Be strategic about your time

(Source: Rita McGrath, Harvard Business School http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/mcgrath/2008/05/be-strategic-about-your-time.html)

In the frantic buzz of most managerial lives, I see people running from meeting to meeting, consulting their BlackBerrys as though in prayer, desperately working into the night to cope with a deluge of emails and otherwise being busy, busy, busy. The dilemma of all this activity, however, is that it is for the most part what academics long ago termed "non value-added time."

Years ago, former Harvard Business School professors Steven Wheelwright and Kim Clark (who also served as Dean) documented a catastrophic decline in the amount of value-added time people bring to work once they are assigned to more than two projects. By the time the respondents in their study reported that they were working on 7 projects, their productive time at work dropped to about 15% (See attached chart). Ironically, the more "stuff" one takes on, the less one seems to accomplish.

So what can you do to get more value-added productivity into your days? A few suggestions:

Develop a set of screens or scorecards that can help you systematically winnow the attractive opportunities from the less attractive.  Follow eight simple rules:

• Ask what needs to be done.

• Ask what’s right for the enterprise.

• Develop action plans.

• Take responsibility for decisions.

• Take responsibility for communicating.

• Focus on opportunities, not problems.

• Run productive meetings.

• Think and say “We,” not “I.”

 

I've got one that I use for considering new clients, and it helps to set priorities clearly.

• Try to bring old projects to some kind of closure before new ones get on the list.
• Make sure to book some time with yourself for those strategic, but non-urgent tasks (like thinking, or writing) that tend to get crowded out by urgent demands. I have one client who has a mythical person named "Joe" - meetings with Joe are for thinking, and it's understood that they are not to be interrupted.
• Check email only twice a day (promise- it won't kill you!)
• Try to make the consequences of your tradeoffs clear to those (like a boss or colleague) who may be creating excess work for you.
• Match your strategic priorities with how you spend your time - and question activities that don't drive those priorities.

• And finally, do question the value of every activity - if it simply didn't get done, what would happen?

Recession, Jobs and Chindia!

People say that there are rays of hope in China and India-the developing nations. What people fail to understand is that speed at which clouds of economic gloom and despair have gathered over China and India has been startling. Until quite recently these two countries were thought to be insulated from the contagion afflicting the developed nations. On the contrary these nations are already beginning to see the pain. China whose GDP was growing at 9.5% over the last decade mainly due to the growth exports to US, suddenly finds no takers in its major end market. While the Chinese government is trying to increase the local spending, it could no where compensate for the US loss. 

Even if  China grows at the rate of 7.5% this year, the impact 2.5% reduction in Chinese GDP would create is huge – millions of job losses. This inturn would slowdown the Chinese GDP further. IMF predicts that if GDP of China slows down to 7%, then the world would take longer time to recover. Couple this with the second major market India. The impact is likely to get worse. Thus, in the best interests of everyone, it is essential to bring back China and India to normal rates soon.

Most of my friends in B-Schools would agree with me on this – this is the worst year to pass out of school, especially with a MBA. The world’s largest economy, US and the immediate next, Europe have already gone into recession. Jobs are hard to come by. Infact there are no jobs. Students who came with the big American and European dreams are finding their dreams shattering like a card house. Looks like the Obama promise of 3million green jobs could nowhere instill the required faith and confidence. The only advice would be to keep the fingers crossed and hope for a change in the mind of the US consumers. Let them consume more. After all  only if US consumes, the rest of the world will survive. :)

God..GOOGLE and Satan!

“Everyone loves Google.” So began a 2001 Wired profile of the company and its “resolutely un-commercial” path to success.

Everyone loves Google. Sounds like so much hyperbole now, but at the time it was essentially a truism.

Eight years later, that’s no longer really the case. Today, Google seems a distorted reflection of the ideals that made it so beloved. Google’s enormous success and relentless pursuit of new markets have inspired some to take an evil-empire view of the company. And Google (GOOG), by virtue of its protean business model and the arrogant righteousness with which it executes on it, perpetuates that view–although the company likely considers those who hold it to be Luddites.

Sure, everyone loved Google in 2001. But in 2008 they fear it. The Google of 2001 was a fascinating corporate anomaly, a company known for its colorful campus, lunar exploration grants and a cafeteria so good it was profiled in Food & Wine. The Google of 2008 is a different beast entirely. It’s a company accused of privacy violations in the states and abroad. It’s a company whose fast-broadening reach has given it unchecked power. And, it’s a company that last month came within three hours of a Department of Justice antitrust suit.

No wonder it’s fallen off the TRUSTe/Ponemon Institute’s list of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States.

And it’s quite a tumble Google’s taken. The company ranked 10th in the Ponemon opinion surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007. This year it didn’t even merit a ranking. Quite a blow for a company for whom user trust is critical. But then consumer perception is a fickle animal, as Google founder Sergey Brin once noted. 

“Some say Google is God,” Brin said back in 2003. “Others say Google is Satan.”

Seems the latter camp’s picked up quite a few new members in the ensuing years….

Source: John Paczkowski in Digital Daily