YOU CAN ELIMINATE DELAY!

I’ve been asked how to eliminate the high cost of delay. Here are ten ways you can eliminate delay in all that you do—at work and at home.

1. Become the kind of person who responds to others’ requests immediately. When you respond immediately to questions or requests from clients, prospective customers, colleagues and friends, you greatly expand the trust between you.

2. Break large or distasteful tasks into smaller chunks. Better to take small steps forward, without delay, than wait for the "right" time.

3. Reduce the number of "To-do" lists you have. Set systems into place to handle routine tasks as they come in instead of writing endless lists that never go away. As soon as you think of something to do, do it. Remember to: "Do it, ditch it, delegate it OR place it on your schedule."

4. Learn quickly. Integrate changes immediately. New information and different ways of doing things all have to go through our mental filters. Understand how long your delay/integration process takes and work to shorten it by 50%.

5. Eliminate delays caused by fear. The best way to reduce fear is to have reserves in your life (in money, time, love, support, space, etc.).

6. Refuse to wait for things. Insist on immediate response. Deal with businesses that put the customer first by responding promptly to e-mail, having Websites, online ordering, or FedEx overnight delivery.

7. Develop a filtering system to screen what comes at you. Use a real or "virtual" assistant to handle your incoming e-mail or postal mail. Know what your vision and goals are. When you’re clear on those and on your values, it automatically filters input for you.

8. Automate your responses so you don’t have to be there. Develop a system to provide people with immediate notice that you received their request and when you’ll get back to them. With e-mail, try autoresponders. You can also set up a fax-on-demand system or voice-information on demand so callers get most of what they need instantly.

9. Sensitize yourself so that you can respond even before a delay is possible. If you realized how costly delays are, you’d quickly make the changes to eliminate them. Respond to changes before others have even noticed.

10. When you find yourself delaying, find out why. There is always a reason and it’s worth knowing why, even if you choose to do nothing about it.

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

WHERE DOES ALL THE TIME GO?

Where do you spend your time? What does a typical week look like in your life? When I ask these questions, my clients begin to get nervous. I hear excuses for why they can’t cancel anything—"It’s my job to be at these meetings," "People are expecting me to fix this problem," or "I’m the only one that can do this." The underlying message in these excuses is that people think they have no choice about how they use their time. But that is not true.

Coach and author Cheryl Richardson, in her excellent book Take Time for Your Life, points out that how you spend your time reveals your true priorities. To begin to know what you call important in your life, count how many hours in a week you devote to a particular activity. For example, take a few minutes now to list the top seven things that take up most of your time. Begin with the item that gets most of your time and end with the item that gets the least. As you look over the list, ask yourself these questions: What’s missing from the list? Are my priorities what I thought they would be? Are they the ones I want? How much time do I spend caring for others? What, if any, time is there for myself?

You would be surprised at how many people actually find they’re "missing" time. That is, their total hours add up to more than the 168 hours actually available every week. In the past, I myself have actually booked two meetings at the same time and never realized it until the moment I had to drive to one place or the other. The thing to remember about how you spend your time is that time "flows" to where you give your attention. If you fill your days with the busy work of others, that is where your time goes.

If I were your coach, I would ask you to take some quiet time in the next two weeks to look over the list of seven items you recorded above and consciously choose some new priorities based on what is important for your whole life. Ask yourself: What is most important to me right now in my life? Where do I want more of in my life? If I had a magic wand and could do whatever I want, what would it be? What areas in my life need more attention—like my health, my finances, relationships or job?

Write any answers that come to mind and let your desires run free. The key to this exercise is identifying what you want. Are poor finances keeping you stuck in a job you don’t like? Make it a priority to clean up your finances. Do you want more fun in your life? Write fun activities into your weekly calendar and do them. Is there a project you keep putting off, like writing a book or creating your own art work? Write it down. This is your life. Choose the priorities that are personally important to you and add them to your list.

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

DID I PICK THE WRONG JOB?

Are you one of those people concerned you might be in the wrong job? Here is a question one of my coaching clients had who was concerned that she may have sacrificed earning more money for the career she enjoys.

