Planning and preparation

17th January 2012 / Posted in: Management, Operational management, Planning and preparation, Top tips

3 things to do before a client meeting

Most of us have so many meetings that it’s easy to slip into the habit of not preparing adequately in advance. As well as the common sense preparations about knowing where you are meeting, how to get there, arriving in plenty of time and taking all the relevant paperwork etc.  Time with clients is precious so aim to get the most out of any meeting, and grow your credibility, by being well prepared.

• Set aside time in the diary well in advance of the meeting to think, read minutes or notes from last meeting, draft an agenda and research any new ideas you have suggested previously or want to mention at the meeting
• Send an agenda, agenda items and any papers for discussion in advance of the meeting allowing enough time for the client, and anyone else attending, to read and prepare for the meeting
• Have a ‘pre-mortem’before the meeting, that is imagine everything that might go wrong in terms of the client not liking what you’ve presented, the client not agreeing to things you’d assumed would go ahead, obections about price etc. If there are two or more of you attending the meeting each come up with your own list of the objections you may face, explain your rationale for identifying them. Agree what are valid objections then together work out how you would overcome them should they arise. It’s an excellent way of challenging your own thinking and identifying any potential weaknesses.

Pre-mortems are really useful when working on large projects, tenders or pitches. See Harvard Business Review for more information.

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12th January 2012 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Operational management, Planning and preparation, Priorities, Productivity, Time management

Tips to boost your productivity

On 10th January I gave a 10 minute presentation,  at the Chichester College Business Breakfast Club, on what gets in the way of working productively. Judging by the number of e-mails, texts and tweets I received the subject and presentation were spot on. The slide presentation is on Slideshare and the following are the key points from the presentation:

• About 50% of the audience admitted to allowing their work to be interrupted by pop up messages on their screen, pings etc when e-mails, texts etc arrive. 
• Interruptions damage waste your most important commodity - time. Once used time has gone for ever.
• Interruptions are a distraction and reduce your ability to focus your concentration and effort on the matter in hand leading to lower quality work that takes longer to produce
• Many people use their diaries simply for appointments and sometimes to list reminders. Using your diary to schedule everything is a discipline and a disciplined approach to managing your time delivers results.
• To start using your diary effectively do a brain dump of everything you need to do - not just tasks, but strategic priorities or the actions needed to achieve these priorities. Go through this list and highlight everything you need to do this week then separate in to two lists for the week - one for strategic and revenue-generating priorities and the other for everything else.
• Schedule the strategic priorities into your diary first remembering that you can’t focus for more than 90 minutes at a time, effectively, then take a break. Make the most of the first 90 minutes of your working day - it’s when you’ll work most effectively  (See ‘The way we’re working isn’t working’ by Tony Schwartz.)
• In your breaks you need to do something different. If you’ve been sitting at your desk looking at Facebook or Twitter isn’t a break. Move around. Have a change of scene.
• Remember - successful people like Richard Branson schedule time to look at an action e-mails - rather than looking at umpteen times a day,  and also define one important or key task as the priority for the day.
• Electronic diaries make using different colours for different types of task easy so you can see what is fixed and what can be moved around.
• Like any new habit working this way takes a bit of time but once you start using your diary effectively you’ll:

1. achieve more priorities - providing you put everything in your diary and you don’t shy away from diarising the ones you don’t want to do
2. feel good about achieving more priorities .... and the business will benefit
3. be less likely to forget to do things as if you need to reschedule something you simply move it to another time
4. be better prepared for client meetings, phone calls etc because you’ve identified planning time in your diary
5. be in a better position to drive opportunities forwards and keep ideas on the agenda if you schedule time to write notes after all meetings
6. become more realistic about the time it takes to do something and hence better at estimating how long something takes - which is really important if time is money
7. find yourself working faster or more efficiently if you know you have an hour do to something - providing your interruptions are being kept to a minimum and you remember to take proper breaks
8. achieve things rather than getting to the end of the day and feeling a failure as you haven’t crossed anything off the to do list
9. discover if you really have more do to than time allows, thereby putting yourself in better position to evaluate what to delegate or outsource
10. have a better work-life balance
11. be happier!
12. It’s worth spending part of Friday afternoon planning your diary for the week ahead

If you work with other people the business will be more successful if everyone recognises that time is their most important commodity and knows how to manage it effectively.

Click here to go to the slides

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3rd January 2012 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Management, Planning and preparation, Priorities, Time management, Top tips

3 top tips for client meetings

When we're busy we often don't allocate enough time to prepare for meetings with our clients or follow up after the meeting.  Every meeting, or significant telephone conversation, presents an opportunity to sow seeds which may develop and grow the business with that particular client.

These three tips may help you make the most of these opportunities: 

► Send a summary of what was discussed and agreed within 48 hours of the meeting. If you don’t already send minutes or action plans Minutes.io is a useful tool.  A summary is useful ground work for future meeting agendas.

