Managing Leadership^®

There are many things expected of everyone at work, let alone of managers – and senior executives. We are assaulted with urgent calls to develop this management skill or that leadership characteristic, each new one promised as the key to our and our organization’s success.

The truth is, though, that most of us could do well enough at our daily work, if we could simply gain control over it. This has been noted by everyone from countless time management specialists to serious students of executive challenges such as Peter Drucker and Henry Mintzberg – not to mention the harried managers and employees who struggle daily to figure it all out.

Unfortunately, most work in this area has a bias of one sort or another that ultimately brings it down. One is encouraged to measure every little matter against overarching values and goals, such that they all lose their identity and meaning in the backglow of these lofty standards – one or the other has to go, and all too often it turns out to be both.

Or, one is told simply to prioritize. Make lists, classify tasks according to some sort of criteria – urgency, time-sensitivity, importance – and then just plunge in. The problem with this approach is that it is inflexible and detached from the disorder of daily work life. You inevitably will find the sorting standards to be inadequate, and the lists will grow to ungainly dimensions until they, too, are simply tossed out.

But the system devised by David Allen, and described to eminently actionable detail in his book “Getting Things Done,” is a thoroughly balanced approach that incorporates comprehensive philosophical and practical considerations in a surprisingly straightforward and easily applicable manner.

The main principle underlying Allen’s prescriptions can be summed up in this disarmingly germane quote:

You have more to do than you can possibly do. You just need to feel good about your choices.”

The key concern is that you clear your mind of the psychic background noise that, below your conscious awareness, depletes so much of your energy, increases your general levels of stress, and prevents you from focusing with the productive clarity of which you are actually capable on whatever work you do manage to get to.

The way you do this is to capture every outstanding item you have in your life – both work and personal – determine which really matter and toss those that don’t, then triage what’s left according to what you should be doing, what someone else should be doing, and what doesn’t call for action right now but warrants holding on to for specified reasons. You store appropriate reference and potential plans/projects material, set reminder notices to check on the progress of delegated items, and establish the next physical action you need to accomplish to further the tasks you’ve retained.

For example, you may have a project for setting up a meeting. Your action item wouldn’t be to “set up meeting.” Rather, you would establish a simple list of everything necessary for the meeting to be successful – outline the agenda, invite participants, reserve meeting room, obtain audio-visual equipment, and the like – then determine which one is the absolute next physical action you need to take to make progress. The idea is that when you’ve done that one, you check it off in the project list and replace it with the next one, until the project is complete.

But the system also classifies tasks according to context. If you are somewhere where the only practical way you can use your time is to make a few phone calls, you should be able to immediately retrieve all call-related tasks. If you are away from the office, you shouldn’t have to waste productive time looking for something to do by wading through tasks that can only be done at the office.

Moreover, Allen is aware not only that tasks will continue to come in, but that ideas will occur to you in unexpected times and places. So he offers solid, reliable ways to assure yourself that you are capturing and integrating these into your time-management system efficiently, and reviewing items regularly to ensure that you have your priorities properly organized.

As Allen says, any such initiative “must save a lot more time and effort than are needed to maintain it.” You will find not only that this one does so, but that you derive such clarity of mind and energy from implementing it, that you come to find the minimal time and effort you invest in keeping it going to be an invigorating part of your day, a reassuring affirmation that you have matters in hand.

This is a highly recommended resource for managers at all levels and at any stage in their careers. Make a choice you will feel good about: pick up your copy now.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of getting things done, please stop over to see what Steve Roesler has to say about why we may be so unproductive at work.

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