As we start creeping to the close of the year, pressure ramps up to “Get it done!”. There may not seem to be enough hours in the day, or even the rest of the year, to get EVERY. THING. DONE!

Today’s post gets you thinking about a number of “year-end productivity hacks” which bring us back to some of the tried and true prioritization tools:

#1 – Understanding your Pareto Ratio – The 80/20 rule asserts that we get 80% of our results from 20% of our efforts. While it may not be truly 80% it can be very useful to think about the areas that provide the most impact in your work, and the results you are aiming towards.
It can be very useful to understand where we get our impact, particularly at crunch time, so that we know what to say yes to, and what we want to say no to.
 
#2 – Going back to Covey’s Urgent/Important Framework – I have written about how a five day training around Steven Covey’s work as a younger manager more than 15 years ago, still influences my thinking about time management. If you haven’t read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, do it now! With the volume of distractions at a peak (from social media, to tech, to diffuse focus):

• What’s really important to be focusing on now?
• What’s important in the mid-term so that you are setting yourself up for success in the new year?
• What are distractions and time wasters?
  

#3 – What can you delegate and defer?
Delegation continues to be a stretch area for most professionals today. Many times we feel we can’t delegate or we have no one to delegate to? What are the tasks that only you can do? What are the tasks that could be chunked down/broken down, so others might be able to complete?
For more on delegation – check out this LinkedIn article “Your Key To Success: Effective Delegation” I wrote on delegation.

#4 – What is absolutely essential?
Sometimes we really need to get ruthless with  our time, asking “what’s absolutely essential?”. As we get into crunch time, what are the things we need to move to the finish line this year, no matter what? What are the elements that can carry over? What elements need to be put on hold?
 
For more on these prioritization tools, take a look at what I wrote in Teams365 #951 on prioritization.

As we step into the end of the year, scheduling key activities for your team is important before the year comes to a close. Some of the key activities you may want to include for your team are:
A review session of accomplishments, lessons learned, based on what worked well, and didn’t work well.
Planning sessions for 2019, with an annual and quarterly focus. Is every team member clear on what key priorities are? What key activities need to be accomplished? By when? What’s expected of them? How their work links with others on the team?
Celebration sessions to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished during the year.
One-on-one time with each team member supporting them in some review of the year and visioning and planning for the year ahead.

Be sure to check out these other Teams365 posts regarding year end activities:
Year-end reflection and planning questions.

You may also want to check out the 10 Year End Activities Video I created last year. View it HERE.

As well as the 4 Best Practices for Year End Retreats.
​
Best, 
Jennifer

Welcome to the month of November where our focus turns to more topics around teamwork and leadership. This month we’ll be looking at:

• Planning for Key Activities for Your Team at Year End
• Five things to make sure you get in the calendar now for 2019
• Skill Development for 2019 for you as a leader and your team
• Five key elements for virtual and remote team members
• Prepping for Year End Events

Later this month we’ll start to revisit some of the Top 10's for the year – ranging from key books, to focus areas for teams, to needs for virtual teams.

For now, it’s Thursday, and let’s get to our 208th Team Building Tip. Today’s question is:

From the 30,000 foot view, what’s important?
 
Consider what’s important for you as a team from the macro-level. As you look out from this vantage point you may want to consider:

• What’s REALLY working?
• How do key items (successes, failures, opportunities, initiatives) fit together?
• What are the things we need to be aware of?
• What lies ahead on the horizon?

In today’s business context it is very easy to get pulled into the minutia and really be in the weeds. With the business context of volatility, and change, being able to get up out of the weeds can be really important.
What do you notice as you move to the 30,000 foot view?

Best,
​Jennifer

​It’s the final day of October and time to take stock of the month that was.
Take note of these questions:

• As you reflect on October, what have been your successes and accomplishments?
• As you reflect on the last quarter, what have been your successes and accomplishments?
• What are you most proud of?
• What successes this month do you want to duplicate?
• What top 3 learning have you head that you want to carry forward?
• What key relationships have helped you so far this year? Which ones need more attention?
• What has helped your successes?
• What has hindered or gotten in the way?
• What does your team need to be acknowledged for?
  
  As you look to November, consider these questions:
• What are your key priorities for November?
• What are the key goals?
• What are the major priorities?
• What will you need to place attention on?
• What changes do you want to make in November or this quarter?
• What habits do you want to leverage?
• When will you check in to explore your progress, and make changes?
• What resources do you want to tap into?
• Who can help you be successful this month?

