Take back control of your workday

Editor's Notes

• #2: Take back control of your workday Louis Richardson – IBM Storyteller & Enthusiast, Social Smarter Work @inter_vivos
• #3: What do you do for a living? If I were to be sitting next to you on a plane and I leaned over and asked this question, what would you say in response?
• #4: So when you’re doing what you do for a living…what specifically are you doing? If you’re a project manager or a sales exec, what does that look like?
• #5: And what keeps you from doing whatever it is that you do to be the best at what you do for a living?
• #6: M&Ms
• #7: Meetings, Managers and Mail
• #8: You likely have to get management approval for a $500 expense…but you can call a 1 hour meeting with 20 people and no one notices. Go figure!
• #9: And meeting are toxic. One meeting requires another…which requires another to talk about the first meeting. It’s insane. In one company there was a weekly executive status meeting that consumed 7000 hours of executive time during the course of the year. However those same meetings caused over 300,000 hours of meetings from support staff and others in preparation for the executive meetings.
• #10: Meetings are often way too general and we only schedule them in 30 minute increments. What about having a 10 minute meeting?
• #11: When I show this picture I often ask the audience to pick out the managers. When they do, I ask “What visual clues did you pick up on to know they were managers?” The answer I get most often, “They weren’t doing any work.” Why do we have managers that mostly measure and report? That may have been acceptable in the industrial age, but we’re well past that need today.
• #12: Managers should be leaders and mentoring instead of measuring.
• #13: And what feeling comes over you when you think about email? It’s overwhelming. We feel guilty with all the unanswered or unopened email. We are uneasy because we think we might be missing something.
• #14: So we spend a growing amount of our workday inside our in-box. Sorting through and checking new messages for a hint of substance. And our in-box has become our to-do list. Our day is controlled by the urgent requests that flood in, unchecked. Conservative estimates are that we spend 25% of our workday dealing with email.
• #15: And the knowledge, the conversations, the decisions, the lessons learned in all those emails, are right there…in all those emails. Where no one will ever uncover them again. Your in-box is where knowledge goes to die.
• #16: And email isn’t even a good conversational tool. It’s built for transactions. I have a question and I email you. You answer the question. Only the 2 of us have benefited. We had a transaction….not a conversation.
• #17: What can be done?
• #18: We’ve designed a new way to work.
• #19: One in which meetings are about context not just time filled with content. Where managers are counselors not commanders. Where mail is not about the mail, but about the message itself.
• #20: So let’s talk.
• #21: Of the 3 M’s (Meeting, Managers and Mail) which one would you say wastes the most time & money in your organization? Or just for you?
• #22: There is hope. Let’s take a few minutes to imagine some ways you can reduce the wasted time.
• #23: Let’s imagine some ways you can reduce the time wasted by Meetings.
• #24: You can use communities to immediately share updates, status, ideas, documents & conversations relevant to the specific audience or topic.
• #25: You can use forums to facilitate discovery of new ideas, conversations around specific concerns and general questions.
• #26: You can use ideation to enlist new ideas and concepts, gain support via votes and garner input from others for improvements
• #27: Let’s imagine some ways you can reduce the time wasted by Managers
• #28: Managers could use activities to keep tract of action items, assign to-dos, share relevant documents, work products and conversations
• #29: Managers could use blogs and wikis to share announcements, inform others, enlist input and support, encourage feedback and improve communications
• #30: And managers could use sub-communities to address specific interests or to provide a private and secure area for sensitive information and discussions.
• #31: Let’s imagine some ways you can reduce the time wasted by mail
• #32: You can use updates and micro-blogs to stay informed, ask questions, find answers, share expertise and inform others of new ideas and findings
• #33: You can use files to share content, enlist comments, track use and influence, remain current, avoid duplication and mail attachment overload
• #34: And of course, you can use IBM Verse…a totally reimagined way to view your conversations, contacts, appointments, notifications, what you owe others and what they owe you.
• #35: Imagine…what would it mean to your organization if your could cut your meeting times by 25%?
• #36: Imagine…what would it mean to your organization if your managers spent 25% less time measuring and devoted that time to mentoring.
• #37: Imagine…what would it mean to your organization if mail distraction (time spent in the inbox) was cut by 25%?
• #38: Your employees are overworked…yet they feel they are underutilized…they have more to give.
• #39: And if you don’t believe me…just ask them
• #40: It’s time to take control of your workday
• #41: Check out these sites for more information www.ibm.com/social www.ibm.com/verse www.ibm.com/smarterworkforce
• #42: Thank you Louis Richardson Storyteller & Enthusiast Social Smarter Work Creativitycrisis.com [email_address] Twitter.com/inter_vivios About.me/louisrichardson Slideshare.net/louisrichardson Linkedin.com/in/louisrichardson Youtube.com/user/louisrichardsonjr