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An evening in Paris

It was a comfortable Paris evening. We had enjoyed dinner and were about to go out to watch a movie. I was with my closest friends. I was happy. I was feeling great. Then someone asked, ‘Have you heard about Sophie? Her father has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a few weeks to live.’

Sophie’s father had not yet retired. He had worked hard all his life, and was just about to enjoy a well-deserved and wealthy retirement. He had a lovely family and was looking forward to spending more time with his wife, children and soon grandchildren.

But now this would never happen.

Later, it hit me more than I had realised at the time. Gradually, the questions took hold and grew within me. Is this what life is about? Working long hours most of your life to retire too old and too tired to really enjoy the things you always wanted to do and the people you really love? Or worse, dying before that retirement can even begin?

It made me realise the value of time and enjoyment of life day after day, to take every day as potentially the last. In all fairness it took many years for me to absorb the lesson of that evening. And I am sure I am continuing to digest it.

When delivering the commencement speech to Stanford University students in 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc, made this interesting statement:

‘For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?

‘And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something … almost everything.

‘All external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.’

Although the intention of this book is to get your business life back in control, focusing on what is truly important for you is really what this book is about. Do you live your life, both personally and professionally, as if each day were potentially the last? Do you wake up every day feeling 100% positive about the day?

When is your day?

I would like you to imagine something crazy. Imagine you have just won the lottery. You won five million dollars, and the money has just been transferred to your bank account. The dream is now a reality, the money is yours. What would you do with this money? Be honest, crazy, fun. What would you buy with it, small and big, long term and short term?

When I ask this question in my seminars, I get both serious long-term answers as well as fun short-term crazy spending ideas: ‘I’ll pay off my mortgage,’; ‘I’ll invest in real estate,’; ‘I’ll invest in shares,’ … as well as, ‘I’ll buy a nice convertible,’; ‘I’ll go travelling for a year,’; ‘I’ll buy my wife and kids some amazing presents.’ One woman even said she would go on a shoe shopping frenzy …

Imagine now you won the lottery, but the prize comes with strings attached to it. You have won five million dollars, but you cannot earn, win or inherit any more money for the rest of your life. You can invest some or all of the five million. However, even if you work, you can’t earn a salary. All you have to play with is this five million dollars. What would you do with this money?

When I ask this second question, most of the fun or short-term answers suddenly evaporate. Most people are now thinking about paying off their debts and investing, seeking some financial advice and planning carefully how to manage their money.

Interestingly enough, when the amount of something is limited we better appreciate the value of it. We put more effort into thinking about it and planning what to do with it.

Third test. You must be thinking by now that this is a very strange lottery indeed. And you are right. Imagine this time the lottery man comes with a different proposition. He is holding a briefcase with some money inside. You don’t know how much money is inside the briefcase. There could be anything between five dollars and a hundred million dollars. There could be $5, $10, $100, $1000, $1 million … you do not know.

However this time the offer is different: it’s a ‘deal or no deal’. If you take the briefcase, and the money within, we will take all your belongings and the money in the briefcase is all you will have for the rest of your life. You cannot earn, win or inherit any more money for the rest of your life. You can invest some or all of the money. However, even if you work, you can’t earn a salary. All you have to play with is the amount in the briefcase.

You could be lucky and end up with a hundred million dollars, or be unlucky and end up with only five dollars for the rest of your life. Deal or no deal? Would you take the briefcase?

I have had a few people who have been tempted — less than 1%. The overwhelming majority of people would not take this deal.

Fourth and last test. Same proposition as the third test. The lottery man comes with a briefcase with some money inside, anything from five dollars to a hundred million dollars. Same as the previous proposition: if you take the briefcase, all your belongings will be taken away from you and all you will have to invest is the money inside the case.

The difference with the previous proposition is that there is a small opening on the briefcase with a $5 note sticking out. The briefcase is built so that whenever you take the $5 note, another one appears. You cannot open the briefcase; you have to take the money note by note.

