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Great Article from Jim Milliken

Efficiency demands flexibility

Jim Milliken

December 16, 2008

Who among us doesn't long to be more efficient?

Nine out of 10 people I work with keep some form of a "to-do" list, but few really feel they are accomplishing enough of the important stuff each day, in either their professional work or their personal lives.

Equally, the top-priority stuff that takes time and continuing attention gets postponed, often to death.

Studies show that personal efficiency, in the best of circumstances, tends to top out around 67 percent. That means good managers and good workers usually are failing to produce useful output a third of the time. So, in the benchmark 40-hour week, the better part of two workdays can go down the drain, lost to bad meetings, overlong conversations, equipment malfunctions and – be honest – poor communication and lack of preparation.

This issue moves from meaningful to urgent as we face uncertainties in the current work world that are the most daunting in decades, unprecedented in the lives of many of us. While the shifting tides of the economic news go from hopeful to bleak and back several times a day, it's important for us to understand and counter what this does to us personally.

For leaders and managers in business and the professions, there are frightening reductions in revenue volume and customer base. For everyone, there is the prospect of added workload, loss of income, perhaps loss of employment.

If we're not careful, we easily suffer from the uncertainty syndrome, which is controlled by the maxim, "When in doubt, hesitate."

As a result, where I was losing too much time on wheel-spinning and low-priority activities before, I'm now in danger of slipping further down the productivity scale.

This uncertainty syndrome is a major symptom of great danger, and overcoming it starts with taking control of the only factor fully available to you, which is how you – and your organization – behave.

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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die

Gilbert K. Chesterton