Archive | September, 2009

Batch Processing: The New Black?

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Last week a Stanford University study concluded what we’ve anecdotally known for a long time – we mere mortals don’t multi-task well.  (See the Stanford article here http://ow.ly/oOTB).  Not to lambast Stanford for their efforts, but consider the last time you were in someone’s office trying to have a conversation while the person on the other side of desk was checking their e-mail.  If that’s not convincing enough, consider sitting in the passenger seat of a car while the driver negotiates traffic and texts back and forth with a colleague.  That’ll get your blood pressure elevated for sure!

All in all, it’s great to have an esteemed learning institution validate the notion that multi-tasking produces less than optimal results.  In today’s 24/7 global working environments, so many people (with and without authority) consider “on it” the only way to accomplish what needs to get done, preferring the idea that multiple “on its” mean multipliers in productivity.  This is simply not the case. 

With multi-tasking functionally debunked as an effective means of producing results, what other options do we have for achieving that goal?

Re-Enter Batch Processing

Henry Ford figured out an effective way to get things produced over 100 years ago – batch processing.  That is, group like tasks together because repeating the same task over and over in one “batch” increases productivity.  Of course, he applied the concept to the manufacturing line, but the underlying premise holds true for any group of tasks that share similar actions for their completion.

Batch Processing Defined

Batch processing is fundamentally a workflow behavior - a way (or “process”) for getting things done.  To batch process means to gather together like or similar tasks and act upon them at the same time.  In effect, it’s working through a stack of items in a repetitive way until you have completed the batch.

Take processing you physical mail as an example.  Physical mail is delivered in a batch by the post office each day.  Most people grab the stack of mail (a series of similar items), open each one, toss the junk out, and sort the meaningful items in some logical manner.  That’s batch processing.  The alternative would be to grab one piece of mail from the stack, open it and then make three un-related phone calls and attend a meeting or two before grabbing the next piece of mail.  What if something in the mail related to one of those phone calls or meetings!? 

Besides that, it just “seems” inefficient to process one piece of mail at a time.  Yet, when you’re multi-tasking, that’s exactly what you’re doing from a workflow processing point of view. It’s just more efficient and effective to batch process things whenever possible.

Things to Batch Process

To get you started on batch processing the stuff that pours into your workday, I’ve pulled together a list of things off the top of my head that can be batch processed. Give one or more of these a try to see if you find it a more efficient way to plow through your work.

  • E-mail.  If you read my previous post on this, you’ll know that I consider e-mail just another form of correspondence.  Thus, it should be batch processed just like the physical mail example above.  Instead of responding to each and every e-mail that comes into the Inbox, I advise that you check it frequently – two or three times an hour – and process what’s in there.  Powering through 5, 20, 50 e-mails all at once is far more efficient than doing each one separately.  Moreover, many of the e-mails in any one batch will cancel out other e-mails in the same batch given people’s penchant for Reply All and Half-Thought Sends (you know who you are).  The net result of batch processing your e-mail is you will move through it faster and create fewer yourself for others to read, which makes them more productive too!  (For more on my views about e-mail processing attend one of my Power Processing Your E-mail online seminars – http://ow.ly/oPwb – or read my related posts – http://ow.ly/oPxm and http://ow.ly/oPzH.)
  • Questions.  One of the most difficult things to do for yourself and others is to group questions together into a batch.  We desperately want the answer right now!  Yet, constantly running down the hall to interrupt someone to ask a question devastates focus at both ends.  Regardless of whether you are the one asking or the one answering these questions, agree to set aside a period each day to ask and have answered all questions.  The benefits of this are several-fold. First, questions will get answered in a timely fashion.  Second, many questions will evaporate in the interim either because they get answered or become irrelevant as new information streams into your workday.  Third, both parties will remain more focused on the task at hand with the interruptions eliminated, which means double the productivity gain.
  • Errands.  Ask any stay-at-home parent if they run errands one at a time and they will uniformly ask if you’ve been getting enough sleep.  Yet, at work, we often charge off on a “must-do” errand (personal or professional) just to charge off an hour later to do a similar thing.  Whether you need to move about inside or outside of the office, stack your errands in a pile near your workspace and do as many of them at once as possible.  This includes moving archival materials to storage!
  • Phone Calls.  Another lost art is batch processing phone calls.  Before the advent of voice mail, we received little message slips that included the pertinent information for calls we had missed.  Many of us would sit down and return those calls in batch form.  Now, because we get a blinking light or, worse/better, an e-mail with the message attached (and possibly transcribed), we react to them individually.  No need.  Carve out a set period or periods each day (10:30 AM and 3:00 PM?) to return calls.  Some would even recommend doing do it over the lunch hour or before/after business hours.
  • Social Media.  There’s an entire post/article here on the value proposition for social media in the business setting. However, for our purposes, the point is to review social media connections in batches.  Whether it’s directly via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn or via an aggregator such as HelloTxt, HootSuite or TweetDeck, I advise that you peruse these communiques only once or twice a day for short periods of time.  Look for things of interest, act upon them and disregard the rest.

