Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the tag “Management”

19 Jul 2008

My Pursuit of Happiness III

Review

This is the main area in other systems (particularly in David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) ) that such emphasis is given to the importance and impact of this regular behaviour.

It’s always been something I’ve struggled with and I don’t really know why. It kind of feels like an easy thing to do compared to having to actually do tasks. I also find it to be an activity which is so easy to get sidelined in. So easy to just quickly do a short task that to come upon during your review……

I want to shift this by applying a structure to the review. A bit like I’ve heard about buffalos only travelling with the slowest in their herd, I want to cull the long tail of tasks by evaluating my accountabilities, projects and My 3 Very Next Actions for each. And then using Mark Forster’s ruthless time assessment (if you haven’t got the time longer term to do something, renegotiate it or drop it), review task ‘doability’

Posted in Control, Focus, Happiness, Management, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 Jul 2008

Goal Setting makes things less Scary

I’ve just come back from our six-monthly strategy away days with the Madgex shareholders. Now these are always good events. We get through a lot of stuff very productively.

This session was particularly productive because since we have tightened the focus of our mission to be the global leaders in job board software and services, our ‘flamenco dancing’ of innovation and creativity has significantly step-changed for the better.

Over the last two days we agreed a set of targets for the five years from 1.2.9. We’re into our fourth year of targets set four years ago which we’ve achieved in each of the years. Now this next set of targets should have ‘filled us with the fear’. We’re talking triple-digit millions. Yet it didn’t.

The reason why I think that it didn’t is that we’ve taken the time to plan the scenarios and imagine what it would be like. We’ve done the sales capacity modelling. We’ve got a big A3 map full of our ideas. We’ve allocated responsibilities and modelled in our heads what it will feel like when we’ve got there.

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Posted in Business, Focus, Leadership, Management, Vision and Goal Setting and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
27 Jun 2008
1 Comment

Improving Capacity to see New Possibilities

I delivered the first part of the Madgex ideas and learnings session on the Behaviours of Leaders and Managers today.

I think it went well. I’d concentrated on researching and distilling down from a top down view the ‘best’ behaviours of managers and leaders. The bit that really ended up interesting me as I researched in more depth was quite a lot of the writing within the topic of ‘insight’ as a key leadership trait.

The obvious elements of insight obviously weren’t surprising: self awareness and an understanding of others are hugely important.

However, Andrew Leigh and Michael Maynard’s thinking and observations around ‘seeing or perceptions of situations’ in particular really struck a cord.

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Posted in Business, Leadership, Management, NLP and tagged , ,

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