Enjoy your reflections,
Jennifer

This week’s Journaling prompt gets you to reflect and write on the statement of “I am most looking forward to…”

Building in time each week to reflect ad write in an unstructured way helps to focus, clarify and sometimes even ease the mind.
​
The Huffington Post published an article last year by Thai Nguyen entitled “Ten surprising benefits you’ll get from keeping a journal” highlighting some of the benefits of journaling ranging from support to goals, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and others such as. Read the article here.

What do you see as the benefits from writing a journal?

For more than a decade as I lived and worked throughout Central and South America, working for the UN and several grassroots development organizations, I kept a regular daily journal. Journaling has always been an amazing tool for me to:

• Capture ideas and events
• Clarify thoughts and explore options
• Identify themes in my work and life I may not have connected before
• Help to identify and focus on priorities

If you have missed any of the past Saturday journaling prompts, view them here. 
 
Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

It’s hard to believe that another month has gone by. Here we are at the end of September and it’s time to do our monthly stock taking and reflection.
If you do track your monthly goals and metrics, today is the day to do this!
Take note of these questions:

• As you reflect on September, what have been your successes and accomplishments?
• As you reflect on the last quarter, what have been your successes and accomplishments?
• What are you most proud of?
• What successes this month do you want to duplicate?
• What top 3 learning have you head that you want to carry forward?
• What key relationships have helped you so far this year? Which ones need more attention?
• What has helped your successes?
• What has hindered or gotten in the way?
• What does your team need to be acknowledged for?
  
  As you look to October, consider these questions:
• What are your key priorities for October?
• What are the key goals?
• What are the major priorities?
• What will you need to place attention on?
• What changes do you want to make in October or this quarter?
• What habits do you want to leverage?
• When will you check in to explore your progress, and make changes?
• What resources do you want to tap into?
• Who can help you be successful this month?

This month also is the start to a new quarter. Grab a few more minutes to think about, and NOTE (yes – write it down).

1. What are your top 5 priorities for this quarter?
2. What will “wild success” look like at the end of the quarter in each of these priority areas?
3. What, and who, do you need to complete these priority areas?
4. What do you need to say NO to, in order to focus on the priorities?
5. What else is important to note about this quarter?

If you have a copy of the Coaching Biz Builder Workbook and Planner it’s time to complete a new quarterly planning section. Join me for a quarterly planning hack!

Enjoy your reflection!

Coming up – October and a focus on Teamwork Skills.

Best,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

Teams like to have fun! When the word team building comes to mind, Fun is often the first thing that does emerge. What are you doing to have fun on your team? Spending time together to get to know each other in a social context can be invaluable in creating stronger bonds. AND, it should be supported by a focus on what needs to get done as well.
Here are a couple of ideas on different team building processes:
 
 
Getting creative thinking happening:
Tool #8 - Word Grams – Creative Thinking
Word Grams were a popular approach in 1990s training, and a great energizer for training of all kinds. Research some word grams online and use them to warm up the space for creative thinking in your next team meeting. Here are some examples:
 
 
Creative Thinking is important today given the complexities that exist, the need to think “outside of the box” and the need for innovation.
 
Tool #9 – Working Around Decisions
Team members and leaders face decisions every day.
A 2015 article indicates that we make 35,000 decisions a day, including 227 on food alone. Read it here.
Helping team members make better decisions is critical for team alignment and success.
Across the span of a day, we may be making decisions around resourcing, priorities, relationships, and what gets our attention.
What are the tools and processes you want to build skills in with your team? Consider the Decision Matrix. Steven Covey’s Urgent/Important matrix is probably one of the most familiar, and popular ones that exist. There are many others so do some research around tools you can bring in to  help team members make better decisions.
Check out this article from Concordia University on the 7 Steps of the Decision Making Process, which also includes a focus on some of the challenges we can have with decision making. Read it here.
 
What is important for your team to take action on right now? Let us know using the comments below.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

This week’s weekly journaling prompt gets you to consider the question “What’s your secret sauce?”. What’s the one thing that sets your apart – as a leader? A team?

If you are just joining us for these weekly journaling prompts, check out the others here.

My intention in sharing these weekly journaling prompts is to provide you with a space to pause and reflect on what’s going on.

In my decade plus of work as a global professional as a leader with the United Nations and other international aid organizations I kept a journal religiously. While they are tucked away in a safe place, I look forward to going back and re-reading these as a later date. They not only will serve as an important memoir for me, but at the time, writing was a wonderful way to capture what was going on, connect the dots of my work and life, make sense of the experiences I was having (commonly referred to as “sense-making today”, clarify priorities and also have an outlet.

If journaling is not something you have considered before, here are two articles which point to why journaling can be important:

Nancy J. Adler’s Harvard Business Review Article – Want to Be an Outstanding Leader: Keep a Journal.
LifeHack’s article “Journal Writing: Five Smart Reasons Why You Should Start Doing it Today”.

