Is it time to throw out technology and revert to pen and paper to re-discover your productivity?

In this article I’m going to discuss two newish forms of journaling method — bullet journaling and interstitial journaling—that might just change your life but, before I do, a bit of a back story! 

I’m as guilty as anyone for rolling out of bed in the morning to grab my smartphone before reaching my toothbrush, and I’m a self-confessed tech geek with all of the toys of modern day digital living. I also have an interest in software companies and start-ups that are technology through and through. So you might be a little surprised to hear this weekend I bought a complete pack of new A6 dotted notepads. Crazy right?

Maybe, maybe not.

If, like me, you live a hectic multi-tasking life, and there’s never enough time in the day, then (again, like me) you’ve probably revisited the challenge of managing your time. You may have tried out a few alternatives to see what works best for you.

My role has brought me extremely close to the subject of office productivity. So when ‘new approaches’ or ‘new tools’ emerge through social business channels, I will always force myself to consider them. 

Like many of my generation, I started life with a trusty Filofax. Then, in the spirit of geek-ism, I moved on to standard office calendaring and task list apps. When social messaging apps like Google Wave and Yammer emerged, I tried them too. And in recent years, I’ve moved on to tools like Google Keep, Microsoft OneNote, Evernote and Trello.

My progress so far? To be honest, I wouldn’t say any of the tech solutions have worked for me personally. I find myself losing time switching even more between apps and my time being stolen to keyboard data entry. While these new tech tools haven’t been good for me, they have been good for my colleagues! At least now we can share diaries and tasks.. And they know normally where I am and what I’m doing.

But that perfect approach to managing my day has still evaded me and I always have that frustration of not knowing what I did two weeks, maybe even three days ago — other than what my calendar tells me.

I was therefore intrigued when I ran across two articles in quick succession talking about the rewards of low-tech ‘pen and paper’ approaches to the age-old issue of managing your own time.

And just a brief step-back on why it matters…

There is a great video of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet running around the wibbly-wobbly-web where Bill explains how surprised he was to find WB keeps all of his meetings in a pocket diary… And how few of them he booked! I imagine, in contrast, Bill was looking at an Office365 calendar, full to the brim, scratching his head! The fact is that YOUR Time is the most precious resource you have when you’re running a business. You need to treat it as the scarce resource it is. When researchers look into the common attributes of successful entrepreneurs, pretty much the only thing they can agree on is they possess remarkable focus and prioritize their time extremely well. And that’s why I found myself in a Stationers at the weekend, purchasing some notepads.

The two systems I’m trying are both approaches that contribute to managing your time in an efficient way by keeping track of what you have to do, what you’re doing, and what you’ve done. Given the focus of the activity is to manage a journal of how you plan your time, are spending your time.. and have spent your time, these methods commit as much time on recording history as they do planning your future.

Bullet journaling is the first method I came across. As the term suggests, it’s about maintaining very brief notation around your activities. The developers of this method have come up with a simple visual way of managing tasks, events, and notes.

Interstitial journaling is the other method I’ve encountered. It’s an approach that recognizes that humans are not good at multi-tasking and the best way to manage multi-tasking is to manage the transition from one task to the next by writing a simple statement of what you’ve just done, and what you plan to do next. The argument is that it helps to declutter your mind of one task before you jump into the next.

Do these systems work? Well, for me It’s early days but so far the experiment seems to be going quite well. I definitely find myself spending less time switching between tasks, and I do ‘feel’ more organized-but, with my terrible writing, well just have to see how long it lasts! 

Here are links to articles on both subjects:

Bullet-Journaling

Interstitial Journaling

Have you encountered these new methods? If so, I’d love to know how you’re getting on, and whether it’s changed your time management performance.

Ian

19 Years of being an Entrepreneur... What have a learned?

I started my first sole trader company, Newleaf-Dialogue in 2000 having left corporate life. That’s me on the left at the tender age of thirty-ish. Here I am in 2019 (on the right) looking somewhat older. I look back at that picture of a fresh-faced young businessman and wonder how anyone ever entrusted me with their projects!

