Land to Your Dream Job

Better Employee Behavior—By Decree

2008-03-24T05:35:00.000-07:00

The vagaries of employee behavior—from chewing gum or potato chips while on the phone with customers to a penchant for showing up everyday at the office fashionably late—will gain consistency if you draw up the company’s behavioral preferences in the form of a contract. That's the advice of Quint Studer, author of "Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top." Studer offers tips for putting together your employee behavioral mandate:
• Don't assume you'll meet resistance. "Most [employees] are as irritated by the offenders as you and your customers are," says Studer. "Most people appreciate having official guidelines—it eliminates their own confusion, as well as that of their coworkers."
• Common courtesy isn't common. You might assume knocking before entering an office with a closed door is par for the course, Studer says. But for people who grew up in large families with few physical boundaries, knocking on doors might feel like a needless formality. "In other words, common sense is a subjective concept, depending in part on an individual's background," he says. "Still, it's very important that every employee display behavior consistent with company standards and aligned with desired outcomes."
• Behavioral rules create a happier workplace. Consistent behavior in the office means a better work environment. "Employees who frequently behave in ways their coworkers deem inappropriate are not contributing to a happy, unified, productive team," says Studer. "And here's the real bottom line: If you don't spell out which behaviors are acceptable and which are not, you can't hold people accountable for them."
• Draw up your own contract. Develop a "Standards of Behavior" contract, and have everyone, from CEO to receptionist, sign it, he advises. This document can address any work-related behavior, says Studer, "from interaction with clients to phone etiquette to 'good manners' (knocking on doors) to 'positive attitude' markers (smiling or saying thank you)." Then make all employees sign it.
• Seek input from all employees in creating the document. Put together a "Standards Team" to spearhead the initiative and create the first draft. "Be sure everyone has a chance to review the document and provide input before it's finalized," he says. "Do not have human resources write it and impose it on everyone else. You want to create buy-in, and that requires companywide participation."
• Align desired behaviors with corporate goals and desired outcomes. Take a look at your organization's long-term goals and areas that need improvement. "You must be able to measure the success of your standards by seeing an impact in many of the key metrics of your operation," says Studer, "whether those are increased customer satisfaction, reduced rejects, or other measures."
• If you do it right, your contract will serve as an ongoing reminder of proper behavior. "Just knowing a Standards of Behavior document exists—and that their signature is affixed to a pledge to uphold it—is enough to keep employees on their toes," he explains. "It creates an extra boost of awareness that really does affect day-to-day behavior. It creates the same behavior expectations for the entire team. Best of all, it functions as a tidal pull on problem employees, bringing them up to a higher level of performance."

source: Inside Training Newsletter

Five Time Management Mistakes that Wastes a lot of Time

2008-02-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

By: Shabbar Suterwala

Have you heard people say “Time Flies”, “There is no Time”, “Where is the Time” and sort of pharases. In my career of conducting Time Management Workshop, I have experienced some of the major flaws that people do which becomes an excuse for the above mentioned pharases.

For all those who would like to master their time management skills, must avoid these 5 major Time Management Mistakes.

1. Procrastination:
Those things which have to be done now are being procrastinated of being postponed. This is one of the traits which is not outside but within us. We have made up a habit that we will do it later as it is not urgent now, we keep on delaying it till one day it becomes burning and urgent, and then we have no choice to act on it. At this point of time, we have to leave aside something that was important but not urgent to complete this task.
Many of the corporate executives also get a kick from doing something that is urgent, they love to take pressure, their common phrase is “ohh, don’t worry there is still a lot of time”.

2. Do it Myself Attitude:
"This is too important. Better let me do it." "By the time I show them how to do it, I will finish it myself." There are these executives and managers who always want to be in the thick of the things. They also get a feeling of threat if some one else starts doing what I do. Some have this misconception about their indispensability.

3. No Clearly Defined Goals:
Because we do not know what to do, we keep on doing whatever comes our way. We keep on working very hard but still do not get results or the sense of achievement because we never have defined what we want to achieve. “A journey of thousand miles begins with the first single step.” We all want to take the first step and we are ready to take it, unfortunately we have not defined our journey so we do not know in which direction to take the first step.

4. Not taking Decisions:
One of the major mistakes which waste a lot of our time is in-decision. We keep on procrastinating our decisions. We do not take the right decision at the right time be it with our professional life or our personal or social life or be it related to our health. And unfortunately many of our decisions are not our decisions at all. They are being imposed on us by our boss, colleagues, family and friends. We also have this urge to be perfect at time and we need a lot of data and testimony to justify our decisions and also always we want to be right at all the time so we remain in-decisive.

5. No Action:
This one is the giant of the time waster which waste chunk of our time. We do not Act on our Goals, we do not take any action on the decisions we make. Many a time people decide to change their habits and behaviour but seldom they take any action step on their plan. So no action – no results. Some times people who do not have clarity of goals, do not see the destination, so, if this set of people act today and cloud sit with a book and pen and start writing down their goal, probably this action step will bring them closer towards their goal.

So if you want to start managing your time, start managing the above five mistakes. So here is your short brief powerful action plan:
Step 1: Stop Procrastination
Step 2: Empower people around you
Step 3: Write down your goals of paper
Step 4: Make those tough decisions
Step 5: ACT now on the above 4 steps.

Wish you all the best. Time management is all about self management. The better you manage your self, automatically your time is managed

THE THREE P'S

2006-10-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

THE THREE P'S

The three "P's" of good time management are Personal, Planning, andPeople.

Personal. Each day we must keep ourselves balanced in the Seven VitalAreas of Life: Health, Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social,Professional, and Spiritual. Like a seven-legged table, if one is out ofbalance, it will upset the entire table.

Planning. "People don't plan to fail but a lot of people fail to plan."Doing Daily Planning each night, planning out the most precious resourceat our command, the next 24 hours, will direct us to spending our timemore wisely.

People. Better than 50% of our success has to do with the goodcooperation of other people. Some will help us and others can hurt us.We need to maintain good, positive relationships with others. "To have afriend, be a friend."

SOME TIPS FOR MANAGING WITH A HEART

2006-10-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

People need to be treated like people, they are not pieces of equipment or furniture possessed by the organization. They need to be treated with a humane touch.

Here some valuable tips for managing with a heart useful both for Managers and Executives :

1. Remember to say that your people "work with you" and not they "work for you".

2. Either organize in house training programs or sponsor your employees to professional training courses. This help them improve their skills.

3. Whenever you finish a project with your team, don’t forget to thank them for their contribution.

4. Whenever you plan your projects, keep employee pressures in mind. Plan the peak periods in such a manner that unnecessary pressures on the employees are avoided.

5. Great expectations will produce great results. Let your employees know that you expect nothing but the best from them and then empower them for achieving that state.

6. Never make a person feel small or out of place simply because he holds a junior position in the organization.

7. Productivity is directly liked to recognition. Whenever you recognize someone’s work, you increase his self-respect and this in turn directly boosts his productivity.

8. If an employee is proving to be a misfit, don’t sack him, look for other positions in the company where he could be better utilized. For all you know he may prove to be a real asset.

9. Never offer too much constructive criticism to too many people, too frequently. If you do, you might find people avoiding you most of the time.

10. The two rewards of work that you should aspire for should be the satisfaction it gives you and the need that others feel for your contributions.

(225 Tips for Managing with a Heart - Rajeev Sethi)

NO PLAY

2006-09-20T00:29:00.000-07:00

A recent Los Angeles Times article noted that some employers are forcingtheir employees to take their vacation time to avoid burnout and weakerperformance reviews. Many are forfeiting their vacation time thinking that more time at the job will increase performance.Vacation time is not an expense.

It’s an investment and failing to taketime out does diminish personal productivity.In the United States we allocate fewer vacation days than any otherdeveloped country. Canada allocates 27 and France, 39.

Don’t forfeit your vacation time.

Take it. Enjoy it and increase yourlong- term performance in the process, with greater ease.

Delegation Dilemma

2006-09-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

Delegation Dilemma

By Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

We all have 24 hours in each day, 7 days each week. (You probably knewthat anyway.)
If you multiply that out and if my math is correct, and Isuspect it is because I’ve done the calculation a few times before, thattotals 168 hours in a week.
But then we have to subtract out time forsleep. Let’s use 8 hours per night, 7 nights per week (I know that mightbe high for a lot of people and maybe low for others, but we do spendabout a third of our week dead), or a total of 56 hours. Subtract that56 hours from 168 and now we’re down to only 112 hours per week toaccomplish all we wish to do.

If we chose to do everything ourselves, we will limit our potentialbecause we are always hitting our heads on a ceiling of 112 hours. Butwhat if we could plug into someone else’s time stream? What if we couldget others to do things for us? Wouldn’t that increase our results? Youbet. And all I’m talking about here is the concept of delegation.

Delegation is when you plug into someone else’s time stream when youdon’t have the time or the expertise to do something, thereby increasingyour own results.Many feel they do not have the opportunity to delegate. “After all, Ihave no staff at work. I am the staff!” some will tell me. Yet, we areall delegators.

Most have mail delivered to their homes. Any of us couldgo to the post office, rent our own postal box, and then each day take atrip to the post office to retrieve our mail. But most of us have madethe decision that that is not the best use of our time so we have theletter carrier deliver our mail.

Maybe you went out for lunch yesterday at Burger King. You got ahamburger, fries, and a drink and paid $5 for that meal. How many peoplewere involved in the production of that lunch to your plate? Probablyhundreds, if not thousands. Someone had to plant the wheat to make thebread, someone had to pick the tomato to make the ketchup, and someonehad to drill the oil out of the ground to power the delivery truck toyour local Burger King. And if you paid $5 for this meal, everyone inthis chain had to share in that $5, perhaps in fractions of a penny.And I’m not trying to stretch delegation to some unreasonableapplication.

This is exactly how the world worked up until about twohundred years age. All throughout the history of the world, if youwanted something, you had to produce it yourself. You wanted food? Youdidn’t pop over to your favorite restaurant. You had to grow it or killit yourself. You wanted housing? You didn’t visit with your local realestate person. You went into the woods and cleared the land and builtit.

In fact, if you look at the development of individual personal wealthfrom whenever they began to keep track up and through about 200 yearsago, people 200 years ago were not a whole lot better off financiallythan their ancestors. And then from about 200 years ago to presenttimes, individual economic wealth shot up through the roof because theIndustrial Revolution permitted companies to mass-produce inexpensiveproducts for the marketplace. This required payment of relatively goodwages to workers so that they could afford to buy these products, socompanies could make profits and produce more products.

If you and I had to do everything ourselves, create our food, clothing,housing, transportation, education, etc, the average person wouldprobably lose 95% of what they have now or retain a mere 5% of what theyhave achieved.So the question is not whether or not you delegate. We all delegate inways that you perhaps had not considered.

The better question to ask is,“How far do you want to go with it?” because delegation is the key toopen the door to great success as we are forever hitting our headsagainst that ceiling of 112 hours available to us each week.

GOT A PEN?

2006-09-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

GOT A PEN?

I called a client at her home yesterday. She was out and her son askedif he could take a message. I thanked him and gave him my name,telephone number and a three word message.He then replied, “Wait a minute. I need to get a pen.”
I waited and then repeated the same message again now that he had a pen and was able to write it down.

To save a little time when you leave a telephone message again with alive person, start by asking, “Do you have a pen?” If not, let them geta pen first before giving the message.This will save you from having to give the message twice and will improve its accuracy.

CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character

2006-07-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character

By Del Jones, USA TODAY

Office Depot CEO Steve Odland remembers like it was yesterday working in an upscale French restaurant in Denver.

The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."

Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.

Odland isn't the only CEO to have made this discovery. Rather, it seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It's hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule.

They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.

And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, "I could buy this place and fire you," or "I know the owner and I could have you fired." Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.

Whoever came up with the waiter observation "is bang spot on," says BMW North America President Tom Purves, a native of Scotland, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, who lives in New York City with his Norwegian wife, Hilde, and works for a German company. That makes him qualified to speak on different cultures, and he says the waiter theory is true everywhere.

The CEO who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. Raytheon has given away 250,000 of the books.

Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person."

Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became "absolutely obnoxious" to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.

"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with," Swanson writes. "Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."

The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was "sweet" to Shaich but turned "amazingly rude" to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn't get the job.

Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are "pushy, self-absorbed and rude" to her before she transfers the call to him.

Just about every CEO has a waiter story to tell. Dave Gould, CEO of Witness Systems, experienced the rule firsthand when a waitress dumped a full glass of red wine on the expensive suit of another CEO during a contract negotiation. The victim CEO put her at ease with a joke about not having had time to shower that morning. A few days later, when there was an apparent impasse during negotiations, Gould trusted that CEO to have the character to work out any differences.

CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. "They're saying, 'I'm better. I'm smarter.' Those people tend not to be collaborative."

"To some people, speaking in a condescending manner makes them feel important, which to me is a total turnoff," says Seymour Holtzman, chairman of Casual Male Retail Group, which operates big-and-tall men's clothing stores including Casual Male XL.

How people were raised

Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn't easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks to how people were raised, says Siki Giunta, CEO of U.S. technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.

More recently, she had a boss who would not speak directly to the waiter but would tell his assistant what he wanted to eat, and the assistant would tell the waiter in a comical three-way display of pomposity. What did Giunta learn about his character? "That he was demanding and could not function well without a lot of hand-holding from his support system," she said.

It's somewhat telling, Giunta says, that the more elegant the restaurant, the more distant and invisible the wait staff is. As if the more important the customer, the less the wait staff matters. People view waiters as their temporary personal employees. Therefore, how executives treat waiters probably demonstrates how they treat their actual employees, says Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes, a former waitress and postal clerk, who says she is a demanding boss but never shouts at or demeans an employee.

"Sitting in the chair of CEO makes me no better of a person than the forklift operator in our plant," she says. "If you treat the waiter, or a subordinate, like garbage, guess what? Are they going to give it their all? I don't think so."

CEOs aren't the only ones who have discovered the Waiter Rule. A November survey of 2,500 by It's Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette, at 52%, way ahead of blowing your nose at the table, at 35%.

Waiters say that early in a relationship, women will pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped, to get a read on their frugality and other tendencies. They are increasingly discussing boorish behavior by important customers at www.waiterrant.net and other blogs. They don't seem to mind the demanding customer, such as those who want meals prepared differently because of high blood pressure. But they have contempt for the arrogant customer.

Rule works with celebrities, too

The Waiter Rule also applies to celebrities, says Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of agency Czar Entertainment, who has brokered deals for Mike Tyson, Mario Winans and Guerilla Black. Rosemond declines to name names, but he remembers one dinner episode in Houston a few years back with a rude divisional president of a major music company.

When dinner was over, Rosemond felt compelled to apologize to the waiter on the way out. "I said, 'Please forgive my friend for acting like that.' It's embarrassing. They go into rages for simple mistakes like forgetting an order."

Rosemond says that particular music executive also treated his assistants and interns poorly — and was eventually fired.

Odland says he saw all types of people 30 years ago as a busboy. "People treated me wonderfully and others treated me like dirt. There were a lot of ugly people. I didn't have the money or the CEO title at the time, but I had the same intelligence and raw ability as I have today.

"Why would people treat me differently? Your value system and ethics need to be constant at all times regardless of who you are dealing with."

Holtzman grew up in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in the 1950s saw opportunity as a waiter 90 miles away in the Catskill Mountains, where customers did not tip until the end of the week. When they tipped poorly, he would say: "Sir, will you and your wife be tipping separately?"

"I saw a lot of character, or the lack thereof," says Holtzman, who says he can still carry three dishes in his right hand and two in his left.

"But for some twist of fate in life, they're the waiter and you're the one being waited on," Barnes says.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-14-ceos-waiter-rule_x.htm

VACATION TIME

2006-07-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

VACATION TIME

Vacation time is productive time, as much as work time. No, you’re not selling anything or working on those important projects but you are charging up your batteries to make your return more productive.

We’re not mindless machines that can function forever with a break. Time at the job dulls us
out over time, slowing our productive output. Vacations, then, are not an expense. They are an investment in your future productivity success.

