Time is one of our most precious resources. It’s difficult to create. Impossible to buy. And it inevitably gets away from us. Which is why it’s important for you and your team to master the tools needed to control the use of their time, regardless of conditions.
I’ve studied productivity for the last 20 years. For myself and for my teams. And while I’ve espoused many principles from books like “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, I’ve found that productivity largely boils down to three key factors: effective communication, clear purpose, and relentless execution.
Productivity largely boils down to three key factors: effective communication, clear purpose, and relentless execution.
In the below I share some of the tools that have worked for me. I look forward to hearing from you if you’re using others!
#1 Dia Bondi’s “21 Things”
Human communication is incredibly complex. And it becomes even more complex when it occurs over the phone or teleconference (with or without your camera on). Miscommunication occurs for many reasons: unclear communication, misinterpretation of messages and lack of confirmation.
“The single biggest issue in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.
George Bernard Shaw famously said: “The single biggest issue in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.
If you want to remediate this problem, I suggest you take a look at Dia Bondi’s “21 Things,” a checklist you can use to be excellent at delivering your message and achieving your communication goals. Dia’s free resources online will help you “communicate like a boss” by staying true to yourself, your message and its goals.
Dia Bondi's "21 Things"
Finally, if you want to know more about “miscommunication”, and why it occurs, take 4 mins to watch the TED-ed video created by Katherine Hampsten, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at St Mary’s University.
Clean Purpose & Relentless Execution
Everyone loves to talk about Strategy. Good ideas and strategies come at a premium. And leadership books often refer to the fact that one hour spent on strategy can save you 10 hours on execution. Clear strategy is indeed paramount. However, your strategy won’t work unless you do!
Your strategy won’t work unless you do!
In his most recent book, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, Ben Horowitz defines culture in a way that can be well applied to the concept of strategy. He says: “Culture isn’t a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way you’d like. It is a system of behaviors.”
High-performance teams have a sound and clear purpose. But, perhaps more importantly, they have designed a system that allows them to relentlessly execute on their mission.
“Culture isn’t a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way you’d like. It is a system of behaviors.”
#2 The Eisenhower Quadrant
This two-by-two quadrant is used to map the urgency and the importance of the tasks on your list. It is often also referred to as the “Urgent-Important Matrix” because it allows you and your team to weigh tasks against their timeliness and their importance to overall mission. You might want each team member to run their quadrant individually or run the exercise as a team together. Half of the value of this tool is the mental process and discussion you can have around the priorities of tasks. Each quadrant is associated with an immediate action or response. More specifically:
Urgent and Important: Do first and do it now. These are the most important tasks to which you should dedicate most of your time. Be selective here. Don’t put 50 items in this box. I typically ask my team to put no more than 5.
Non Urgent but Important: Schedule time to work on those. These are projects that are key to your team’s success but don’t need to be tackled immediately. In a way, the better you manage this quadrant, the better your daily schedule will look. If you take thinking time to prepare how you’ll tackle these before they become urgent, you’ll be ahead!
Urgent but not Important: Don’t linger. Do them and move on quickly! These are time-stealers. An emergency issue that needs to be fixed. A request you didn’t expect that only you can tackle. This quadrant often represents tasks that were imposed on you and that you have to do. Avoid the tendency to add to this box by creating vanity activities that only loosely connect with your purpose: this could be scrolling twitter for recent news from your competition...etc. This quadrant is where procrastination festers.
Non Urgent and Not Important: Not for you to do. This might seem harsh. But, tasks in this quadrant are not appropriate for you. They may be on someone’s else ‘Urgent and Important’ list but they are not on yours. This quadrant is the most critical one in my view for execution is as much about what you will say “yes” to as what you’ll say “no” to or delegate.
There are lots of resources on the internet that will help you integrate this into your daily and weekly routine. Jonathan Levi does a great job explaining the above in detail.
High-performance teams have a sound and clear purpose. But, perhaps more importantly, they have designed a system that allows them to relentlessly execute on their mission.
#3 Stand Up Meetings
Now that you know how to communicate your goals effectively thanks to Dia Bondi and that you have a mental model to implement (thanks to President Eisenhower), you need to make sure these practices are built into your daily habits.
Here, I turn to Melissa Raffoni, an expert in organizational effectiveness. Her latest piece in the Harvard Business Review, will help you build a method that drives accountability and execution. She details how leaders use scorecards and checklists to get their work done, regardless of the conditions.
My favorite practice is the “daily standup”, a 30-minute meeting that the team uses to go over their priority updates. I detail this practice in more detail here.
I hope you’ll find that the above can help your team. I’m constantly looking to improve my methods so if you have tips and tricks, please let me know!
