or when defending against someone who is trying to exploit the situation selfishly. However it can leave people feeling bruised, unsatisfied and resentful when used in less urgent situations.

Collaborative: People tending towards a collaborative style try to meet the needs of all people involved. These people can be highly assertive but unlike the competitor, they cooperate effectively and acknowledge that everyone is important. This style is useful when a you need to bring together a variety of viewpoints to get the best solution; when there have been previous conflicts in the group; or when the situation is too important for a simple trade-off.

Compromising: People who prefer a compromising style try to find a solution that will at least partially satisfy everyone. Everyone is expected to give up something, and the compromiser him- or herself also expects to relinquish something. Compromise is useful when the cost of conflict is higher than the cost of losing ground, when equal strength opponents are at a standstill and when there is a deadline looming.

Accommodating: This style indicates a willingness to meet the needs of others at the expense of the person’s own needs. The accommodator often knows when to give in to others, but can be persuaded to surrender a position even when it is not warranted. This person is not assertive but is highly cooperative. Accommodation is appropriate when the issues matter more to the other party, when peace is more valuable than winning, or when you want to be in a position to collect on this “favor” you gave. However people may not return favors, and overall this approach is unlikely to give the best outcomes.

Avoiding: People tending towards this style seek to evade the conflict entirely. This style is typified by delegating controversial decisions, accepting default decisions, and not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings. It can be appropriate when victory is impossible, when the controversy is trivial, or when someone else is in a better position to solve the problem. However in many situations this is a weak and ineffective approach to take.

Once you understand the different styles, you can use them to think about the most appropriate approach (or mixture of approaches) for the situation you're in. You can also think about your own instinctive approach, and learn how you need to change this if necessary.

Ideally you can adopt an approach that meets the situation, resolves the problem, respects people's legitimate interests, and mends damaged working relationships.

Understanding The Theory: The "Interest-Based Relational Approach"

The second theory is commonly referred to as the "Interest-Based Relational (IBR) Approach". This conflict resolution strategy respects individual differences while helping people avoid becoming too entrenched in a fixed position.

In resolving conflict using this approach, you follow these rules:

Make sure that good relationships are the first priority: As far as possible, make sure that you treat the other calmly and that you try to build mutual respect. Do your best to be courteous to one-another and remain constructive under pressure;
Keep people and problems separate: Recognize that in many cases the other person is not just "being difficult" – real and valid differences can lie behind conflictive positions. By separating the problem from the person, real issues can be debated without damaging working relationships;
Pay attention to the interests that are being presented: By listening carefully you'll most-likely understand why the person is adopting his or her position;
Listen first; talk second: To solve a problem effectively you have to understand where the other person is coming from before defending your own position;
Set out the “Facts”: Agree and establish the objective, observable elements that will have an impact on the decision; and
Explore options together: Be open to the idea that a third position may exist, and that you can get to this idea jointly.

By following these rules, you can often keep contentious discussions positive and constructive. This helps to prevent the antagonism and dislike which so-often causes conflict to spin out of control.

Using the Tool: A Conflict Resolution Process

Based on these approaches, a starting point for dealing with conflict is to identify the overriding conflict style employed by yourself, your team or your organization.

Over time, people's conflict management styles tend to mesh, and a “right” way to solve conflict emerges. It's good to recognize when this style can be used effectively, however make sure that people understand that different styles may suit different situations.

Look at the circumstances, and think about the style that may be appropriate.

Then use the process below to resolve the conflict:

Step One: Set the Scene
If appropriate to the situation, agree the rules of the IBR Approach (or at least consider using the approach yourself.) Make sure that people understand that the conflict may be a mutual problem, which may be best resolved through discussion and negotiation rather than through raw aggression.

If you are involved in the conflict, emphasize the fact that you are presenting your perception of the problem. Use active listening skills to ensure you hear and understand other’s positions and perceptions.

Restate
Paraphrase
Summarize

And make sure that when you talk, you're using an adult, assertive approach rather than a submissive or aggressive style.

