-- Peter F. Drucker
Focus
If you chase two rabbits, both will escape. -- proverbAlso known as First things first, the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule, or focus. Concentrate your time and energy on the most important thing. Do one thing at a time, and do it right. This is the one recommendation that I have seen in practically every treatment of the matter.
One can not conentrate on many things, and one does not need to. A few important things usually dominate, in spite of a large number of unimportant ones. For example, 80% of the results stem from 20% of the effort. 80% of revenue come from 20% of customers. 80% of sick leave come from 20% of employees, and so on.
Spend your own time on what counts. Spend it on people hiring and development (more when building an organization). Spend it on operations, including improving productivity, reviewing performance against competition and the past. Spend a little on strategy and new initiatives. Spend some with customers to stay in the real world. Spend as little as possible on administrative overhead, although it will be hard avoid it entrirely. Spend at least a tenth in each area you are working on for learning, updating and and improving.
One corollary of this rule is that in many cases averages are useless or even harmful. Go after the fat rabbit.
Review your tasks from time to time, and cull of the ones that are not important any more. Ask youself, if I were not already doing this, would I start doing it now? Ideas are never limiting, resources are. When starting something new, also decide what old thing to stop to free resources. Don't postpone, decide -- later it will be even less right to do it, as things change. It's just a cowards way of saying you'll not do it.
Time is the one resource that is totally inflexible. That makes it the scarcest and most critical one. Record how you spend your time, to learn if you waste it on reacting to pressure like recurring crisis, meetings and busy work instead of sepending it on important tasks. Prune time wasters. Some things you can stop doing. Others you may be able to delegate.
Defragment your time so that you have at least chunks of an hour or two, in which you can get into flow and be productive. Starting on lots of things and breaking off after ten minutes achieves nothing.
Concentrate on opportunities, the future. Do not let pressure make you sacrifice the important things for problems and adminstrativa.
Use Strength
Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.--Andrew Carnegie
Where you are strong, you can excel. Where you are weak, the best you can achieve is mediocrity. Imagine Tiger Woods working on theoretical physics, or Einstein focusing on Golf. You can not master everthing.
Apply your strengths. Identify people's strength and put it to use, never mind their weaknesses. Appraise for strength. Put your best people on new initiatives.
Identify areas of ignorance that stop you from being effective there. Remedy bad habits. Learn where you are such a failure, that you should leave it alone.
If you do not know what you are good at, find out. Ask others. Record decisions, and check back later on their outcome. Track your sucesses and failures.
[I have heard the exact opposite argument made: it is hard to improve where you already excel, and easy to improve in some problem that is holding you back. I think the synthesis is to remove weaknesses that hold you back, only if they hinder that in which you are strong.]
Help
Ability is of little account without opportunity. -- Napoleon BonaparteThink how you can contribute to the success of the enterprise. What does the enterprise need that you and only you can do well? What can you provide, and provide with distinction? If you are not able to make a contribution, because your strengths do not meet the needs of the company, then you are in the wrong place. Move on.
The advantage of a company is that people can focus on their strengths, and complement each other. So ordinary people together can produce excellence. Look at your contribution from the position of others. "Who needs my work?", "Why does he need it, why is it important for him?", "How does he use my work?". Ask people: "What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?"
"Warm feelings and pleasant words are meaningless, are indeed a false front for wretched attitudes, without achievement in what is after all, a work and task focused relationship." No matter how nice someone is, if he does not keep his commitments and does not do his work, you will develop resentments.
If everybody tries to contribute, you get communication and teamwork for free. Teams do not work because they try to "be a team". They work because people complement each others abilities, and try to work together to achieve a shared goal.
Decide
De minimis non curat praetor. (The magistrate does not consider trifles) -- Roman ProverbThe worst decision is no decision, if the matter is of importance. The best decision is no decision -- if the matter is insignificant, or it is unclear if a decision would improve anything. Act only if the benefits clearly outweigh the risks and costs. But if there is need to act, and you act, go all the way.
Good decisions must be based on reality. You may be able to lie to yourself, and you will then fail. So, good decisions need a culture of candidness, that makes it possible to face the truth. Effective decisions are based on disagreement between different points of view, rather than on consensus. Decisions would ideally be based on fact, but in practice must be based on opinion. People have opinions first, then go get facts that support them. Disagreement highlights the weak points in each position. Disagreement provides alternatives, so that if the decision turns out to be wrong, there is already a fallback position. Disagreement protects the decision maker from giving in to special pleaders. And finally disagreement stimulates to come up with a creative solution.
It is important to understand the nature of the decision. Always assume that a problem is generic at first, or only the first incidence of a string of such problems, and try to solve it by fixing the fundamental conditions, not the individual incident. When a crisis repeats this is a sign that something is fundamentally wrong. Fix the underlying structure.
Many decisions that count are going to be unpleasant and unpopular, they need courage. Do not put them off because of the unpleasant consequences. When cowards ask for "another study", ask if there is any reason to believe that it will produce anything new? And is there reason to believe that the new is likely to be relevant? If the answer is no, do not permit another study. Do not waste the time of good people to cover up your own indecisiveness.
A decision is not made, until it is decied who will carry it out, until when, and everybody who needs to knwo about it is informed. For any decision, you should personally track how it pans out. Note down your expectation. Build in some feedback mechanism or followup checkpoint to see if it has been carried out and works.
Meetings
The least productive people are usually the ones most in favour of holding meetings.
-- Thomas Sowell
To make meetings effective, decide what the meetings purpose is: making an announcement, making a decision, discussion and brainstorming, one person presenting something, several people reporting on status, inform an executive. Stick to that purpose, do not start a discussion off topic.
Preparation is essential for productive meetings. For decision making and discussion someone has to prepare. Announce the purpose at the beginning. Sum up at the end. Create minutes of the meeting, that list the decision made, who has to carry them out and by when, and distribute it.
You can either direct a meeting and listen for important things being said, summing up at the end, or you can take part and talk, but you can not do both at the same time.
Plan
It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. --Howard RuffWhen things are slow and there is no urgency, then is the time to implement improvements.