And vacations need not be expensive excursions either. Just getting away from work for a period of time is enough to clear your head.

Be sure to take vacation time this summer to get your batteries charged up again.

by Don Wetmore

KILLING TIME

2006-07-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

KILLING TIME

The proof that some have too much time on their hands is that they are
killing time to just pass their time away.

The best way to kill time is to work it to death.

Set aside time each day for planning and create a “to do” list filled
with the things you have to do and the things you want to do and tackle
those items with enthusiasm each day and get more out of your day, every
day.

by Don Wetmore

REDUCING WASTED TIME

2006-06-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

REDUCING WASTED TIME

The average person wastes 2.09 hours per work day, some 25% of theaverage work day in idle time, surfing the Internet and majoring inminors. Some of that wasted time is useful to collect thoughts and getrecharged. Much of it, however, just keeps you from capitalizing on yourtime for improved performance.But what if you could re-claim just half the wasted time?

You get back an hour a day, five hours per week and 250 hours of productive time overthe next year, the equivalent of better than four work weeks to advanceyour success.Monitor how you spend your time. Be intentional about reclaiming some ofthat wasted time to move you ahead for greater results.

WEIGHT OF STRESS

2006-06-01T23:57:00.000-07:00

WEIGHT OF STRESS

Hold a 16 ounce soda bottle in your hand with your arm stretched out fora few minutes. Easy.Continue holding it for a half hour. Difficult.Do it for and hour. Painful.Stress is like that. In the short run you easily manage it but in thelong term, event little stresses exact a high toll on us and diminishour personal productivity.Work to reducing those stresses. You will get more done and feel betteras well.Here’s a stress builder. 80% of people do not want to go to work onMonday mornings. Many feel stifled and unappreciated. What if there wasa way you could have a side business that would not take a lot of timeand would release you from having to go to work?

Jika Terjebak Di Dalam Debat

2006-05-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jika Terjebak Di Dalam Debat

Kita bisa saja terjebak dalam suatu transaksi bicara yang mengarah ke bentuk-bentuk perdebatan. Hal terbaik yang bisa dilakukan dalam kondisi seperti ini, adalah sesegera mungkin keluar dari sana.Berikut ini adalah prinsip-prinsip dalam berdebat.

ATURAN DASAR
HINDARI DEBAT SEKALIPUN ANDA BERADA DI POSISI YANG BENAR.

ATURAN # 1
Debat hanya dibenarkan untuk mencari kebenaran. Apa yang paling benar adalah ATURAN DASAR.

ATURAN # 2
Tidak masalah kebenaran itu muncul dari mulut siapa.
Bisa dari mulut Anda, bisa juga dari mulut lawan bicara Anda. In both cases, accept it.

ATURAN # 3
Pilihlah untuk melakukannya secara tertutup atau menyendiri berdua saja.

ATURAN # 4
Perbedaan tidak bisa dihindari dalam berbagai hubungan dengan orang lain. Jalani dengan bijak.

ATURAN # 5
Hadapi perilaku atau sikapnya, bukan manusianya.

ATURAN # 6
Jangan terapkan "psi-war" atau "mental game".

ATURAN # 7
Dasari argumentasi dengan isu yang ada di tangan. Jangan bawa masa lalu dan masa depan. Fokuslah pada "right here' dan "right now".

ATURAN # 8
Beranilah meminta maaf, bersikaplah terhormat, berjiwa besar dan empatik. Jika lawan bicara yang meminta maaf, terimalah dengan jiwa besar.

ATURAN # 9
Debat dan bicara bukan obat. Makin banyak bicara tidak menjamin kondisi yang lebih baik. Yang lebih baik adalah berdoa dan melatih cara berpikir. Bicara baik atau diam. Bijaksanalah dalam menentukan "when", "where" dan "how".

ATURAN # 10
Debatlah hanya poin-poin yang terkait langsung dengan perbaikan. Jangan terjebak dalam perilaku mempermalukan, menghina atau menghancurkan.

ATURAN # 11
Bertanggungjawablah untuk emosi dan perasaan Anda sendiri. Orang lain TIDAK DAPAT membuat Anda marah, senang atau gila. Anda sendiri yangmenciptakannya.Katakan "Saya tidak setuju", jangan katakan "Anda salah".Katakan "Saya kaget Anda mengatakannya. Tapi sepertinya itu tidak benar", jangan katakan "Anda melukai saya".Katakan "Anda datang tidak sesuai dengan yang kita sepakati", jangan katakan "Anda telat".

ATURAN # 12
Untuk segala sesuatu, ada waktunya. Kritik harus konstruktif. Perkenankan lawan bicara menyelamatkan muka.

ATURAN # 13
Kompromi atau kompetisi hanya me-manage konflik. Kolaborasi-lah yang menyelesaikannya.

ATURAN # 14
Selalu ada yang lebih besar dari diri kita sendiri. Di atas langit ada langit. Jika tidak sanggup mengatasi konflik, manfaatkan konsultan, penasehat atau pakar.

ATURAN # 15
Jika belum sanggup melaksanakan aturan-aturan di atas, kembalilah ke ATURAN DASAR.

Sumber : milis bicarahttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/bicara/

Developing a Great Character

2006-05-12T02:39:00.000-07:00

Developing a Great Character

By Brian TracyWhat is character? Your character is the degree to whichyou live your life consistent with high, life-enhancingvalues. A person who lacks character is one whocompromises on higher order values in favor of lower orderexpedience, or who has no values at all. Your adherence towhat you believe to be right and true is the real measureof the person you have become to this moment.

The Value of Excellence

Let us say that one of your values is "excellence." Yourdefinition of excellence could be, "Excellence means thatI set the highest standards for myself in everything I do.I do my very best in every situation and under allcircumstances. I constantly strive to be better in my work,and as a person in my relationships.

I recognize thatexcellence is a life long journey and I work every dayto become better and better in everything I do."Your Organizing PrinciplesWith a definition like this, you have a clear organizingprinciple for your actions. You have set a standard bywhich you can evaluate your behavior. You have created aframework within which you can make decisions. You have ameasuring rod against which you can compare yourself ineverything you do. You can continually grade youractivities in terms of "more" or "less."

You have a clear target to aim at and organize your work around.Put Your Family FirstIt's the same with each of your other values. If yourvalue is your family, you could define this as, "The needsof my family take precedence over all other concerns.Whenever I have to choose between the happiness, healthand well being of a member of my family, and any otherinterest, my family will always come first."

Choices Are Easier

From that moment onward, it becomes easier for you tochoose. Your family comes first. Until you have fullysatisfied the needs of your family, no other timerequirement will side track you into a lower valueactivity.

Take Charge of Your Own Character

DevelopmentThe wonderful thing about values clarification is thatit enables you to take charge of developing and shapingyour own character. When your values and goals, yourinner life and your outer life, are in complete alignment,you feel terrific about yourself. You enjoy highself-esteem. Your self-confidence soars. When you achievecomplete congruence between your values and your goals,like a hand in a glove, you feel strong, happy, healthyand fully integrated as a person.

You develop a kind ofcourage that makes you completely unafraid to makedecisions and take action. Your whole life improves whenyou begin living your life by the values that you mostadmire.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put theseideas into action.First, create a clear, written description of your valuesand what they mean to you. From that point on, resolve tolive consistent with your own definition.Second, discipline yourself to live in complete alignmentwith the values, virtues and qualities that are mostimportant to you.
This is the key to character.

source : www.motivasi-islami.com

Bad Hiring Comes Home to Roost

2006-05-12T02:28:00.000-07:00

Bad Hiring Comes Home to Roost

Your poor judgment, and that of the leaders you helped foster, may have greater consequences than your own embarrassment. According to the results of a study released last month by Right Management (www.right.com), a Philadelphia-based career transition and organizational consulting firm, bad hiring and promotion decisions come with a significant aftermath.

The survey of 444 organizations throughout North America showed that lower employee morale and decreased productivity are the biggest consequences of these less-than-stellar choices. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents cited employee morale as a result of these decisions; 66 percent said decreased employee productivity was a consequence; 54 percent linked shoddy hiring and promotion choices to lost customers and market share; and 51 percent said not hiring and promoting properly means higher training costs. And, that’s not the only cost.

Human resources gurus, trainers and organizational leaders who don’t think carefully before making their next appointment could cost their companies money in other areas as well—especially when direct reports decide to hit the road. Forty-four percent of leaders, for instance, said bad hiring decisions result in higher recruitment costs, and 40 percent cited higher severance costs. And the costs related to those lost employees keep on adding up.

Recruitment, training, severance and lost productivity may add up to two times the employee’s annual salary, 42 percent of those surveyed said; 26 percent said it amounted to three times the employee’s annual salary; 11 percent cited costs up to five times the employee’s annual salary; and 6 percent said it’s four times his or her salary. Fifteen percent said it’s about equal to what the employee would have made in a year—had they stayed, of course.

Source: INSIDE TRAINING

YOU JUST MIGHT BE A WORKAHOLIC

2006-05-12T01:12:00.000-07:00

YOU JUST MIGHT BE A WORKAHOLIC

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

Many wonder what it takes to be a workaholic. Now I’m not suggesting
that being a workaholic is either a good thing or a bad thing but maybe
it’s useful to determine if we are. There is really no one thing that
would make one automatically qualify but after twenty years as a
full-time Professional Speaker I have been able to unearth some of the
symptoms.

If it frustrates you that they don’t allow laptops on a Ferris wheel,
you may be a workaholic.

If you are looking forward to Christmas this year because you’ll decide
to take that afternoon off, you might be a workaholic.

If you don’t drink any beverages during the day because you’ll lose time
having to go to the bathroom, you might be a workaholic.

If a Pay-Per-View movie is your idea of a vacation, then you just might
be a workaholic.

If twenty minutes is too long for a lunch “hour”, you might be a
workaholic.

If hobbies are something you will get into when you “get the time”, you
may be a workaholic.

If the only time you’ve had off in the last three years was to attend
your favorite uncle’s funeral, you might be a workaholic.

If you wish you weren’t so stressed but know that you will feel better
as soon as you “get over the hump”, you might be a workaholic.

If the color of one side of your golf bag has faded and is different
from the other side of the bag, you might be a workaholic.

If you promised your spouse “this is the only Sunday I’ll work” more
than three times in the last year, you might just be a workaholic.

If you bring your spreadsheets to your son’s football game, you may be a
workaholic.

If you sense that the smiles from those around you are somewhat
synthetic, you might be a workaholic.

If you’ve told yourself, “I can cut back of my hours anytime, if I
wanted to” more than three times in the last six months, you might be a
workaholic.

If you use your cell phone in the shower to return business calls in the
morning before work, you might just be a workaholic.

If you don’t have a tan by July 15 each year, you may be a workaholic.

If it’s difficult to remember the last time you heard background music
at a restaurant, you might be a workaholic.

If you set your alarm for 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. so you can check your
voicemail, well, you just might be a workaholic.

If it bothers you that you are always at work before and after everyone
else, you might be a workaholic.

If you can’t name your daughter’s favorite rock band, you just might be
a workaholic.

If elderly people tend to make you impatient, you might just be a
workaholic.

If people at cocktail parties seem to want to leave your conversation
and “get another glass of wine” just when you were really getting into
telling them about your job, well, you just might be a workaholic.

If it’s been a while since you felt guilty about missing yet another
family dinner, you might be a workaholic.

If you carry family pictures in your wallet only to remind you what they
look like, you might be a workaholic.

If you’re drinking your coffee in a dirty cup from yesterday, you just
might be a workaholic.

If you haven’t gone home early in the last six months, you might be a
workaholic.

If your idea of an intimate anniversary celebration is to take your
spouse to a formal business dinner, you might be a workaholic.

If a clown is not so funny, an owl is not so wise, and you think that
Peter Pan cannot really fly, you might be a workaholic.

If the last outrageous thing you did was over ten years ago, you might
be a workaholic.

If a three-year-old girl holding a fluffy bunny under her arm doesn’t
cause you to stop and watch, well, you just might be a workaholic.

Your Biggest Problem Tackled

2006-04-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

Your Biggest Problem Tackled

There's usually no quick solution to problems that seem insurmountable, but that doesn't mean it's time to start breathing slowly into a brown lunch bag to avoid hyperventilation or a fainting episode. Greensboro, N.C.-based nonprofit leadership educational institute Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has launched a program that provides a problem-solving methodology to avoid the madness.

The program, Navigating Complex Challenges, gives participants a problem-solving strategy they can use right as they're learning it, says Brenda McManigle, PhD and global manager of open enrollment programs. "One of the things that's really unique about it is it involves individual action learning," McManigle says. "A person will bring an actual complex challenge and work that."

The program begins with pre-work before participants ever arrive, and continues with online follow-up work after they leave the three-day face-to-face sessions. The experience is 12 weeks altogether.Launched the last week in March, with additional sessions scheduled for June and September of this year and January and March of 2007, examples of problems brought to the Center include how to integrate organizations following an acquisition and how to effectively bring a new product to market.

Eight weeks before the course begins, participants receive pre-work including a 360 by Design feedback assessment as well as an assessment that gauges the organization's readiness for innovation. They are also asked to start developing a "social network map" in which students are asked to think about all the stakeholders who will be affected by the outcome of the challenge.

In addition, participants are asked to interview the person in the organization who is championing the challenge, such as the manager who has assigned them the task that's worrying them so much, as well as a few stakeholders. Two weeks prior to the program, students have a 90-minute meeting with a CCL coach to clarify pre-work and start talking about the challenge that will be brought to the face-to-face sessions. From there the approximately 20 students come to the face-to-face in which they are set up in "learning teams" of four to work as peer coaches confronting one another's challenges.

The tuition, $4,800, includes meals, but students are expected to pay for travel and accommodation themselves. A week after the face-to-face sessions, the coach calls students for an assessment on how the challenge has been reframed and what steps will be taken to work through it.

Two weeks after, a 10-week online follow-up course begins in which students can bring the other members of their learning team, along with actual stakeholders of the challenge, into a virtual space for time with the coach. After those 10 weeks are over, the coach has a closing 30-minute call with participants after which they decide if they want to continue with counseling. The cost for additional time with the coach is $250 an hour.

"I think one of the things we really try to get people to focus on is the fact that they don't have all the answers, they're not going to have all the answers," says McManigle, "and so how do they develop their network and reach out to people to get the greatest degree of difference in perspective on what they're trying to accomplish." For more information, visit www.ccl.org.

Key Drivers of Talent Management Revealed

2006-04-30T05:26:00.000-07:00

Key Drivers of Talent Management Revealed

Just when you may be despairing that no one appreciates your work, the 2006 Talent Management Survey has been released. Announced on Monday at the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) Conference in Washington, the results of the survey reveal that an overwhelming majority of companies cite talent management initiatives as a major sector of interest within their organizations for the next three years.

Conducted jointly by San Ramon, Calif.-based human capital management technology consultancy Knowledge Infusion and Burlington, Mass.-based IHRIM, an organization for human resources technology professionals, the survey found areas such as performance and learning management, succession planning and recruiting set for growth. Survey respondents, comprised of IHRM’s 3,000 members and Knowledge Infusion’s customer base, are primarily in HR management, with a majority representing organizations that generate more than $1 billion in revenue. According to a release issued this week, reasons cited for the increase in importance of talent management included recognition of the link across training, knowledge and performance, what was seen as a looming talent shortage and the realization that internal re-deployments of workers can often be more effective than external recruiting.

More than 77 percent of respondents said they would see dramatic increases in talent management initiatives within the organization over the next three years, Knowledge Infusion CEO Jason Averbook noted in the release. Substantial buffing up may be needed, for instance, in the area of human resources process and technology, which more than 40 percent of organizations surveyed said they currently have little or none of. "The lack of integrated processes along with little to no measurement of the workforce demonstrates that most organizations should increase their focus on talent management initiatives immediately," said Knowledge Infusion president Heidi Spirgi. And that’s not the only finding underscoring a deficiency.

Forty-two percent of respondents reported little to no effectiveness in the relationship between HR and training in creating and executing joint human capital management initiatives.