Step Two: Gather Information
Here you are trying to get to the underlying interests, needs, and concerns. Ask for the other person’s viewpoint and confirm that you respect his or her opinion and need his or her cooperation to solve the problem.

Try to understand his or her motivations and goals, and see how your actions may be affecting these.

Also, try to understand the conflict in objective terms: Is it affecting work performance? damaging the delivery to the client? disrupting team work? hampering decision-making? or so on. Be sure to focus on work issues and leave personalities out of the discussion.

Listen with empathy and see the conflict from the other person’s point of view
Identify issues clearly and concisely
Use “I” statements
Remain flexible
Clarify feelings

Step Three: Agree the Problem
This sounds like an obvious step, but often different underlying needs, interests and goals can cause people to perceive problems very differently. You'll need to agree the problems that you are trying to solve before you'll find a mutually acceptable solution.

Sometimes different people will see different but interlocking problems - if you can't reach a common perception of the problem, then at the very least, you need to understand what the other person sees as the problem.

Step Four: Brainstorm Possible Solutions
If everyone is going to feel satisfied with the resolution, it will help if everyone has had fair input in generating solutions. Brainstorm possible solutions, and be open to all ideas, including ones you never considered before.

Step Five: Negotiate a Solution

By this stage, the conflict may be resolved: Both sides may better understand the position of the other, and a mutually satisfactory solution may be clear to all.

However you may also have uncovered real differences between your positions. This is where a technique like win-win negotiation can be useful to find a solution that, at least to some extent, satisfies everyone.

There are three guiding principles here: Be Calm, Be Patient, Have Respect…

Key Points

Conflict in the workplace can be incredibly destructive to good teamwork. Managed in the wrong way, real and legitimate differences between people can quickly spiral out of control, resulting in situations where co-operation breaks down and the team's mission is threatened. This is particularly the case where the wrong approaches to conflict resolution are used.

To calm these situations down, it helps to take a positive approach to conflict resolution, where discussion is courteous and non-confrontational, and the focus is on issues rather than on individuals. If this is done, then, as long as people listen carefully and explore facts, issues and possible solutions properly, conflict can often be resolved effectively.

Avoiding Micromanagement

2009-04-04T14:34:00.000+05:30

Avoiding Micromanagement

Helping Team Members Excel - On Their Own

You've assigned an important task to a talented employee, and given him a deadline. Now, do you let him do his work and simply touch base with him at pre-defined points along the way - or do you keep dropping by his desk and sending e-mails to check his progress?

If it's the latter, you might be a micromanager. Or, if you're the harried worker trying to make a deadline with a boss hovering at your shoulder, you might have a micromanager on your hands - someone who just can't let go of tiny details.

Micromanagers take perfectly positive attributes - an attention to detail and a hands-on attitude - to the extreme. Either because they're control-obsessed, or because they feel driven to push everyone around them to success, micromanagers risk disempowering their colleagues. They ruin their colleagues' confidence, hurt their performance, and frustrate them to the point where they quit.

Luckily, though, there are ways to identify these overzealous tendencies in yourself - and get rid of them before they do more damage. And if you work for a micromanager, there are strategies you can use to convince him or her to accept your independence.

First, though, how do you spot the signs of micromanagement? Where is the line between being an involved manager, and an over-involved manager who's driving his team mad?

Signs of micromanagement

What follows are some signs that you might be a micromanager - or have one on your hands. In general, micromanagers:

Resist delegating;
Immerse themselves in overseeing the projects of others;
Start by correcting tiny details instead of looking at the big picture;
Take back delegated work before it is finished if they find a mistake in it; and
Discourage others from making decisions without consulting them.

What's wrong with micromanaging?

If you are getting results by micromanaging and keeping your nose in everyone's business, why not carry on?

Micromanagers often affirm the value of their approach with a simple experiment: They give an employee an assignment, and then disappear until the deadline. Is this employee likely to excel when given free rein?

