Tag Archives: Productivity

Survival of the Fittest and Leadership Flexibility

Hawaiians and other Polynesians are the descendants of peoples who traveled by boat from East Asia to settle their islands.  Those most likely to survive the long and arduous journey were those with “thrifty genes”.  They were those ancestors who … Continue reading

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Decisiveness

“In a minute, there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” This line from the 1915 T.S. Elliot poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is a lovely bit of poetry.  It is also a … Continue reading

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Avoiding Micromanagement

Guilty as charged!!  I confess that I do, at times, micromanage. However, soon after slipping into micromanagement, I become aware (yet again) that micromanagement is truly just mis-management.  It would have been far better for me to avoid the trap … Continue reading

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Checklists

Several years ago, a medical surgeon, Atul Gawande, wrote a best-selling book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, that discusses the advantages of using checklists in all types of activities from surgery to disaster recovery to business. As … Continue reading

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Optimize the Overall Business

As business leaders, we strive to have each of our areas improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Accounting, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Operations, Project Management, Customer Service – each of these parts of the business needs to be as effective as possible.  Likewise, … Continue reading

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Think Twice and Do Once

Every Do-It-Yourselfer knows the carpenter’s advice: Measure twice cut once.  In successful businesses, a similar recommendation holds true: Think twice and do once. To so many of us, immediate action appears to be essential: We are just doing it! We … Continue reading

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10 Ideas for Improved Organization and Effectiveness

Pre-planning “For every 10 minutes of pre-planning you do, we get four to five hours of productivity improvements.” On a weekly basis, schedule the most important tasks and activities first and build our week around them “The best day begins … Continue reading

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8 Ways To Be As Smart As We Can Be

To do our best in business, we need to be as smart as we can be. Alas, I do not have any tremendous insight or magic elixir to make myself or anyone else be smarter.  Sorry. What I do have … Continue reading

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The Five Whys of Follow-Up

When General Dwight D. Eisenhower was first elected President in 1952, then President Harry S. Truman remarked: He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen.  Poor Ike [nickname for Eisenhower].  It won’t be a … Continue reading

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10 Ways to Really (and Truly) Be Organized

With all the meetings, E-Mails, objectives and communications in a typical company, staying organized is a never-ending task. Yet, there are a few fundamentals to follow to ensure that you stay organized and focused on the most important tasks each … Continue reading

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We Need to Create Time For Our Teams

Many of us aspire to personally be as productive and effective as possible.  We read articles and blogs (including some of mine – How to Be 10X More Effective…) and take classes to learn how to get more done in … Continue reading

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The 9 Biggest Time Wasters in Business

The sheer waste of time in the typical business today is incomprehensible. From half-baked initiatives and pet projects that lead nowhere to endless and endlessly dull meetings, the typical employee can fritter away as much as half of his or … Continue reading

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