Fifty-two percent said HR is never invited into the boardroom to discuss future organizational goals; 38 percent do not have a senior executive at the company who is responsible for the performance of the workforce; 88 percent report their organization is limited or not successful at all at aligning business goals to measurable business results; and 72 percent said they have no analytic tools to measure the impact of HR on business results.

Luckily, though, help is on the way. Fifty-four percent cited they are planning to purchase a performance management solution over the next three years and 78 percent indicated collaboration between training and HR will be greater over the next two years. For more information, visit http://knowledge-infusion.form25.com/newsletter.

Source: Training Magazine

No End to Workplace Ridicule

2006-04-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

No End to Workplace Ridicule

Lest you thought all those lengthy sexual harassment policies and ethics training programs were finally paying off, Boston-based employee performance consultancy Novations Group has news for you. Racial, ethnic slurs and other inappropriate comments made in the workplace, failed to decline last year, according to an annual national telephone survey of 612 employed Americans conducted last month for Novations (www.novations.com) by Media, Pa.-based International Communications Research.

Following a pattern established over the last four years, the most frequent offensive remarks were sexually related, with the incidence of improper sexual remarks rising by 4 percentage points, from 31 percent in 2004 to 35 percent last year. Ridicule based on sexual orientation also shot up 4 points, from 20 percent in 2004 to 24 percent last year, Novations Group consultant Tom McKinnon reported in a press release.

Incidence of ethnic and racial slurs also hasn’t improved, remaining consistent over the past four years: Ethnic remarks were overheard by 29 percent of employees in 2005, 28 percent in 2004, 28 percent in 2003 and 29 percent in 2002, while racial slurs were overheard by 29 percent in 2005, 30 percent in 2004, 27 percent in 2003 and 29 percent in 2002. African-Americans were half as likely as whites to overhear racial comments, by 17 percent to 30 percent, and Westerners were more likely, by 36 percent to 24 percent, to overhear such remarks than Northeasterners.

In addition, ethnic slurs were more likely to be overheard by Southerners than by Northeasterners, by 32 percent to 27 percent. And, if sex, ethnicity or race didn’t get your employees, then there’s a fair chance they were ridiculed about their age. Age-related ridicule was noted by 22 percent of employees.

Source: Training Magazine

A LOOSE THREAD

2006-04-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

A LOOSE THREAD

Ever notice how a loose thread can lead to the unraveling of an entiregarment?In your daily life, a similar thing occurs. If you don't take care ofsome the little things, (having the right supplies you need to do yourjob, returning an important telephone call in a timely way for example),then your day can become unraveled.Take care of the little threads during your day. Don’t get unraveled.

Generation Y motivated by different factors to previousgenerations

2006-04-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

Generation Y motivated by different factors to previousgenerations, say HR and finance professionals

According to new research from recruitment consultancy Robert Half Finance &Accounting, HR and finance professionals around the world believe that thebenefits packages that motivate Generation Y are distinctly different fromprevious generations.

The survey, conducted in 2005 with 1,800 HR and finance professionals in 11countries around the world, reveals that 83% of HR and finance professionalsbelieve that Generation Y are motivated by different factors to other agegroups.Motivating factors for Generation Y, according to the HR and financeprofessionals surveyed, are:

* Flexible hours: 36%
* Performance-related salary and bonuses: 33%
* Programs for career development: 32%

HR and Finance professionals believe that Generation Y are most likely toleave their company for the following reasons:

* The lack of career development prospects: 50%
* Poor salary and bonuses: 39%
* An inadequate work/life balance: 12%

Phil Sheridan, Managing Director of Robert Half Finance & Accounting,comments: “Generation Y is seeking employment opportunities that complementtheir lifestyle and include strong provisions for career development andfinancial rewards. Their behaviors and preferences will shape corporatelife. Organizations need to review the benefits and packages that they offertheir workforce to ensure that they hold onto this generation of workers.”

Source: http://www.roberthalf.co.uk

Six Interview Mistakes

2006-04-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Six Interview Mistakes

by Michael Neece, founder of Interview Mastery Monster Contributing Writer

It's tough to avoid typical interview traps if you're unsure whatthey are. Here are a half dozen to watch out for

.1. Confusing an Interview with an Interrogation.Most candidates expect to be interrogated. An interrogation occurswhen one person asks all the questions and the other gives theanswers. An interview is a business conversation in which bothpeople ask and respond to questions. Candidates who expect to beinterrogated avoid asking questions, leaving the interviewer in therole of reluctant interrogator

.2. Making a So-Called Weakness Seem Positive.Interviewers frequently ask candidates, "What are your weaknesses?"Conventional interview wisdom dictates that you highlight a weaknesslike "I'm a perfectionist," and turn it into a positive.Interviewers are not impressed, because they've probably heard thesame answer a hundred times. If you are asked this question,highlight a skill that you wish to improve upon and describe whatyou are doing to enhance your skill in this area. Interviewers don'tcare what your weaknesses are. They want to see how you handle thequestion and what your answer indicates about you

.3. Failing to Ask Questions.Every interview concludes with the interviewer asking if you haveany questions. The worst thing to say is that you have no questions.Having no questions prepared indicates you are not interested andnot prepared. Interviewers are more impressed by the questions youask than the selling points you try to make. Before each interview,make a list of five questions you will ask. "I think a good questionis, `Can you tell me about your career?'" says Kent Kirch, directorof global recruiting at Deloitte. "Everybody likes to talk aboutthemselves, so you're probably pretty safe asking that question."

.4. Researching the Company But Not Yourself.Candidates intellectually prepare by researching the company. Mostjob seekers do not research themselves by taking inventory of theirexperience, knowledge and skills. Formulating a talent inventoryprepares you to immediately respond to any question about yourexperience. You must be prepared to discuss any part of yourbackground. Creating your talent inventory refreshes your memory andhelps you immediately remember experiences you would otherwise haveforgotten during the interview

.5. Leaving Your Cell Phone On.We may live in a wired, always-available society, but a ringing cellphone is not appropriate for an interview. Turn it off before youenter the company

.6. Waiting for a Call.Time is your enemy after the interview. After you send a thank-youemail and note to every interviewer, follow up a couple of dayslater with either a question or additional information. Try tocontact the person who can hire you, and assume that everyone youmet with has some say in the process. Additional information can bedetails about your talents, a recent competitor's press release orindustry trends. Your intention is to keep everyone's memory of youfresh.

Source : www.monster.com

TOP TIPS: How to implement a recruitment strategy

2006-04-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

TOP TIPS: How to implement a recruitment strategy

To win the talent war, you need an efficient and well-managed recruitmentprocess and the ability to develop and inspire your employees. Thesepointers will help you decide how to improve your company's recruitingpractices.

1. Identify needsA skills audit of the organization may highlight a particular area forconcentration, or reveal untapped existing skills within your company. Fillthe most important positions first - e.g., where poor result from anunder-resourced team is a threat to business. Clues on applicants’ CVssuggest the type of person they are. For example, bad grammar could indicatea lack of attention to detail.

2. The selection processEnsure your HR processes follow best practice to ensure that no unlawfuldiscrimination occurs. Advertise the position where it's most likely tocapture the attention of the type of person you want to recruit. Ensure thatsenior management ask the most effective questions that will best reveal theskills of the ideal applicant.

3. Bringing in the consultantsFor niche roles it's more efficient to call in consultants in a particularfield. The right supplier can fill a more particular role much quicker thanif you were to speculatively place an advert and hope for the best.Consulting experts helps to fill a position with a capable and highlyskilled individual who may not have been found otherwise.

4. Managing interviewsdon’t leave the interviewee waiting in reception for longer than fiveminutes - an interview is a two-way process and if the candidate does notfeel valued, they may not accept the job. Explain to the interviewee whenthey can expect to hear a decision from you - failing to make decisionsquickly enough may discourage the intended employee from waiting for an

5. Develop a retention policyOnce your candidate\'s in the role, it’s important to keep them there. Duringthe induction process, make sure the new employee understands their role andwhere they fit within the company. Offer training and regular appraisals toassess personal development and career goals. Companies that actively engagetheir employees are rewarded with loyalty and longevity.

Source: Alan Rommel, Parity Resources: http://www.parity.net

Time Tip-Telephone Tag

2006-04-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

Time Tip-Telephone Tag

I love technology. I am not a technical person but I admire thetechno-things that have helped my business, productivity andprofitability. Things like laptops, the Internet, and email have cutcosts and boosted productivity and profits dramatically during the lastdecade.With almost all new technological breakthroughs, there is a period thatis heralded as the answer to all our problems followed quickly by alearning period during which we figure out how to best capitalize onthis new way of working.

Voicemail fits this paradigm. Voicemail-the culprit that heightened“telephone tag” to an art form.Ten years ago, I had to pay the salary of a receptionist or acquire theservices of an answering service to handle incoming telephone calls. OrI might use an answering machine with a limited recording limit. I optedfor the live receptionist.
More personal, more real, I thought.Then along came voicemail, a way of accepting incoming phone calls at alow cost with more options than an answering machine and a way of moreeffectively handling phone calls than before, giving the caller theopportunity to receive answers to their inquiries without talking to areal person.

Multiple menu options surfaced (if you would like sales, press 2, if youpress 2 and would like to receive a copy of our catalog, press 4, if youpress 4 and would like our winter catalog, press 5, but if you wouldlike our spring catalog, press 6…..).

I actually timed a menu optionthing recently and it took over a minute and a half to get to the optionthat I wanted to get to the information I needed.Voicemail also creates a new opportunity for people to duck your calls.Many people rarely answer a phone when it rings waiting until you haveslogged through their voicemail menu, then to play your message anddecide whether or not to call you back. Of course, when they call youback, they get your voicemail system and then you have to listen totheir message and decide whether or not to return their call. Hmmm.

Telephone tag and you’re it!We need a better system. Here are a few suggestions to better deal withvoicemail and avoid telephone tag.

1. Use an alternative to telephone. Look, people you call are going toduck your call via voicemail so use a different mode of communicationthat might have a better rate of success of getting through. Fax yourmessage or email it or even use a first class letter. Some of those“old” methods are better than the new technology.

2. Don’t spill the beans. Want someone to call you back? Don’t give themthe entire speal in your voicemail. Less is more. A little intrigue. Teasers. “Debbie. Please give me a call to talk about how to make yourjob easier” v “ Debbie. I found a new online course for only $259 thatwill show us how to get a lot more done in less time with a lot lessstress. The problem is I can’t afford to buy it on my own. Would you bewilling to kick in half of this and we could share the program? Let meknow if you want to do this.”

3. Be specific. If you want a return call, don’t end with “Call me assoon as possible” or “Call me soon” or “Call me when you can”. Everyonehas “too much to do”. You are then just one more thing to do. Thosevague requests wind up in the “as soon as possible” pile of Never NeverLand that rarely gets acted upon. Instead, give a specific day and timeto call back. Don’t give two or more choices because that willnecessitate a call back from that person to confirm which date and timeis best to return the call.
For example: “Joe, this is Don. I need to speak to you about how to makethe Anderson research run more smoothly. Give me a call back on Tuesday,the fifth at 9:00 a.m. I blocked that time for you. If this doesn’t workfor you, please give me a call to reschedule and leave a message on myvoicemail with at least two alternate dates and times for us to talk.
Gutsy? Offensive? Well, 95% of the time you will not hear back from thisperson to change the date and time you have selected and you willaccomplish what you intended to do on the date and time you have selected.

by Don Wetmore

Six Interview Mistakes

2006-04-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

Six Interview Mistakes

by Michael Neece, founder of Interview MasteryMonster Contributing Writer

It's tough to avoid typical interview traps if you're unsure whatthey are. Here are a half dozen to watch out for.

1. Confusing an Interview with an Interrogation.

Most candidates expect to be interrogated. An interrogation occurswhen one person asks all the questions and the other gives theanswers. An interview is a business conversation in which bothpeople ask and respond to questions. Candidates who expect to beinterrogated avoid asking questions, leaving the interviewer in therole of reluctant interrogator.

2. Making a So-Called Weakness Seem Positive.

Interviewers frequently ask candidates, "What are your weaknesses?"Conventional interview wisdom dictates that you highlight a weaknesslike "I'm a perfectionist," and turn it into a positive.Interviewers are not impressed, because they've probably heard thesame answer a hundred times. If you are asked this question,highlight a skill that you wish to improve upon and describe whatyou are doing to enhance your skill in this area. Interviewers don'tcare what your weaknesses are. They want to see how you handle thequestion and what your answer indicates about you.

3. Failing to Ask Questions.

Every interview concludes with the interviewer asking if you haveany questions. The worst thing to say is that you have no questions.Having no questions prepared indicates you are not interested andnot prepared. Interviewers are more impressed by the questions youask than the selling points you try to make. Before each interview,make a list of five questions you will ask. "I think a good questionis, `Can you tell me about your career?'" says Kent Kirch, directorof global recruiting at Deloitte. "Everybody likes to talk aboutthemselves, so you're probably pretty safe asking that question."

4. Researching the Company But Not Yourself.

Candidates intellectually prepare by researching the company. Mostjob seekers do not research themselves by taking inventory of theirexperience, knowledge and skills. Formulating a talent inventoryprepares you to immediately respond to any question about yourexperience. You must be prepared to discuss any part of yourbackground. Creating your talent inventory refreshes your memory andhelps you immediately remember experiences you would otherwise haveforgotten during the interview.

5. Leaving Your Cell Phone On.

We may live in a wired, always-available society, but a ringing cellphone is not appropriate for an interview. Turn it off before youenter the company.

6. Waiting for a Call.

Time is your enemy after the interview. After you send a thank-youemail and note to every interviewer, follow up a couple of dayslater with either a question or additional information. Try tocontact the person who can hire you, and assume that everyone youmet with has some say in the process. Additional information can bedetails about your talents, a recent competitor's press release orindustry trends. Your intention is to keep everyone's memory of youfresh.

Source : www.monster.com

How to get Fired..

2006-04-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

Advice You Can Live Without

If you came here looking for advice on how to stay employed, just do the opposite of everything I tell you here.

Arrive late for work Being on time is for wimps. Drag yourself out of bed whenever you feel like it. Stop to run an errand on your way to the office
Don't forget the coffee No not for your boss -- for yourself! You're already late so why not stop for a cup of coffee on the way to work? Don't forget to get a muffin or a roll too (crumbs on your tie look really good).
Eat at your desk I mean your coffee and roll, not your lunch silly. Why would you want to work through lunch anyway? And take your time — you're in no hurry to start working.
Take a long lunch An hour for lunch? Are they nuts? That can't possibly be enough time to get together with an old friend and run a few more errands.
Have a drink What's lunch without a couple of beers? It'll relax you. So what if you smell like a brewery?
Make personal phone calls If you can't make your phone calls from the office, when else will you find the time? Don't make those calls short and sweet -- chat away.
Speaking of chatting... Let's not forget about the good old Net. You can go into a chat room any time of day, so why waste your precious personal time.
Send lots of email Use those eight hours at work to take care of all that personal email. Oh and don't forget to use your work email address.
Download, download, download... Your connection is much faster at work than on your home pc. And besides, there are some things you wouldn't want your significant other to see.
Make the customers/clients really mad There are several ways to do this. If you deal with customers in person, ignore them while you talk to your co-workers. Don't have answers to their questions. If most of your contact is by phone, keep yours busy so clients can't get through. If they bother to leave a message, don't return their phone calls.
Don't ever go beyond your job description Even when a project is down to the wire and your help is desperately needed, just remember: "It's not your job."
Leave work early. Who made that five o'clock rule anyway? If you leave 15 minutes early think of how much you can get done before dinner.
Party hardy Nights are made for partying. Don't worry — you can sleep late tomorrow. After all, you do plan to get to work late, don't you?

as published in about.com

READING FACTS

2006-04-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

READING FACTS

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

-95% of all the books in America are purchased by only 5% of the people.The other 95% of the people purchase the other 5% of the books. (They probably don’t read them; they don’t have the time; they give them awayas gifts.)

-The average person has two hours of reading per day.

-If someone, making $50,000 per year can save one hour per day, whichtranslates into a savings worth $6,250 per year, year after year.