Possibly - if the worker has exceptional confidence in his abilities. Under micromanagement, however, most workers become timid and tentative - possibly even paralyzed. "No matter what I do," such a worker might think to himself, "It won't be good enough." Then one of two things will happen: Either the worker will ask the manager for guidance before the deadline, or he will forge ahead, but come up with an inadequate result.

In either case, the micromanager will interpret the result of his experiment as proof that, without his constant intervention, his people will flounder or fail.

But do these results verify the value of micromanagement - or condemn it? A truly effective manager sets up those around him to succeed. Micromanagers, on the other hand, prevent employees from making - and taking responsibility for - their own decisions. But it's precisely the process of making decisions, and living with the consequences, that causes people to grow and improve.

Good managers empower their employees to do well by giving opportunities to excel; Bad managers disempower their employees by hoarding those opportunities. And a disempowered employee is an ineffective one - one who requires a lot of time and energy from his supervisor.

It's that time and energy, multiplied across a whole team of timid, cowed workers, that amounts to a serious and self-defeating drain on a manager's time. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with analysis, planning, communication with other teams, and the other "big-picture" tasks of managing, when you are sweating the details of the next sales presentation.

Escaping Micromanagement

So now you've identified micro-managerial tendencies and seen why they're bad. What can you do if you know you're exhibiting such behaviors - or are being subjected to them by a supervisor?

From the micromanager's perspective, the best way to build healthier relationships with employees may be the most direct: Talk to them.

It might take several conversations to convince them that you're serious about change. Getting frank feedback from employees is the hard part. Once you've done that, as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith recommends in his book What Got You Here Won't Get You There, it's time to apologize and change. This means giving your employees the leeway - and encouragement - to succeed. Focus first on the ones with the most potential, and learn to delegate effectively to them. Read our article on delegation for more about this.

Tip:
Part of being a good manager, one often lost on those of the micro variety, is listening. Managers fail to listen when they forget their employees have important insights - and people who don't feel listened to become disengaged.

As for the micromanaged, well, things are a bit more complicated. Likely as not, you're being held back in your professional development - and probably not making the progress in your career that you could be if you enjoyed workplace independence.

But there's a certain amount that you can do to improve the situation:

Help your boss to delegate to you more effectively by prompting him to give you all the information you will need up front, and to set interim review points along the way.
Volunteer to take on work or projects that you're confident you'll be good at. This will start to increase his confidence in you - and his delegation skills.
Make sure that you communicate progress to your boss regularly, to discourage him from seeking information just because he hasn't had any for a while.
Concentrate on helping your boss to change one micromanagement habit at a time. Remember that he's only human too, and is allowed to make mistakes!
Read our Premium Member Solution on Working With Powerful People for further advice on how to manage upwards.

Key Points

Micromanagement restricts the ability of micromanaged people to develop and grow, and it also limits what the micromanager's team can achieve, because everything has to go through him or her.

When a boss is reluctant to delegate, focuses on details ahead of the big picture and discourages his staff from taking the initiative, there's every chance that he's sliding towards micromanagement.

The first step in avoiding the micromanagement trap (or getting out of it once you're there) is to recognize the danger signs by talking to your staff or boss. If you're micromanaged, help your boss see there is a better way of working. And if you are a micromanager, work hard on those delegation skills and learn to trust your staff to develop and deliver.

Adams' Equity Theory

2009-04-04T14:33:00.000+05:30

Adams' Equity Theory

Balancing Employee Inputs and Outputs

Why Use the Tool?

Adams’ Equity Theory calls for a fair balance to be struck between an employee’s inputs (hard work, skill level, tolerance, enthusiasm, etc.) and an employee’s outputs (salary, benefits, intangibles such as recognition, etc.). According to the theory, finding this fair balance serves to ensure a strong and productive relationship is achieved with the employee, with the overall result being contented, motivated employees.

The Theory Summarized:

The Adams’ Equity Theory is named for John Stacey Adams, a workplace and behavioral psychologist, who developed this job motivation theory in 1963.

