by Julie | Nov 6, 2019 | Efficiency, Leadership, Management
Did you know that your email inbox is a list of someone else’s priorities for you? Most people check their email first thing in the morning; nearly everyone checks it throughout the day, and for some it is the last thing they do before they go to bed. Do we really need someone or something dictating what we should be working on all day, every day?
I look at my inbox and feel overwhelmed. I have multiple email addresses for different businesses, and my personal email inbox contains over 6,000 unread emails (most of those are from companies trying to sell me their goods or services). I also feel I need to keep the entire archive of all my business emails, just in case I need to reference it in the future.
So what happens when I check my email? I get stuck looking at, thinking about and working on things that aren’t my current priority, which makes it nearly impossible to manage my time.
A few weeks ago, I was visiting a client and the Executive VP had 4 emails in his inbox. I asked him how that was possible, and he said he has a system for managing his email. Right then and there, I decided I needed a system for managing my email. And here is what I’m doing to take control of my email:
- I don’t check my email until I have my morning routine completed. My routine consists of a work-out, throwing the ball for my dogs, meditation, time in prayer and daily affirmations. I want to start my day focused on what is important to me, and when I do that, I am much calmer than I would be if I jumped directly into email.
- I started filing my emails into folders sorted by date, not subject. The folders are:
- Today
- Tomorrow
- This Week
- This Month
- FYI – which is like an archive for emails that I want to reference in the future.
- As I check my email, I move each message into one of those folders, which keeps the clutter out of my inbox. I then work out of the folder titled Today.
- I only check my email 3 times per day – morning, after lunch and at the end of the day.
- I have begun unsubscribing from emails that I don’t want or need. I also established a rule for my email program that automatically moves emails from people not in my address box into another folder, which I’ll check a few times a week. These two actions have substantially reduced the number of emails I’m getting distracted by.
This is a relatively new practice, and I’m still adjusting to it, but I’ve already seen improvements in how I’m managing my time and staying on task. I’m curious – does anyone else have some tips on how to manage email so that it can be a valuable tool and not a time waster? If so, please share!
by Julie | Sep 18, 2019 | Efficiency, Leadership, Management
Over the past few years, I have scheduled some grueling physical goals for the summer and/or fall. I have completed Hood to Coast, climbed Mt. St. Helens, survived Cycle Oregon, and this year I’m doing the last leg of the Camino Frances. Each of these events has been fairly challenging and has required a lot of additional training and conditioning. But having set a goal to complete them (without dying) gave me the motivation to stick with the training.
We have just over three months until the end of the year. Three months is enough time to train for a marathon! So, I’m challenging you to pick a goal or two that you can focus on in the upcoming months so you can complete 2019 with a true sense of accomplishment.
Share your goal for the balance of 2019 and I’ll share mine. Together, we can encourage each other and hold each other accountable!
Cheers to a strong finish in 2019!
by Julie | Sep 11, 2019 | Leadership, Management
When I was thinking about my major in college, I considered several options: business, pre-med, pre-law. Then I saw my childhood dentist, who asked me if I had considered engineering. I replied that I wasn’t smart enough. His response of, “Don’t put limitations on yourself,” has stuck with me over the years. So, I did some research, realized chemical engineering was a good fit for me and haven’t looked back since.
The assumptions we make about our personal attributes can be overcome if we’re aware of them and if we do our daily affirmations, like Stuart Smalley’s “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”
But, for leaders and executives, assumptions about business can be trickier to overcome. Making the wrong assumptions about the root cause of a problem within an organization can lead to decreased productivity, reduced performance and lower profitability. As an instructor of the Process Control Class for the Investment Casting Institute, I teach students the DMAIC process. DMAIC stands for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control. Each time I teach this class, a majority of the students make assumptions as to the root cause of a given problem and immediately begin trying to solve it before they have clearly defined the problem. Sure, we can go through the process and fix something, but if what we’re addressing isn’t the root cause, we aren’t really solving the problem.