The big difference with the previous deal is that even if you take the deal you won’t know how much money there is in the briefcase. You will have to take the money, one $5 note after another, until it stops. And of course you don’t know if there is only one $5 note, and the money will stop after the first withdrawal, or if there is a hundred million dollars; i.e. an almost endless flow of $5 notes.

Would you take the deal?

So far I haven’t found anyone interested.

Yet, if you substitute money for time, this is the deal we are given. We live a minute and another minute appears. We live another minute and another one appears. No-one knows how many minutes we have in our briefcase. We could be gone in a day, in a week, in a year, in ten years. Who knows?

We are given a terrible deal with time — a deal no one would accept with money. However we place much more value on our money than on our time.

Imagine someone steals your wallet while you’re walking in the street. There might only be a few dollars in it, or a few notes, but you would try to do something about it. Run behind the thief if you can, shout, try to arrest him and prosecute him. You would be very upset.

Every day we allow our time to be stolen and we do not react. Time is far more important than money, and we place so little value on it.

Imagine that someone comes to you and asks for $100. You would ask why and would need some good reasons to give $100 away. However, when someone invites us for a meeting or interrupts us, asking for our time, we are far less careful. We give our time away very easily.

I don’t know how long you and I will be here. What I do know is that I want to make every day, every hour, every minute count as if it were gold.

In this book I have included some of the principles by which I live. I share these with my clients to make sure they are as effective as possible, helping them achieve what is important for them.

Some interesting facts about how we work

I am always surprised, and even amazed, to see how much time we waste every day on things that really do not matter. The problem is not the fact that we are spending time on non-important matters; it’s the consequences of this. It’s the fact that we are not spending enough time on things which are very important to us, such as family, health, the key projects at work which will have a big impact on our performance, and so on.

In recent years, the advances in technology at work have been phenomenal. We now have amazing tools at our fingertips which are available to everyone. If you think of email, research by the Lotus Development Corporation shows that people are receiving on average forty to fifty emails per day. Some of my clients are getting over 200 emails every day.

This is great on one view. A high level of communications ought to signify a high level of productivity in our businesses. But we are paying a high price for this. A few years ago one of my coachees heard a very interesting survey on the radio. Apparently in Australia white collar workers check their email, on average, 50 times per day …

I cannot verify this survey but I know that people are constantly looking at their inbox. We start working on something, and we stop every few seconds to check whether we have received new emails. We continue concentrating on our work, and we hear the ‘bing’ from our inbox to indicate a new email has arrived. It’s hard to resist — we humans are curious by nature — and here we are checking our emails again. We return to our work, and after ten minutes feel a bit bored. Guess what? We re-re-recheck our inbox!

Sound familiar? But it does not stop there. The recent move for many companies from compartmentalised offices to open plan workspaces adds to our lack of concentration. Research shows that, on average, people are interrupted every three minutes.

Although the above examples are mainly relevant to corporate life, they have an equally important impact upon our personal lives.

I have seen another survey which demonstrated that 66% of corporate strategy is never executed. Companies spend a lot of time and money to think ahead, to decide their long-term vision and strategy. They pay high-level consultants or recruit high fliers to do so. They involve many people and resources to produce a lovely Word document and numerous PowerPoint^® slides to display their plan and strategy.

Only to see that two-thirds of it will never be executed.

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges for companies today is execution. They might be clear on their strategy, on where they want to head. But if you check what people are doing on a day-to-day basis, what they spend their time on hour per hour, you realise there is often a big gap between what they are doing and what they are supposed to do. There is a big gap between what they should be doing to have a major impact on the business, and what they are really doing.

Many people tell me one of their biggest frustrations is that they find themselves at the end of each day having worked hard on a lot of small crises, but having not had the time to focus on any of their big-ticket items.