My whole career has been in the academic and non-profit sectors. I love my current job, which is stimulating and varied. However, I am regularly plagued by bouts of real envy related to salary. Among my acquaintances are women (and men) who have no more education or experience than I but earn TONS more, because of the profession they are in. It’s not just the idea that a higher income would make life more comfortable; I often feel that a lower salary and no ‘executive perks’ translate into a lack of status or recognition. Did I pick the wrong career?

If I were your coach, the first thing I would point out is that instead of looking backward, to the past, look forward to the future. Start where you are right now and ask yourself: "Do I like getting up in the morning and going to work? Am I living what I want to do? Is it my passion? Is this where I’m supposed to be?" If it is, then stop looking at where everybody else is and know that everything you’ve done up to this point in your career has contributed to who you are today. The question now is: "What are my opportunities? What am I not taking advantage of?"

Here’s a good exercise if you’re not sure about the career you’ve chosen. Ask yourself: "Where would I like to be job-wise and financially in two years if everything went the way I wanted it to? Would it be a different job? Or the same job but making more money?"

Here’s another assignment if you’re still not sure you want to stay in your present job. Come up with a list of five possible jobs or careers that not only look fulfilling to you but are also financially rewarding. Pick the one that looks the most interesting to you and investigate the feasibility of moving in that direction. For example, talk to people in that profession, spend part of a day observing or helping out, and/or identify any training or education you would need. Go down your list of possibilities and check each one out. If you can do something else you also love and make more money at the same time, why not go for it!

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

TOP TEN SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIORS IN BUSINESS

Is there any sadder sight than watching someone you know fail because of self-defeating behaviors? You know, doing or saying things that get in your own way. Successful people are vigilant in making sure they avoid or overcome their own self-defeating behavior. And should they slip, they are quick to pick themselves up, learn from their mistake, and move on. In their book, Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg identify some of the most common behaviors in business that cause people to be mediocre or worse:

1. Procrastinating: If you’re always late in finishing things, others will quit relying on you and, before long, start overlooking you.

2. Not following through: "Good intentions" are not enough. If you don’t have a follow up plan set in place, you won’t follow through.

3. Not preparing well enough: If you don’t take time to prepare, instead of leading from your head, you’ll shoot from your hip. Then more often than not, you’ll proceed to shoot yourself in the foot.

4. Getting involved with the wrong people: There are bad people in the world and, if you keep giving them the benefit of the doubt, it will backfire and you’ll be the one cleaning up the mess.

5. Always having to be right: Right as you think you are is as wrong as you can turn out to be. Always having to be right can create a lot of resentment and a lot of folks waiting for you to fall on your face.

6. Taking things too personally: When you take criticism too personally instead of realizing it is about fixing a problem, the problem becomes bigger and takes longer to fix. Better to take problems seriously, not personally.

7. Having unrealistic expectations: When you confuse what is reasonable (i.e., what sounds sensible) with what is realistic (i.e., what is likely to happen), you set yourself up to fail.

8. Quitting too soon: You have a lot more control over trying and quitting than you do over succeeding or failing. If you always quit, you’ll never succeed. If you always try, you’ll eventually succeed.

9. Not learning from your mistakes: Successful people don’t make fewer mistakes than unsuccessful people. They just don’t keep repeating the same mistakes. Remember, if you can’t admit you’ve made a mistake, you can’t learn from it.

10. Playing it too safe: The world is in such a rapid state of change that doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to be safe may turn out to be the greater risk.

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

TOP 10 GAMES PEOPLE PLAY AT WORK

In her book, Territorial Games, Annette Simmons writes about the ten most common games or turf wars people play at work. She views the playing of these territorial games as a natural human response to a world that is changing at a frightening pace and believes that many individuals are simply unaware of the implications of their behavior. But the price of playing territorial games is great in terms of its impact on personal, team and organizational productivity. The first step is to see territorial behavior for what it is.

1. The Occupation Game: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Like the game of musical chairs, the winner is the one who does not let anyone else have access to her chair or just stays seated during the music. Such a player has already claimed her organizational territory, whether it is information, relationships and/or authority, while the less territorial employees wait obediently for the music to stop.

