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Showing posts from July, 2010

Too many jobs / not enough time?

Many times you hear people talking about the lack of time in their day and the amount of tasks or projects that are building up. There is a simple approach to this that can be used to great effect and may be worth a go. It is the idea of drip feeding 10 minute tasks into your day. Ten minutes isn't a lot of time and you can get a surprisingly large amount of work done in a focussed slot of 10 minutes. Ten minutes isn't very long and so usually doesn't make us feel overwhelmed, this means that procrastination can be avoided. Ten minutes done every day is fifty minutes in a normal working week. Many projects can be moved on with nearly an hour a week. Moreover, if the tasks or projects you have chosen to spend 10 minutes a day on are important, you will probably gain momentum and decide to spend more time on these and stop doing something that is less important. So, if you find yourself getting stuck then try putting your hard to reach / hard to start projects into

Stop doing what's no longer required

When an improvement has taken effect and the results you need have appeared this can often be an opportunity to stop doing some things that you have done before. Do the same KPIs need to be reported upon? Do the same reports need to be submitted to your clients? Do you still need to hold the same meetings that you had before your problems went away? When you make an improvement to your business some activities you did beforehand will not be as relevant. Some tasks may only be present because they are at the request of an unhappy owner or customer. Make the decision to stop doing what is no longer required and do more of what is essential. Smartspeed Consulting Limited Deliver on Time with Smartspeed

Result, Solution, Action

This is the sequence to make change happen. Many times we see organisations determine what solution they want, when in fact that will give them a different result to the one that they really want. If you find yourself in this situation, or are about to embark upon a new project, then ask yourself this question - "will this course of action give me the result that I need?" From root cause problem solving we know that the 'evidence' that we see around us is usually a symptom of the real problem and by probing deeper we can find the simpler and more powerful problem to solve. So, before you start your next project or improvement activity consider the steps once more: - What result do we need? - What is the appropriate solution? - What is the most efficient and effective course of action? Smartspeed Consulting Limited Deliver on Time with Smartspeed