Before I retired, I had the pleasure of working with numerous managers, workers, and executives from dozens of corporations. This enabled me to observe practices that worked well and to see trends emerge in the way business is conducted.
From this, I could make a long list of survival skills. I’m sure you can, too. But we would have a good score for most items on the list: the proof is our survival. So, for this article, I want to focus purely on the skills where we can probably all agree that we, and most people, need to continue to improve.
Skill 1: Filtering Incoming Information
In this fast-paced world, we are required to process more and more information. This is happening to everyone, and especially to knowledge workers. Many people spend hours every day just going through email. Add to that the long line of incoming reports, project updates, office chatter, spam, the communication stream from those we try to keep up with on Facebook and Twitter, and so on.
We’ve talked before about processing information when there’s too much of it, and we noted that it helps to set up filters for your incoming information. In this regard, it can be very useful to set up filters for your email. Although most email programs support some type of filtering, I am most familiar with the filtering systems of Outlook and Gmail. So, my examples will draw from that experience.
Filtering can be set up in Gmail by clicking on Settings, and then on Filters. An example of how I used this is shown in the following two pictures, which create a filter that has Gmail intercept all messages in which the subject contains “is now following you on Twitter.”
After entering the desired text in the Subject line, I click on Next and enter the following for the rest of the set up:
Note that I have told Gmail to send these incoming emails to a “label” (similar to Outlook’s folders). The Twitter-related emails go there, marked as read, staying out of my inbox, and waiting on me to read them whenever I want to.
In my case, I check my Gmail “Twitter folder” every couple of days, and delete any emails that are from people that have numbers in their Twitter names (like janie22), because I know without looking that they are spam. For ones that look like they might not be spam, I do a quick check of them and follow back a few who sound interesting.
As noted earlier, Outlook also has a good filtering system, as suggested by this screenshot of one of its filtering panels:
The principle of filtering can be broadly applied. For example, as indicated in the above Outlook screenshot, you can set up a filter so that any emails from your boss go to your High Priority folder. My own preference, though, would be to leave the important items unfiltered so that they stay in your inbox until you attend to them.
Note that, depending on the nature of the filtered items, you may want to schedule periodic reminders to check the various folders your mail is sent to. In the case of my Gmail Twitter folder, it doesn’t really matter when I check it … every couple of days is fine, and I always remember to do that without a reminder. But, you may want to ensure you check certain folders periodically and might need a calendar reminder for that, at least until you have a habit of it.
Ask “What Is This Action Worth?”
With workload increasing and the economy slumping, it is more important than ever to make sure you are working on the right things. It pays to get in a habit of asking what a task is worth. You can tweak your efficiency until hell freezes over, but you won’t be effective unless you are working on the right things. I love how Peter Drucker says it: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
All of us are going to die with tasks undone. That’s just the way it is. Even on our last day, we will have things on “our lists” (even if they are just mental lists), and some of those things won’t get done.
It has always been important to work on the right things, and it will become even more so.
Be a Good “Cloud Collaborator”
I’m rolling two skills together here: collaboration and “working in the cloud.”
During the past 10 years, there has been a massive shift in the way work is done. The shift has been from use of supervised individuals to the use of teams. And, even when a formal team is not assigned to a project, it still is often accomplished through collaboration.
Take something as simple as a performance indicator report as an example. Previously, such reports may well have been produced by an individual (a manager or admin assistant), but it is now common to see such reports put together by several people, each contributing their part, by updating information online.
And, of course, we have all seen the use of “the cloud” increase (data on the internet). Many of us now keep our schedules online instead of in a desktop program … I keep mine in Google Calendar (for the “heck of it,” I still sync it to Outlook). College students now frequently use the Google Docs collaboration feature to put together joint reports.
Many, many corporations, including small businesses, use online project management software like Basecamp, because such software is designed with collaboration in mind. When President Obama was campaining for President, he managed his campaign using similar software.
As companies get tired of the capital layout for their servers, and the associated energy costs, the cloud is going to be more and more attractive to them. We can expect to see the trend of cloud computing and collaboration continue upward, and we should all be prepared to be comfortable working in this type of environment.
Your thoughts?