-The average person reads at approximately 200 words per minute.

-The average person, reading just 15 minutes per day, can read one bookper month, twelve books per year.

-The average person retains only 5% of what is read once, after thirtydays.-Reading is a primary source of new knowledge and skills for moresuccess in life.

-This is the “Information Age”. Half of what we know today, we did notknow fifteen years ago. The amount of knowledge has doubled in the lastfifteen years and is said to be doubling again every eighteen months.

-We receive more information in one day than people in the early 1900’sreceived in their lifetime.

-Increasing reading speed and comprehension is a skill that anyone canlearn without regard to their education, background, job, or intelligence

-Increasing reading speed and comprehension is an essential tool intoday’s competitive environment and it is the most immediate and easiestTime Management tool to increase your career success.

Simplify your Day

2006-04-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

In my Time Management seminars, which I have conducted for more than 100,000 people from around the globe, I show people how to get more done in less time, with less stress; to help them have more time for the things they want to do in their work and personal lives.

If you can recapture a wasted hour here and there and redirect it to a more productive use, you can make great increases in your daily productivity and the quality of your life.

Here are five of the many techniques I share in our Time Management seminars, each one of which will help you to get at least one more hour out of your day for additional productive time.

1. Run an Interruptions Log. The average person gets 50 interruptions a day. The average interruption takes five minutes. Some five hours each day are spent dealing with interruptions. Many are crucial and important and are what we are paid to do but many have little or no value. Run an Interruptions Log to identify and eliminate the wasteful interruptions. Just use a pad of paper and label it “Interruptions Log” Create six columns: Date, Time, Who, What, Length, Rating. After each interruption is dealt with, log in the date and time it occurred, who brought it to you, a word or two about what it related to, the length of time it took, and finally the rating of its importance: A=crucial, B=important, C=little value, and D=no value. Run it for a week or more to get a good measure of what is happening in your life. Then evaluate the results and take action to eliminate some of the C and D interruptions that have little or no value.
2. Delegate It. We all have 168 hours each week and when you subtract 56 hours for sleep and another 10 hours for personal care, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to get done what needs to be done. Delegation permits you to leverage your time through others and thereby increase your own results. The hardest part of delegation though, is simply letting go. We take great pride in doing things ourselves. “If you want a job done well, you better do it yourself”. Every night in Daily Planning, look at all that you have to do and want to do the next day and with each item ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time?” If it is, do it. If it isn’t, try to arrange a way to delegate it to someone else. There is a lot of difference between “I do it” and “It gets done”.
3. Manage Meetings. A meeting is when two or more people get together to exchange common information. What could be simpler? Yet, it can one of the biggest time wasters we must endure. Before a meeting asks, “Is it necessary?” and “Am I necessary?” If the answers to either are “no”, consider not having the meeting or excusing yourself from attending. Then prepare a written agenda for the meeting with times assigned for each item along with a starting time and ending time. Circulate the written agenda among those who will be attending. There is no sense in holding a meeting by ambush. Let people know in advance what is to be discussed.
4. Handle Paper. It’s easy to get buried today in the blizzard of paperwork around us. The average person receives around 150 communications each day via email, telephone, hard mail, memos, circulars, faxes, etc. A lot of time is wasted going through the same pile of paper day after day and correcting mistakes when things slip through the cracks. Try to handle the paper once and be done with it. If it is something that can be done in a minute or two, do it and be done. If it is not the best use of your time, delegate it. If it is going to take some time to complete, schedule ahead in your day calendar on the day you think you might get to it and then put it away.
5. Run a Time Log. If you want to manage it, you have to measure it. A Time Log is a simple yet powerful tool to create a photo album sort of overview of how your time is actually being spent during the day. Simply make an ongoing record of your time as you spend it. Record the activity, the time spent on it, and then the rating using A, B, C, and D as described in #1 above. Some examples of how your time might be spent: Made telephone calls, 35 minutes, A; Answered emails, 48 minutes, B; Attended staff meeting, 55 minutes, C. Run this for a few days to get a good picture of how your time is being spent. Then analyze the information. Add up all the A, B, C, and D time. Most discover a lot of their time is being spent on C and D items that have little or no value. Finally, take action steps to reduce the C and D items to give you more time for the really important things in your life.

MAKE REGULAR SMALL IMPROVEMENTS

2006-03-21T19:33:00.000-08:00

MAKE REGULAR SMALL IMPROVEMENTS

It is useful to improve on our entire twenty-four hour day, but lasting improvements tend to be small, incremental changes. ("Yard by yard is really hard. Inch by inch is a cinch".)In a horse race, the first place winner may receive twice the purse as the second place horse, not because it ran twice as far or twice as fast, but rather, was a "nose ahead" of the competition.Converting one hour per day from non-productive time to a new productive practice gives us the "multiplier effect".
We receive 7 more productive hours per week, 250 per year, or the equivalent of over 6 additional work weeks in the next year.

Taking Minutes

2006-03-15T18:51:00.000-08:00

An Important Skill

At some point your boss may ask you to take minutes at a meeting. This task isn't reserved for secretaries only. Any person who attends a meeting may be asked to do this. Since the minutes will serve as an official record of what took place during the meeting, you must be very accurate. Here are some pointers to help you master this skill.

Before the Meeting

Choose your tool: Decide how you will take notes, i.e. pen and paper, laptop computer, or tape recorder. Make sure your tool of choice is in working order and have a backup just in case.
Use the meeting agenda to formulate an outline.

During the Meeting

Pass around an attendance sheet.
Get a list of committee members and make sure you know who is who.
Note the time the meeting begins.
Don't try to write down every single comment -- just the main ideas.
Write down motions, who made them, and the results of votes, if any; no need to write down who seconded a motion.
Make note of any motions to be voted on at future meetings.
Note the ending time of the meeting.

After the Meeting

Type up the minutes as soon as possible after the meeting, while everything is still fresh in your mind. Include the name of organization, name of committee, type of meeting (daily, weekly, monthly, annual, or special), and purpose of meeting.
Include the time the meeting began and ended.
Proofread the minutes before submitting them.

Source: http://careerplanning.about.com/cs/communication/a/minutes.htm

Just Say “No”

2006-03-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

Just Say “No”

By Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

I used to put everyone else’s requests and needs first and if there wasany time left over at the end of the day for what I needed and wanted todo, that was acceptable. That is until I began to realize that if youand I are going to be effective time managers, we have to stay away fromallocating our time solely on the basis of those who demand it.

Instead,if you and I are going to be effective time managers, we have toallocate our time on the basis of those who deserve it.I don’t mean this in any negative or arrogant way. It’s just you havelimits to the amount of time you have to spend and so one of the mostpowerful words in your Time Management vocabulary is the word, “no”.

Almost everyone you encounter will think they have a better idea abouthow you should be spending your time. It doesn’t make others bad. It’sjust the way the world works. If there is a void in your Time Managementlife, someone, or many for that matter, will jump in to fill that spot.

The problem is that they do not have the full understanding of where youare taking your life and if you keep saying “yes”, they will continue totake up your time, possibly keeping you from accomplishing what youreally want to do.“No” is sometimes difficult to say because you have been taughtdifferently. You have been taught to say, “Yes”, to please, to serve,and to accommodate.

There is nothing wrong with saying “yes” most of thetime, but occasionally there is a line you choose not to cross, whensaying “yes” is really not the best use of your time to get you to whereyou need and want to be.If you had unlimited amounts of time, you could “yes” all the time toeveryone. But you don’t.

You have 24 hours each day, 7 days a week for atotal of 168 hours. And you get to spend that time only once, so youhave to spend it wisely.I have listed seventeen ways here to say “no”. Don’t let me put thewords in your mouth. Take the ones you like, change them around and youuse the words that are comfortable for you.

The point is, if you areever in a position when you can never say “no”, then you are alwayssaying “yes”, and like the song says, “If you don’t stand for something,you will fall for everything”.Try these:

“I’m sorry. That’s not a priority for me right now.”
“I can’t help you on this now, but I can get to it next week. Would thatbe okay?”
“I have so much on my plate now I don’t know when I can get to it. But Ido know someone over here who can help you now.”
“Before I take this on for you, let me show you a few things so that youmight be able to do it yourself.”
“I have made so many commitments to others, it would be unfair to themand you if I took on anything more at this point.”
“If I can’t give you a ride to the school dance on Friday, how elsewould you get there safely?”“I don’t know how soon I can help you on this, but I will get back toyou as soon as I am able to help you.”
“I’m sure we’re close enough that when I say “no” you’ll understand it’sfor a good reason.”
“Sure I can help you with your request as long as we both agree andunderstand that the item I agreed to do for you yesterday is going tohave to wait.”
“Before I take this over from you, what do you think we ought to doabout it?”
“I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I sure can do thatfor you. The bad news is, I’m so overloaded with everything else, I’vebecome delirious and have been
lying about my commitments.”
“When I get overwhelmed like I am now, I remove every third person whoasks me for something, from my “Good Friends List” and the second personjust left.”
“No.”
“Thanks for thinking to ask me, but, no thanks.”
“I would like to help you out on this but you understand I don’t havethe resources available to do the right job for you.”
“Now that’s the type of thing I would love to help you on if only I hadthe time.”
“Just like you, I get overloaded sometimes and have to tell some veryspecial people, “no”. This is one of those times.”

And as you speak, smile.

THE HR NETWORK: How do I integrate two culturally different organizations?

2006-03-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

THE HR NETWORK: How do I integrate two culturally different organizations?

Keep abreast of the latest HR strategies and best practices with the HRNetwork, a global listserv for strategic HR professionals. Here's an exampleof a recent posting with one of the responses it generated:

Q: We're currently facing change management issues related to theintegration of another firm into ours. Culture, processes and habits arequite different and this results in difficulties integrating the two teamsto make them work together properly. We're thinking of offering an award orfinancial incentive to the team that shows they focus on integrating witheach other, or to the team that's already the best integrated. I'd reallyappreciate any ideas on this topic. - HR MANAGER, A TOP GLOBAL LAW FIRM

A: I wouldn't offer a reward for integration and cooperation that's monetarybecause you're now establishing a new incentive plan for behavior that'spart of everyone's job: "working together to serve the customer." The bestintegrations seem to occur when the following factors are put in place andsupported by the top leadership team:

1. The clear and compelling reason the merger was formed to begin with. Whatare the market and competitive realities that make this important andcritical to survival? What major opportunities does this create for everyoneif successful?
2. Form a powerful guiding task team with membership from both companies tobe accountable for the integration. Incorporate this objective on theirappraisals and link these to existing performance reward systems.
3. Create and publish a vision of what the new company/entity will be ableto accomplish.
4. Communicate the new vision through every channel possible enlisting themost influential people.
5. Systematically evaluate what has to change in order to make the vision areality. Structures, processes, systems, people.
6. Plan for and publish short-term wins.
7. On a quarterly basis, have total company reviews of the progress to date.

- HR SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUGHES SUPPLY

What do CEOs really think of HR?

2006-03-10T15:54:00.000-08:00

What do CEOs really think of HR?

Asked to rate the performance of various areas of their business,
respondents to the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest annual CEOBriefing
survey gave HR an emphatic thumbs-down. Alone of the functions under review,
more people rated the performance of HR bad (6%) than excellent (4%). No
other function - not even the notoriously unlovable IT department - came
close to being this unappreciated.

The 555 senior executives from 68 countries were asked to choose which three
business functions will be most important to realizing corporate strategy
over the next three years: HR received only 16% of the votes, with sales and
marketing rated at 56%.

Senior executives worldwide predict that their organizations will prioritize
international markets over domestic ones in the next three years. They
identified the importance of globalization to their strategic growth plans,
with respondents expecting the proportion of revenue coming from overseas
markets to jump by an average of one-third over the next three years.

Acquiring new customers is seen as the most important strategy for achieving
revenue growth (58% of respondents). Increasing market share (53%) and
growing revenue (50%) outstrip lowering the cost base as strategic
priorities for executives.

Almost nine out of ten respondents regard the prospects for business
globally as either good or very good, a marked increase on previous years.
One paradox of globalization is that it increases the value of local
knowledge. Understanding the needs of local customers in the different
markets as customers’ tastes change and competition intensifies is the
biggest challenge that managers of global companies face, according to the
survey.

To download the CEO Briefing report free of charge, visit
http://www.eiu.com/CorporatePriorities2006

How to create a high performance coaching culture

2006-03-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

How to create a high performance coaching culture

It’s amazing what people can achieve with the right support. These fivepointers emphasize the fundamental role that HR can play in embedding acoaching culture to unlock untapped talent and potential.

1. Clarify drivers for change and get buy-in from senior management
To make a compelling case for coaching, it's important that a coachingcompany work closely with HR and business leaders to identify areas in needof improvement, challenges, missed opportunities and hidden costs – forexample, costs associated with high staff turnover.

2. Agree relevant ROI measures that can be tracked from the outset
These might be revenue/profit-focused or centered around retention levels,employee or customer satisfaction, as well as behavioral measures which canbe monitored through 360 degree assessments and employee health surveys.

3. Create a coaching vision and integrate coaching with strategic plans
Ask senior management to think about when a coaching culture is in place.What results will be achieved? How will people feel? What difference will itmake to individuals and the bottom line? The greatest results are achievedwhen organizations commit to a long-term program and integrate the visionand key performance indicators into their strategic HR plans.

4. Communicate quick wins
Try one-to-one coaching with a select group of individuals, or start with aregional pilot program. These activities can be publicized to gainengagement for a full coaching plan. Work with marketing and PR tocommunicate success stories, both internally and externally.

5. Sustain momentum
Senior management need to walk the talk and continually inspire learning andgrowth. Look at creating programs that not only coach individuals but alsoteach them how to coach the people they manage. Progress should be assessedon an ongoing basis to help to ensure key objectives continue to be met.Source: Carole Gaskell, Full Potential Group.

For further information,please visit: http://www.fullpotentialgroup.com

HANDLING EMAIL

2006-02-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

You don’t want to get into the “shuffling blues” where you read an e-mail, postpone action, save it, re-read it later, and find things slipping through the cracks.

As you open each e-mail, do one of the following and be done:
a. If it requires a quick response, (it will only take a minute or two), respond to it and delete it.
b. If it requires a response but is not the best use of your time, try to think of a way of delegating it. There’s a lot of difference between “I do it” and “It gets done”.
c. If it is going to take any serious amount of time to respond (beyond a minute or two), schedule it for action in your Day Planner and then save it or print it out for future action.

VISIONS THAT REPEAT

2006-02-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

VISIONS THAT REPEAT

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

You spend a lot of time reliving memories from the past. Some memoriesare positive and uplifting and give our days a bounce, enhancing ourproductivity and results. Other memories are not so bright and bum usout, draining our spirits and motivation and productivity.Memories are stored in your head after a long journey that begins with asingle vision. Visions are the pictures you see in your mind. You canhave positive visions or negative visions.For example, you are going to a party Friday night. This is a party thatyour brother-in-law always attends and in the past you always got in anargument with him, then left the party in a huff, and generally had abad time.

So you start to visualize going to the party again on Fridayand what do you see?
You see yourself having a bad time at this partybecause, after all, you’ve always had a bad time at the party with yourbrother-in-law.From those visions, those pictures, you take action.

You see a confrontation coming with your brother-in-law and consistent with thatimage you attend the party waiting for him to trigger the arguments ashe has in the past, and sure enough, your body language and wordstelegraph the message that you are ready for verbal combat and so theprocess moves forward to conflict and leaving in a huff.

These actions produce results. Your result was, “not having good time atthe party”. Those results then become the memories that you re-liveover and over again negatively affecting your future productivity.

Your visions direct the actions you take that create the results yourealize that form the memories you re-live over and over again,Now let’s say you would prefer to have a positive memory from thisupcoming party in your mind to relive in the future for enhancedproductivity.

What can you do in advance to change the outcome, thelingering memory? You change the vision.You stop visualizing having a bad time at the next party. I know, you’vehad a lot of history with bad results, but you put a new picture in yourmind this time.

