Staying Organized in These Chaotic TimesWritten by Ron Sathoff
Continued from page 1
I like to create a new mailbox for everyone who writes me, even if they are not placing an order. Everything they send to me I keep in their mailbox, and I separate my mailboxes into 3 categories: Finished, Present, and Possible. As a client's status changes, all I do is move mailbox. Then, when I'm looking for information on "Jane Doe's" order, all I have to do is open her particular mailbox and all her correspondence is there in one place. 3) Mark Everything: My biggest problem with clutter is that I end up with a lot of notes that have some piece of information, like a phone number, that I can't identify. It's really kind of amazing -- when we write down number or message, we just KNOW that we'll remember who it's from, but 20 minutes later, it's like we have amnesia! The cure for this particular problem is simple -- just identify each message you jot down. You can put client's name on paper, or you can identify it by project name. In either case, be consistent with your system, and don't rely on abbreviations. And remember, you should file information as soon as you're through with it. These tips are fairly straightforward, but it is common for us to forget them when we are pressed for time. The thing to remember, however, is that if we take time to follow these steps, we'll actually be making MORE time for ourselves in future.
Ron Sathoff is a noted speaker and manager of DrNunley's http://InternetWriters.com He provides copy-writing, marketing, Internet promotion, and help for business speakers. Reach him at ron@drnunley.com or 801-328-9006.
| | Why Change?Written by Robert Brents
Continued from page 1
What's hard is getting momentum built up in first place. Once you have momentum going -- and most big organizations that have been around a while have this -- they have a tendency to keep going in same direction, because it's hard for them -- impossible really -- to turn on a dime. The point is that to change, you have to change momentum. You cannot count on environment to change your momentum. For things to change for you, you've got to change. For momentum of an organization to change or be redirected, you must take action to cause that change to happen. For things to get better for you or your organization, you or your organization have to get better. And that almost always means changing. Using Pareto Perspective is one of ways of identifying and implementing change. It's not be-all and end-all. I'm not pretending that it is. But it is a very powerful way of implementing change with a very simple Paradigm Shift (a term coined by Thomas S. Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). An abused term, but nevertheless still valid. Paradigm Shift in simplest terms means changing way you think about things, your constructs, you world-view. So by extension, for things to change for you, you've got to change your thinking. Which leads to "for things to change for you, you've got to change your actions." Insanity has been defined as doing same things over and over again yet expecting a different result. No wonder people end up in asylums -- and corporations end up in bankruptcy court. People and companies would rather be able to do same thing and get better results because something else changes -- world, for example. Not going to happen. 9/11 not withstanding, things are going to be pretty much like they've always been. Yes, there'll be some tweaking of things at margins, but momentum of world-as-we-know-it will continue pretty much intact, until and unless there is a MAJOR catastrophe (like a really big rock falling out of sky -- as has happened several times before). So we have to change. Our companies have to change. We have to get better. Our companies have to get better. Or we -- and they -- will get extinct.
Robert Brents, "The 80/20 Guy" Create Outrageous Success Through P.A.R.E.T.O.! http://www.RobertBrents.com / RobertBrents@RobertBrents.com I work with organizations that want to focus resources on breakthrough objectives and with decision-makers who want to create outrageous success.
|
