I aim to be 50% productive and usually manage it, (15% being the norm). What I mean by that is I aim to spend 50% of my time on high-payoff activities – the activities which, if neglected, will lead to goal failure. Most people are around 15% productive. Strange but true.

I spent all of last Friday doing one particular high-payoff activity. A single task. I scheduled a full day for it in my diary. It involved me teaching myself something I needed to learn. I had no distractions – no email, no phone calls…nothing. I completed the task – I learned what I had to learn. I switched the phone and email back on at 430pm, dealt with what could not wait and then switched everything off again, all before 530pm.

I felt wonderful. In control, purposeful, satisfied. It was a good day in the office.

It reminded me of the critical importance of focus to productivity. Focusing on one task for an extended period of time. At least half a day. It feels like a luxury, but it isn’t. A whole day is even better. With the phone and the email turned off. Check them every two hours if you must. But don’t get sucked in – just check them and only deal with what is truly urgent. And that means urgent to you, not the other person.

In any working week, it is much better to give each of ten high-payoff activities a half day than to spend each of the five days doing all ten high-payoff activities for 45 minutes each. That’s the road to madness.

This is because our brains work at their best when we allow ourselves to focus. Multi-tasking only works at a trivial level – I can drink beer, eat pizza and watch the football at the same time but these are not high-payoff activities. You cannot do two high-payoff activities at the same time. I’ve said this before but it’s critically important that we reserve substantial chunks of time for the important stuff. Our world has a huge and increasing ability to fragment our attention to the point where we are so distracted we cannot function properly.

So when you catch yourself doing a dozen different things in a day and rushing around like a mad thing, it’s time to ask if you’re really focused on the important stuff, or have you slipped into “I must get through my to-do list” mode. You cannot get through a to-do list. It’s against the laws of physics.

As I keep saying to my clients, chief execs don’t stand up at the annual general meeting and say “we had 98% to-do list completion last year”. No. They talk about metrics that represent goal achievement…sales, profit etc.

Here’s another wee prompt – when you hear yourself say “I’m busy” remember that “busy” is usually a euphemism for “I don’t really feel in control”. And you cannot achieve when you’re not in control.

You can achieve when you identify your high-payoff activities and give them the time and space they deserve. And you will become calmer, clearer-headed and you will get what you want.

Strange as it may seem, you can get more done by doing less.

So, we’re twenty four days into 2011 already. Almost February. My Mother tells me time continues to speed up as you get older. Ug! It’s already going past at 600mph. So fast that it’s difficult to keep the really important stuff at the front of the mind. So easy to switch the neck-top computer off, do what we have always done and miss the chances to improve on last year, no matter how good last year was.

Well that would be a shame so here’s my Top 10 list of self-management essentials to ensure you use the free will you most certainly have, but can so easily neglect.

Let’s start at number 1…

Values

Straight in at number one, since about 500 B.C….values. What do you believe in? What matters to you? Values drive all effective action. Get this right. It’s the foundation.

Purpose

Number 2…the angelic offspring of values….purpose.  The essence of leadership – whether of oneself or of others. No purpose…no point. Start with values and from them…derive your purpose. Paying the mortgage is not a purpose. You were put on the earth for a wee bit more than that.

Plan

Number 3…values and purpose…now get a plan. You are part of a plan, whether you like it or not. The only question is who writes the plan. It’s either you or someone else. If you don’t wish to be the author there are many who will take your place, but they won’t write the plan with you in the starring role.

Goals

Number 4…goals. You have a purpose…very good.  Time to get a bit more real. A bit more tangible. So, how will I achieve my purpose? Goals. Goals. Goals. Think of goals as small steps on the route to achieving your ultimate purpose.

If you don’t have goals get some help. I really mean it. When a coach/manager/mentor says to you to set goals, it’s like your doctor saying “stop smoking.” It’s not fashion. It’s not the latest thing. Just do it.

Action

Number 5…take massive action. Data collection is over. Thinking time is over. Define and focus on your high-payoff activities (the things that if you do NOT do, you will fail to achieve your goals). Work on your time management and personal productivity until you feel like you are in charge of yourself. Then you probably are.  Develop a steely, cold, single-minded determination to do what you need to do to deliver your goals and ultimately your purpose. Consider throwing away your TV. Then throw it away.

Measure

Number 6…measure. If it matters to you, measure it. No measurement…no feedback. No feedback…no catalyst for improvement. You’ve got to get very lucky very early to be successful without measuring what’s important. So, do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

Fear

Number 7…fear. If you have a high-payoff activity that you do not do as much as you should, deal with the fear that stops you doing it. The mistake you’re probably making is attributing more pain to doing the thing than not doing it. This is easy to do because the pain of doing the thing is now, palpable and tangible. Whereas the pain of not doing it is some time off and seems less urgent. Reattribute the pain to inaction, not action. In other words, focus on the pain of regret, not the pain of discipline, as the great, late Jim Rohn said. This works.