2. The Information Manipulation Game: Damned lies and statistics. Controlling information or the interpretation of that information is used as a tool to protect territory, such as denying a "rival" access to data about resources and opportunities or massaging statistics to send a "tweaked" message favorable to one’s own territory. Manipulating or withholding information can be done in a variety of ways: from smiles, pretending, and little white lies to major cover ups.

3. The Intimidation Game: "Make my day." This is the game most firmly grounded in human instinct. At its most basic, it involves escalating behavior as a warning—raised voices, lowered voices, tapping fingers, narrowed eyes. But it can also entail veiled threats, sarcasm or public humiliation, and just "losing it" in terms of throwing "hissy-fits."

4. The Powerful Alliances Game: Friends in high places. One of the core truths in territorial warfare is the old adage: It’s not what you know, but who you know." Powerful alliances are necessary to survive in today’s business environment. Savvy players build allies and/or plant spies in critical places. As a game, it can include brownnosing, playing office politics, rubbing shoulders (frequent face-to-face contacts), and monopolizing access to key decision-makers.

5. The Invisible Wall Game: It must be the gremlins. This is one of the most covert strategies used by more "civilized" turf mongers who find intimidation distasteful. In this passive-aggressive game, players erect "invisible" walls to prevent the progress of perceived invaders by carefully orchestrating rules, procedures, information access requirements, and timing issues to be inconvenient and disadvantageous.

6. The Strategic Noncompliance Game: Oops…Sorry. A highly effective game is to agree up front to cooperate, lull the perceived turf invader into a sense of false security, and then default on the agreement at the last minute. This is a nice way of describing the behavior normally referred to as lying. No one will admit to doing it and everybody does it at one time or another. The problem is when it becomes a habit.

7. The Discredit Game: He’s OK, but I wouldn’t trust him. There is a lot of power in credibility—the more credible the speaker, the more power he or she has to influence others and create action. Decreasing the amount of credibility of a perceived opponent can be an effective strategy in protecting turf.

8. The Shunning Game: The Amish solution. Depriving an individual of attention can have a powerfully punishing effect to the effect he or she gives up ground. Raise the psychological stakes high enough and most people will back away from protected territory. It’s a childish way of branding someone or some group as an outsider and it can be accomplished through active ignoring or death by politeness.

9. The Camouflage Game: Look, a head in the road! If you’ve ever walked into a meeting feeling focused and clear and later walked out dazed and confused, you may have been party to the camouflage game where smoke and mirrors can decide critical territorial battles. The purpose is to distract or confuse long enough to deter the perceived invader. This is done through diversionary sneak attacks, calling attention to old embarrassments, and imaginary threats.

10. The Filibuster Game: We seem to have run out of time. A cross between the camouflage game and occupation game, the player occupies valuable floor time with confusing rhetoric. The player talks long enough to delay any progress that might invade protected territory.

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

7 KEY STRATEGIES TO RUNNING EFFECTIVE MEETINGS

Meetings are expensive and have a "ripple effect." The average organization spends between 7-15 percent of its personnel budget on meetings. A classic resource book on how to run effective meetings is: How to Make Meetings Work by Michael Doyle & David Strauss. Here are some guidelines to ensure your meetings are worth the effort.

1. Develop a clear purpose and expectations for the meeting.
Because a meeting is just a tool, it’s important to know the purpose and expectations you have for every meeting you call or participate in. Meetings are good for some things, bad for others. For example, don’t have a meeting if you have inadequate data or are poorly prepared, if you can communicate better by phone or e-mail, if your mind is already made up, if the subject is trivial, or if there’s too much anger or hostility. A meeting is a good idea if you want information or advice, you want to involve others in solving a problem or making a decision, you have an issue that needs clarification, or there’s a problem that’s not clear. When invited to attend a meeting, always ask what the purpose and expectations are.

2. Develop a clear agenda and whenever possible let members "own" the agenda.
With ongoing staff or board meetings, provide avenues for member input to the agenda, either at the beginning (Is there anything we should add?) or at the end of the previous meeting. Having input into the agenda increases member accountability. Be sure agendas are sent out prior to the meeting and designate the amount of time for each item.