Seek Out Batches

Many of the tasks we must accomplish each day can be grouped into batches for more efficient processing.  I encourage you to identify additional activities that can be grouped and accomplished in batches together.  My experience is that it’s more productive and efficient, which are key components to feeling in command of your work environment.

Maximizing Productivity: Building The Three-Legged Stool

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The science of increasing individual productivity is derived from the art of blending together three interrelated disciplines: time management, organizational skills, and workflow processing. This article summarizes each area and provides a list of specific QuickTips that will improve your productivity immediately.

Time Management

I often quip that there’s no such thing as time management because time ticks inexorably forward. Though you can’t really manage time itself, you can manage how you use it. The distinction is between managing something external – time – and managing something internal - behavior.

Changing long-established behaviors is difficult. I advise looking for one or two small changes to make to experience the positive feedback of success immediately. Once a number of small changes are paying productivity dividends, larger changes can be tackled. Here are several easy time management QuickTips to try.

• Eliminate/Shorten Meetings. If you control the occurrence or length of any meetings, ask yourself three questions.

  1. Does this meeting even have to happen?
  2. If so, how frequently?
  3. If so, can you cut the scheduled time for the meeting by 25%, e.g. reduce a 60-minute meeting to 45?

Many meetings are simply unnecessary and are counter-productive because people have to prepare for and attend them instead of getting work done. Even necessary meetings can often be reduced in frequency, e.g., a weekly meeting moved to bi-weekly. Additionally, work fills the time allotted. Consequently, 45 minutes will suffice for most 60-minute meetings and 20 minutes for most 30-minute meetings. The net result of these small changes can mean hundreds of hours in increased productivity.

• Group Like Tasks. It’s very common to see people charging around to get things done. However, if you watch what they’re actually doing, you’ll find much of the charging around is duplicative. A person may rush to the supply closet to grab a new tablet only to charge back five minutes later for a new pen! The same is true of people “dropping by” to ask a question - again and again throughout the day. The answer here is to simply group (and ask others to group) tasks into logical categories, so that they can be performed together to save time.

• Leave Time in between Meetings. One of the biggest mistakes most busy people make is scheduling meetings back-to-back. Two problems are occurring here. First, you are running out of one meeting without capturing all your thoughts and rushing into the next meeting not ready to focus on that subject. This results in unnecessary lost data on both sides of the equation. Second, you’re running and rushing around which only accelerates your mental exhaustion and reduces your overall effectiveness.

Leave at least five minutes open between meetings (15 is preferable), plus realistic travel time. These precious minutes will allow you to collect and record all the information from the last meeting before entering the next meeting. You will also be more focused when entering the next meeting with the last meeting put to bed mentally. Oh, and if you’re early to the next meeting, take a break and just enjoy the view of whatever is around you – it’s called relaxing!

• Use Subject Line Naming Conventions. When dealing with e-mails, calendar events and tasks, create and use a meaningful naming convention for the subject lines. Naming conventions will save you lots of time when you’re searching for information related to that matter. For example, for an appointment in your calendar, put the following in the subject line:

Mtg: John Doe (123-456-7890) - Re: Johnson Marketing Campaign - Mr. Doe’s Office

Now you can look directly at the event item on your computer (and smartphone) and see exactly what will be happening and where.

This is true of e-mail subject lines as well. Instead of:

Update

try something like this:

Johnson Marketing Campaign – Update Following Meeting with John Doe

It’s not only easier for you to search for and find later, the recipient of your e-mail will immediately know what the content of the email is.

• Coach Versus Instruct. When you manage others, the best thing you can do both for yourself and for them is to develop their abilities to do their job with as little supervision from you as possible. You’ll accomplish that by coaching them on how to get the result you need versus instructing them on the specific steps to accomplish that result. The difference is subtle but important. If you help them figure how to succeed on their own, you won’t need to look over their shoulder along the way.

Small advances in these time management behaviors demonstrate my point that it only takes a little savings each day to aggregate into a significant improvement over the longer term. Remember also, that I’m talking about both your productivity and your sense of accomplishment.

Organizational Skills

We’ve all seen the desk that looks like a hurricane recently passed over it. The oft-heard retort is, “But I know where everything is.” And that may be true to a certain degree. However, when pressed, it usually takes about 30-45 seconds to actually find a specific item. Those seconds add up over time, resulting in hours lost searching.

