Fast Focus on Your Success

Pack These! How to Stay Tip-Top on the Road

		Thursday, 24 September 09 - 03:08 PM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

When you're traveling on business, it's especially important that you are fit and operating at optimum level.  Whether you're meeting with customers or staff, giving a presentation, or seeking new business opportunities, your ability to communicate clearly, think quickly, and make smart decisions is key to success.  As if travel doesn't present enough challenges and stress under "normal" circumstances, now we have to be prepared for the H1N1 flu virus.

Here are some obvious and not so obvious items to have when you travel:

1.  Hand sanitizer or wet wipes.  Clean hands are the best way to avoid picking up nasty bugs.

2.  Ear plugs.  These are an inexpensive way to silence jet engines, passengers on cells phones, or unwanted noises when you're trying to sleep or work  in your hotel room.  They are also smaller to carry than sound-cancelling headphones. 

3.  Melatonin tablets.  This over-the-counter product helps deal with jet lag when traveling across time zones.  I find this natural substance very helpful in adjusting quickly to local time.

4.  EKG scan.  If you're of an age where you have an electrocardiogram scan as part of your annual physical, then ask for a copy from your physician.  Keep it in your wallet.  Should you ever be out of town, or out of the country, and seek medical assistance for a cardiac condition, a copy of your baseline EKG can be a valuable comparative tool for those treating you. 

5.  Aspirin.  Speaking of your heart, health care professionals recommend chewing an aspirin if you think you're experiencing a heart attack.  So keep a few in your handbag or briefcase.

These recommendations are not meant to scare you.  Rather, they are simple ways to be prepared for expected nuisances and the rare serious health situation when you're on the road.

Meeting Value Calculator Tool

		Thursday, 30 July 09 - 01:14 PM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

Meetings, meetings!  We have so many, yet so few really deliver top value.

"Time is money," Ben Franklin observed.  Nowadays, time is worth more than money.  It's our most precious resource.

Money can be replaced.  Time cannot.

Still, calculating a monetary equivalent is a good starting point in determining whether your meetings are investments that yield dividends or costing valuable resources.

Profitable investment or waste of time?

The Meeting Value Calculator is a free tool that can help you answer this question.  You can access it on my firm's website by clicking here.

Also, check out my article Five Ways to Sink a Meeting for ways to improve your meeting results.

Living Effectively - Enduring Advice from Antiquity

		Wednesday, 01 July 09 - 05:44 PM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

In the Nothing-New-Under-the-Sun category, I recently saw the fabulous exhibit Afghanistan:  Hidden Treasures from the National Museum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The exhibit included works and artifacts from Ai Khanoum, a city founded in the 4th century BC after Alexander the Great's conquest. 

This tomb inscription, part of the Delphic precepts, is reproduced in the exhibit.  It strikes me as being as relevant today as it was in ancient times:

"As children, learn good manners

As young men, learn to control the passions

In middle age, be just

In old age, give good advice

Then die, without regret."

Timeless and universal advice for us all!

Supercharge Your Meetings

		Friday, 03 April 09 - 04:05 PM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

Often, it's the simple things that are the most difficult to get right.  I think that business meetings fall into this category.  People have just become resigned to having large amounts of their time snatched from their work week. 

Even meetings that have a good reason for happening often take up more time than they need to, and don't generate optimal results because insufficient thought and planning have gone into them. 

Time is our most precious resource.  We can't reclaim it.  For maximum productivity and collaboration, consider these action steps to get the highest return on time (ROT) possible on meetings.

Six Tips to Supercharge Your Meetings

1.     A clear, compelling reason to meet should be identified and communicated in advance of the meeting.  This primes the motivational pump and focuses people’s attention.  Too many business meetings are a waste of time because this prime directive is overlooked.

2.    The meeting agenda should be circulated in advance, since attendees are likely to have different thinking and communication styles. (For example, some people possess a rapid “think-out-loud” style, while others are more reflective and need to think through matters carefully before they will speak an opinion or suggestion).

3.    Desired outcomes should be communicated at the beginning of each meeting to calibrate attendees’ expectations.  For example, is the meeting for brainstorming or decision-making?  Is the meeting primarily for operational  information flow or in-depth discussion?  When a meeting’s outcomes are consistent with expectations up front, everyone feels encouraged, motivated and focused on next-step action.  This is especially the case with full-day or multi-day management retreats and offsites.

4.    People support what they help to create.  Attendees need to be heard to become engaged and committed.  Meeting leaders should be inclusive and not just use a meeting as a bully-pulpit to pontificate.

5.    Inclusiveness means having a system to collect everyone’s opinions, not just the loudest or most talkative.  A round-robin system works well and prevents people from talking over one another.

6.    Focused attention is critical to successful meetings, so ban distracting technology such as cell phones, PDAs, etc. from the room.  Psychologically, this sends the powerful “meta-message” to attendees that the meeting agenda and content are of prime importance.

Most meetings, whether they're team meetings, board sessions, or large offsite events, are successful in direct proportion to the planning that's done in advance. There are no shortcuts. 

Color Code Your Performance?

		Tuesday, 31 March 09 - 07:50 AM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

Recently, I was stuck in a windowless conference room, an unwilling victim of "PowerPoint Gone Mad."  The font was so small, the presenter's voice so monotone, that I struggled to find something in my surroundings to keep my eyes and mind from glazing over.

The walls were blah beige.  No help there.  Then I noticed  a red "Exit" sign.  If only I could have exited! 

But the sign reminded me of some interesting research on color and performance I'd read about.

The Science article, titled "Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances," reported that red enhances performance on detail-oriented tasks, whereas blue enhances performance on creative tasks.  The color red is also associated with avoidance, as in warnings of danger or caution.  Think STOP sign.

(Who among us does not associate red ink with errors and incorrect answers?)

The color red - when used as room color or other background color - can make people's work more accurate.  On the other hand, the color blue enhances people's creativity.

Blue-sky thinking, here I come!

The Positive Power of Sleep

		Monday, 12 January 09 - 11:07 PM (GMT -05:00) By Susan Battley in Performance Improvement

Attention, peak performing leaders and professionals. 

Do you want to reduce your chance of getting a cold?  Cut your risk of heart attack?  Sleep research continues to yield important information about how our minds and bodies benefit from a good night's rest.  Consider these two recent studies.

Researchers note in The Journal of the American Medical Association , December 24-31, 2008 issue, that getting an extra hour of sleep was associated with a 33 percent drop in participants' odds of developing coronary artery calcification over five years.  [JAMA. 2008;300(24):2859-2866].

A study published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people who sleep less than seven hours per night are three times more likely than those who sleep at least eight hours to catch a common cold after being exposed to a cold-causing virus. Put another way, sleep fights colds.

Now for the reality check.  In a National Sleep Foundation survey, nearly a third (32%) of respondents say they only get a good night’s sleep a few nights per month.

Time sleeping is time well spent.  Be good to yourself, and reap the rewards of greater productivity, creativity, stress resilience and overall well-being.

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