Let me give you a few examples I have seen recently:
A few weeks ago, I was meeting with the president of a mid-sized manufacturing company. He mentioned that high turnover was affecting productivity. I asked him the reason for the high turnover and his response was that the unemployment rate was very low and while his pay was acceptable, he couldn’t compete with the larger employers in the area. I then asked about the company culture. He said there was definitely room for improvement. He shared that he has been working hard to improve his management team and the way they worked together, but that his focus hadn’t been on the employees on the floor. I asked him what impact a more stable workforce could have on his company and he replied that it could free up his management team to work on productivity improvements and would allow longer-term employees to transfer the tribal knowledge to newer hires. With that understanding of benefit, we started talking about ways to improve the culture. I also shared with him an article I wrote for Incast magazine that provides tips on how to attract and retain employees, which is available on my website.
A few years ago, an industrial services company retained me to resolve a problem related to low productivity. The company designed and installed industrial systems, and cost and schedule overruns were affecting profitability. The design manager and designers said that following a schedule would impact the design. From personal experience, I know that the time required to complete a task will swell to match the time available. So, I challenged that assumption by putting together a timeline for completion at the inception of each project. Once this was established, we started tracking each project’s status and set a goal of completing 90% of projects on-time. By posting the status on a daily basis, the company was able to increase the number of projects completed on-time from approximately 50% to nearly 85% in one week.
Another client was struggling with declining sales in an industry that had recently experienced a large contraction. Since their sales were declining at a rate lower than the contraction of the industry, the sales manager was content with the sales. However, the president challenged this assumption and asked me to come work with the sales team to help increase their sales, despite what was happening within the industry. As a group, we determined that we had a huge potential for upswing, as the company had low market share compared to the industry as a whole.
Each of these companies’ performance was being affected by decisions made with incorrect assumptions. By challenging those assumptions, we were able to identify and address the root causes of each of the problems.
So, how do we prevent ourselves from making decisions based on incorrect assumptions or faulty logic? Here are some tips that have been proven to be beneficial:
- Don’t try to solve the problem until you understand the problem. This may require utilizing Lean or 6 Sigma tools or having a healthy discussion with a group of open-minded individuals. If you don’t take time to define the problem first, you will keep solving problems that won’t resolve the issue.
- Use the 5 Whys or another well-established problem-solving methodology. Keep asking why until you get to root cause of the problem. You may be surprised that this exercise leads you to places you didn’t expect.
- Listen to the people around you, especially those people who tend to have a contrary point of view. And take time to hear exactly what the person is saying.
- Get input from an unbiased professional about the problem. Having someone look at the problem who isn’t involved in the daily operation of the business may provide a different perspective on what the true problem might be.
- Trust your gut. Deep down, we often know the direction we are going isn’t the right one, even though it may be the easier one.
Taking the time to challenge our assumptions can allow for resolving the real problems that are impacting the business. While this may take more time, it often leads to a more engaged workforce, higher productivity and greater profitability.
by Julie | Aug 28, 2019 | Uncategorized
For the past few years, I’ve been working under the assumption that I am unable to grow peppers in my garden because of the elevation where I live. Our property is typically 7-10 degrees cooler than those in town, and I don’t have any concrete structures around my garden to help generate or retain heat. My argument goes like this: peppers need heat to grow, my garden lacks heat, therefore I can’t grow peppers. This was a great story to make me feel better about how my pepper plants aren’t producing many peppers.
That is, until I went to my neighbor’s house. My neighbor has healthy, green, high-producing pepper plants. So I asked him what he uses to make his pepper plants look so good. His answer? Chicken manure.
I felt happy and deflated at the same time. All I have to do is add chicken manure and I can have high producing pepper plants. But, his answer also made me realize that all the excuses I’ve been giving myself weren’t valid. In order to get different results, I will need to do something different.
How about you? What stories are you telling yourself about your business? Are you having a hard time retaining employees because of the low unemployment rate, or could it be because you haven’t created a culture that makes people feel valued? Are your sales down because your industry is slow or because your sales process isn’t effective? Is productivity down because your employees don’t care about their jobs or is it possible they haven’t been given the tools they need to be successful?