You see yourself intentionally avoiding being in thesame room with your brother-in-law and if he presses to goad you intoargument, you see yourself walking away.
You see yourself sitting withAunt Sarah, whom you spend little time with and talking with her for theevening.You repeat that vision only, over and over, and if you do enough ofthat, you find yourself changing your behavior, avoiding yourbrother-in-law and instead, spending quality time with the other guests.
When you leave, you discover you have produced the result called “nothaving too bad a time at the party”. You recall and remember this now ina positive vein, as an uplifting memory that boosts your attitude anddaily productivity in the future.
Does it all happen so easily and quickly? Unlikely.
Maybe you create nonew results in the near term from this new, more positive way ofvisioning, but if you are willing to persist and make this healthier wayof thinking a consistent habit, then soon you will find it does work.Your visions will be more positive, your actions will follow the visionscreating the results that form the positive memories you will re-liveover and over.

10 Ways to Overcome Procrastination

2006-01-27T02:12:00.000-08:00

10 Ways to Overcome Procrastination: The Challenge for Tomorrow!
by: Lisa James

Did you realize that as much as 47% of the time we spend on-line has nothing whatsoever to do with our work? In 1978 15% of the population stated that they do procrastinate somewhat. Only 1% admitted to chronic procrastination. In 2002 the numbers quadrupled! 60% of people stated that they experience mild to moderate procrastination in their lives and 6% stated that procrastination ruled their lives! In this era of “distraction overdose”, make the decision to overcome procrastination by applying some or all of the following techniques.

1. Live by the Law of More Effort. As you accomplish an important task, you will feel a surge of energy and enthusiasm. Completing the task will trigger the release of endorphins in your brain, causing you to experience a natural high. You will actually become addicted to this feeling as you continue to complete challenging and important tasks. So, as you put forth more effort, you will want to continue to put forth more effort.

2. How’s your energy? There are many things you can do to increase your energy stores, including getting 8 hours of rest each night. I know you are saying, “I’m lucky if I get 6!” With better planning & organizing, you can not only get 8 hours of sleep, but you will also have time for #3.

3. Exercise & eat right! Yes, that’s right. If you take the time to exercise, you will actually have more energy and will procrastinate less. Also, avoid those simple sugars that “give you a boost”. It may give you an immediate rush, but you will “dump” just shortly there after. Eat complex carbohydrates which provide a slower, steadier release of energy throughout the day.

4. Improve your goal setting techniques. Do we eat the elephant all at once? No. We do it one bite at a time. Do the same with your goals. Take your larger goals and break them down into a series of smaller, more attainable goals. Write them down, be specific and put a date on them. A goal without a date is just a dream. Make sure they are challenging and schedule your repetitive goals (ex. workouts) at the same time each day to develop a routine.

5. Make lists and work from them. No one likes to work from lists. You feel like your mother is controlling your every move. But this keeps you organized. Have a daily, weekly and monthly list of things you need to do and add to them as necessary.

6. Make your own “top ten” list. Write down ten things you want to accomplish in the next year. Write these out as if they have already happened, in the present tense. Post them where you will see them daily and while you’re at it, read them out loud daily. Self-talk is very important. (That’s for another top 10.)

7. Select a favorite from your list. Which item on your list will push you forward 100% in your career, personal life, etc. when completed? Come up with an action plan for achieving that goal first and write it down.

8. Find a system that works for you. There is no cookie-cutter approach to overcoming procrastination. A system that may be very successful for one person, could fail miserably for another. Try different “programs” on and be patient. You will find a system that fits you perfectly.

9. Don’t give up! We can all develop the habits of focus & concentration if we commit to it by making the decision, developing the discipline and staying determined.

10. Just do it! I realize this phrase is completely over-used, but let’s face it, it applies. Sometimes we just need to buckle down and complete that unbelievably miserable task that we have been dreading for so long. I guarantee you that you will have more energy when you are done.
David Allen says, "Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they have started."

HANDLE PAPER

2006-01-25T16:30:00.000-08:00

HANDLE PAPER

It’s easy to get buried today in the blizzard of paperwork around us.The average person receives around 150 communications each day viaemail, telephone, hard mail, memos, circulars, faxes, etc.A lot of time is wasted going through the same pile of paper day afterday and correcting mistakes when things slip through the cracks.Try to handle the paper once and be done with it. If it is somethingthat can be done in a minute or two, do it and be done. If it is not thebest use of your time, delegate it. If it is going to take some time tocomplete, schedule ahead in your day calendar on the day you think youmight get to it and then put it away.

2006-01-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

TOP FOUR TIME MANAGEMENT ISSUES

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

Talk with most anyone and ask them what they think are the top issues intime management and you will get answers such as, “Having a wellprepared “to do” list”, “Managing multiple priorities”, “ManagingMeeting time”, “Handling the flood of paperwork and emails”. All aregood responses but overlook the top four time management issues that, incombination with one another, can do more to keep you from having, doingor being what you want and deserve.

They are: ineffective relationships, a poor attitude, being flat outtired, and the weather.

1. Ineffective relationships. Probably more than 50% of your personalproductivity success has to do with effective relationships with otherpeople. Friends and allies will open doors for you that would take aconsiderable amount of your effort. They can give you words ofencouragement that lift your spirits during down, unproductive times.They can teach you lessons that would take too much time otherwise tolearn.I’m not suggesting that one who does not have the good cooperation ofother people can not be productive. They can, but not as productive asthose who enjoy positive, effective relationships with others.

2. A poor attitude. It has been said that your attitude will determineyour altitude in life’s successes. With a poor attitude you becomediscouraged and demoralized and your performance goes down. Moreover, anegative person tends to repel positive people, whom you need to boostyou up, and they tend to attract other negative people who will bringyou down with their stories of misery and failure. “You got a flat tire?Well I got two flat tires! You think you have it bad? I have it worse!”Imagine. Two people having a debate about who has the worse life.

3. Being flat out tired. Three out of four people claim that they areflat out tired all throughout their days. Test this. Ask anyone, anytime of the day these questions: “Are you rested?” “Did you get a goodnight’s sleep?” “Are you at the top of your game today?” Most willreply, “Oh, I’m so tired!”Some do not get a sufficient quantity of sleep. They simply stay up toolate and get up to early, burning the candle at both ends. Some have medical issues that can be treated. And many may be getting a sufficient quantity of sleep but not the quality. Their days are filled with somuch stress and distress. Why? Because they do not have the tools orrefuse to the tools to take control over their days so as they try to sleep, that little voice in the back of their heads is reminding them ofall the unfinished items of the day and about a string of future uncontrolled events and they wind up tossing and turning, not gettingthe deep nutritious sleep that their bodies need every day to be asproductive as they might be.

4. The weather. The city in the United States that has they highest incidence of suicide is Seattle, Washington. I understand they have fewer sunny days and more cloudy and rainy days than most other places.If you take your own life, is that considered poor time management?That’s not meant to be a poor joke, but guess what? People all over theworld are committing “productivity suicide” each day fussing over theweather and using it as a reason to reduce their productivity. “It’s toocold!” “It’s too hot!” “It’s so rainy!” “It’s so dry!” When, all of thetime, the weather is just perfect, just the way it is.If you were a visitor from another planet listening to the media, youwould think we on earth just invented snow storms, cold and heavydownpours when they have been with us since the beginning of time.Being aware of the weather is important, of course. If locally it is tobe icy you may choose to stay indoors and a threatening hurricane maypersuade you to evacuate to a safer place. But to be obsessed with thenormal ranges of weather conditions is to only steal away from theopportunity to have a good and productive day.

2006-01-16T18:29:00.000-08:00

How to leave gracefully

You've got the job of your dreams, and tempting as it may be to shoutit immediately that you're off, that might not be the best strategy.You need to plan your exit carefully, both physically and emotionally.Because in a small world, you'll never know whose path you'll cross,or who you'll bump into in the future.

Informing the boss
Obviously the first thing to do, they shouldn't be left to hear fromthe office grapevine. If you think they will try and offer youenhancements to stay, be ready. Of course, if you could be persuadedto stay (and it is flattering to be thought of as indispensable), thatis another option. But if you can't, be clear about:
* Why you're leaving (more responsibility & opportunities, better package)
* What you are going to divulge about the new role (how much detail are you going to go into about what the role is, organisation, structure. If you want to keep things confidential, you'll have to be tactful in fielding questions.)
* When would be ideal to leave. You may have a long notice period to work through, so check your contract. If you have, and three months is not uncommon, try trading with your boss to find a mutually convenient leave date. This could be a natural break between projects or a bank holiday. A date that suits both is preferable - no-one wants someone in post for three months going through the motions.
* Who needs to be told - especially communication to third parties, contractors or stakeholders as there may be contracts or other guidelines to follow. You might also plan for a successor, and if there is need for interimcover. But that might be later.

Communication
Any direct reports should be told next, along with other key contactsand colleagues. Face-to-face is the ideal, but this is not alwayspossible, so choose a method that suits your organisation.

Organisation for the handover
The temptation will be to retain everything, both hard-copy andonline, with annotated notes for your successor. But is thisnecessary? Rather than opt for pages of notes covering everyeventuality, why not talk through some keys issues with the personlikely to be picking things up until some-one new is appointed. And ifthey make their own notes, they are going to be more likely to usethem. You can be helpful and leave your new contact details with them,to offer guidance for the first couple of months if necessary. And finally ...

emotion
Not everyone will think this, but leaving a job where you've givenheart and soul especially over a number of years, can be like theending of a long term relationship - the 'shock' at seeing 'your' jobon the intranet or internal notice-board, brings home the fact you areleaving. So you'll need to detach yourself emotionally. Be ready for the compliments that come your way, and find time to fitin the social side of leaving too.

> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - was taken from Jinfo Support - Linda Emmett has recently moved to a new role in project developmentfor the North Devon and Exmoor Regeneration Company after 12 yearswith the CIPD in Wimbledon <linda@ndexreg.co.uk>.

2006-01-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

Our lives are built on several legs, the Seven Vital Areas: Health,Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional and Spiritual. Ifone is a little longer than the rest, like a table, it will affect thenentire table.

Life can be cruel. You can lose in any of those areas overnight. Yourhealth can go away. Your money can be lost. Your family can leave you,all on a moment’s notice. Not that we don’t do things to prevent thatfrom happening, but the point is, if one or two legs falters, you haveothers to hold you up.It takes three legs for a stool to stand. If you build your life aroundjust one or two legs or areas you first have a continual problemmaintaining your balance.

Worse, if you lose those one or two legs ofthose remaining legs, you collapse.Here’s my list of the seven best ways to get out of balance and becomeuni or duo dimensional.

1. Ignore your Health. Don’t get the quantity and quality of sleep yourequire. Don’t take time for exercise. Eat the wrong stuff. (90% ofthose who join Health and Fitness Clubs today will stop going within thenext 90 days.) Your resistance level will be reduced and you will besusceptible to all the latest sniffles and flues going around to ensurethat you take advantage of all the sick days you are allowed. 75% of alladult deaths are preventable. We are literally driving ourselves toearly grave in the “hurry-up, stressful” life of ours.It’s interesting when someone gets a new car, they bring it in for thescheduled maintenance, put the right grade of fuel in the tank, and keepit shiny and clean. Our pets visit the veterinarian on a scheduledbasis. In a recent study, 34% of the men surveyed said they would not goto doctor even if they were experiencing chest pains.

2. Postpone Family time. They will always be there for you anyway whenyou get the time for them. A student once asked me, “What is the bestway to take my four year old on vacation?” I replied, “You take her whenshe’s four years old.” Fifty percent of marriages wind up in divorcecourt. Imagine, getting married at age twenty-five and twenty yearslater, at age forty-five, you give up 50% of everything you have workedfor in your adult life in a property settlement in divorce court. It’slike the squirrel, gathering the nuts, hoarding away while someone isdrilling a hole in the side of the tree to let all the nuts escape. Thesquirrel is too busy to hear the impending threat. The average workingperson spends less than two minutes per day in meaningful communicationwith their spouse or “significant other” and less than thirty secondsper day in meaningful communication with their children.

3. Don’t plan your Financial life. Be assured that your employer, and ifnot, then the government, and if not, then maybe a kindly relative willtake care of your needs. Most people arrive at the end of lifefinancially deficient or dependant upon some type of assistance from thegovernment or relatives. Most people do not spend a little of theirtime, on a regular basis, to create financial freedom and live theirlives they way they “want to”, but rather do what do because they “haveto”. Eighty percent do not want to go to work on Monday morning.Ninety-seven percent say that if they did achieve financialindependence, they would not continue with their current employer or intheir current line of work.

4. Stay away from Intellectual development. You have the degree. Youread books at one time. Five percent of the population purchasesninety-five percent of all the books. The other ninety-five purchase theother five percent of the books. They don’t have time to read them. Theygive them away as gifts. You barely have enough time to keep your headabove water, what with work and other interests. Coast with theknowledge you have. It’s draining away from you daily but hopefully youfilled the reservoir enough early on that it will carry you through yourlife.

5. Let your Social contacts decide your future. Follow the advice ofyour friends about what you should be doing in your life even if theyare not in a place where you would want to be. Be ever conscious of“What would my friends say/think if I did…?”. Always seek out and actonly with the approval of your peers. Take comfort in the knowledge thatwhen there is a void in leadership your life on how you should bespending your time, someone else will fill that void and tell you whatto do.

6. Let your Professional life just happen. Do not establish a lifetimeplan of where you want to go. Take whatever opportunity and advancementlife gives you and be satisfied. Don’t rock the boat. Seek the familiarand avoid the strange. Play it safe. Make it comfortable. If you chose acareer path when you were eighteen or twenty years old, and now at ageforty you are unhappy, don’t consider a change. Hold on to that decisionyou made twenty years ago. It will be like going to a twenty year oldfor career counseling.

7. Avoid spending time in your Spiritual area. Not only in a formalreligious venue, but also in our relationships to others, our community,our environment, and the universe. Leave those questions to others toponder. “When man forgets his Creator, his own creations will be turnedupon him.”

2006-01-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Workforce Assessment Assessed

Human resources execs concerned they’re not effectively measuring employee performance might find the Human Capital Management 2005 Study from Columbia, Md.,-based competency management and learning solutions provider Avilar Technologies worth a read.

Administered to 96 random human resources professionals, almost half of the respondents were at the senior management level working at organizations that ranged in size from less than 100 employees to more than 10,000.

On the issue of employee self-assessments, the good news is that 91 percent thought this popular tool is at least “somewhat accurate”; the bad news is many could also cite reasons why the tool isn’t “extremely accurate.” Forty-six percent, for instance, say employees have a tendency to either over- or under report their abilities; 45 percent believe employees feel an honest self-assessment may be used against them; and 41 percent think the competencies employees are using to assess themselves do not accurately reflect their job.

Respondents believed that manager assessments are only slightly more accurate than self-assessments. They identified several reasons why these evaluations are not extremely accurate. Sixty-one percent said managers have not been trained on how to properly assess people; 40 percent say the competencies managers are using to assess their employees do not accurately reflect the job; and 28 percent report that managers play favorites.

Though performance appraisals may not be the best way to assess the impact of competency management, more than half of the respondents indicated those appraisals are still what they use for that purpose.

More than half of the companies that participated in the survey said they are not currently using 360-degree assessments. Many said they do not use this tool because it is time consuming and too expensive, while some indicated their company has never considered implementing it, but they don’t know why. Surprisingly, 19 percent of respondents who said their company use 360-degree assessments work at companies with less than 100 employees. One explanation for this finding, Avilar posits, is the management in these companies has decided this tool is helpful for improving employees’ performance, so they are willing to spend money on it. Overall, 64 percent of the respondents who said their company uses 360 assessments are from companies with 1,000 or more employees.

For more information, visit www.avilar.com.

2006-01-08T19:26:00.000-08:00

Globally mobile employees receive fewer benefits

According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, one in four
companies surveyed doesn't have a benefits policy for globally mobile
employees.

The survey covered 230 multinationals based in North America, Europe, Asia
Pacific, Latin America and Middle East/Africa, with more than 50,000
globally mobile employees in total. It found that over 60% of the companies
surveyed are increasing their use of short-term international assignments.