Educate

Number 8…educate yourself. Never stop. Deepen and widen what you know and how you use it. This is better than TV. You have the time.

Humans

Number 9…partner with others. We work better in teams. Get into one. Either a mentoring group, a mastermind group or a business partnership. Something involving others. We are social and work better in teams. But beware…here be dragons. Unless those you choose to work with are in the same place as you, mentally, and share similar ambitions, they will be very bad for you, despite not being bad people.

Stop running

Number 10…take time out. This life is a marathon, not a sprint. Smell the roses.

That’s it. Why not focus on one of these areas right now…today. No matter how good 2010 was, 2011 can be better. Good luck.

What do your staff really need from you? This has been researched many times over and the answers never really change.

Well, this is what staff want:

1. You to show an interest in their career. That’s right, their career. They want to know that in return for their exceptional efforts you will help them get to where they want to get to. After all, they’re helping you to get to where you want to get to. Fair deal? I think so.

2. You are honest with them and they trust you. Honesty isn’t just about not telling lies. It’s about being fully open and in a timely manner. This is not just about the bigger business situation. It’s also about dealing with their occasional poor performance immediately and effectively – not letting it fester until it’s getting too late to do anything about it. Dishonesty includes truth avoidance and telling partial truths.

3.You have a vision of where you’re going and how to get there and this is communicated well. It’s about organisational purpose and direction. It’s also about having a plan for teach staff member that shows that as a part of the organisation’s journey to the sunlit uplands there is a plan to develop and improve each of them as well. There must be a win-win. “We’re paying you to do the job” is not management or leadership.

4. You provide worthwhile work. Your staff need meaning in their jobs. Not all can have glamorous roles, but you must help them to see how their part plays a role in the journey to the sunlit uplands.

5. You recognise them. People need recognition. When they deserve it they need to receive it. Praise generates enthusiasm. Chastisement generates a sense of avoidance which leads to a sense of what the rules are which leads to a compliance mindset. An enthusiastic team versus a compliant team? Choose one.

In a nutshell your staff want to feel cared for, trusted, purposeful, worthwhile and recognised. That shouldn’t be too difficult should it? They are human beings after all – not resource units.

Here’s what they don’t ask for –

Money – often a demotivator in fact. Because they (and you) cannot win with money. There is always someone who got more and that sends a message that they are not as valuable as the person with more. It invites comparison with others and that’s a game few can win.

Soft stuff – flexi-time, a gym, free canteen, marble foyer – never mentioned. I remember many years ago the CEO of ICI saying that “we’re not in the crèche business”. And this was in ICI, an organisation that elevated paternalism to a fetish. Well, he was right. We weren’t in the crèche business.

The soft stuff is just fluff. It’s nice, of course, but does it make someone feel better about a manager who doesn’t care about their career, doesn’t trust them, has no sense of direction, provides worthless work and offers no praise? Nope.

Remember what management actually is. It’s the ability to get things done through other people. These other people have said what they want. Spending time, real time, on delivering the five points above is a critical management task and is time well spent. It’s a high-payoff activity. Much better to do these simple things than spend time on useless nonsense; the ultimate useless nonsense of course being the need to deal with poor performance that has directly resulted from your inattention to the needs of your people.

Apart from the occasional bad apple, you get the staff you deserve.

I was in the supermarket the other day having been sent there for sushi by my six-year old when, not for the first time, I was amazed by the sheer variety of magazines on display. One that jumped out at me was Total Carp – that’s not a misspelling; it’s apparently “The UK’s Biggest Selling Carp Magazine”. It looked familiar. I am sure Total Carp has been around since I first realised I had no interest in carp. My children use the phrase euphemistically i.e. “that’s total carp” to mean something else of course, and to annoy their Mother.

There are people who only fish for carp. No other fish. They do not want a broad-based fishing magazine. They want one on carp.

This is a dream for marketers. Because the greater precision with which you can define your target market, the more precisely you can meet their needs. And you know what they say – “the easiest way to get rich is to find out what people want, and give it to them.”

People have always had niche interests. But the ability to identify these niches and fulfil their immediate needs and wants, and ones they never knew they had, drives demand. It creates demand.

The critical tool for a lot of this niche identification and exploitation (that’s not a bad word…people are not forced to buy Total Carp) is the internet. On the internet, people tell you what they need. They put it into Google. And Yahoo and Bing.

What this means is you can access the long tail – the part of the curve that represents wants and needs that relatively few people have. The key word is relatively. I’ll take as my market 0.01% of the English speaking world any day.