I’ve had a few successes, some near misses, a few bits of bad advice, some good — and a few disappointments along the way. I’ve also made lots of lifelong friends. Sure, I’ve also been able to earn a pretty decent crust and my kids have grown up along the way — but what have I learned?

There are a lot of bits I’ve picked up I could include in that list; knowing where you’re headed, staying focused on winning customers, not getting distracted by the minutiae of business administration, never loosening your grip on the purse-strings, forgive yourself the mistakes and learning lessons, always enjoy it… but I’ve settled on three takeaways that really have been painfully learned.

I guess my first takeaway from those nineteen years is around what I’ve learned about myself along the way. There have been a few times when ‘I thought I was ready’ to jump up another gear in what I was doing, only to realize — maybe a decade later — that I wasn’t ready. When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re always learning.

The fact of the matter is, you’re never ready to run a business.

There are always new things to learn. Every twist and turn of a business, just like parenting, is about learning on the job. Having the humility to know that you’re not the ‘finished package’ blended with the self-confidence to believe you’re capable of stepping up to the challenge is the vital recipe for survival.

My second takeaway is along the lines of getting the balance right of trusting your own judgment and relying on others. On this score, I don’t think I’ve always got it right and I’m still learning. Sometimes, you have to call on others to balance the skills mix you need to run a business. Other times though, you have to trust your instincts and lead your business. It’s YOUR business after-all!

My third and ultimate takeaway sounds so embarrassingly simple that you’d think it obvious. Never forget why you do it. Entrepreneurs are the wealth creators of the world. They’re the people that give others the inspiration to try something themselves. They’re the spark that set passions alight in others to discover their own gifts. They’re the people that lead great teams and give everyone a buzz and desire to be a part of something. And they’re the people that deliver. I wake up every morning with oodles of activation energy and bounce around the office because I love what I do, and after nineteen years doing it, I can’t remember what it felt like not to be thinking about my next business project with a grin.

Has that experience made me a better businessman; a better supplier to serve my customers? Were you to judge any response to that answer as a customer, I suspect the answer is no. Why not? Because I’ve always committed 120% to make sure I deliver on my promises to customers and ensure they get what they paid for.

Whether it’s your first day on the job or last morning before retirement, I’d say every entrepreneur must do that well.

Ian Tomlin is CEO of the conversational marketing company, Newton Day.

Do you think enough about how you think?

(Thought for the day... And possibly week)

 

Do you think enough about how you think?  I know that sounds slightly ridiculous but it's quite important. 

 

There's a lot going around the blogosphere about how and why humans need to rediscover being human.  This is because, as a race, we've now created our own competition in the form of artificial intelligence (clever humans).  Listen to experts like the recently passed Stephen Hawkins and the real-world manifestation of Ironman that is Elon Musk and you would be encouraged to believe we've finally invented something that can erase us from the planet.  Perhaps, perhaps not, but robots and AI definitely have the potential to break the economic rule that says growth in the productivity of economies leads to increased wages and therefore more spending power to drive consumer spending.

 

The other thing we know robots can definitely do better than humans are repeatable, tedious tasks; you know, like the hundred  or so ones that people do in the office, like populating forms, crunching data in spreadsheets, producing legal papers and writing articles like this one.  Funny thing is, you don't actually know whether it was me who wrote this article or whether I had Encanvas produce it.

 

And while all of this automation and computing is going on, Otto Sharmer and 'guru's like him are tearing up the conferencing circuit waking executives up to  the fact that they don't habitually take in those sparkly fresh ideas with an open mind.... Nope.  Most of us are way too quick to 'download' new thinking only to put it into a familiar box. Sharmer argues that those businesses in need of transformation require someone at the helm that does something more than just drop new ideas into old boxes.  Afterall, the boys and girls in the fresh fruit markets can sort oranges and apples into the most appropriate box!  You're not exactly leadership material nowadays if that's all you know. 