3. Be sure the right people are there.
Who is invited to a meeting has a significant impact on what happens because there is a direct connection between who attends the meeting and the content and quality of decisions that will flow from it. If you hold a meeting to choose between alternatives A and B but only invite people sympathetic to A, there really was no choice. If you have the same kind of people with the same kind of views, you are going to get only predictable solutions. Sameness or homogeneity of meeting membership is the principal cause of many ineffective decisions.

4. During meetings, groups need to create a short term memory.
Traditionally, the long-term memory of the group has been served by minutes as recorded by a secretary or note taker. While these are important, they really represent the memory of what one individual thinks was important. Such minutes do not help participants during the meeting. Much more effective is to use a flipchart pad and select someone to record the ideas, actions and decisions of a group in full view of everyone in the meeting. This is not only a powerful short-term memory tool, it also provides a physical focus for the group. The notes can then be transcribed into a group memo or minutes of the meeting.

5. Work for group decisions--they are superior.
It’s well documented that group members will be more committed to a decision reached by consensus than to one settled by majority vote or mandated by one individual. A good decision isn’t of much value to a group if few people are willing to accept it.

6. Ensure effective participation of all members.
Identify roles and responsibilities to ensure all members take part in the meeting, such as leader, facilitator, recorder, and time keeper. The role of meeting leader or facilitator is to act as a kind of "police officer" by directing the verbal traffic of all participants and making sure every member has an equal opportunity to be heard and is protected from personal attack.

7. Create a comfortable, welcoming environment that projects a sense of openness. The seating arrangement makes a tremendous difference. Every human being brings energy to the group setting and most of it radiates in the direction he or she is facing. Seating people in a semi-circle helps them look in a common direction, allows for less emotionally charged communication among members (less eyeballing of one another), and it sets an atmosphere more suited to problem-solving. The optimum arrangement places nothing between members and officers, such as a desk or table. Get rid of empty chairs or have people move closer together to eliminate potential "energy leaks."

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net

7 HELPFUL HINTS FOR NON-PROFIT STRATEGIC PLANNING

I was asked to speak at a conference recently about community building and strategic planning for non-profits. Here are seven helpful hints that I passed out for non-profits or community organizations on how to proactively plan for your future. The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation publishes a number of books for non-profits which focus on community building and strategic planning.

1. Follow a strategic planning process and promote widespread participation.
Every organization, including community non-profits, should have a strategic planning model or process that it follows and that can be visually shown to every employee or member. Without a clear process, it is almost impossible to successfully enlist the support and enthusiasm you need to reach all your goals. Make it as inclusive as possible. Get input from all the key stakeholders—management, employees, and board members Invite supporters, partners, and related organizations to contribute. Participation in goal setting leads to a sense of involvement, which creates a feeling of influence and psychological ownership, which then leads to commitment!

2. Develop a shared vision.
More and more research is pouring in on the efficacy of developing a shared vision for your organization—from the real-life experiences of corporations and retail businesses to governmental agencies and non-profit boards. A shared vision is how you create your "preferred future." This is where you engage the "hearts" of those who work for you and support you and release the energy to move forward.

3. Take careful steps to measure and analyze the needs and problems of your environment or community.
As part of your planning process, identify all the stakeholders and, when necessary, get technical assistance from experts to build your case with the community and with other organizations.

4. Be sure to publicize and communicate tangible events and accomplishments.
Use well developed systems of communication to reach out internally and externally, such as festivals, parties, parades, newsletters, news releases, special events, and public meetings. Make use of neighborhood information brokers and network with resource people in the community.

5. Have ties to organizations outside your community.
Reach out to organizations at the state, regional, federal, national and even international levels for financial, political, knowledge, or technical support. They can also provide a much-needed boost in your recognition factor and increase your publicity opportunities.

6. Make sure your process produces new leaders over time.
Is there a way for employees, members, and participants to receive leadership training, learn group facilitation and organizational skills, and gain knowledge on how to analyze complex community issues?

7. Maintain a balance between internal and external resources.
Try not to have all your eggs in one basket in terms of human and financial resources. The broader the support across the greater community, the sounder your base.

Clancy Consultants, Inc.
www.clancyconsultants.net