Colleagues,
Yesterday we looked at how efficiency is different from productivity, and how they correspond to urgent (efficient) versus important (productive). I suggested that you identify one thing to do that would drive organizational improvement and put it at the top of your to-do list each day. I wonder what you wrote. Was it challenging to come up with something? Does it seem overwhelming? Did you associate doing something productive and important with doing something big? It doesn’t need to be that way. Small things add up, especially when they are executed consistently over time. In fact, there is something very small that you could do every day and which, over time, would transform your organization. The most powerful thing that leaders can do is to help their people grow. Better people equal a better organization. That’s it. Tomorrow I’ll provide two low cost and simple strategies for improving your organization and growing your people. Do good and be well, Frederick
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Colleagues,
Seth Godin recently wrote a short piece on the difference between being efficient and productive. He describes being efficient as being busy and getting lots of things done, while being productive is about getting important things done. This is just another way of thinking about the Eisenhower Matrix and urgent versus important. When we run around all day dealing with issue after issue, we can feel very efficient, but at the end of the day, did we produce anything important? Ideally, at the end of each day you will have done at least one thing that will move your organization forward over the long term. One thing may not seem like a lot, but if you are making a small step each day, you will be gaining momentum and creating the future in the present moment. Here is my challenge for you: Identify one specific action you can take that will move your organization forward. Put that one thing at the top of your to-do list and make it the priority of your day. Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues, Yesterday we talked about the importance of identifying the specific outcomes of an initiative. We asked, what does success look like? We used my volunteer tomatoes as an analogy for looking at purpose and outcome in order to evaluate whether or not something is (or was) worth the effort. Let us return again to those tomatoes. Here are a couple on non-numeric outcomes:
The important point is that we need to clearly define success, although it doesn’t have to be a hard and fast number. Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues, Yesterday I asked you to think about the specific purposes behind some of your important initiatives. If you didn’t already do that, you might want to pause for a minute or two to reflect. Once we are very clear about the purpose of an initiative, we need to consider very carefully what success looks like. If we don’t know explicitly what success looks like, how will we know if we were successful?
That’s a far cry from six, but it was a great opportunity, right?
Maybe. It isn’t a question we can easily answer because we never defined what success would look like! Obviously, if all the tomatoes died before harvest, we could say we were unsuccessful, but how many tomatoes do we need to get to call the project a success? One pound? 10 pounds? 100 pounds? In retrospect, we should have first asked what problem 20 volunteer tomatoes would help us solve. Then we should have defined a clear outcome. Last night, Pam and I started talking about what to plant next spring. Yes, we did talk about tomatoes. We discussed why we wanted tomatoes and how they would make our lives better. We also discussed what success would look (and taste!) like. What will you plant, and to what will success look like? Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues,
Yesterday we thought about some questions we should always ask before embarking on a new initiative or jumping on a “great opportunity.” Today I want to dig a little deeper on one question:
Intuitively, most leaders will consider this, but they often aren’t able to describe the answer in very specific terms. This is especially true when we are engaging in a practice that is sound. For example, should we evaluate people’s performance? Of course! But why? There are different answers to that question, and your specific answer should have a big impact on what the evaluation process looks like. Take a few minutes to think about some of the initiatives you are engaged in right now. What is the specific purpose? If you reflect today it may help you get more out of tomorrow’s email. Do good and be well, Frederick |
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