Kent Blumberg

Reduce your FOPP* time

Time is the only thing you cannot create, borrow, steal or buy. If you waste your time Fixing Other People's Problems (FOPP time), it's gone. Gone for good. If you own or run a business, FOPP time, time spent doing things your subordinates should be doing, keeps you from focusing on the growth you so earnestly desire. If you'd like to spend less FOPP time and more Growth time, try these suggestions.

7 alternatives to New Year's Resolutions

Everybody's talking about resolutions today.  My search of Technorati turned up more than 76,000 posts using the word.  However, resolutions often don't work, and they may even be bad for your health.  This is particularly true when we focus on trying to fix some perceived shortcoming (being overweight, for example).

It doesn't need to be that way.  Here are seven alternatives to the resolutions tradition.

Change your response to events in order to increase your personal effectiveness

In their book, Play to Win!, Revised Edition: Choosing Growth Over Fear in Work and Life, Larry and Hersch Wilson offer a simple formula for changing how we respond to events around us:  Stop-Challenge-Choose.  Here's how to use it to reduce your stress and improve your results.

Know when good enough is good enough

Sometimes we don't know when to stop.  We keep revising an idea, a blog, a plan and are never satisfied enough to actually push the button and release our work.  Why and when should we settle for "good enough," why do we sometimes get caught seeking perfection, and how can we find the right balance?

Visually turbocharge your thinking and communications

[image by Duncan Hall]

Sometimes words or numbers just don't cut it.  When you find your thinking stymied or blocked, try drawing the problem.  When you are having trouble communicating, try a drawing or other visual representations.  When you want to easily remember a complex set of information, consider the power of a drawing.

Here are some examples.

Shield customers from unintended consequences

My friend Mike Schaffner writes today about his frustrations with a "customer friendly" alarm clock at a DoubleTree hotel.  It seems that back in 2005 the hotel chain introduced new clocks with simple to use alarm controls.  Unfortunately, it is impossible for the customer to set the time on the clock (engineering must do it, apparently), and the clock in Mike's room had not been reset to Daylight Savings Time.  So he ended up using his Blackberry alarm and ignoring the hotel's clock.

In this case, the customer paid the price of an unintended consequence.  The hotel offered to find a maintenance person to come up and adjust the clock, but why should Mike have to stay awake waiting for them to show up? Why didn't the hotel adjust all the clocks when Daylight Savings Time began?  Better yet, why did they design a clock with no way to adjust the time?

Good questions.  The answer:  the chain fell afoul of unintended consequences.

Here's the question for you:  what unintended consequences are your customers dealing with and what are you going to do about it?

Are meetings really a symptom of malorganization?

Lately I've been reading a nice little book, The Effective Executive in Action: A Journal for Getting the Right Things Done (Journal) (Peter F. Drucker and Joseph A. Maciariello, Collins, 2006, 200 pages).  I'm having fun with it and will write more about it here in a few days/weeks.

In the meantime, I've found something to disagree with in Drucker's book.  That's unusual.  Generally, Drucker's writings hit the mark for me. I don't know that I've ever before disagreed this strongly with something he wrote. 

Here's the quote that got me:

"Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organizations."

I just don't think that's right.

Take back your time - "Cut To The Chase"

"You know what really drives me nuts?  Then people come into my office for a five-minute conversation and, an hour later, they're still there!  Why can't they cut to the chase?"

So begins Stuart Levine's great little book of ideas about time, Cut to the Chase: and 99 Other Rules to Liberate Yourself and Gain Back the Gift of Time (Currency Doubleday, 2006, 207 pages).  Written for all of us - anyone who realizes that time is the essence of life, that time is the only non-renewable resource, and that time deserves careful attention- Levine's book contains 100 ideas to help you take back your time.

How to ask for help from your network

We all have a network of people who stand ready to help us, if only we will ask.  We may not be in touch with most of them.  We may not even realize how many folks are out there ready to lend a hand.  But they are there.

How can you tend your network so it is more ready to help when you need it?  When you need a hand, what are some keys to asking effectively?  Once you get the help you need, how do you follow up?

Read on for tips on growing a lush network, and harvesting a bountiful crop of help from it.

15 ways to build a great relationship with your boss

Wish you had a better relationship with your boss?  Feel like you are ignored in favor of others?  Wondering if you have any career progression left?

Think about how well you are helping your boss get her job done and meet her obligations.  Are you doing everything you can (within legal and ethical bounds, of course) to help her look good and get ahead.

If not, your relationship may be getting in the way.  Consider this list of 15 things you can do to improve your relationship with your boss.