To understand how and why we experience information overload we need to recognize that the main reason we collect information is to influence ourselves and others. Not entirely unrelated is the fact that one of the most important factors in attaining happiness is having influence over others. Without it we lose our raison d’être. This is also essentially…
Email is the leading cause of preventable productivity loss in organizations today. Forbes Magazine (2008) Employees spend 1 to 3 or more hours per day managing email at 40-60% of capacity. That means they typically lose 30-60 minutes PER DAY. Not some. All — even the ones who believe they are extremely productive. That means…
It all started with a client. To begin with, his IT manager had told him that 92% of his incoming email was spam and was filtered out before it ever reached his inbox. So my client never saw more than ninety percent of his incoming volume. What my client found even more astonishing was that…
We enter into collaborations assuming we’ll succeed as teamwork partners. Yet we rarely achieve true partnership: Because we listen uniquely and through biased filters we sometimes mistakenly presume intent or misconstrue what’s been said and agreed upon. Problem: Flawed assumptions, wasted time and relationship capital, and restricted scope. There is often not enough diversity to…
How often do your on-line meetings start on time? Not often enough, I’ll bet. Funny, there’s no traffic to fight, no coffee to get, no coats to hang, and still, very few people are able to manage getting to on on-line meeting prepared and on time. Let’s be clear: this is not an IT problem;…
One of your prime objectives as a sales director is to get your teams out of their inbox and in front of the customer as much as possible. I’m not knocking the importance of email, I’m just saying that you probably see a huge benefit to having your teams managing their inboxes at twice their…
As business folk, we hold meetings regularly. Yet often we don’t accomplish what we set out to achieve. Why? The Purpose Meetings are held to accomplish a specific, beneficial outcome requiring the attendance of the right people with the right agenda. The Problem/Pain Often we end up with miscommunication, wasted time, incomplete outcomes, misunderstanding, lack…
I’ve seen Hector (not his real name) wheeling his cart around Barcelona a few times. It’s massive. It must be extremely difficult to maneuver. One day I went up to him asked him if he really needed all of those things. He actually articulated an impressive defense. Does that remind you of anyone you know?…
I have this weird habit, one might think. Before I click send on a mail that contains a document that I have attached, I open the document and check it one last time. Even if I have already gone through the document, or have just created it, I open it once it is attached to…
You land a meeting with a prospect that you’ve been researching for quite some time. Then you make the same mistake that most sales people make: you book an hour-long meeting at her office. What’s wrong with that? Plenty. The chances of converting that meeting into a sale are quite slim at this point. So…