Almost all participants agreed that addressing benefit issues for globally
mobile employees is a medium or top priority. The survey also found that 30%
of companies have no formal governance procedures and one in ten (11%) has
never reviewed their policies. Almost 10% of globally mobile employees have
expressed dissatisfaction with their benefit package.

"Setting and managing benefit programs for expatriates and third country
nationals is an extremely complex undertaking. Keeping approaches fair and
consistent globally is very challenging, particularly as the
one-size-fits-all approach no longer satisfies employees," said Peter
Blake, a principal at Mercer.

Of the companies that plan to change their expatriate benefit programs for
such employees, 46% intend to outsource plan administration, 40% plan to
enhance benefits for certain employees, while 39% aim to globalize their
approach to benefits provision.

Source: Mercer's "The Expatriate and Third-Country Nationals Benefits"
survey. http://www.mercer.com

2005-12-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

Inside Leadership Development

Leadership development may, itself, need some development, if the results of a recent survey are any indication. According to an executive summary of “Leadership Forecast 2005-2006,” released this fall by Bridgeville, Pa.,-based workforce management consultancy Development Dimensions International, trainers have room for improvement when it comes to nurturing their organization’s top performers.

Based on survey results that included 4,559 leaders and 944 human resources representatives from 42 countries, the sample involved both public and private organizations from 36 industries. Sixty-three percent of these organizations employ more than 1,000 people. Information was collected from December 2004 to April 2005.

From this respondent pool, it appears that up-and-comers may not be absorbing the skills and attitudes your organization says are important. For instance, when leaders were asked to select the one action that garnered them the most respect in their organization, the ability to make money clearly outweighed ethics. The “ability to bring in the numbers” ranked No. 1 on respondents’ list of priorities, followed second and third by “ability to take a stand and make tough decisions” and “ability to create a strategy or vision for success.”

This emphasis on the bottom line might not be paying off in the long run. The study found that about one-third of internally sourced leaders fail, usually because of poor interpersonal skills. The human resources reps queried reported that 65 percent of leaders selected internally stay in their positions and are successful, but of the 35 percent who are not successful, most fail because they have poor people skills or exhibit inappropriate personal qualities.

The efforts and funding behind leadership development programming often are misdirected, according to the study. While formal training is the most common leader development practice, special projects or assignments prove the most effective, the study revealed. When the HR professionals surveyed were asked to indicate the degree to which they made use of a variety of leadership development programs, the most widely used development activity, formal training, was not rated the most useful. Special projects within and outside normal job responsibilities were perceived as most valuable.

Both human resources reps and the leaders they are charged with developing seem to know something’s missing. Only 39 percent of HR and 53 percent of leader respondents reported they have high confidence in their organization’s leadership, and only 53 percent of leaders say they are satisfied with the development opportunities provided by their employer. Less than half of all leaders surveyed, or 47 percent, believe their organization provides them with all they need to develop.

For more information, visit www.ddiworld.com.

2005-12-08T00:50:00.000-08:00

THE CURSE OF PERFECTIONISM

By Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

There’s a rule known as the Pareto Principle. It teaches us that 20% of
our efforts produce 80% of our results. The additional 80% of our
efforts will only yield an additional 20% of results. The first thrust
of effort then is the most productive use of our time. The latter thrust
is very costly.

For example, let’s say you allocate 2 hours (which we’ll represent as
20% of your time) to clean a room, a basement, or a garage. Let’s say
that will you will be able to get it to be 80% clean. It won’t be
perfect, but it will be acceptable and a job well done. However, to
squeeze out an additional 20% of results, to make it “perfectly clean”,
will require an additional 80% of your time, or 8 hours. The additional
results are sixteen times more costly than the initial results from 20%
of the effort, not to mention that while you’re trying to squeeze out
those additional results, you are kept from doing a lot of other more
productive things.

This rule has a lot of application to you as a time manager. Ever notice
if you’re in sales how 20% of your customers give you 80% of your sales
and the other 80% of your customers give you the remaining 20% of your
business? Where then should you be spending 80% of your time? With the
20% of the customers who are giving you 80% of your business.

Ever notice how 20% of your relatives give your 80% of your headaches?

It may not always work with exact mathematical precision, but,
typically, the small chunk of input yields the biggest chuck of output
or results.

Most of us benefit from this rule intuitively. When you and I approach a
task (clean a room, prepare a term paper, write up a project, etc.) we
decide to put in a reasonable amount of time and effort to achieve a
reasonable result. The result may not be perfect but it will be
acceptable and this will release us to devote our time to tackling other
endeavors.

We put in a reasonable amount of time and produce a pretty decent
report. It may not be perfect, but putting in a whole lot more time to
make it a little better is not cost-effective and therefore not worth
the effort.

Those who suffer from the Curse of Perfectionism do not understand this
principle. Their goal is always perfection, which, realistically, is
unattainable. For example, you cannot clean a room perfectly. As you
clean it, it’s getting dirty as dust settles. Any written report can be
polished and improved upon with more time and effort. Striving for
perfection is then always stressful and frustrating.

Their overall productivity suffers as they spend an inordinate amount of
time on a few things, trying to make them perfect, rather than a lesser
amount of time on a lot of things that will multiply their results.

The curse is cured when they abandon the need to do their tasks
perfectly, when they understand that excellence in performance is
attaining a degree of perfection, not absolute perfection. This does not
compromise one’s standard of excellence in performance. It enhances
excellent performance with increased results.

2005-11-28T20:31:00.000-08:00

The Chaos Theory of Careers: a user's guide

Career Development Quarterly, June, 2005 by Jim E.H. Bright, Robert G.L. Pryor
The purpose of this article is to set out the key elements of the Chaos Theory of Careers. The complexity of influences on career development presents a significant challenge to traditional predictive models of career counseling. Chaos theory can provide a more appropriate description of career behavior, and the theory can be applied with clients in counseling. The authors devote particular attention to the application of attractor concepts to careers.