Much like many of the more prevalent theories of motivation (theories by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg's Theory, etc.), the Adams’ Equity Theory acknowledges that subtle and variable factors affect an employee’s assessment and perception of their relationship with their work and their employer.

The theory is built-on the belief that employees become de-motivated, both in relation to their job and their employer, if they feel as though their inputs are greater than the outputs. Employees can be expected to respond to this is different ways, including de-motivation (generally to the extent the employee perceives the disparity between the inputs and the outputs exist), reduced effort, becoming disgruntled, or, in more extreme cases, perhaps even disruptive.

How to Apply the Adams' Equity Theory:

It is important to also consider the Adams’ Equity Theory factors when striving to improve an employee's job satisfaction, motivation level, etc., and what can be done to promote higher levels of each.

To do this, consider the balance or imbalance that currently exists between your employee's inputs and outputs, as follows:

Inputs typically include:

Effort
Loyalty
Hard Work
Commitment
Skill
Ability
Adaptability
Flexibility
Tolerance
Determination
Enthusiasm
Trust in superiors
Support of colleagues
Personal sacrifice, etc.

Outputs typically include:

Financial rewards (salary, benefits, perks, etc.)
Intangibles that typically include:

Recognition
Reputation
Responsibility
Sense of Achievement
Praise
Stimulus
Sense of Advancement/Growth
Job Security

While obviously many of these points can't be quantified and perfectly compared, the theory argues that managers should seek to find a fair balance between the inputs that an employee gives, and the outputs received.

And according to the theory, employees should be content where they perceive these to be in balance.

Tip:
Frederick Herzberg's Motivation/Hygiene Theory, which is similar to this. While Adams' Equity Theory obviously has a strong element of truth to it, it's probably fair to say that Herzberg's Motivation/Hygiene Theory has greater motivational significance.

Key Points:

Much like the five levels of needs determined by Maslow and the two factors of motivation as classified by Herzberg (intrinsic and extrinsic), the Adams’ Equity Theory of motivation states that positive outcomes and high levels of motivation can be expected only when employees perceive their treatment to be fair. An employee’s perception of this may include many factors (see outputs above). The idea behind Adams’ Equity Theory is to strike a healthy balance here, with outputs on one side of the scale; inputs on the other - both weighing in a way that seems reasonably equal.

If the balance lies too far in favor of the employer, some employees may work to bring balance between inputs and outputs on their own, by asking for more compensation or recognition. Others will be demotivated, and still others will seek alternative employment.

Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene Factors

2009-04-04T14:28:00.000+05:30

Herzberg's Motivators and Hygiene Factors

Learn How to Motivate Your Team

What do people want from their jobs?

Do they want just a higher salary? Or do they want security, good relationships with co-workers, opportunities for growth and advancement - or something else altogether?

This is an important question, because it's at the root of motivation, the art of engaging with members of your team in such a way that they give their very best performance.

The psychologist Fredrick Herzberg asked the same question in the 1950s and 60s as a means of understanding employee satisfaction. He set out to determine the effect of attitude on motivation, by asking people to describe situations where they felt really good, and really bad, about their jobs. What he found was that people who felt good about their jobs gave very different responses from the people who felt bad.

These results form the basis of Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (sometimes known as Herzberg's Two Factor Theory.) Published in his famous article "One More Time: How do You Motivate Employees", the conclusions he drew were extraordinarily influential, and still form the bedrock of good motivational practice nearly half a century later.

Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Herzberg's findings revealed that certain characteristics of a job are consistently related to job satisfaction, while different factors are associated with job dissatisfaction. These are:

Factors for Satisfaction	Factors for Dissatisfaction
Achievement	Company Policies
Recognition	Supervision
The work itself	Relationship with Supervisor and Peers
Responsibility	Work conditions
Advancement	Salary
Growth	Status
	Security

The conclusion he drew is that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not opposites.

The opposite of Satisfaction is No Satisfaction.
The opposite of Dissatisfaction is No Dissatisfaction.