I’m not advocating that you live a highly structured life or keep your working environment Über-organized. However, small changes to your organizational behaviors pay big dividends both in terms of efficiency and greater peace of mind. Try a couple these QuickTips to see how they work for you.

• Create a Designated Work Area. This is the easiest way to improve productivity that I’ve ever discovered. Take everything off your desk and put it all behind or beside you. See that wide open space in front of you? It’s called a desktop! I call it a designated work space and into it should only go the ONE thing you are working on right now.

Multi-tasking is far less efficient than single-tasking. Seriously, just do a Google search for the hundreds of recent articles on the subject. Creating a designated work space allows you to focus on the one thing that needs doing. When you’re done with it, put it away and turn around and pick up the next thing!

• Develop a Structured Filing System (Physical or Electronic or Both). Papers piled high all around you is not a filing system. It’s a “noisy” collection that costs you and others precious minutes all the time. The same is true for your computer where you might have hundreds of e-mails stacked up in your Inbox and dozens of shortcuts on your screen.

Most businesses have a filing system for physical files. Take advantage of it and, if you have an assistant, delegate to him/her the task of grabbing finished items out of your workspace daily. If you don’t have an assistant, make it part of the “grouped tasks” above! For electronic filing, just duplicate your business’s physical system. Create folders and sub-folders and file stuff away, both in your e-mail and on your computer.

• Centralize Task List Management. Instead of having a dozen little sticky notes plastered all over the place, create a centralized task list and develop a method for routinely reviewing and updating it. The more things get spread around, the more likelihood of system failure. This is an easy one to do and will greatly increase your productivity.

• Use a Subject Line Naming Convention. I’ll say it again - leverage your subject lines wherever possible through a descriptive naming convention. See above for examples.

Consider organizational skills the oil in the machine. When things are where you expect them to be and you can readily find and/or identify them, everything runs more smoothly. The result is increased productivity and a greater sense of well-being.

Workflow Processing

In today’s world the phrase “workflow processing” brings to mind countless consultants descending on a business to make it all better. Though to some extent true, more simply viewed, workflow processing is just identifying the steps to getting something done. The struggle we all face today is the endless stream of interruptions and distractions that bombard us while we’re trying to do just that! Here are a couple of QuickTips that will help you navigate through the daily minefield more productively.

• Regularly Assess Workloads. Most people hit the office at a dead run these days. STOP! There are two times in the day when it’s vitally important that you assess what your workload is - first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening. Determining what’s on your plate is the very best way to determine how to best integrate all the new things coming at you.

Instead of starting your day in your e-mail Inbox, first survey what is already on your to-do list then jump into your e-mail. Similarly, spend the last five minutes of each day assessing what’s on your plate before going home. Oh, and if you can, do it once mid-day to see your progress and to re-prioritize based what’s happened since your morning review.

• Practice E-mail Triaging. E-mail is the boon and bane of modern-day working environments. We’re fortunate to have it and hate to think about how it’s stacking up in our Inbox right now. The most significant problem with e-mail is that it has created a Pavlovian response mechanism in bright, capable people! We jump every time one comes in and we worry about what we’re missing if we don’t sit in the Inbox all day long waiting for the next one to arrive. Insanity!

Whether you use the QuietSpacing™ method or some other system, get in the habit of viewing e-mail as just another form of correspondence and triage it accordingly. If you start treating e-mail as correspondence instead of a lifeline, you’ll break the spell and get on with the work at hand.

• Set Outlook up as a “Command Center”. Now that you’re not salivating in your Inbox anymore (!), you can switch over to hanging out in your Calendar view. When you get there, set it for Work Week (View | Work Week) and add your Task View to it (View | TaskPad). Voila! Now you can see your entire week of events and an organized list of your tasks. The next step is to start creating Tasks and using them to collect your…well…tasks in one organized place. Hey, wasn’t there something above about that?

• Sequestering. If you can’t get people to leave you alone, then just leave them! That’s right, move to a conference room or an empty office. Take what you MUST work on (one or two things) and get those tasks done. Then head back to your workspace and tell everyone you were attending to business. None the wiser and you got more done!

• Aggressive Delegation/Prioritization. Oddly enough, all this new technology has created a never-before-experienced problem – a reduced ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Just because we can do things doesn’t mean we should do them. It’s a lot like the Reply All button. People hit it because it’s there. If you stop hitting it, fewer people are distracted by unnecessary e-mails.

Look at your task list and ask of each item, “How will this drive my primary objectives?” If a particular item won’t move you down that path, de-prioritize it or remove it altogether. You’ll be amazed at how effective you become when you focus your efforts on more productive endeavors.