 

As a consultant I'm often speaking to clients about single loop and double loop learning - what the remarkable knowledge management 'guru' Dr. Martin Vasey described as the difference between 'doing things better' and doing better things'.  With double-loop learning you really do need humans that bounce ideas around the room (or stick them to walls with PostIt Notes) and are prepared to look beyond how processes work.  There was a time for LEAN - when most manufacturing firms really were shoody at repeatedly making products of a high quality.  It's now past.  If you can't make a decent produce at a market ready price, you're either dead or dying.  That's not a watering hole you want to stick around for too long!  Yep, douple-loop learning is where it's at, and to do that you need people that think differently. 

 

Naturally, when for decades society has tried really hard to drive the creative types and people with Asbergers (who really do think differently) to the very back of the class, pasting stickers on the back of their shirts like "Here sits an idiot that doesn't follow rules", suddenly these weird - rare kids- have become the nerdy saviour of man-kind.  And it's not because they've suddenly learnt how to think linial.  No, it's because he or she is a creative thinker that's always comfortable to take risks, question the norms, strive for perfection, because they've never fitted in and so it doesn't feel any different.

 

So how do you think?

 

There's actually a name for it... you know, the act of thinking about thinking.  It's called metacognition (yup, you can genuinely learn something new everyday).

 

'Course, Albert Einstein has been misquoted about a million times for saying something like, 'We can not solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.'  And he's right.

It's a really useful skill to be able to apply different kinds of thinking, new patterns and shapes to the way we absorb information and rationalise it.  Bear in mind, I'm not saying I can do it.

 

I describe myself as a curvy thinker.  I know a lot of straight line thinkers (and boy gosh, they're useful when you need to map a process or step through a problem one step at a time!).  but they're less useful when you need off-the-wall thoughts (nice lyric, Michael Jackson).  Most people are too constrained by their environment and their education to do anything else but linial thinking.  Businesses need all sorts of thinkers - but in a world of transformation and AI robots, it's the creative thinking of humans that sets us apart.  Robots are GREAT linial thinkers. 

 

Having the ability to adapt how we think, to NOT think in a linial way, could be the main reason why humans retain a role in the workplace.

 

So grab your mouse and click on metacognition and see where it takes you. A new idea perhaps?

 

Ian

 

 

 

  

What is Robotic Process Automation?

http://www.slideshare.net/ictomlin/what-is-robotic-process-automation-rpa

This article provides a simple introduction to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and provides some insights into the likely impact it will have on enterprise technology procurement, employment and businesses.  Included are examples of use cases that are already being deployed today.

Fine-Tune Your Voice of Customer with ODI

Applying Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) Techniques to Quantify Voice of Customer and Translate it into Customer Value

Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) is a methodology for harvesting customer insights in a way that distills what matters most to customers. Its original purpose was to provide basis of evidence to drive product innovation but I’d argue it has the potential for broader application. In this article I share how ODI is invaluable as a mechanism for Organizational Designers to find new Customer Value by quantifying what the Voice of the Customer MEANS to the enterprise.

Are you familiar with Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI)?  I won't blab on about the detail of how ODI came about, the people behind it - or the low-down on how the method works in this article because you can always google it - but I did want to explain why it matters to every organization.

If you've read any of the volumes of work authored by Peter Drucker then you’ll know we share a similar instinct when it comes to customer value.  Simply put, most businesses are about finding a source of customer value and then translating that value into a repeatable source of return for stakeholders. It makes sense therefore that businesses should be good at identifying and qualifying customer value and turning it into cashable returns - right?

If you follow this logic then it will probably surprise you how many organizations are 'poor' if not truly terrible at understanding and valuing what matters to customers.  It's not that organizations don't invest good money into listening to and understanding customers: Few would claim not to. The problem is HOW they listen and HOW they apply this knowledge.

I’d also say it’s not the case that organizations that are poor at listening to customers automatically fail.  Far from it.  There are many operationally poor enterprises that continue to make money for shareholders and grow in size and scale even though the do ignore their customers.  Take British Telecom’s Openreach business for example.  The company has a monopoly in the UK on telecoms infrastructure – so if you’re not happy as a consumer customer, tough! Of course, not every company has the advantage of a monopoly, so if you want to grow and be successful IN MOST CASES listening to customers and sourcing customer value is important, if not essential.