Remedying the causes of dissatisfaction will not create satisfaction. Nor will adding the factors of job satisfaction eliminate job dissatisfaction. If you have a hostile work environment, giving someone a promotion will not make him or her satisfied. If you create a healthy work environment but do not provide members of your team with any of the satisfaction factors, the work they're doing will still not be satisfying.

According to Herzberg, the factors leading to job satisfaction are "separate and distinct from those that lead to job dissatisfaction." Therefore, if you set about eliminating dissatisfying job factors you may create peace, but not necessarily enhance performance. This placates your workforce instead of actually motivating them to improve performance.

The characteristics associated with job dissatisfaction are called hygiene factors. When these have been adequately, people will not be dissatisfied nor will they be satisfied. If you want to motivate your team, you then have to focus on satisfaction factors like achievement, recognition, and responsibility.

Note:
Despite its wide acceptance, Herzberg's theory has its detractors. Some say its methodology does not address the notion that when things are going well people tend to look at the things they enjoy about their job. When things are going badly, however, they tend to blame external factors.

Another common criticism is the fact that the theory assumes a strong correlation between job satisfaction and productivity. Herzberg's methodology did not address this relationship, therefore this assumption needs to be correct for his findings to have practical relevance.

To apply Herzberg's theory, you need to adopt a two stage process to motivate people. Firstly, you need eliminate the dissatisfactions they're experiencing and, secondly, you need to help them find satisfaction.

Step One: Eliminate Job Dissatisfaction

Herzberg called the causes of dissatisfaction "hygiene factors". To get rid of them, you need to:

Fix poor and obstructive company policies.
Provide effective, supportive and non-intrusive supervision.
Create and support a culture of respect and dignity for all team members.
Ensure that wages are competitive.
Build job status by providing meaningful work for all positions.
Provide job security.

All of these actions help you eliminate job dissatisfaction in your organization. And there's no point trying to motivate people until these issues are out of the way!

You can't stop there, though. Remember, just because someone is not dissatisfied, it doesn't mean he or she is satisfied either! Now you have to turn your attention to building job satisfaction.

Step Two: Create Conditions for Job Satisfaction

To create satisfaction, Herzberg says you need to address the motivating factors associated with work. He called this "job enrichment". His premise was that every job should be examined to determine how it could be made better and more satisfying to the person doing the work. Things to consider include:

Providing opportunities for achievement.
Recognizing workers' contributions.
Creating work that is rewarding and that matches the skills and abilities of the worker.
Giving as much responsibility to each team member as possible.
Providing opportunities to advance in the company through internal promotions.
Offering training and development opportunities, so that people can pursue the positions they want within the company.

Tip 1:
Here we're approaching the subject of motivation in a very general way. In reality, you'll need "different strokes for different folks" - in other words, different people will perceive different issues, and will be motivated by different things. Make sure you talk with your people regularly on a one-to-one basis to find out what matters to them.

Tip 2:
Herzberg's theory is largely responsible for the practice of allowing people greater responsibility for planning and controlling their work, as a means of increasing motivation and satisfaction.

Key Points:

The relationship between motivation and job satisfaction is not overly complex. The problem is that many employers look at the hygiene factors as ways to motivate when in fact, beyond the very short term, they do very little to motivate.

Perhaps managers like to use this approach because they think people are more financially motivated than, perhaps, they are, or perhaps it just takes less management effort to raise wages than it does to reevaluate company policy, and redesign jobs for maximum satisfaction.

When you're seeking to motivate people, firstly get rid of the things that are annoying them about the company and the workplace. Make sure they're treated fairly, and with respect.

Once you've done this, look for ways in which you can help people grow within their jobs, give them opportunities for achievement, and praise that achievement wherever you find it.

Apply This to Your Life
If you lead a team, take a little time with each of the members of your team to check that they're happy, that they think they're being fairly and respectfully treated, and that they're not being affected by unnecessary bureaucracy.

You may be horrified by what you find once you start probing (bureaucracy, in particular, has a way of spreading), however you may be able to improve things quickly if you put your mind to it.

Then find out what they want from their jobs, do what you can to give this to them, and help them grow as individuals.