Have a great weekend!
Jennifer

As some readers may know, earlier this month I released a workbook and planner called the Coaching Business Builder: Workbook and Planner. Part planner, part self-guided reflection journey, it’s geared to support coaches in exploring their own unique ecosystem, potentials and plans for their business. Plans are in the works for additional editions down the road for remote professionals and leaders.

In the workbook section, I touch on a variety of productivity tools, or hacks, to consider. These are things that I have seen transform the work of business owners and leaders I have both coached, and worked with over the years. As we gear up for back to work next week, I thought it would be useful to share with you four productivity hacks and frameworks I think might be useful for you. These include:
 
1. Schedule in time for your regular planning. Whether it’s daytime or night, the act of scheduling time to identify, note and focus on your own tasks which are upcoming can save a lot of time. An old project management adage has said that for every 10 minutes of planning you save 60 minutes  of unfocused effort.  Think about how having a list every day can help you navigate the changing waters of tasks and priorities, as they shift.When do you want to schedule in planning? Daily planning? Medium term planning? Long term planning?

2. Consider what time of day works well. One of the key learnings which still stands out for me almost 30 years after being an undergrad science student at McGill University, is the importance of our circadian rhythms. Research continues to show how we each have a different internal clock, helping, and hindering us to get things done at different times of the day. This concept has been revisited and revived recently with books such as Daniel Pink’s When, where he explores the concepts of larks and owls.
When are you are your peak (morning/night/another time)? What can you do to tweak your schedule to leverage those windows?

3. Build  in pockets to get things done without interruptions. Interruptions are everywhere in today’s working world – from the bings of emails, to phone calls, to people dropping in. Research by Gloria Marks and her team have discovered how every interruption has an extended impact. She has found that after an interruption it can take upwards of 25 minutes to get back on task. 23 minutes and 15 minutes to be exact.  Look at her research here. What can you be doing to build in pocket to get things done? Minimize interruptions?
Check out this article from Inc entitled “Six Tips to Maximize Productivity on Remote Working Days” from Inc here.

4. Finally, consider what the priorities are – yours, your bosses and/or your teams. Schedule in time for this in your calendar and get it done! Covey’s Urgent/Important Matrix constitutes to be a valuable framework to help us all take into account what is truly important and urgent. Check out a past blog post I have done on this here. What would you like to focus on this fall? Which one area would make the biggest impact on your work?

Enjoy,
Jennifer

PS – Looking for some time to plan? Consider joining me this Friday for the month end reflection and new month planning session I am going to host as one of my monthly Virtual Hacks. This is a 60 minute virtual planning session I host on zoom, using many of the templates I have created for the Coaching Business Builder. If you don’t have a copy of the book, pick up one. I also provide group members with digital copies of the relevant tools from the book. This one-hour session, and materials, costs $39 US
Click here to register and reserve your spot.

Last week I hosted a gearing up for fall planning hack, during which time I led the group through a series of real-time planning activities over the course of a 45 minute window. With the launch of my latest resource the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner, I’ll be hosting more of these real-time virtual planning sessions for coaches and other planners. (On a side note, I’ll be releasing another edition of the Workbook and Planner later this year/early 2019 for Remote professionals and Leaders). I hope you may join me for one of the many upcoming virtual planning sessions.
For today’s post I thought it would be fitting to provide you with some planning prompts to think about the fall and all that you want to create. Here are some questions to guide you:

• As you look to fall, what is the environment you want to create in your work?
• What are the core goals and priorities?
• As you look to you main goals for fall,, how do they fit together?
• How do they interlink with others work?
• What do you need in order to be successful with these goals?
• Who can help you?
• What’s going to help you further grow as a professional?
• What stretch opportunities do you have to expand your thinking, and skills?
• What projects will help you grow?
• What collaborative conversations do you want to foster this fall? (Consider peer groups, mentors, time with your boss and team, other…)

I read an interesting article recently from the MIT Sloan Review by Linda Gratton on the Challenge of Scaling Soft Skills You can read it here. In it she mentions four skills which will be important for professionals of all kinds as the workplace continues to change - empathy, context sensing, collaboration, and creative thinking. What are you doing to enhance and grow in these areas?
Throughout my career, and in the work that I continue to do, I work regularly in support of fostering skills in empathy, collaboration and creative thinking. These will be needed by team members of all kinds. Some of the skills we learn in training, but many we learn by doing. What can you do to foster opportunities for team members to grow and expand in these areas?

Enjoy your Tuesday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326