Here's a summary of the challenges of gathering and applying the voice of the customer to organizational design and performance improvement:

1. Not listening to customers

Some organizations spend very little time listening to customers.  It could be they are operating as a monopoly and don't care, or they have a pretty solid economic engine and very little competition, so they don't care.  Other organizations lose contact with their customers as the enterprise grows and key managers and relationship holders leave, never to be replaced. But this still represents the minority of companies in my experience.

2. Listening, but not well

Organizations will often rely on information gathering mechanisms like customer surveys, forums, complaints and suggestion systems (etc.) to source their feedback. Often, these mechanisms distort the voice of the customer by their design or in the way they are implemented.  Other times they employ closed questions (i.e. 'Are you happy or not?') and this doesn't provide the opportunity for customers to 'vent' and really say what they WANT to say.  Poorly formalized listening mechanisms can deliver a shallow, hugely inaccurate perspective of the customer voice.  I would say something like 80% of companies fall into this category.

3. Failing to route customer insights to the right parts of the enterprise

Attempts to listen to customers generally happen in small silos around the enterprise.  While front-line customer service staff, sales people, line managers and others will interact with customers frequently, rarely are these insights harvested and shared.  I often see first-hand organizations investing thousands of dollars in listening to customers and then the resulting outputs end up in a file somewhere and never get used.  Sometimes surveys and research projects funded by one department can have more value to other parts of the organization but because they’re funded by one silo, other silos fail to access the insight (sad but true and surprisingly common).

4. Interpreting Voice of Customer Poorly

As organizations grow they develop their own culture and ‘biosphere’.  They start to apply vocabulary, understanding, norms of behavior and ways of making sense of their market that start to skew HOW managers interpret feedback from customers and markets.  Unless care is taken a management team can cocooned itself from customers by assuming it knows what customers care about because the feedback they get only seems to reinforce the assumptions they’ve already built up about their customers and markets.  This can result in poor interpretation of the voice of the customer – mostly driven by opinions and false perspectives rather than evidence and meaningful quantitative measures.

5. Ignoring the learning lessons

Organizations that pass through all of these hoops sometimes fall at the last hurdle. When focused on ‘the day job’ and departmental priorities it can be difficult to break out of the cycle and look up for a moment to consider something new.  Very often the inflexibility of budgets, organizational designs, norms-of-behavior (etc.) can build up a huge barrier of resistance against considering new ideas and fresh perspectives – the sort of things that come from listening to customers.

Where ODI Comes In

Let’s face it, the picture painted by customer feedback can look unclear.  There’s no silver-bullet solution to gathering insights or weighing their importance.  For this reason, organizational priorities and interpretations of voice of customer tend to be driven by management opinions. Outcome Driven Innovation (‘ODI’) helps this process by translating the voice of the customer in a more meaningful, measurable way.

The underpinning common sense behind ODI is that people ‘hire’ products and services to get a job done better.  Appreciating ‘what the job is’ and then assessing ‘what unmet needs exist’ helps to frame customer feedback into manageable chunks.  Of course, when assessing what unmet needs exist, organizations must also qualify ‘how much pain’ does the unmet need create and ‘what’s in it for them?’ so it’s important to understand to what extent is the unmet need to hire something being served by another vehicle, mechanism, supplier etc.

The ODI methodology serves to construct a formalized process to churn the voice of the customer into a measurable list of wants that enables organizations to appreciate what they can do to bring more or so far untapped customer value.

The Relevance of ODI in Organizational Design

My philosophy behind OD is that it should create better organizations by design – better meaning able to produce more stakeholder value, higher levels of workforce productivity, improved customer journeys and a generally more efficient and effective economic engine for churning out customer value and producing the wonderful bi-product that is profitability. 

For me, ODI is the essential ingredient to that mix:  No strategy should be formed or fashioned into a balanced scorecard until leadership teams KNOW what the voice of the customer is and how their enterprise can translate it into value.

So let me ask you, what matters most to your customers?

Ian.