These niches, or non-mass market, were too difficult to get to with any scale in the old days when marketing was expensive – adverts, direct mail etc, etc. Now that marketing is cheap, you can measure your return-on-investment quickly and accurately. Once you identify a niche, you have a real opportunity.

You don’t have to go head-to-head with International Megacorp in the mass market – you can get to the places that International Megacorp cannot get to, because they need markets of a minimum sizes to justify their expensive entry strategies.

You can avoid the mass markets. In fact, you should avoid the mass markets.

Type Google keywords tool into Google, click on the top link, and have a play. If your passion is cocker spaniel grooming you can see how many people are searching for this (today, the stats are 1,000 per month in the UK and 6,600 per month globally). Now I dare say no one is going to travel much more than 20 miles to get their cocker spaniel groomed at your fancy salon. So, for those that are further away, maybe you can offer something of value. A guide; a book; a video; a newsletter. Whatever cocker spaniel owners want – if this is your thing you probably know. Or you could do some market research. Reach out to them. Give them some real value, for free. Start a relationship. There’s 80,000 of them declaring their interest per year. And that’s just for cocker spaniel grooming. Never mind training, breeding, showing, food supplements….

Maybe in time you will have the biggest cocker spaniel-related mail order business on earth. Why not? Someone has to do it. 80,000 people are looking for you to make the move. And then there’s borzoi, afghan, pug…

You can find out what these people want and you can give it to them and they will make you rich. They say money isn’t everything, but as Sophie Tucker said “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better.” If you don’t like the word rich, try replacing it with free to do as I choose with my time. How does that sound?

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This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on Thinking.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

In the boardroom…

“I’ve got this great idea. It’s a device you speak into and you can talk to other people who are far away. It’ll allow us to speak to people in the next county!”

“But I don’t know anyone in the next county.”

“I know, but think how good it would be if you did!”

“But I don’t…”

Kiss your comfort zone goodbye…

We develop habits of thinking. We become comfortable in our habits. And more certain of our correctness. We stifle creative thought. We suppress full and rational discussion and in so doing, miss the opportunity.

Edward de Bono is having none of it. The inventor of “lateral thinking” speaks of his Six Hats Thinking.

Put your hat on…

Choose a hat. You can wear many. And should.

White hat – think “neutrality”.

A focus on information and facts. What’s available and what can be found out. All the facts, not just the ones you like. No selective memory. No force-fitting. No post-event rationale.

Red Hat – think “fire!”

Emotions and feelings. “What do you feel about this?” No need to explain. Just state the feelings. Emotions are legitimate. They are not dirty secrets. It is said that women are, stereotypically, more emotional than men. And men make decisions based on objective rationality. This is, of course, poo. All decisions are emotional. It’s just that men go through the post-event rational of thinking up good, “objective” reasons as to why their emotions are correct. And “objectivity” has a value in our society. Women tend to have moved on by this point.

Black Hat – think “judgemental”.

Critical. Why it won’t work. This is called “logical negative”. Very common with technocrats with no vision. “Ooh, it’ll never work.” And those who are small and secretly think it’s a great idea but only if it’s their idea.

Yellow Hat – think “sunshine”.

Optimism. It’s all about benefits. What’s good. This is called “logical positive”. Sunshine and optimism – sounds flaky, doesn’t it? You must be British. That’s conditioning. Nothing wrong with sunshine and optimism. And remember, this is just one hat and you must wear them all.

Green Hat – think “vegetation”.

Growth. Creative thinking. Possibilities. New ideas. Be a dreamer. But not only a dreamer. Why do we go to the moon – because it’s there. Why do we map the human genome. Because we can, and who knows…

Blue Hat – think “sky”.

Cool. Calm. Overview. Control of process. The chairperson…organiser. Thinking about thinking. Someone has to. Otherwise it’s a bun fight.

Know your enemy…

It’s not about fighting a battle to see who’s wearing the right hat. It’s about wearing all the hats, and fighting a battle against our comfort zones, to solve the problem, or realise the opportunity.

It’s about removing the barrier that is our individual ego. That puts us before the problem or the opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong – ego is great. Without it we’d be pond life. But it’s a double edged sword. To be used, with caution. Make ego–gratification equal to solving the problem or realising the opportunity, not “winning” a fight with your colleagues.

Here’s how to do it…

Get a facilitator to do white hat, blue hat and manage the process.

Then challenge people.

“Yes I know you can see how this will not work.” “And we welcome that” (We really do – a sceptic is usually worth their weight in gold.)

“But we ask more of you. We ask you to contribute more fully. To think about what might be; how we can make it happen; how good it could be.”