If you do this systematically, you'll be amazed by the impact this has on motivation!

Mentoring: An Essential Leadership Skill

2009-04-04T14:23:00.000+05:30

Mentoring: An Essential Leadership Skill

Mentoring from a Mentor's Perspective

Mentoring is an essential leadership skill. In addition to managing and motivating people, it's also important that you can help others learn, grow and become more effective in their jobs. You can do this through a mentoring partnership, which you can arrange within your organization or through a personal or professional network.

Should you become a mentor? And what do you need to consider before setting up a mentoring relationship? In this article, we'll highlight some things a mentor does and doesn't do, and we'll help you decide whether mentoring is right for you.

Becoming a Mentor

Mentoring can be a rewarding experience for you, both personally and professionally. You can improve your leadership and communication skills, learn new perspectives and ways of thinking, advance your career, and gain a great sense of personal satisfaction.

Is Mentoring Right for You?

Even if you understand the benefits of mentoring and it sounds like a great idea, you have to decide whether it's right for you. To explore your reasons for mentoring and whether you want to take this type of commitment further, ask yourself these questions:

Do you want to share your knowledge and experience with others?
Do you enjoy encouraging and motivating others?
Are you comfortable asking challenging questions?
Do you want to contribute to other people's growth and success?
Are you prepared to invest your time in mentoring on a regular basis?
How will mentoring contribute toward your own career goals?
How will mentoring add to your sense of contribution and community?
What type of person do you ideally want to mentor? Can you describe the professional and personal qualities of this person? Do you want someone from the same profession or the same career path?
In what areas are you willing to help? Are there any areas that you don't want to go near?

Clarify your reasons and motivations for becoming a mentor. When you meet a prospective mentee, this will help you assess your compatibility.

What You Should Consider

Although you may want to jump right in with both feet, think about these practical considerations:

Frequency of contact - How much time can you commit to this relationship?
- Can you "meet" weekly? Biweekly? Once a month?
- How long can you spend in each meeting? Half an hour? An hour? More?
- Do you want to be available between "formal" sessions?
Method of contact - Would you prefer face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or emails? If you were to use phone calls, who places the call? Can you both use an Internet phone service such as Skype (giving high quality, free local and international calls)?
Duration of partnership - Do you want to limit the length of the mentoring partnership? Do you want to set regular intervals to review whether you're both happy with the relationship, or do you just want to informally review progress on an ongoing basis?
Skills, knowledge, and experience - What specific expertise can you offer to a mentee?
Confidentiality - How will you approach confidential business information? Think of ways to speak about general concepts and situations while maintaining confidentiality.

Where to Draw the Line

When developing a mentoring partnership, make sure you have clear boundaries of what you can and cannot do for the mentee.

Answer the above questions to help you clearly define these boundaries for yourself. Then, when you meet your potential mentee, you'll better understand your own mindset - what areas you're interested in covering, and what you will and will not do.

Take the lead on where you'll allow the mentoring relationship to go and what ground you'll cover. As a general guide, focus on your expertise and experience. If anything is beyond your skills and abilities, refer the mentee to another expert.

For example, if a discussion about human resources issues raises a concern about employment law, send your mentee to an internal expert or attorney. If conversations about work problems lead into personal or family problems, the mentee may need more focused professional help from a psychologist or therapist.

As a mentor, you can become the mentee's confidante and adviser. You may be called upon to be a "sounding board" for all sorts of issues and concerns. So know in advance how you're going to deal with difficult situations and getting "off subject."

Key Points

A mentoring partnership can be an enriching experience. You can develop your leadership and communication skills as well as contribute toward your own career advancement.

Mentoring can also give you a great overall sense of personal satisfaction, knowing that you're helping someone else learn and grow on a professional and personal level.

Before you begin a mentoring partnership, it's important to think about your reasons for becoming a mentor and the practical considerations and logistics of such a relationship. If you decide that mentoring is right for you, the time and effort that you put into it can reap great rewards that far exceed your expectations.