The impact of our lack of efficiency and effectiveness does not stop in the workplace. When I ask my clients what they would like to do if they were more in control of their work and time, I often receive such answers as:

 ‘Come home earlier to see my kids.’

 ‘Have more time to go to the gym and look after my health.’

 ‘Avoid bringing my work stress home.’

 ‘Avoid waking up at night thinking about what I forgot to do.’

Inefficiency impacts us both at work and at home.

Most of us have never been taught how to work

What a bold statement to start with! However, in my view, this is one of the most important reasons for lack of execution and lower-than-expected performance. Most people are committed to their role and want to do a good job. They are neither lazy nor unwilling. But they are not working efficiently — they work hard but not always smart. They have never been taught how to work.

It normally surprises people when I make this claim, but I believe most people have never been taught how to work. We go to school, universities, and gain a qualification. We train and qualify as doctors, accountants or engineers. And one day we start working.

Let’s take some simple examples. We get a desk and a computer, and before we know it we get bombarded with information. We receive many emails and have to handle many paper documents.

In my career as an effectiveness coach I have seen many ‘information management systems’. From people who have nothing on their desk, to people who have a few piles to remind them of the things to do for the day, to people who have huge reading piles, to people who have a desk which looks like a bombsite.

I have even met a few people who had two desks: the current one and the old one. They used to work on the old one, but it became so full of paper and files that they had to move to a new desk. And they still use their old desk as a filing system. Curious filing system indeed!

To have a laugh with some of my clients I sometime take pictures of their desk before I begin working with them. One day I might ask my clients if I can publish some of these pictures — you would not believe your eyes!

When I ask people why they chose this ‘information management system’, the most common answer is, ‘Trial and error.’ I then ask if this is the best system for them, and I hear, ‘I don’t know — I have never been shown how to do this.’

Another example which demonstrates that most of us have never been taught how to work is the way we manage our priorities. The most common way I have observed is what I call the ‘note pad strategy’. At the start of every day, you start a new ‘to do’ list in your note pad. You write all the tasks which need to be done for the day.

On one hand people enjoy having a ‘to do list’. They can keep track of everything they have to do and they can add things throughout the day.

On the other hand they are often frustrated with this system. New things keep being added to their list. They finish the day with half of the list not completed. And at the start of a new day they have to scramble through all their previous ‘to do’ lists to collect all undone or unfinished items.

When I ask people why they do it this way, I get answers such as, ‘I have so many things to do every day that I need a system to keep track of all this.’ When asked if this is the most effective system for them, most people don’t know. They have never been taught some simple yet effective work habits.

As most people have never been shown how to work, they have developed work habits that are not the most efficient and effective ones. There is nothing wrong or shameful in this. Peter Drucker was one of the most famous effectiveness coaches. He wrote many books including the famous The Effective Executive. In this book he wrote:

‘In forty-five years of work as a consultant I have not come across a single natural, an executive who was born effective. All the effective ones have had to learn to be effective. And all of them had to practise effectiveness until it became a habit.’

We are not born naturally effective. We have to learn the principles and practise them until they become habits.

My main focus is to improve the performance of individuals, teams or divisions by challenging their work habits. And the lift in productivity and performance by simply improving people’s work habits is amazing. So much time, energy and money is wasted because of poor execution.

The purpose of this book

The purpose of this book could be viewed solely as a guide to improving your performance at work by giving you simple and practical tools to be more effective.

While I want to help you to improve your productivity by challenging your work habits, my ambition in writing this book is to have an impact not only on your business life but also your personal one. Business and personal life are intrinsically linked. If you are out of control and stressed at work, it will affect your personal life.

As an effectiveness coach, my personal motivation comes from hearing the impact I’ve had on the lives of my coachees. My ambition is to change the life of each person I interact with. It may sound ambitious, but this is what drives me. Comments such as, ‘You have changed my life,’ or ‘I feel so much more in control and happy with my job,’ or ‘My performance has dramatically increased since I have worked with you,’ are my best rewards.