Then we’ll make a decision. Based on a full and open discussion. Not on who has the greatest ability to argue. My wife sometimes says to me “you haven’t won the argument, you’re just better at arguing. “

She has a point.

And the lesson is…

That the objective needs to be to arrive smiling at the best result for the issue at hand.

No ego is required.

The six hats are required.

Try this…it works.

Mark

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on Strategy.

“What’s the use of running if you are not on the right road” – German proverb

Hello Big Boy…

Strategy is not just for the big guys. Small businesses need one as well.  And it doesn’t have to be a 200 page tome. And it doesn’t need consultants.

What is a strategy…?

It’s your purpose. Your direction. It contains your vision and mission. It states your competitive advantage (or makes you get one if you don’t have one). The markets you are in. And more.

This applies to you.

And your team…

Strategy binds people with good attitude together under a common purpose. A higher level, compelling, challenging, achievable purpose.

Links in a chain…

The output of strategy is strategic objectives. This could be…..”put a man on the moon before this decade is out”. Or it could be “find 5 new profitable customers in the hotel sector by year end”.

And these objectives are linked to the plans that deliver the strategic objectives…marketing objectives, operational objectives, technology objectives…

You may need to pull all these together to put a man on the moon. If your goals are more modest, you may just need to find an effective marketing channel. Or hire a telemarketer.

And the chain continues…

…into individual objectives for leaders, managers and staff. Or just you if you are all three.

The point is you are now in goal-directed action mode. You have a target, a destination, and you can walk or run, depending on your level of ambition.

It doesn’t matter who you are – you’re either on the right road or you’re not. Marshalling thousands of people and billions of quid, or just your own time…

That’s why you need a strategy.

So how to do it…?

Start with the end in mind. What’s the output of a strategy? I’d say approximately four objectives max, for the next year… four  things that, if you achieve them will have taken you forward (assuming you want to go forward of course). Objectives that, once achieved, will make you feel proud, make you happy. Make you feel in control, purposeful and productive.

Tool up…

There are some tools that are as old as the hills.

A SWOT analysis to measure your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and opportunities combine to tell you where the money is, right now. Act on this first. Weaknesses and threats need to be plugged, but later.

A competitive force analysis – which tells you which of the four business strategies you really should have (some say this is simplistic, or old-fashioned, but it holds true for the majority of businesses and if you’re not clear on which one of these strategies you have, you are going to get eaten alive from both ends at the same time).

The Ansoff matrix puts real context into your product/market mix and the associated risks.

Get my free list of 372 strategy tools…

No. There are many others, but there are only about ten that have widespread relevance and I suspect about four that really apply to you.Less is more.

These tools are simple, easy to understand and can be done on the back of a fag packet.

Once you’ve done this (spend no more than one hour), you should be able to construct 3 to 5 strategic objectives for your business.

Then you have purpose. And your actions can be goal-directed. And whether you choose to walk or run, at least you’re on the right road.

Mark

Here’s some stuff on the tools mentioned above –

http://bit.ly/what_is_strategy

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on….

Purpose

“You better realise that you gotta have a purpose or this place is gonna knock you out, sooner or later.” – from Clash City Rockers by The Clash – Joe Strummer/Mick Jones.

Ideal Homes…

The benefits of having a purpose are clearly demonstrated by my children. When they are purposeful they are quiet (sometimes), resourceful, diligent, hardworking, have the goal in mind and co-operate freely. They achieve their desired result and they are happy and rightly proud of what they have done. Their confidence soars.

Towerblock…

When they have no purpose, they are listless, snappy, irritable, complaining and bad tempered. They goad each other, get increasingly frustrated and are unproductive. Their mental state is poor (and deteriorates). They achieve very little and they are not happy. Their confidence dives.

Just like adult life, only starker because children don’t wear masks.

You gotta have a purpose…

Your business needs to have a purpose, or as it is unhelpfully called, a Mission Statement. It really should be called a Purpose Statement because no one would admit to not having a purpose, or their purpose not being in the forefront of their mind.

Your Purpose Statement should be desirable to you and those who work with you. Feelings toward it should be the number 1 interview question asked of prospective employees.

The Purpose Statement should be displayed prominently, understood and acted upon by all, and seen as an important and useful strategic tool in your business (even if it’s just you in your business).

This place is knocking me out…

But don’t fret if your Purpose Statement is a bit rubbish, or non-existent.

Opportunity knocks…

You have an excellent opportunity. Get your people together or have a meeting with yourself, and define your Purpose Statement. This will give you direction, aid decision making and the key goals will identify themselves. You will have a shared purpose and when you have a shared purpose you’ll be ahead of the game and that’s what leadership is about.

Leaders are ahead of the game.