The purpose of this article is to set out the key elements of the Chaos Theory of Careers and to illustrate how these fundamental concepts are particularly relevant to contemporary career development. In the process, we show how we have applied some of these concepts to counseling practice and have used a time-honored, but infrequently acknowledged, method of reasoning in an effort to illustrate how the demanding aspects of chaos theory can be communicated in user-friendly ways.
Traditional approaches to career development typically aim to understand the key attributes of the person and then match these to compatible or congruent environments (jobs). A recurring theme in the criticisms of traditional person-environment fit models by authors such as Savickas and Baker (in press); Krumboltz (1979); Mitchell, Levin, and Krumboltz (1999); Vondracek, Lerner, and Schulenberg (1986); and Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1996) is that the person-environment interaction has been characterized in trait-oriented terms (e.g., Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Super, 1990). The relatively static nature of the terms of the interaction, person and environment, is no longer appropriate, given the complexities and change that are observed in modern careers. Arnold (2004) noted that congruence between the person and environment has been shown in several metastudies to correlate poorly (between 0.1 and 0.2) with outcome measures such as satisfaction (e.g., Assouline & Meir, 1987; Tranberg, Slane, & Ekeberg, 1993; Young, Tokar, & Subich, 1998). Arnold high-lighted the problem by observing that the concept of congruence in J. L. Holland's (1997) theory accounts for only 1% to 4% of the outcome measure variance. He proposed 14 problems with the theory, including inadequate conceptualization of the person and the environment, inadequate measurement of the environment, and the fact that job environments are increasingly demanding variety and diversity and that jobs are continually changing.
Several of vocational psychology's leading authorities (e.g., Mitchell et al., 1999; Pryor & Bright, 2003a, 2003b; Savickas & Baker, in press) have openly questioned the continuing value of traditional person-environment fit models of career choice, wondering whether they fail to capture adequately the complexities, uncertainties, and dynamic aspects of modern work. As Savickas and Baker have pointed out, "With less stable personalities and occupations, vocational psychology's basic model of person-environment fit with its goal of congruence seems less useful and less possible in today's labor market."
Career theorists are increasingly interested in approaches that characterize the individual and the environment in more complex and dynamic terms than the traditional person-environment approaches. Vondracek et al. (1986) directed attention to the multiplicity of contextual factors in career development. Mitchell et al. (1999) explored the role of unplanned events in career choice. Patton and McMahon (1999) used systems thinking to illustrate the complex interconnectedness of multivariate influences on individuals' career decision making. Savickas (1997) focused attention on individuals' capacities for change and creativity in the crafting of a career. As an extension of such thinking, we pose the question, "What conceptual framework of careers might be able to incorporate coherently such new ideas as complexity, change, and chance?"
Recently, several authors (e.g., Bloch, 1999; Drodge, 2002; Pryor & Bright, 2003a, 2003b) have begun to investigate the potential of chaos and complexity theory to explain career behavior. Chaos theory challenges traditional approaches to scientific explanation and goes to the heart of issues relating to what can be known and how it can be known. In chaos theory, two key concepts are nonlinearity and recursiveness. In linear systems, all the elements add up to make the whole, such as a credit card balance being equal to the amount of money spent plus interest and plus a monthly card fee. A nonlinear system is characterized by the elements adding up to more (or less) than the sum of the parts. For instance, the air time a song receives on the radio increases as the sales of the song propel it up the charts, which, in turn, increases the air time the song receives. In this scenario, the sales and airplay increase rapidly and nonlinearly. Of course, the final outcome sees a sharp decline in sales and airplay as the market becomes saturated and also tired of the song. This example also includes recursiveness--one variable influences another, which in turn influences the first one, and so on. Chaos theory (Gleick, 1988; Stewart, 1989) presents an account of the recursive application of several nonlinear equations to system behavior, resulting in elements of both stability and susceptibility to sudden and dramatic change at the same time. Furthermore, chaotic systems display other characteristics such as a lack of predictability at the micro level, while at the same time appearing to have a degree of stability at the macro level. In addition, their nonlinear nature means that minor events can have a disproportionate outcome on the system. Such ideas are permeating many areas of contemporary science. To cite just one example from Peacocke (2000), "[W]e know, through key developments in theoretical biology and physical biochemistry, that it is the interplay of chance and law that allows the matter of the universe to be self-creative of new forms of organization" (p. 44).
Chaos theory describes a series of features of complex system behavior that many social science researchers have identified in their own areas of study. For instance, in social psychology, Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl (2000) have described in great detail how the tenets of chaos theory provide a compelling account of small group behavior. They highlighted how chaos theory can provide useful insights into the development of teams, how conflict arises in teams, and how teams adapt to change. In the management literature, Stacey, Griffin, and Shaw (2000) presented chaos theory as a way to consider change, creativity, and crisis in organizations. They highlighted how traditional systems approaches in management theory are conceptually and practically flawed in approach and scope and why chaos theory provides a more complete account of human behavior in organizations and of the behavior of the organizations themselves. Chaos theory approaches to counseling have been applied in psychoanalysis (Van Eenwyk, 1991) and in family therapy (Chubb, 1990). Duffy (2000) outlined how the tenets of chaos theory might be useful in assisting a worker whose career has plateaued.
In fact, careers counselors are already confronting the realities of 21st century career development, including the implications of complexity, chance, and change, with their clients. Chaos theory may provide a theoretical basis for career counseling practice and a conceptual framework through which further counseling advances might be made.
Career Counseling and Prediction
A prerequisite to adopting a chaos theory approach is to accept that career development is subject to a wide range of different influences, many if not all of which are continually changing at different paces and in different degrees. In other words, career development and the influences upon it are highly complex. Furthermore, it is increasingly accepted that career behavior is influenced by unplanned and chance events to a much more significant degree than has been typically acknowledged (e.g., Bright, 2003; Bright, Pryor, & Harpham, in press; Bright, Pryor, Wilkenfeld, & Earl, in press; Mitchell et al., 1999; Osipow, 1973; Williams et al., 1998). Incorporating this wide array of influences and acknowledging the central role of chance events in careers, however, present a significant challenge to the possibility of accurate prediction. This challenge is important, because often when providing career advice, career development professionals are explicitly or implicitly making predictions about the suitability of different courses of action or jobs for a client on the basis of past behavior, knowledge, skills, or interests. As Savickas (1997) said, "the career counselor's job is to see life prospectively, to extend a life theme into the future" (p. 14).
Abduction and Communication
The difficulty for both counselors and clients of grasping some of the fundamental notions of chaos theory is not to be underestimated. Moreover, chaos theory acknowledges the finitude, and therefore the limits, of the capacity of human understanding. This appears to contradict the aspirations of much previous science, which emphasized the apparently boundless ability of humans to research, understand, and control the world and the things in it. Various attempts by writers in the counseling field (e.g., Amundson, 2003b; Gabriel, 2000; White & Epston, 1990) are being made to use metaphors, myths, archetypes, poetry, heroes, and stories to deal with the challenges of complexity, change, and chance that their clients face. In doing so, they point to a form of reasoning that is different than the forms that are typical of "scientific psychology." The traditional forms of reasoning in scientific psychology have been deductive reasoning (syllogistic logic) and inductive reasoning (generalizing from observation). However, drawing on the work of Bateson (1979), Patton and McMahon (1999) indicated that an additional form of problem solving, called "abductive reasoning," should be used. Unlike the traditional forms of reasoning, abductive reasoning is not linear but lateral; it deals with patterns and relationships and accepts that all knowledge is open to doubt and revision and open to interpretations from different perspectives. It is often analogical in form, such as techniques based on metaphor and myths. Duke (1994) was one of the earliest researchers to argue that chaos theory can be usefully applied in psychology, pointing out that its application was likely to be analogical and metaphorical in nature. Following this lead, we proffer the following vignette to illustrate some of the major concepts of the Chaos Theory of Careers.
Ping-Pong Balls and Puppies: An Abductive Illustration of the Chaos Theory of Careers
Imagine you are in a room alone with a Ping-Pong ball. If you repeatedly drop the ball from waist height, you can be fairly confident of correctly predicting that it will fall to the ground somewhere near your feet. We call this Scenario 1.
However, suppose now that an eager ball-chasing puppy is in the room with you and also that a strong electric fan is brought into the room, placed near you, and switched on. Now, when you drop the Ping-Pong ball, how certain can you be that the ball will land near your feet? Presumably much less certain, because the puppy might catch it or the fan might blow it off course. We call this Scenario 2.
Now suppose there is a pack of eager puppies in the room and a series of electric fans; someone has opened the window and a howling gale is blowing; and, furthermore, you are now obliged to stand on an electric treadmill programmed to randomly vary its speed! Now when you drop the ball, how confident are you that it will land near your feet? Indeed, how confident are you in making any prediction about where the ball might end up? We call this Scenario 3.
In Scenario 1, the system is very predictable for two reasons. First, the person and the environment are fairly static and unchanging. Second, there are no unplanned events intruding. This is essentially the world as characterized in traditional person-environment models of career development, such as J. L. Holland's (1997).
In Scenario 2, there is a broader range of variables with the addition of the puppy and the electric fan, but we are probably still confident of working through most of the possible outcomes. In career development terms, this is not dissimilar to frameworks such as Gottfredson's (1981), in which gender, prestige, and interests are characterized as the key influences on career choice. With the "zone of acceptable alternatives," there is a constrained influence of happenstance (Chen, 2002).
In Scenario 3, there are many different variables to consider: Each puppy has a mind of its own, the treadmill is randomly programmed, the airflow is confused by the various fans blowing, and the gale force winds outside will all combine to confound our attempts at predicting where the ball will go. Such a scenario is closer in spirit to the wide range of influences identified by Krumboltz (1998) and Lent et al. (1996). This scenario also resembles the type of complex dynamic system that can be well accounted for in chaos theory (Pryor & Bright, 2003a). Here is an example where broad predictions can be made about the future behavior of the room. For instance, the ball will end up somewhere. It is highly likely the ball will remain in the room, because the gale force winds blowing in are more powerful than the fans in the room. So in the short term, we can make broad predictions, but we are unlikely to be able to make specific and accurate predictions. In the longer term, due to the characteristics of the system, things could alter dramatically, thereby making prediction impossible. For instance, if the gale abated, it is possible the ball would be blown out of the room, or a dog with the ball in its mouth could escape through the open window. If either of these happened, the dynamics of the system would be radically altered. Either one would have to find something other than the ball to drop or go after the ball (and the puppy).
Stacey et al. (2000) argued that chaotic systems are predictable at the global or macro level, but only in qualitative terms. In the short term, they argued, short-range, micro-level predictions might be possible, but these will have little or no bearing on long-range predictions. In Scenario 3, in order to make accurate long-range predictions, it would be necessary to measure the effect of every minor alteration of the initial state of the person, the treadmill, the fans, the outside weather, and those pesky puppies! The number of possible ways that all these states could vary--and the manner in which they could interact--makes it impractical and probably impossible to record. Arrow et al. (2000) argued that chaos approaches to prediction differ in three crucial respects from "positivist-reductionist analytic" approaches:
1. The operation of the system is observed in its entirety and not in terms of the directional causal effects of specific individual features.
2. The rules and principles that govern the interaction of individual features are investigated rather than trying to predict the exact values of specific variables.
3. The focus of interest is on how the system changes over time--its trajectory--and not the "average" levels of certain variables over time.
In the career development literature, there is evidence that the unpredictability of life experience does influence career paths. For instance, Morrison (1994) found that a group of people with similar Holland codes diverged in their career paths over time in ways that were not predictable from the original descriptions of their Holland types. Bright, Pryor, Wilkenfield, et al. (in press) found that 70% of a large sample of university students reported that their careers were significantly influenced by unplanned events. These events ranged from unplanned meetings to illness to messages from God.
In summary, what we have described in the Ping-Pong ball analogy is a complex or chaotic system because it contains the key elements of chaotic systems: complexity, emergence, nonlinearity, unpredictability, phase shifts, and attractors. In the remainder of this article, we highlight how these chaotic elements apply to career behavior and suggest how they might be used in counseling.
Complexity and Career Counseling
Careers are influenced by parents, social and environmental context, gender, age, political and economic climate, interests, abilities, geography, and many other events (Patton & McMahon, 1999). All of these factors, and many more, are inherently unpredictable and subject to change. For instance, economies can change rapidly and unexpectedly, political scandals can emerge from left field to change the political landscape, and acts of terrorism can have profound influences on career behavior (e.g., negative impacts on tourism, impacts on the victims and their families and communities). In counseling terms, career counselors must take this complexity into account and encourage clients to reflect on the variety of influences in their lives.
The emphasis here is on understanding processes and influences and how these have shaped and continue to shape individuals' experience of the world. Narrative counseling techniques emphasize the role of story and construction in understanding careers (Amundson, 2003a; Savickas, 1997). Narrative provides a vehicle for understanding the motive processes in a person's career. It focuses on interests--as understood in the word's derivation from "between-being,"--such as those described by Savickas (2005) in which he described career construction in the following terms: "[I]ndividuals construct their careers by imposing meaning on their vocational behavior and occupational experiences" (p. 43). Savickas argued that constructivist counseling focuses not on the person or the environment of the person-environment fit, but rather on the "----" (i.e., the series of dashes) that make up one's career. Such an approach is entirely consistent with the chaos theory's emphasis on understanding the process and the patterns in careers rather than on defining or predicting stable variables as outcomes.
The complexity of the influences on career alerts career counselors to the need to avoid traditional approaches of seeking causes or trying to explain behavior in terms of one factor influencing another factor. Rather, counselors should look at each client in that client's entirety and then help the client understand the patterns and processes in his or her life. Counselors should not try to "narrow down" conversations to only "career-related" topics. Clients should be encouraged to reflect on many different aspects of their lives, such as their familial circumstances, their childhood, their hobbies, their reading, and key events and tragedies, and on more general environmental factors, such as global political issues and concerns. Clients should be encouraged to reinstate contextual factors when recalling previous career decisions. Techniques for working with clients using these techniques can be found in Bright and Pryor (2003) and Pryor and Bright (2005).
Emergence and Career Counseling
Essentially, emergence is a process that runs in a counter direction to reductionism (Morowitz, 2002). The latter, traditional, scientific approach is to seek ever narrower, more precise explanations of behavior in terms of the nature of the constituent system agents. The problem with always looking at finer and finer distinctions is that interaction of the components is neglected. In sport, for example, a team of champions is not the same as a champion team. Teams have properties over and above the total of the skills and performance of individual players. Teamwork, morale, combinations of moves, strategies of play, and so on cannot be accounted for by specific reference to each particular team member. As Polkinghorne (2000) noted about science in general, "there are two levels of description. One involves energy and bits and pieces. The other involves the whole system and pattern" (p. 135).
Emergence involves going up a level or more in description to look for patterns of behavior that appear to emerge from the complexity. Inevitably, such approaches appear to lack the scientific precision of measurement that is often claimed in reductionist approaches, and the forms of description are typically qualitative, such as narrative, analogy, and metaphor. In such an endeavor, the emphasis becomes to describe the system behavior in ways that are meaningful to clients at their current stage and understanding of themselves, as opposed to trying to "nail" the essence of a person or making long-term predictions. In pursuing this goal, career counselors recognize the limitations of their knowledge, in that they can never fully know what influences a person or how that person will respond in the future. However, career counselors can attempt to identify some of the emergent patterns of behavior and link these to past career events. In this way, clients can come to a greater understanding of how their life story is playing out; this, in turn, can provide them with some ideas for future career exploration.
Emergence as a counseling process essentially makes sense of the client's past behavior in terms of themes, narratives, preoccupations, and the unpredictable nature of a range of influences in the past. The role of counselors in this process is to assist their clients to understand their career behavior and to highlight the range of influences, including happenstance, on their careers. Then, techniques for capitalizing on some of these influences, events, and themes can be developed with the client (e.g., Krumboltz & Levin, 2004).
Nonlinearity and Career Counseling
As J. H. Holland (1995) demonstrated, nonlinear equations prevent the description of behavior in terms of aggregates or averages, because very small changes in an input variable can lead to dramatic changes in the output. This is the essence of nonlinearity: There is potential disproportion between a change in one part of a complex system and its subsequent effect in another part of the system. Strogatz (2003) argued that most things in nature are nonlinear, whereas linear equations tend to describe idealized situations (such as somebody dropping a Ping-Pong ball in the absence of any complicating factors like puppies and fans). Strogatz argued that "every major unsolved problem in science from consciousness to cancer to the collective craziness of the economy is non linear" (p. 182). In nonlinear systems such as career behavior, small or seemingly trivial events can have significant career implications. For example, a young engineer working for a construction company has one sick day off in the first 2 years that he is with the company. However, that is the day an urgent overseas project meeting is held. A team is assembled from those attending the meeting and within a few days is sent to work on the project. Subsequently, the project is a great success, and all those on the team are promoted ahead of our only slightly sick, but certainly hapless, young engineer who only missed one meeting.
Memon (1999) recommended that clients be asked to recall everything, no matter how trivial, when the aim is to obtain a full understanding of a past event, because it is the seemingly trivial that can shed light on the significant subsequent event. Savickas (1997) recommended that counselors listen carefully to the language used by clients, because language can reveal important information about their preoccupations and, hence, how they may behave in the future. In chaos theory, the future is conceptualized not principally as some place or time out on the horizon; rather, the future is essentially an individual's next thought, word, or action. Furthermore, nonlinearity reminds the counselor that interventions do not need to be large, long, or painful to effect change in a client's career. Nonlinearity means that a single word may be sufficient to effect change. For example, one of the authors of this article was 14 years old when, after irritating his high school Spanish teacher through classroom misbehavior, he was chastised, with the teacher saying "when you go to university you will not be able to behave like that." Had the teacher said, "if you go to university," it would have had little impact. The use of the word when and the backhanded high expectation were sufficient to change the 14-year-old's self-efficacy and expectations after having never considered himself able to gain entry to college.
Unpredictability and Career Counseling
In career development terms, chance events can and often do have significant influences on an individual's career (e.g., Bright, Pryor, & Harpham, in press; Bright, Pryor, Wilkenfield, et al., in press; Krumboltz, 1998). Career counselors must encourage clients to explore the impact of chance in their careers and find ways to help clients capitalize on chance events. As Gelatt (1991) termed it, they must encourage clients to embrace positive uncertainty. Krumboltz and Levin (2004) have set out a series of principles to assist individuals to capitalize on chance events.
Helping clients to understand the uncertain nature of careers can definitely be a challenge. First, clients' expectations of career counseling typically involve some notion of the counselor narrowing down a wide array of possible steps or jobs to a manageable few options and, hence in so doing, reducing the uncertainty of the future. Consequently, attempts by the counselor to increase or underline the high level of uncertainty in life may be met with active resistance or pessimistic fatalism. Second, when clients think of chance events, they tend to bring to mind situations in which they have little or no control over the aftermath of the event, such as being injured in a motor vehicle accident requiring a month in hospital. Typically, a client does not consider the events in which he or she has a great deal of discretion over the outcome, such as unexpectedly meeting someone at a party who suggests that the client contact him or her at work the following week to discuss a job opportunity. In this circumstance, the client has much more discretion over whether to capitalize on this event by making an appointment or failing to do so by ignoring the invitation.
Conversely, discussing happenstance in a client's life can often serve to relax him or her and remove the self-imposed burden that some clients carry to present all of their career decisions and history in strictly rational terms. When clients present their history in rational terms, they are very often overlooking or ignoring the chance events, and the opportunity can be lost to discuss strategies to stimulate future positive chance events.
Counselors might wish to ask questions about unplanned and unpredictable events when asking their clients about their past. They can normalize chance events by citing statistics that show that most people report that chance events have played a major role in their life. Further-more, they could work with clients to develop strategies to capitalize on chance events in the future (Pryor & Bright, 2005).
Phase Shifts and Career Counseling
In the scenarios presented earlier, a small change in the behavior of one of the fans could have blown the ball out of the room. This could change the dynamics of the system radically. The function of the system, the person's behavior, might change from an investigation of gravity to a search for a Ping-Pong ball. Similarly in careers, people can undergo radical changes in career direction. Sometimes, this is caused by significant external events such as a major workplace injury. Alternatively, it can be more subtle: When an employee has attended countless pointless meetings previously and then is called on to attend one more, it may be the "breaking point" that provokes the employee to resign.
Using Attractors in Career Counseling
Just as a single job in a particular organization can be seen as a single set of interrelated influences or constraints (on a system), so, too, the person's work history, or career, can be seen as a more complex system. According to chaos theory, a common theme is patterns within patterns (Kauffman, 1995). Understanding how such patterns at differing levels of generality and complexity function has given rise to the adoption of the mathematical notion of "the attractor" within chaos theory.
Attractors are descriptions of the constraints on the functioning of a system. They are called attractors because they influence behavior by drawing it in particular directions or constraining the behavior in some way. Four major types of attractors are generally recognized in chaos theory.
Point Attractor and Career Counseling
The simplest is the point attractor. The point attractor describes behavior when the object in question (a thing or person) is attracted to one specific thing or point. In Scenario 1, the floor directly below is a point attractor for the Ping-Pong ball: The ball falls directly to the ground when dropped (in the absence of any complicating influences). In career terms, the point attractor could be a particular vocational goal--such as being promoted to the next level in the corporation. Point attractors generally occur when the individual or some other agency places artificial constraints on the individual's behavior. Person-environment fit models of career decision making (e.g., Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; J. L. Holland, 1997) are examples of point attractor models. They assume there is an optimal vocational direction or space in which personal interests or other personal attributes match suitable jobs. Constraining a client's behavior by imposing a point attractor can be motivational (i.e., by setting a goal), but chaos theory reminds individuals of the need to continually revise goals as they are seeking to attain them and also to make alternative plans in the event of unforeseen circumstances becoming insuperable barriers to the fulfillment of goals.
Counselors should recognize the strengths and weaknesses of goal-setting behavior. Goals have been demonstrated to be effective in motivating behavior; however, Landy (1989) pointed out that evidence for goal setting was far stronger in laboratory settings than when applied in real-life settings because of the complex and unpredictable nature of the world. Counselors should be alert for self-limiting behaviors characterized by setting overly narrow or unrealistic goals and encourage clients to develop resilience strategies or insurance policies to deal with unforeseen future events that prevent their reaching their goal. In addition, reality checking about the true value of the goal is a recommended action (Gelatt, 1991).
Pendulum Attractor and Career Counseling
The second form of attractor is called the pendulum attractor. A pendulum attractor constrains behavior to a regular, predictable pattern. Behavior can move from one extreme through to a midpoint and out to an opposite extreme. The behavior then moves back toward the midpoint and out toward the original position. Behavior is regular, unchanging, and defined. Pendulum attractors might be observed in the career behaviors of clients who are torn between two career options. They gradually build up their determination to follow one course of action, and then this determination gradually recedes to indecision and then to intentions to follow the alternative course of action. In turn, the strength of this intention wanes back into indecision and ultimately back through to the conviction to follow the first course of action. Pendulum attractors are a reflection of significant constraints being imposed on career behavior, either self-limited or overly narrow thinking, or some external pressures, such as family pressure to study medicine combined with an individual interest to pursue psychology. Identifying the action of the pendulum (also known as periodic) attractor is an important first step in understanding the nature of the career indecision (Bright, 2003).
The pendulum attractor can be seen in clients who hold rigid and extreme beliefs. Such thinking is generally a barrier to effective thinking and hence prevents insights and the generation of solutions. Counselors should encourage clients to consider issues from multiple perspectives, and, in so doing, the clients appreciate that the problem is likely not to be reduced to a simple either/or scenario (Amundson, 2003a). Clients in the grip of pendulum thinking will rarely be able to generate win-win scenarios, and furthermore, solutions that present "balance" as the desirable outcome may be aggravating the situation by attempting to stop the pendulum at the lowest point!
Torus Attractor and Career Counseling
The third form of attractor is called the torus attractor. The torus attractor describes behavior that is more complex but that is still ultimately constrained and repeating. A client may perceive that his or her job is well described by this attractor. For instance, an indoor nurseryperson produces plants indoors all year round. He or she follows routines in terms of planting, nurturing, harvesting, and selling the plants. This person may see his or her world as predictable and repetitive; however, he or she is placing artificial constraints on business as a way to beat an inherent unpredictability: weather. Although the nurseryperson has gone to great lengths to minimize unpredictability, it cannot be removed entirely and it takes only a hailstorm to break a greenhouse or a disease to devastate the crop. In the same fashion, many people express feelings of boredom or frustration with what they see as endless routine. In thinking about their work in these constrained terms, however, they may be overlooking possibilities and opportunities for change.
This attractor can be the hardest to identify in clients and the hardest to demonstrate to clients, because the apparent complexity of its action serves to mask its ultimately bounded nature. Consequently, clients may perceive their careers as changing and varied while at the same time feeling empty or stuck in a rut (Covey, 2004). Appeals to creativity, uncertainty, and further change, as implied by chaos theory, may be interpreted as more of the same and, therefore, may be rejected. The challenge here is to identify the routine nature of the career as constructed by the client and highlight how all possibilities within this structure can be ultimately anticipated. As a consequence, the lack of challenge may be exposed and understood. Clients may then need to be challenged about the barriers and constraints that they are placing on initiating phase-shift change in their lives (Amundson, 2003b). At this point, issues of purpose, meaning, contribution, and passion may need to be raised and confronted as the driving forces to motivate personal change by the client.
Strange Attractor and Career Counseling
The strange attractor is the attractor that typically characterizes chaos models. It is also the most complex and counterintuitive. Strange attractors, at one level, seem to have no constraints or rules governing their dynamics. Indeed, it may appear as though there are no patterns or relationships between their elements. In this sense, they are chaotic; however, over time and when considered from the appropriate perspective, a pattern, albeit exceedingly complex, can be discerned. It is characterized as never repeating, but self-similar. The identifiable and psychometrically assessed skills and traits of individuals are examples of such patterns. However, psychologists' limitations in predicting specific behavior at a particular future time from such assessed results may owe as much if not more to the inherent changeability of individuals as to the technical limitations of the measuring instruments.
Change and unpredictability are constants within the strange attractor. Minute changes in initial states can result in profound nonlinear changes in the behavior of the attractor. Furthermore, the strange attractor can reconfigure radically into a different attractor unpredictably and unexpectedly. In counseling terms, understanding a client's strange attractor in all its complexity, stability, and vulnerability will help both counselor and client understand current and past behavior and help prepare the client for his or her future journey. Counselors are increasingly using myths, mind maps, movies, metaphors, pattern identification, and client journaling, along with narrative therapy strategies, to encourage clients to explore the order and disorder of their experiences.
For clients, the goal of counseling is to gain an appreciation of their careers in all of their complexity. By recognizing the inherently unpredictable nature of their careers at the micro level and how this unpredictability can lead to possibilities at the macro level, clients can begin to develop strategies to deal with change and uncertainty at work. Such strategies might be risk-minimization strategies or more positive strategies to embrace and thrive on chance and uncertainty (Pryor & Bright, 2005). Furthermore, clients can be encouraged to consider patterns and themes--and the rich variety of influences upon them--and how small changes to any of these things may lead to profound changes in their careers. Counselors using this approach move away from notions of the ideal or perfect career and consider clients in their entirety and in their context in order to assist them to discover purpose and meaning within their own frame of reference (Covey, 2004).
McKay, Bright, and Pryor (in press) recently compared traditional trait-matching approaches to career counseling with a chaos theory approach. Clients were randomly allocated to traditional, chaotic, and wait-list control groups. Outcome measures were used to assess such variables as satisfaction, self-efficacy, career exploration, and irrational career-related beliefs before, after, and 1 month after the counseling. The chaotic approach was found to be equal to or superior to traditional counseling and the control group on all the measures. We concluded that approaches using chaos theory that emphasize uncertainty, continual change, and adaptation have a legitimate role in career counseling and may be more appropriate and better received than the more traditional, static, matching approaches.
Conclusion
In this article, we have attempted to indicate the potential worth of the Chaos Theory of Careers (Pryor & Bright, 2003a, 2003b), which may represent a significant development in the understanding of career behavior. The theory deals with reality as individuals experience it as richly complex, nonlinear, and serendipitous. We believe this is why when we present chaos theory in presentations or individually in counseling, so many people--professional counselor and client alike--can identify with it. Chaos theory points to some of the neglected realities of career decision making, such as chance, unpredictability, the limits of knowledge at the point of decision making, the limitations of goals, and the nonlinearity of change. The Chaos Theory of Career Development also links career development with some of the most profound thinking in other parts of science (Pryor & Bright, 2004). We suspect that this approach is the only theoretically coherent account of chance, the unplanned, and serendipity in contemporary career development theory. The approach is inherently dynamic in nature and points to the importance of continual change and adaptation in careers, because both the careers of those around us and the world around us change.
References
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COPYRIGHT 2005 National Career Development AssociationCOPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JAX/is_4_53/ai_n14710847/pg_6

