‘Death by PowerPoint’ has been an old adage batted about by managers who have seen too many flat presentations jammed with too much information, while falling short on clarity of theme or message. Today, the same lament can be said about email.
‘Death by Email’ describes the ailment of what professionals are losing today: Time and productivity.
By Kelly Johnson.
Of all the intriguing details Michael Lewis revealed in his Vanity Fair profile of President Obama this month, the bit about the suits sticks with me. The president wears either blue or gray. With so many high-octane decisions to make each day, why waste even a moment lingering at the closet (or the tie rack or the sock drawer)?
This morning, I appeared on Morning Joe to discuss Extreme Productivity. Check out the video!
By Brian Moore.
At first blush, Robert C. Pozen doesn’t seem like an extreme kind of guy.
He doesn’t BASE jump, BMX bike or bodyboard.
Instead, he has simultaneously taught a full load at Harvard Business School and served as executive chairman at MFS Investment Management in Boston, written six books and hundreds of articles and raised two children with his wife of more than forty years.
IT’S 5 p.m. at the office. Working fast, you’ve finished your tasks for the day and want to go home. But none of your colleagues have left yet, so you stay another hour or two, surfing the Web and reading your e-mails again, so you don’t come off as a slacker.
It’s an unfortunate reality that efficiency often goes unrewarded in the workplace. I had that feeling a lot when I was a partner in a Washington law firm. Because of my expertise, I could often answer a client’s questions quickly, saving both of us time. But because my firm billed by the hour, as most law firms do, my efficiency worked against me.
Internal meetings are the bane of corporate life. There are too many meetings, they take too long, and they get too little accomplished.
Why? Because most meetings are really not necessary. Before you call a meeting, think about whether you can accomplish your goals through email or a quick phone call. You rarely need to call a meeting if you’re just planning on sharing information or issuing action instructions. By contrast, meetings may be needed to debate issues or to develop new approaches.
I used to be a lawyer at a firm in Washington, D.C. My specialty was advising financial institutions on complex transactions and I was often able to answer clients’ questions quickly. That made my clients happy and gave me more time to spend with my friends and family. But because I was paid based on how many hours I could bill, my efficiency was costly.
“He’s one of my best employees. He always puts in ten-hour days, sometimes much more.”
Is this how your boss judges you and your colleagues? Probably yes, according to a 2010 study published in Human Relations. In the study, a group of researchers led by business professor Kimberly Elsbach conducted extensive interviews of 39 corporate managers. They found that these managers generally considered their employees who spent more time in the office to be more dedicated, more hardworking, and more responsible.