A million years ago I was a young man trying with all my heart to become a first grade soccer player. I once came on as a reserve but never quite made it. The reason? The first grade coach described me as a one-pace player. By this he meant that regardless of the circumstances of the game I played at my own steady pace. I could neither quicken up or slow down.

 

I believe that thinking is exactly the same. You can decide how fast or slow you think depending on the time available and the nature of the situation–by doing so, you can become a more effective and flexible problem-solver, idea generator and decision-maker.

 

Let’s consider a practical example. I am in the process of designing a course on overcoming procrastination. I started thinking quickly and designed the first outline of the course. Then I realised that there were many gaps in my knowledge so I slowed down and reflected on the content (slow thinking). This led me to start a LinkedIn discussion and I read numerous research reports. Finally I quickened my pace and completed the design of the course and then sent it around to various people for comments.

 

My message? Getting anything done requires just starting and I have found the best way of doing this is to do it quickly. Once started you can then slow down then speed up. The aim is to continuously create movement. You also feel good and there is a sense of progress.

 

Try it next time. Don’t procrastinate–just start (quickly). Then slow down and reflect and ruminate if you need to then accelerate. You will get more done and you you will stop procrastinating.

 

If only someone had told me this earlier on in my soccer career I might have played for a rich club overseas–but that is another story.

 

Best wishes ken

 

I just came back from a HR SUMMIT in Hong Kong where i was one of the speakers and i was surprised that the issue of Work-Life balance was never mentioned. From all recent research among managers (particularly women) work-life balance is one of their major goals yet among HR managers at this coference it did not seem to rate a mention. Why is this so?

Perhaps the answer lies in these difficult times that simply having and keeping your job is the first and only priority. With retrenchments and down-sizing leaders are trying to reduce their cost base so that an astute manager will not want to raise an issue when simply having a job is a bonus.

The emphasis at the conference seemed to be on the measures that leaders go do to retain their all their staff, reduce their cost base and keep retrenchments at a minimum e.g. for example one company has asked every one of their leaders to take a 5% permanent cut in remuneration, another has offered a 12 month sabbatical for any employeee without pay.

But is this enough? It reminds me of the climate change debate, many initiatives have been put on hold because of the current financial crisis but shouldn’t we expect more from our business leaders. Why can’t we expect that work hard to maintain employment that offers some form of work-life balance. If you are an employee why would you expect anything less?

So lets no let our leaders (particularly in HR) off the hook. They keep telling anyone that will listen that people are our best asset yet what they are really saying is people are our best asset when it suits us and for most leaders, today it does not suit them at all.

Ken Hudson

 1. Adopt Hudson’s Law of Meetings

‘Hudson’s Law of Meetings’ is an adaptation of Parkinson’s Law which states that: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Hudson’s Law suggests that meetings expand to the time set for the meeting. So the first step in designing a better, faster meeting is to simply reduce the meeting time. In the service organisation where we are trialing these ideas we have reduced the meeting time from one hour (the default time) to 45 minutes with no reduction in output. Indeed there is a growing awareness that time is short so people must remain focused. For example, every 15 minutes a dedicated time keeper poses the question to the group that we are one third of the way through the meeting—are we one third of the way through the agenda? This reduction does not sound much but it does mean that you have reduced your collective meeting time by 25%. This time saving enables people to get to the next meeting, make a coffee, answer some emails and prepare for the next meeting and be on time.

2. Keep it Simple

Speed and simplicity have a symbiotic relationship. In trying to go faster you often have to simplify things. In simplifying a process or activity you can go faster. Hence with meetings it is a good idea to develop a standard agenda layout and format that can be used for most meetings. In the service organisation every department and it seems every manager had their own agenda layout. This slowed down comprehension and sometimes led to confusion where people were searching for where to find information and what preparation they had to do.

Every meeting should have an agenda with the purpose and the desired outcomes clearly stated and sent out at least 24 hours before the meeting. In this way the logistics of the meeting (e.g. place, time, location, participants) are confirmed. Much like kids at school where no hats means no play—no agenda means no meeting should take place (unless in an exceptional circumstance).

3. Collectively design some meeting rules and stick to these

One of the best things we did with the team from the service company is that they collectively designed a set of new meeting rules. These are the ‘rules of the game’ that everyone was expected to follow. Because they were created by the team they had a better chance of being followed and reflected the unique culture of that department and organisation. For example, some of the rules they agreed to were:-start every meeting on time (no ifs or buts), no meetings between 12.00pm and 1.30pm and no mobile phones in the meeting or any other electronic devices.

These rules also created peer pressure that made it easier for the person who called the meeting to enforce.

4. Speed Think your way through a few agenda items

In a normal meeting every agenda item is allocated roughly even time. But with a speed meeting you should divide the agenda into those everyday items and the more strategic ones. You can then speed-think the everyday items which will enable you to obtain a result quicker and the meeting will create momentum and energy. It will also free up more time for the more difficult items.