2005-11-27T23:48:00.000-08:00

HR urged to use OFR to forward the human capital agenda

A new report from Saratoga, the human capital measurement and benchmarking arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, calls on HR professionals to seize the opportunity provided by changes to
Operating and Financial Review (OFR) requirements. "Despite the fact that human capital costs often amount to more than 40% of the total costs of the company, people have rarely had a prominent
position in a company's annual report and accounts," says Richard Phelps, lead partner at Saratoga. "The OFR is a huge opportunity for HR professionals to put the human capital agenda and its overall
business contribution in front of directors and investors, demonstrating clearly, perhaps for the first time, its critical role in the success of a company's activity,"

Saratoga's HR Guide to the OFR details three categories of human capital measurement which will provide shareholders and others with informative measurement and benchmarking positioning against other
organizations or which can be used to plot internal performance trends:

1. Generic human capital metrics, relevant to all commercial organizations in all sectors and all regions. Examples include: Profit per FTE, Cost per FTE, Remuneration/Revenue, Total Absence Rate and Cost per Hire.

2. Specific sector or sub-sector human capital metrics directly related to a company within its sector or sub-sector, region, and/or against direct competition. These metrics provide a more focused measurement of an organization. For example: in manufacturing it may be costs or productivity; in retail - staff turnover or customer service; in banking - key player capability; in eastern Europe - remuneration levels or value added.

3. Specific metrics related to issues or challenges likely to affect the future sustainability of a company. Saratoga highlights a range of key issues which it considers will affect future investment decisions and will increasingly attract the attention of shareholders. They are: leadership; succession; talent management; innovation; commitment and engagement; and human capital capability.

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers Saratoga's HR guide to the OFR: The Operating and Financial Review. For more information see: http://www.pwc.com/uk

2005-11-27T23:27:00.000-08:00

Ensure a positive candidate experience

If your job applicants receive a rough ride you risk losing out on highly skilled people to competitors, as well as negatively affecting your employer brand. As companies begin to realize that every candidate is also a potential customer, they're taking steps to ensure all job candidates have a positive experience. Patrice Barbedette, executive director and founder of Jobpartners, shares his top five tips:

1. Produce clear, easy-to-find job descriptions. First, make jobs easy to find on your website or that of a third party and provide plenty of information about the job role and the application process. Include an HR section which must be as attractive and clear as possible, with employee testimonials and extensive job descriptions. This will help give candidates an idea of the company culture and what they can expect from the job if they are successful.

2. Respond quickly and efficiently. Too many companies fail to reply promptly to candidates, and some fail to reply at all, which immediately creates a poor perception. The initial response must be followed up and candidates kept informed of next steps throughout the process. Be clear on what's expected next from the candidate or what can be expected from the company.

3. Create a talent pool. If you receive a good application but don't have a suitable job opening, keep it on file so you create a talent pool to refer to in future. Offer talented applicants the opportunity to create a personal profile that can be updated at any point.

4. Ensure management involvement. Effective communication between the recruiting department and managers helps create a streamlined process that's time and cost effective. For example, management
involvement will make sure job descriptions are completely aligned with managers' needs and the right candidates are put forward.

5. Build excellent one-to-one relationships. Make the candidate feel they are unique throughout the recruitment process. When possible, send personalized answers, offer the opportunity to apply
for other relevant jobs and ensure you keep all notes and feedback from everyone involved in the recruitment process. Finally, remember to keep promises made to new employees - the induction
process should also be personalized to ensure that, after all the hard work put into recruitment, the new recruit doesn't walk out the door in the first few weeks.

Source: Strategic HR Review Vol. 4, Issue 5, July/August 2005

2005-11-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

To help make your meetings be more productive:

1. Ask, “Is it necessary?” We always hold the meeting because we have always held the meeting. What would happen if it did not take place? What if we did not meet quite so often? How about if we met once a month instead of every week?

2. Ask the question, “Am I necessary?” Now I do not mean this in the deep philosophical sense, but, rather, “do I get anything out of the meeting?” and “do I contribute anything to the meeting?” If the answers to those two questions are both “no”, try to avoid attending the meeting. Or, perhaps just the first half of the meeting is relevant to you. In this case, see if there is a way to get excused from the second half of the meeting.

3. Prepare an agenda. Just as it is a good practice to prepare a daily “to do list” to help us get focused each day, we ought to have a written agenda for our meeting. Circulate it in advance to those who will be attending. Let them know what is to be discussed. Give them a chance to prepare. Do not hold meetings by “ambush”.

2005-10-23T00:39:00.000-07:00

Save Time

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

In my Time Management seminars, which I have conducted for more than100,000 people from around the globe, I show people how to get more donein less time, with less stress; to help them have more time for thethings they want to do in their work and personal lives.If you can recapture a wasted hour here and there and redirect it to amore productive use, you can make great increases in your dailyproductivity and the quality of your life.Here are five of the many techniques I share in our Time Managementseminars, each one of which will help you to get at least one more hourout of your day for additional productive time.

1. Run an Interruptions Log The average person gets 50 interruptions aday. The average interruption takes five minutes. Some five hours eachday are spent dealing with interruptions. Many are crucial and importantand are what we are paid to do but many have little or no value. Run anInterruptions Log to identify and eliminate the wasteful interruptions.Just use a pad of paper and label it “Interruptions Log” Create sixcolumns: Date, Time, Who, What, Length, Rating. After each interruptionis dealt with, log in the date and time it occurred, who brought it toyou, a word or two about what it related to, the length of time it took,and finally the rating of its importance: A=crucial, B=important,C=little value, and D=no value. Run it for a week or more to get a goodmeasure of what is happening in your life. Then evaluate the results andtake action to eliminate some of the C and D interruptions that havelittle or no value.

2. Delegate It We all have 168 hours each week and when you subtract 56hours for sleep and another 10 hours for personal care, that doesn’tleave a whole lot of time to get done what needs to be done. Delegationpermits you to leverage your time through others and thereby increaseyour own results. The hardest part of delegation though, is simplyletting go. We take great pride in doing things ourselves. “If you wanta job done well, you better do it yourself”. Every night in DailyPlanning, look at all that you have to do and want to do the next dayand with each item ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time?” Ifit is, do it. If it isn’t, try to arrange a way to delegate it tosomeone else. There is a lot of difference between “I do it” and “Itgets done”.

3. Manage Meetings A meeting is when two or more people get together toexchange common information. What could be simpler? Yet, it can one ofthe biggest time wasters we must endure. Before a meeting ask, “Is itnecessary?” and “Am I necessary?” If the answers to either are “no”,consider not having the meeting or excusing yourself from attending.Then prepare a written agenda for the meeting with times assigned foreach item along with a starting time and ending time. Circulate thewritten agenda among those who will be attending. There is no sense inholding a meeting by ambush. Let people know in advance what is to bediscussed.

4. Handle Paper It’s easy to get buried today in the blizzard ofpaperwork around us. The average person receives around 150communications each day via email, telephone, hard mail, memos,circulars, faxes, etc. A lot of time is wasted going through the samepile of paper day after day and correcting mistakes when things slipthrough the cracks. Try to handle the paper once and be done with it. Ifit is something that can be done in a minute or two, do it and be done.If it is not the best use of your time, delegate it. If it is going totake some time to complete, schedule ahead in your day calendar on theday you think you might get to it and then put it away.

5. Run a Time Log If you want to manage it, you have to measure it. ATime Log is a simple yet powerful tool to create a photo album sort ofoverview of how your time is actually being spent during the day. Simplymake an ongoing record of your time as you spend it. Record theactivity, the time spent on it, and then the rating using A, B, C, and Das described in #1 above. Some examples of how your time might be spent:Made telephone calls, 35 minutes, A; Answered emails, 48 minutes, B;Attended staff meeting, 55 minutes, C. Run this for a few days to get agood picture of how your time is being spent. Then analyze theinformation. Add up all the A, B, C, and D time. Most discover a lot oftheir time is being spent on C and D items that have little or no value.Finally, take action steps to reduce the C and D items to give you moretime for the really important things in your life.

2005-10-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

VACATION LOST?

31% of working Americans do not use all their vacation time that theyhave earned. On average three out of twelve vacation days go unused.What an unproductive waste.Taking vacation time is good time management. It gets your batteries andattitude charged up for greater productivity.Don’t waste earned vacation time. It’s poor time management. Spend it.You deserve it.

2005-10-22T02:37:00.000-07:00

5 BEST TIME MANAGEMENT HABITS EXECUTIVES SHOULD PRACTICE

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

For the last eighteen years, I have traveled all around sharing my Time Management and Personal Productivity principles in seminars, keynotes, and through executive coaching. There are dozens of things we all ought to do to enhance our daily success and I have included what I think are five of the more important habits. I find that most people know what it is they should be doing. A reminder list such as this may help us to better accomplish those good intentions.

1. USE THE 20/80 RULE. 20% of an effort generally accomplishes 80% of the result. To achieve an additional 20% of the result, it will take an additional 80% of the effort. We cannot create any more time, but we can leverage our time by focusing on those things that give us “the biggest bang for the buck”. Avoid getting bogged down in “majoring in minors”. Direct your attention to 20% of your customers/clients who will give you 80% of your success. Give special attention to that group of 20% of the people you deal with who have the potential for delivering 80% of what you need.

2. NETWORK YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS. Identify and target those who you need
to get to know. This is not an exploitive technique of “bleeding them for all they are worth”. In fact, it works just the opposite. Help these people with what they need first. “To have a friend, be a friend.” “What goes around, comes around”. If you give generously to them first, they will give to you what you need and want.

3. GET A GOPHER. We all have 10-20 hours per week of minutia, like getting the car gassed up, running errands, mowing the lawn, etc. It’s all stuff that makes our lives work. There’s nothing wrong with doing it ourselves, but if you are saying, “I don’t have enough time to do the things that really count”, and you are spending 10-20 hours per week on the routine items, you have a choice. Hire a high school or college kid, a “Gopher”, who will “go for this and go for that”, then re-allocate
those hours to tasks that will enhance your career success.

4. WORK WITH A CLEAN WORK ENVIRONMENT. “Out of sight, out of mind.” The reverse of that is true, too, “When it’s in sight, it’s in mind” and we cannot help but be distracted and drawn to the “quick” and “fun” things while the important career enhancing tasks are left undone. By working with a clean desk and work environment, not only do you allow yourself to be more focused, but you also model an important work skill that others around you will tend to follow, helping them to get more focused.

5. RADIATE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE. “Fish rots from the head on down.” If you display a negative attitude, if you are angry, frustrated, anxious, overwhelmed, etc., you will send out that message and negatively infect those around you. If those who support you in your quest for career success do not have a positive attitude, your progress will be impeded.

2005-10-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

STRESSED OR DESSERTS?

Stress is caused when your reality falls short of your expectations.

You expect to get that project done but you don’t. You expect to wash your car this weekend, but you don’t. You expect to clean up your desk but you don’t.

If you only had a few failed expectations each day, life would be almost stress free. However, the average person has dozens, and in some cases, hundreds of failed expectations every day and so their stress level soars.

With daily planning, you can add these undone items to your To Do list and increase the likelihood that you will get them done, thereby lowering your stress and giving you your just desserts. Desserts are what you get when you turn stressed around (and spell it backwards!).

2005-10-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

The most offbeat Time Management tips for you to get twice as much done. I know you’ll get a chuckle or two from them.

• Don’t buy an address book and fill it out. Instead, get a copy of the white pages from your local telephone company and cross out the names you don’t need.
• Support cloning.
• Watch the television program “60 Minutes” in half an hour.
• Always use twice as much grass seed as the directions call for and
grow twice the grass.
• Use a large scrub brush to brush your teeth.
• Shower for twice as much time on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and
you can skip Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
• Catch two colds at a time and take only half the sick days.
• Go to bed dressed, ready to start your next day.
• Keep one eye closed during the day and you’ll only have to sleep half as much time.
• Have twins.
• Ski downhill twice as fast as you are used to and get it over with in half the time.
• Buy Double-Mint gum.
• Only go out on a double date.
• Listen to your politicians and learn how to be better at double talk.
• At the beach, roll across the sand and tan your front and back at the same time.
• When angry, slam the door twice so you won’t have to do it the next time you get angry.
• Only look at every other word and read twice as fast.
• I know cookies should be baked at 350 degrees, but try cooking them at
700 degrees in half the time.
• Pack twice as much as you need when traveling.
• Play your CD’s and DVD’s in the Fast Forward mode.
• Eat your dessert while eating your main course.
• When writing, always use both hands at the same time.
• Have a double set of speakers for your sound system and you will listen to twice as much.
• On rainy days, leave the umbrella home and then you can skip your shower the next day.
• If you are a golfer, hit two balls at the same time.
• When you make a big mistake, be sure to have two excuses why you goofed, to get you out of trouble twice as fast.
• At a birthday party, leave off singing the second half of the “Happy Birthday” song.
• Fish with two poles.
• Cut off half the buttons on your shirts and blouses and you will be able to button what’s left in half the time.
• Bet on the Daily Double.
• Dig a hole with two shovels.
• Use two bars of soap when you wash and get it done in half the time.
• Always wear a sweater so you don’t have to spend time looking for one when you really need one.
• Tip 30% rather than 15% at the restaurant and enjoy twice the service.