Sitting On Your New Three-Legged Stool of Productivity

You may or may not be successful with all these proposed changes. However, each small change generates increased control over your productivity and, generally, produces measureable results. The real win comes from continuing to ask yourself, “How can I do X a little better?” There’s always something you can improve upon and each time you do, you receive the reward of achievement!

The Work/Life Balance Footprint: How Green Living Actions Increase Success

Thursday, September 3, 2009

It’s a quick post this week as I’m in a five-day training seminar for our new web-based enterprise solution for my other business – Outdoorplay, Inc. (http://www.outdoorplay.com).  And on a related note, it’s amazing how far web-based enterprise solutions have come!  We went with NetSuite and I’m overwhelmed with the level of sophistication and detail we are learning about this platform.  Very excited and somewhat daunted by what we’ve bit off!  However, I’m always up for a challenge and this system will replace at least four of our current systems while also being much more efficient.

Now, on with the matter at hand.  Whenever, I get near the work/life balance issue, I have to check my Baby Boomer, Type A, Yuppie attitudes at the door and review my own career path and lifestyle choices.  To get off that very low soapbox, I remind myself that how we feel – successful, happy, disappointed, stressed-out, etc. – is the real measure of our work/life balance.  If we love what we do during our professional time and during our personal time, then our work/life balance is in sync. 

Previous posts and articles have focused on how to be more engaged in our professional career and what perspectives can provide us a higher likelihood of success in those endeavors.  This post addresses some things we can do on the “life” side of the work/life balance equation to feel more success in those endeavors. 

The fundamental proposition here is that there are a number of small but very easy things we can all do to make a difference.  Most of these suggestions require changes of behavior, which are always difficult, but the amount of change is small.  Some might even say nascent.  The point is that doing even one or two them will make a difference over time.

What’s in it for You?

There are two benefits we each derive from doing one or more of the things listed below, one is long-term and one is immediate.  The long-term benefit is that we are shifting course every so slightly, which, over the course, of months, years and decades results in a significant departure from our current trajectory.  The golfers reading this know what I mean:  A millimeter of difference in the angle of contact between club and ball results in yards of directional difference during the flight of the ball. 

However, the immediate benefit is even more rewarding:  We get  to FEEL good right now about what we’re doing.  If life’s success can be measure by how good we feel about ourself and those around us, then these actions directly result in success.  Thus, small changes in every day actions drive better work/life balance.

Acts of Green Living

Here are 10 things we each can do right now to improve our work/life balance.  They are all pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let you decide the merit of the points and, of course, whether they’re worth your time.

  1. Buy Durable Goods Used (Cars, Washer/Dryers, etc.).  All the resources necessary for their construction have already been used.  No further depletion results from buying them used and their lifespans are usually very long.
  2. Water-Saving Shower Heads.  They’re annoying at first, but you get used to it.
  3. Use BPA-Free Reusable Water Bottles.  Water from every tap in the United States is safe to drink.  Stop supporting irrational, fear-driven behaviors to the contrary and save our landfills a little strain.
  4. Electronic File Storage.  Stop printing hard copies of things you have electronically.  For long-term storage, use cloud computing solutions.
  5. Switch to Fluorescent Light Bulbs.  They’re more expensive but last longer and use much less energy.  Swap them out one at a time as you go.
  6. Use Rechargeable Batteries.  Again, an investment up front that pays dividends on many levels downstream.
  7. Opt to Receive Alternative Energy Solutions.  We elected to have Outdoorplay, the business mentioned above, receive 100% of its electricity from alternative energy sources.  Our provider recently sent a report that stated our choice had resulted in emissions reductions equal to 12,000 cars during the last year.  12,000!
  8. Turn Monitors Off.  Whenever you walk away from your desktop or laptop, turn off the monitor as they’re the largest energy drain on computers.  Better yet, set your monitor to turn off automatically after 10 minutes of inactivity.
  9. Adjust Thermostats by Two Degrees.  Whether it’s the heat or air conditioning, change it by two degrees.  You’ll adjust quite quickly, save yourself some money, and reduce your footprint dramatically.
  10. Wrap the Water Heater.  Give it a coat!  It’ll stay warmer, saving you money again.  Oh, and when you go on vacation, set it on Vacation which will further reduce your footprint while helping to pay for the vacation.

Taken separately, each of these items is easy to implement and then live with over the long term.  Whether each of us does one or a few of us do several, the overall impact can be quiet significant. 

Small Steps, Reduced Footprints, Better Feelings, Greater Balance

Increasing work/life balance can be effected on each end of the equation. See if some of the suggestions above make you feel more successful in the knowledge that you’re making a difference.  It’s good for you and for everyone else too!