I will never forget the first person who gave me this feedback. It was the last session with one of our first clients, a group of managers from a bank. I was asking each participant for their feedback, for the changes they had made throughout the four months’ journey we had undertaken, and the impact of those changes.

The feedback from the team was terrific. The journey had had an amazing impact on their work habits and they were all very positive about it. And then Marnie stood up and explained the impact for her. She mentioned that as a result of this journey, she felt much more organised, her desk was cleaner, she was on top of her emails, she was much more focused. As a result she had no doubt she would over-achieve her KPIs (key performance indicators), and that she would achieve her business goals for this year.

And then Marnie made an amazing comment. She said that this was not the big win for her; that this was not the most important thing. I was intrigued. What Marnie had mentioned so far sounded great and I was pleased she had achieved so much throughout the program.

Marnie said something I will never forget: ‘The big win for me is that I sleep at night.’ I was not expecting this and asked Marnie what she meant. She then explained, ‘I have a challenging job. I love it, but for many years I have brought my stress home. I have found myself waking up in the middle of the night with ideas of things I should do or should have done, of things I had forgotten or let slip. I had to sleep with a note pad on my bedside table to write all this down.

‘For the first time for many years, I sleep well at night. When I leave the office, I feel in control, I feel I have achieved what I need to. Even my husband is seeing the difference. This journey has changed my life.’

I was nearly in tears. This was one of those moments when you realise why you are doing what you are doing. This became the focus and vision for me, something that drives me forward — ‘changing lives’. Since then ‘changing lives’ has become the mission of my business, Primary Asset Consulting. A very ambitious mission, indeed. But if you do not aim high, you are unlikely to achieve great things or to bring great value.

I hope this book will help you to be more effective, to perform better at work and feel more in control of both your professional and personal life. Ultimately my goal and hope is that this book changes your life.

Efficiency versus effectiveness

When I mention in the corporate world that the focus of my business is to increase performance by challenging people’s work habits, I am often met with doubt.

Performance is a well-worn word, used in all industries and for whatever is being sold. What a company does or purchases is ultimately aimed at improving its bottom line and performance. Performance means so many different things that I sometimes feel the word has lost its power because of misuse and over-use.

When we deal with a sales team, performance is usually quite easy to define. It can be measured, for example, by the number of meetings or the amount of revenue and profit. When we deal with a legal team, performance is more difficult to measure. In some law firms it is measured in billable hours per day. Other legal teams link performance to internal feedback and satisfaction. Or a combination of both.

When we work with a marketing team or a senior executive, performance has yet another meaning. In this case performance can be linked to the revenue generated from marketing activities, to indicators such as improved brand recognition or client satisfaction, or to the delivery of specific projects.

However there are often two criteria that influence performance. Let’s take a few examples. When you discuss performance with a sales team, you will hear success measured using these factors:

Performance (sales) = quantity x quality

On one hand you can be a great sales person, have a very good understanding of your products, target the right clients, and have a very good sales approach (quality). However, if you do not make any phone calls and have no meetings (quantity), it will be hard to perform.

On the other hand you can be a dynamic sales person, make lots of phone calls and have lots of meetings (quantity); if you do not target the right prospects, if you do not know your products well and have poor sales skills (quality), it will be hard to perform.

When we think about people management, we often hear about two different skills: management skills and leadership skills.

Performance (leading team) = management x leadership

You can be a great manager, have clearly defined KPIs for your team, have organised regular one-on-ones, team meetings and reviews, and you spend lots of time with your team; but if you are leading them in the wrong direction, if you do not have the right vision and strategy, it will be very hard for you and your team to perform.

You can have a great vision for your team and have clear strategies in your head to make your team successful but if you do not communicate with them, if they are unclear on this vision, if you do not define clearly the role of each and monitor and coach them on a regular basis, it will also be hard to be successful.

