Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2008

Turn off your e-mails?

Watching people at work can tell you all kinds of things. One of the activities that I see on a regular basis is people gazing at their e-mails. Even worse is when the e-mails interrupt meaningful work. You can see the frustration in people's faces when they realise that the e-mail isn't really that useful and then they have to go back to what they were doing before. Checking your e-mails less frequently could help to raise your personal productivity. What would happen if you didn't get to an e-mail straight away? Could you live with that result? Experiment to find the right frequency for you and for the business so that service levels are maintained and productivity optimised. Smartspeed Consulting Limited 'For When Results Matter' www.smartspeed.co.uk

Asking better questions

When faced with issues in the business it is sometimes easy to jump to conclusions based on what you believe. It might not be a fact-based idea that is helpful to the situation – it could be a distraction. When we state what we think the problem is we can often end up limiting our options. This can lead to a narrow view of the world and not help us to generate a really effective solution. If we discuss what we can see (or feel or hear) about the issue then that is about as close as we can get to in terms of facts. An example of this would be a flat tyre. Some people will say that you have a puncture (the narrow view) because that is what they expect. This could be the case, but there are other reasons why the tyre could be flat – the only thing we can see is that there is a lack of air in the tyre. There could be multiple reasons as to why this is the case. By keeping the initial thinking broad we can find out what is the real situation. If we can stay with broader thinking at the o