We all tell stories to make ourselves feel better. But when you aren’t getting the results you desire, it’s time to ask if you’ve been selling yourself a line of manure – or if, perhaps, you need to add some manure to your business? I’ll leave it to you to decide which will help you get the results you desire.
by Julie | Aug 22, 2019 | Uncategorized
The current expansion of our economy is over 120 months long, which is the 3rd longest in our country’s history. While we know this won’t last forever, many CEOs find it hard to take focus off maintaining their current growth while preparing for a possible economic slowdown. As the saying goes, “Profit covers Sin,” and businesses need to take steps now to uncover their sin in order to preserve profit to ensure their businesses are robust enough to survive an economic slowdown.
From a business perspective, one of the areas where I observe opportunities for preserving profit is through robust processes. I recently worked with a construction company that was entering their busy season. After just a 15-minute meeting, it was clear the company didn’t have processes in place that could help streamline day-to-day activities including preparing samples for a customer, invoicing new suppliers and communicating with customers. The lack of processes was causing disorganization and employee frustration. By establishing some basic processes, they were able to improve employee efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately improve profitability.
From an individual standpoint, the most common productivity issue I run into with my clients is managing priorities and time. With all the requirements of the job, what are those vital activities which must be worked on? For me, the process of identifying those activities starts with my annual goals. From those goals, I use a monthly planning tool which helps me identify the key activities that must be accomplished every month. Then I use a weekly tracking tool that helps me make sure I’m using my time efficiently. Without this structure, I find myself adjusting my activities based on my mood or what I feel like working on, which sometimes is counter to my long-term growth goals.
This leads into another area that typically needs improvement: time management. This equates to understanding where and when to put your concentration and focus. For example, email is one of the biggest problem areas for my clients. An email inbox is a list of other people’s priorities for you, not a list of your priorities. But almost everyone I know checks their email first thing in the morning and constantly throughout the day. In addition, nearly all of my clients are alerted for each new email. These notifications are a distraction from what you are working on. Studies show that for each interruption, your brain will work on up to three different tasks before it goes back to the task it was initially working on. This can cause an incredible amount of wasted time and effort.
Time management also means scheduling time to work on non-urgent items that will have the greatest impact on you and your company. Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” outlines the Time Management Matrix. In order to get the results we desire, we need to spend more time in the Important and Non-Urgent quadrant. This requires more thinking and planning and less doing. Personally, this is hard for me, as I like to check items off my To Do List. But the greatest gains I see come from spending more time on Important and Non-Urgent activities.
Having said this, the bigger question is how do I know what specifically I should be working on? Typically, my clients know they need to make improvements: they need to grow sales, they need to streamline processes, they need to focus on strategic issues. The challenge is which activities should I work on that will yield the greatest results?
The answer to this question is the root of planning for continued economic success. I recommend that management teams establish goals for where they want the company to be in the next 18-24 months and then identify critical success factors to achieve those goals. For example, if the company needs to grow 5% per year, what are the critical success factors for success? This could be greater manufacturing capacity, an enhanced sales team, new products, etc. Once there is agreement on the critical success factors, the team can develop an action plan to address those identified areas. I recently worked with a client whose goal was to grow sales by 10% within a specific targeted market. With the goal in mind, we talked through the critical success factors and the specific actions required of each salesperson. As an outcome of the meeting, each salesperson has identified target customers and specific goals for sales activities and these items are reviewed during their monthly sales meetings. Within just four months, they increased the number of new accounts by 25% and are on their way to achieving their goal of 10% sales growth.
An action plan can help individuals manage priorities and time and will also identify those processes that are critical to success. Implementing a plan like this isn’t difficult, it just requires discipline and commitment. If you need assistance getting your team unified and focused on the right priorities, let’s have a conversation on how to achieve your desired results. I’ve worked with numerous clients to establish a strategy for success and each time, the team has been able to achieve the desired results much faster than they could have imagined.