In terms of personal productivity, there are two critical skills that impact personal performance: efficiency and effectiveness.

Performance (personal) = efficiency x effectiveness

Quantity, management and efficiency are all linked to ‘how’ you do things. When you are given a task or a project, how well do you do it? Do you carry it out as requested, do you respect the budget, do you pay attention to detail, do you do it on time and respect deadlines? Efficiency can be defined by doing things right.

Quality, leadership and effectiveness are all linked to ‘what’ you are doing. Are you focusing on the few crucial things which will be key for your performance? Effectiveness can be defined by doing the right things.

To be more in control of your workload, to work smarter rather than harder, I will discuss these two skills: efficiency (doing things right, i.e. the ‘how’) and effectiveness (doing the right things, i.e. the ‘what’).

I will start with the ‘how’. Are your work habits slowing your performance? Do you have an efficient filing system? Do you manage as efficiently as possible the flow of information and tasks you receive on a daily basis?

I will then discuss a great efficiency tool: Microsoft Outlook*. To be both efficient and effective, you need a tool to manage your time, your tasks, your focus. In the business world, most people are using Outlook, while some are using Lotus® Notes and a few are using other systems such as GroupWise, a device such as a smartphone, BlackBerry® or iPad, or even a paper tool. The principles we will discuss are equally relevant for Outlook, Lotus® or whatever system you are using. Because most people use Outlook, I will use this tool as an example.

Then I will focus on effectiveness, what I call personal leadership. This is more the ‘what’.

Although I start with efficiency principles, the most important principles are the effectiveness principles. For many years, time management books and seminars have been focusing on saving time, on doing things quickly. Saving time is important but is almost irrelevant if you are not clear on what you want to achieve, if you are not clear on what is important for you.

I’d rather be very effective and totally inefficient than the contrary. In business terms, I believe a person with a messy desk, emails out of control and bad time-wasting habits but who is clear on what he or she wants to achieve, and making some progress towards those goals, will be more successful than a person who is well organised, with a clean desk and an inbox under control, with great work habits but no goals, and who is unclear regarding the few things which are key for his or her performance.

Having said that, I have found it more beneficial over the years to start improving efficiency and then work on effectiveness principles. I found it works better to put the house in order and then discuss long-term goals and focus.

I have found that people are much more receptive to taking a 10,000 feet high helicopter view of their role and goals once they feel in control of their day-to-day activities. Hence my logic in starting with the efficiency principles before the effectiveness ones.

Reading is easy, changing habits is hard

At this point it would be useful for you to be clear on why you are reading this book and what are you expecting from it. Are you reading it for leisure or do you want to see some real changes? Do you want to challenge some of your work habits?

Being clear on your goals will give you the fuel and energy to act. If you want to be successful and achieve your dreams, the most important thing is not the ‘how’, it’s the ‘why’.

Throughout this book I would like to share some principles that are important to perform if you are to be successful. Rather than settle for just showing you, I would like to take you through a journey and challenge some of your work habits, some of those things you are doing every day and that you have probably been doing for many years. The principles are simple, but changing them into habits is hard.

If you do not have strong reasons to change, what I will suggest in this book will be very challenging, and you will struggle to find the motivation and drive to apply these principles.

 Let me ask you: Why are you reading this book? What are some of the challenges you are facing in the area of efficiency and effectiveness?

 Does your filing system need a good review?

 Are you crawling under a ton of emails in your inbox?

 Do you wonder every day what to focus on?

 Do you struggle to manage your time effectively?

 Are you frustrated at the end of every day, wondering where your time went?

 Do you have to take some important work at home or stay late in the evening when everyone else is gone so that you can finish it?

And beyond these challenges, what outcomes are you expecting? What do you want to change? What will be the business benefits and pay-offs of working more efficiently and effectively? Will you reach your targets, achieve your KPIs, be promoted to new responsibilities?