► Take time to reflect on the meeting and whether any additional information, or clarification, is needed to progress any work

► Plan the actions required by the client remembering to schedule time in your diary. As well as making sure actions don’t get overlooked, scheduling helps keep track of the time actually spent on each client/project

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23rd June 2011 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Holidays, Planning and preparation, Productivity

Holiday Planning

August in the UK is rapidly becoming like Christmas. Apart from the retail sector there are so many people away that many businesses either just bump along or grind to a halt. But can you afford to write August off?  Even if you have staff, clients and suppliers on holiday for large chunks of the month a bit of forward planning stop it being a complete write off. 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Start planning holiday handovers well in advance, rather than leaving until the night before.
• Aim to get key projects and priorities completed before holidays, or to a stage where someone else can oversee.
• Check when colleagues are taking their holidays and the likely impact of them being away. If there’s no impact - why are you employing them!
• How can the impact be managed?  Do you have adequate resources internally to cover for absences without over stretching?  If not do you know where to find suitable temporary or interim staff?
• Who will respond to communications for staff who are on holiday? (don’t forget social media) An auto response saying the e-mail will be dealt with on the recipient’s return isn’t great customer service.
• Agree how decisions can be made in the absence of senior staff and under what circumstances those on holiday can be contacted.
• Encourage staff to take a complete break - adequate planning may allow them to spend time without a smart phone in their hand
• Don’t use the holiday break as the chance to take short cuts or reduce your service - particularly with long standing clients. Complacency be the excuse they are looking for to move their business elsewhere.
• Use the quiet time to review your business strategy or plans, and your marketing plans, so at the start September you have a clear idea of where you are going and how you will get there.
• Similarly spend some time checking what your competitors are up to and adapt your forward plans accordingly.
• Review last year’s sickness absence from September until December. If sickness was a problem - why was it a problem and what can you do to stop the same happening again.
• If you are making any changes such as changing software support, changing suppliers, introducing social media to your marketing strategy, do some background research.
• Encourage everyone not to send masses of e-mails etc to people that are on holiday so they return to an overflowing in box.
• Take time to step back and review the way you are working - are you using your time effectively

We are supposed to be having some decent weather this summer so if you’re not on holiday make August a month to remember - in and out of work.

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10th May 2011 / Posted in: Comfort zone, Management, Planning and preparation, Strategy

Outside My Comfort Zone

Some of my work involves helping clients address issues they’ve been avoiding - usually because it takes them out of their comfort zone.  On Sunday I tasted of my own medicine by stepping, or should I say, cycling, outside of mine. In a moment of madness I’d let my cycling-mad brother persuade me to enter the Davina’s Diva 100 - a women only 100km cycle ride in aid of Action Medical Research (www.action.org.uk/davinas_diva100).  He knew I wanted to get better acquainted with my road bike and what better way to do it than a 100km cycle starting in Cowdray Golf Club - a couple of miles from where I live.

Preparing for the day

Friends say I’m pretty fit so I just needed to spend more time in the saddle to prepare.  It sounded logical and plausible but as the day grew closer I felt outside my comfort zone as I’d never cycled further than 68km, and what if I didn’t have the stamina; fell off and got hurt; had to ride in wind or rain; got cold - which stops me functioning; crashed - I’ve never cycled in a group. Worst of all what if I couldn’t finish.

As this daunting task grew closer I put myself in my clients shoes. I focused on the things I could control not the ‘what ifs.’ I read the event manual and planned what to wear and take with me, what to take to eat and drink, what to have for breakfast before and what time I needed to get up.  I’d seen the route before I made the decision to enter so I either had to stick with my decision or pull out. Obsessing about the number and length of the hills wouldn’t help. I knew I needed to keep a positive, ‘can do’  frame of mind. My brother and my friends believed in me. I just needed to believe in me too. I couldn’t do anything about things out of my control - like the weather. Instead I decided the weather was like a day at work - you’re never quite sure what it may throw at you but whatever it does you can probably deal with.

They’re off

The cyclists were being set of in groups of 30 and my plan was to be in the first group - start early, finish early and enjoy the rest of the day at home.  My approach was just what I help my clients to do - break down the task into  manageable chunks. With food stations at 33km and 66km the route naturally fell into three chunks, each of which was about the same distance as my cycle to work.  But, to do these in succession I knew I must cycle steadily, at my usual pace making sure I kept fueled and hydrated, as its too late leaving it until you feel hungry or thirsty.

'The start of the Davina's Diva 100km cycle ride

I kept my distance from other cyclists at the start and after the first couple of miles, I settled into rhythm and found myself not far behind the lady leading the group. She looked like a better and more experienced cyclist than me - judging by her bike and her sculpted calves! I decided to keep her in sight as her pace was similar to mine and watch what she did as my brother says to watch follow better cyclists if you want to improve. So, I observed her cadence (the number of times her legs go round) and tried to match. I watched her up hills and adopted her technique of getting out of the saddle early, the result of which made me go up faster with less effort. At last I’d found a good use for those extra 5 lbs I’m carrying! She must be cursing me for what I learned as half way round the course I found my rhythm going up the Trundle meant I was cycling faster than her so nervously I crept past her. With no-one ahead to focus on I keep an eye on my average pace on my Garmin watch until about 16km later I got overtaken by a faster rider. I caught up with her going past Stansted Park and we rode together and chatted for quite some while. Imagine how good I felt to find myself cycling alongside someone who said she could just keep going and going, had been doing triathlons for 7 years and recently completed the full Ironman!  Sadly here stamina took her ahead of me about half an hour before the end. That was the toughest bit. I was on my own, it was windy, my legs were tired and my back hurt. I’d come this far, and in a good time, so I just focussed on maintaining my pace.  Seeing a road sign ‘Midhurst 4’ gave me a real boost. I crossed the line after 4 hours 10 minutes and 8 seconds.

Pleased with my achievement

What I learned

None of the things I had worried about stopped me achieving my goal. There were a few spots of rain, it was windy and my legs were really tired towards the end but I had the right mental approach to get to the finish.  Even better, I shaped this blog in my head as I was cycling.  Conquering something outside my comfort zone gave me a great sense of achievement and reminded me that the experiencs we learn at work are often very useful to our home lives and vice versa.

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