Another effective practice is that after you have made a decision, have two minutes of gut-feel time where anyone at the meeting can voice their intuition. People are now given permission to express what their emotional minds are telling them e.g. ‘I know the numbers don’t add up but my intuition is telling me that there is still a good opportunity here.’ We know that our intuition works ahead of our rational mind and informs all our decisions. A formal ‘gut feel’ time respects and validates this process.

5. Make every meeting also a learning experience

Every meeting should both have a purpose an outcome and ideally be a learning experience. It is a chance for the younger less experienced to learn from the leaders of an organisation and for the leaders themselves to role-model what they expect from others. Meetings reflect the culture of a business. If the culture is open and diverse you would expect the meeting to be conducted in a similar way. If on the other hand, the leadership team adopts an autocratic style this will become very evident in every meeting.

At the service business where we are trying to help some of their team break out of a few sloppy meeting habits we have suggested that the last few minutes of every meeting be allocated to a quick discussion on what worked in the meeting, what did not work and what did we learn and could do better next time. By thinking about meetings as learning opportunities ensures that whatever you decide, no meeting is ever a waste of time.

Running faster, better meetings is an important management and leadership skill that needs to be developed. I believe that every organisation should develop their own way of conducting meetings that reflects it culture, values and priorities and that this should be taught to all aspiring leaders of the future. It will make the business more efficient and productive and the time spent in meetings more enjoyable.

Dr Ken Hudson

Remember when time management courses were all the rage?

 It seemed to make perfect sense. There were courses on managing staff, managing projects, managing budgets so the idea of a course on managing time was the next logical step. You apply the same rational approach that you do to every other business activity. You plan, control, prioritise, review etc. But is this the way that we should be thinking about time?

Have we entered a new era where so much (e.g. work, growth, sales, information etc) is expected from so few resources (e.g. time, people, dollars) that trying to become better at managing time will not be enough?

Can you really manage time in the first place?

Don’t we need to think differently about time? As Einstein said we need new thinking to solve new problems.

My aim with Speed Thinking is to help everyone create more time for themselves by becoming more efficient and productive with everyday problems, ideas and solutions. By doing so you actually feel better and you often do better work. It also means that you can free up more time to invest in other activities that have meaning to you.

The thrust of Speed Thinking is that everyday problems can be resolved by paradoxically not over-thinking these. By keeping it simple and by thinking quicker. All you need is two minutes and the courage not to filter your responses.

It is not about managing time but creating more of it for you to spend it how you wish to.

So start thinking quickly right now!

Ken Hudson

 

 

According to the latest Boston Consulting Group Survey on Innovation:

http://www.bcg.com/impact_expertise/publications/files/BCG_Innovation_2009_Apr_2009.pdf

The two biggest barriers to innovation identified by leaders around the world are:

1. A risk-adverse culture and

2. Lengthy Development Times

Yet as they note, one of the least popular metrics remains time to market (used in 19% of organizations). If the old saying, what gets measured gets done, then speed to market will be an ongoing obstacle for most organizations in the future.

This seems strange to me. Most leaders are aware that the market-place is changing rapidly and consumers have an increasing expectation of speed of service yet speed to market is not on their radar. Also most leaders know that staying ahead of your competition is a sure way to grow revenues so why the reluctance.

Perhaps the penny has not dropped yet. Speed is a major differentiator in the market-place today. Speed is an organizational wide capability. And speed can be improved upon with the right training, tools and culture but it requires a letting go of the old slow and steady as she goes.

Organizations today have to be built around speed. Speed wins every time.

The leader that can think faster than his/her competition will dominate. Long live Speed Thinking.

Ken Hudson

 

I have been running a series of Speed Thinking sessions for a major airline as part of their emphasis on customer service.  Why Speed Thinking? Well if you are stuck in a line you hope that the person behind the counter can look after you quickly and efficiently. Speed is the new expectation of customers world-wide. They are comparing the broadband speed they achieve over the internet with the slow response times of business to their complaints. Not surprisingly, customers are not happy.

So what to do about it? Teaching front line staff to think quicker might be one option.

Lets return back to the airline–in the past two groups (39 people) I have asked people to rate themselves on how fast they are thinking at the beginning of the session (on a ten point scale, 1-slow, 10 very fast).
 
Their average score was 6.10
 
At the end of the 1.5 hour session I asked them the same question and their average score increased to 7.46 -this is an increase of 22.3%!
 
This is a small sample and it is self-scored but imagine how more productive your team can be or how the service experience can be enhanced by being able to think 22% quicker.
 
Imagine being able to free up 20% of your time. You could go to the gym or spend more time with your family or just go home early. Not to mention that Speed Thinking also has a positive impact on your mood and morale as well.

Imagine the edge you will have on your competitor. You can be better, faster.

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

 

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

 

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