As importantly, what will be the personal benefits and pay-offs of working smarter? Will you spend fewer hours in the office and more time at home? Will you be less stressed? Will you feel more in control, able to enjoy your job again?

Reflect on this. Are you ready to take a journey which could transform your life? As mentioned earlier, my ambition whenever I coach someone is ‘to change life.’ I hope I can reach the same goal with everyone reading this book. To achieve this goal, I will need your help. If you want to be challenged and change some of your work habits, reading this book alone will not be enough. You will need to bring two things to the party: practice and persistence.

Practising is learning

Confucius is credited as saying: ‘I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.’

Reading this book alone is not enough. You need to read it carefully and you need to be ready to practise the principles explained. You need to read it as if you want to teach these principles to someone else.

Only then will you start to see some changes.

I suggest reading this book with a pen and a highlighter close by. Underline what resonates; what you want to remember. The action of underlining key phrases will fix them better in your mind and enable you to come back to the principles, materials and tools which resonated with you.

Once back at your desk, review the sections you have highlighted and the things you have decided to apply, and just do it!

Don’t be a perfectionist. I used to be one, and nothing gets done because perfection is not achievable. Do not put off trying a new way of doing something just because now is not the perfect time. There will never be a perfect time. Try new skills as best as you can. Practise, persevere, and little by little you will improve.

I once read about some research done in the US by a psychiatrist who specialises in education, Doctor William Glasser. What he found out is very important in any learning process. Glasser demonstrated that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 80% of what we practise and 95% of what we teach someone else.

If the only thing you do is read this book and that’s it, you are likely to remember only 10% of it. In a one or two day training session where you hear a lot of good principles, you are likely to remember only 20% of it.

You can see the huge gap between only reading the material as opposed to hearing and practising the ideas. Your learning jumps from less than 20% to 80%. This is why simply reading a book or doing a training course often does not produce the results it should.

I heard once that on average we retain 12% to 15% of the learning from a simple training course. And this does not surprise me. However I find it amazing that we accept this from training. Imagine you buy a brand new car for $50,000 and on the day you are supposed to get it, you are given only four wheels — 10% of the value. No one would accept this. Why should we accept it from learning?

Whatever you find of value and relevance for you in this book, practise it back at your desk or in your workspace straight away.

If you want to see real change in your work habits, if you want to be more in control of your workloads, to work smarter and not harder, you need to read this book as if you were going to teach it to someone else and you need to practise the principles until they become new habits.

Persist to change the new learning into habits

My role will be to suggest some simple principles and challenge some of your work habits. Your role if you want to progress will be to do two things: practise and persist. You understand the importance of practising. Let me explain why I mean by persisting.

There is a joke which says, ‘Do you know the difference between a hassle and a habit? … two weeks.’ For two weeks, doing something differently is a hassle. After two weeks of practice, it becomes a habit. There is a lot of truth in it. Changing some of your work habits will feel awkward to start with. You will be tempted to come back to your old work habits which are easier and more comfortable.

Just be aware of it. Changing your work habits will be hard for about two weeks. Studies on habits show it takes about twenty-one days to change a habit. If you are to persist every day with a new work principle, within twenty-one days it will have become a habit.

Be persistent. The rewards, which I see so often in the lives of those I coach, are clearly worth it.

Read, practise, persist and celebrate with me

My ambition is for you to take away something valuable from this book. I hope you will enjoy this book, learn a few things from it, apply those things and change some of your work habits.

Once you have made some progress, write to me and share what you have learnt and how you feel. Take a photo of your desk before and after practising new habits and send it to me. Let me know the number of emails in your inbox (read and unread) before and after. Share with me the impact these new habits have had on your performance, your stress level and your life.

I really enjoy receiving feedback. This is what drives me, hearing that our approach and methodology have made a difference. You may also have some ideas and tips you would like to share. Please do not hesitate to send me an email at cyril@wslb.com.au