The First Thing To Do When You're Disorganized
You've got more emails.The phone is ringing.Your boss walks in and tells you about 3 things you need to do.. . .Does any of this sound or feel familiar?This is one of those classic cases of "fire of the day" management style.
When I've brought the Agile framework into a new team, the first thing that we do to help alleviate this is 2 fold:
- We discuss the Eisenhower Decision Matrix
- We put up a Scrum Board.
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix helps the team prioritize/triage the tasks coming in. It helps them respond and focus on the important stuff instead of trying to react to every loud, shiny alarm bell.Here's a picture I've used before that is easy to follow. Photo credit goes to ArtofManliness.com
The Scrum board puts tasks into three categories: To-Do, Doing, Done.
"To-Do" (later we'll call it the Backlog) is the place for tasks that we know we need to get done eventually and they might not be super clear or well defined yet."Doing" (later called the Sprint Backlog) is ONLY for the tasks that we know we need to get done in the next week or two. In order for a task to be ready for the sprint, it needs to be prioritized, have a task owner, and it needs to be defined enough that someone can "check the box" and say it's done.The "Done" column is, you guessed it, for completed tasks. This allows the manager to walk in and quality-check everything that's ready to go.Whether you're on a team or not, this structure allows you to take control of all the crises and respond to only the critical ones.The other cool benefit?You feel more calm and collected because you've suddenly got a lot more control over your workflow.
2 Minute Action:
Draw up a scrum board real quick. 3 columns.It can be on a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or on a napkin.Fill it with all the tasks you've got in your face.You will be amazed at how this simple framework will help you categorize and start to prioritize your work.
Make This Mistake And Be Stuck forever
As soon as you wake up, you’re thinking about everything you’ve got to do.But even when you put your to-do list together, you get blindsided by firey hot crises.Phone calls come in, old tasks resurface, and you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once.At the end of the day, you feel like you did a TON of work, but you can’t really point to any “checked” boxes.This is called “Fire of the Day” management style and it’s a great way to ensure burnout, anxiety, and unhappiness.If you’re struggling to keep up with tasks, remember that reacting is not going to help.Its how you choose to respond (not just react) that will keep you focused.Reacting to every phone call and every email will ensure that you stay a slave to urgency—but you’re smarter than that.Tasks can be important and urgent, that’s called a crisis.But tasks can also be urgent and not important, in which case you’d be better off delegating them to someone else on your team or not doing them at all.Conflatig urgency and importance is one of the most common mistakes I see when diagnosing “Fire of the Day” management style.Recognize the difference and you’ll be able to focus on what’s important without being a slave to every burning hot urgency that comes flying at you.If you want a useful tool for helping you with this, check out the Eisenhower Decisions matrix. I share this tool with everyone I work with and point to it all the time.
2 Minute Action:
Create a quick to-do list (spend 1 minute on this).Spend the next minute assigning a number to each task.Once you have your numbers you’ve got a prioritized list of things to do.Go get ‘em.
You'd Be Surprised At How Many People Make This Productivity Mistake
You walk in and instead of confidently starting on your prioritized "to-do" list, you start responding to emails, fielding help-desk tickets from customers, taking phone calls, and diving into whatever is pressing on your attention at that moment.You'll never be in control of your project if you always feel like a slave to the urgency of a crisis.This is known as a "Fire-of-the-Day" management style.Whatever seems to be burning down today is where your attention goes.Here's the tell-tale symptom:If you're exhausted at the end of every workday, but you can't really describe what you did, you're experiencing this one.There’s nothing worse than feeling like you have no control over your own project.One way to get a grip on the reins and get buy-in from your team is to create Critical Productivity Indicators (CPIs) that are measurable, actionable, and don't mean they'll "get the axe" if they mess up.When your team is clear about what “success” means, you’re going to see a lot more collaboration and confidence on "progress report day."What are CPIs? Below are some I've developed for organizations. All together, they form a Productivity Index, a composite score used to gauge how healthy a team is.Steal this and run with it.
2 Minute Action:
Look at the list below. What's the most important, pressing issue for your team? Only pick one.Take 1 minute and define the question.Take the next minute and create a few answers.You don't have to solve this right now, but having a good question in your head will let you see your work differently today.It's up to you to carve out the time to develop solutions.
- Activity - How much work is being done?
- Prioritization - What kind of work is being done?
- Efficiency - How much work is redundant or wasted?
- Productivity - How much useful output is generated by your team?
- Potential - How much productive work you could be doing?
- Visibility - How clear your team is on their responsibilities?
- Reinforcers - What is motivating consistent, high-quality work behavior?
- Standards - What goals, targets, or benchmarks are in place?
- Capacity - Does your team have all the skills necessary?
- Alignment - Is everyone clear on the mission and priorities?
- Proximal Zone - Where does your team fall in Vygotsky’s Proximal Zones, and the anxiety-boredom spectrum?
- Sentiment - Does your team believe in the mission and are they invested in success?