How do you achieve more with less?
September 29, 2008
Welcome to the world of business today. Everyday people are expected to achieve higher results with less time, people and resources. At the same time as there is more competition, changes in technology and even more demanding consumers, partners and shareholders.
It is enough to make you tired just thinking about it. But that is exactly what more and more people are experiencing. It really is ’survival of the fittest’ as business managers become overworked, stressed, burn-out or simply quit hoping that there next job will give them some relief. But guess what? The grass is not greener over at the next pasture.
Do we have to put up with this? Time management can help you to some extent with its emphasis on pritorizing. Perhaps that is why there is so much discussion on obtaining a better work-life balance because for most of us, work is such well…hard work. As a very hard working mum of one of our daughters friends just told us that she was too stressed to go on a holiday!
Or to put it another way–work as we know it simply does not work anymore. Surely we need to reinvent work itself. Why do we accept that work has to be the way it is? Unless we run our own business, why can’t we try and change the way we work.
My proposition is that Speed Thinking might just be what we all have been looking for. If you can change the way you think, you change your actions, feelings, expectations and ultimately your results. It is your greatest leverage point.
Speed Thinking enables you to think in a faster, better and more powerful way. I will not go on but Speed Thinking has the potential (I believe) to totally reinvent the way we all work. To become an activity in life that is purposeful, has meaning and is an expression of our mostly hidden, untapped talents.
Does anyone want to join me in this new movement? Reinventing and reimagining work so that we can produce more by working less and that work can create energy rather than sucking it from us.
Ken Hudson
What is your Return on Time Invested (ROTI)?
September 21, 2008
In a time-poor world we need to invent new ways of thinking and behaving. Ones which can help you prioritize, make you more productive and create graeter value, quicker.
So, I think we need to create a new measure which i have called your personal ROTI or what is your return on the time that you need to invest in a project or meeting? Many of us have done this intuitively when we are weighing up the merits of attending a meeting for example. But it is now time to formalise this. Your time is valuable and it is a scarce resource. Hence you need to invest it where you will achieve the greatest return.
Enter this new measure of ROTI. Every time you are faced with a decision where and how much to spend of your time try and work out your ROTI. For example, I was recently invited to talk to a group of small business owners. Normally I would love to do this but it involved speaking at night (so minus 1 point because it takes me away from my family), it was an hour and a half away (another i point), this would be stressful (another 1 point detraction) and i was only speaking for 15 minutes (another neagtive one point). In return it would make be feel good (plus 1 point) and I might gain some new business (plus 1 point). In this case my personal ROTI on this meeting is in the negative so the decision becomes an easy one.
A new world, requires new measures. This simple concept will help you make better decisions and assist with your time management. It waill also ensure that you gain the greatest possible return from your time invested.
Do you use anything similar to a ROTI score to help you manage your time?
Ken Hudson
Reduce meeting times by one third
September 5, 2008
According to a recent study conducted by The University of Missouri there is a way to make your meetings shorter without impacting on the quality of the decisions.
The answer?
Take the chairs away. The researchers compared the results from 111 meetings around a specific problem and found that the seated meetings lasted 34% longer. What’s more there was no difference in the decision making outcomes of the group.
In fact, among the standing meeting participants they expressed a greater satisfaction with their meetings.
This study can be found at:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E1D6103BF931A15755C0A96F958260
Some of the reasons that a stand up meeting is shorter might be:
- The sheer novelty of doing this
- You do not become too comfortable
- There is some physical motivation to quicken the meeting
- And also according to the Speed Thinking principles a better decision is often made quickly anyway.
Imagine the possibility of freeing up one third of your time. It has to be worth a try!
Ken Hudson
32% Faster Thinking in 30 minutes
June 29, 2008
Recently I conducted a Speed Thinking Workshop with 30 people who work for a major non-profit organisation.
At the beginning of the 1.5 hour workshop i asked them to record how fast they were thinking at this very moment. Their average score was 4.88, on a ten point scale (self-scored).
After 30 minutes of various Speed Thinking tools and exercises i ask them again to score how fast they were thinking and on average they scored themselves at 6.44. This is anincrease of 32%.
At the end of the session they scored themselves at 6.96 which was a 43% increase from their original state.
This finding tends to validate my experience in other workshops that i have run that you can increase the speed at which you think, quickly. I know this is only one group and it needs to be replicated etc but it is indicative.
Some of the other possible reasons for this increase other than the effect of the Speed Thinking Tools might be:
- The people that attended the session (it was voluntary) were open to the concept of Speed Thinking as they has self-selected
- The physical exercises we do to sharpen up the reflexes at the beginning of any workshop can sharpen the mind.
- There is a ‘group effect’–as they were all trying to improve our Speed Thinking it might influence one another.
- Simply talking about Speed Thinking might raise people’s awareness of it so they are simply just focus on it (perhaps for the first time?).
- It might just be that suggesting to people that they can think faster helps them to break free of a self-imposed limit?
What do you think?
Ken Hudson
96% of Small Business Owners will implement Speed Thinking
June 13, 2008
I don’t like to boast but sometimes when you are launching a new concept and you are passionate about it then good feedback is wonderful.
I recently conducted a 1.5 hour Speed Thinking Workshop with over 50 small business owners at a Department of State and Regional Development sponsored event. The business owners ran an amazing array of businesses from florists, to fruit juice suppliers to coaches and trainers.
The two key results were:
96% of respondents indicated that they would implement what they had learnt (in the workshop) in their business
98% of respondents rated the presenter’s delivery of the workshop as good to excellent
Some of the reasons that owners found the workshop to be so beneficial (based on feedback):
- The originality of the Speed Thinking concept
- It was energizing
- Participations’ had an opportunity y to work and learn with others in two minute blocks
- Small business owners have no time so anything that can help them better adapt to this situation the better
- The speed thinking tools are simple and helpful
Ken Hudson, Inventor of Speed Thinking
Improve how fast you think by 44%
May 22, 2008
Recently I surveyed my Graduate students at the
I asked each of my students in an elective subject called Marketing Creativity to rate how fast they were as a thinker at the beginning of the course on a ten point scale (1 being very slow, 10 extremely fast). Their average score was 4.61. This was a surprising low result in itself but perhaps they have not been encouraged to think quickly in a post graduate education experience. By comparison a group of small business owners self-scored themselves at 6.2. Which is expected (I believe) given the fast-paced world a small business competes in. In another comparison a group of facilitators scored themselves 6.5 on average. These scores also suggest that people reconise that there is room for improvement!
After approximately five hours (i.e. ten sessions of 30 minutes) of rather haphazard training by me in speed thinking I asked the students again and their score on average increased to 6.63–an increase of 44%!
I put the increase down to three main factors. Simply by talking about Speed Thinking raised student’s consciousness of it. Secondly they became more confident in it because they would practice it week in, week out. And thirdly I gave them a range of tools that seemed to increase their speed and confidence.
I also asked the students whether they considered themselves to be an extrovert or an introvert (again on a ten point scale) and found that the extroverts improved by 39% and the introverts by a whopping 51%. My proposition is that extroverts find speed thing easier than introverts because they tend to react quickly to external events rather than the introverts more internal deliberate style. Hence although introverts found the going slightly more uncomfortable they gained the most benefit. This finding will be explored more in the future.
Being able to think quickly in a time-poor world would seem to be an advantage that these students seem to appreciate and enjoy. These results tend to suggest that the pace at which we think can be improved and is not fixed.
I will bring you more results when these come to hand.
Dr. Ken