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| Issue 2 2009 |
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Cost effective tips to support people through the downturnThe current economic climate not only impacts the bottom line of organisations but applies pressure on key resources, your people. As the pressure and workload increases due to the downturn this has an impact on the engagement and performance of your people. Here are five key tips to consider when supporting your people and organisation through the downturn.
Contact us for information on how we can help you with these 5 steps.
Julianne Johnson |
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Did you know Pollak Learning Alliance is now a Gold Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions? |
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Save hours each day - work smarter with Outlook |
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Email was supposed to make our lives easier right? So why are many of us struggling with managing our inbox? As workloads increase we all know that we need to ‘work smarter not harder’ but where specifically can we look to save time and become more efficient on a daily basis. We spend a considerable amount of time dealing with the activities that drive our daily workflow with things such as emails, meetings and task allocation. It makes sense to discover a smarter way to use Outlook and become more efficient potentially saving more than 5 hours per week. The 3D approach Delete, do, defer is the 3D approach. By learning to use the simple but effective 3D approach to email management you can really make some valuable savings every day and give yourself the time to focus on the more important things. Consider how we manage posted mail at home. First we filter through and toss the junk, then we sort and act on the other items. We then note the most important events on the calendar or on Post-it Notes on the fridge so they are not forgotten and the electricity is not cut off next month. This approach is the essence of ‘active mail management’, or in other words the 3D approach. So why do we treat email differently? As you process items in your inbox consider what ACTION you want to take. Is it something you can act upon immediately? Can it be deleted? Can it be moved onto your calendar for follow-up at a more suitable time? Messages received that can’t be done right away should be allocated time to carry out during your work day. By organising your calendar with activity-related appointments you can focus on completing work at set times throughout the day. Items that don’t require time scheduled can be prioritised and maintained in a To-do list using Tasks. Whatever the outcome, making a decision on each item of email and acting on it by moving the item out of your Inbox will ensure that you never see more in your mailbox than is absolutely necessary. An uncluttered inbox leads to an uncluttered mind and ensures the things that are important to you are allocated the appropriate time and mental focus. How to learn more The Time and Task Management using Outlook course will help you save time rather than mastering the technology. By investing just 3.5 hours away from the office, this short course will give you many hours back in time saved. By learning to use the techniques to process information more efficiently some people have managed to recover up to 5 hours a week in previously ‘lost’ time. Just think what you could do with an extra 5 hours each week! The following quotes are from participants who have attended this course and adopted these simple rules:
Put your 3D glasses on and you’ll never look back! To view the course outline and upcoming dates for our Time and Task Management Using Outlook course, click here. This article was co-authored by:
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The power of project management |
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It is a well publicised fact that projects have a high failure rate - according to the Standish Report, 68% of IT projects fail. The biggest problems are that project often run over time, over budget or fail to get buy-in. But the most common risk is people running projects without the right skills. What does it mean to be a project manager? Everything from an office move to implementing a new computer system needs project managers. Project managers traditionally have had degrees in project management, but during these uncertain economic times, we are seeing increasing numbers of people's job roles creeping towards project management. Some questions to think about as a project manager:
If these questions have planted the seed of doubt in your mind, there are several paths you can take to increase your project management skills. This includes:
For more information about how we can help you or your people with managing projects, contact your client manager on 1300 658 388.
Jessica Lucas |
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Book Review: Silos, Politics and Turf Wars |
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By Patrick Lencioni, Published by Jossey Bass, 2006 Within the genre of management books, there’s a range of book types. There’s the academic-turned-author who did a great piece of research and wants the world to know. (Think Marcus Buckingham’s First Break All The Rules.) Then there’s the ‘guy-who-made it’ book, the entrepreneur’s how to guide. (Think anything by Richard Branson or Jack Welsh.) Then there’s my favourite, the fable. A theory disguised as a story. The king of the management fable is, without a doubt, Dr Ken Blanchard who has sold 18 million books worldwide. Patrick Lencioni is perhaps the prince of management fabledom. He’s an American management consultant who loves putting numbers in his books titles. A departure from that tradition, Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is about a young manager who leaves his job to start a management consultancy and sets out to help leaders break down barriers and eliminate game-playing within their organisations. It’s an engaging story despite its simplicity. I had previously read another of Lencioni’s books (The Three Big Questions For A Frantic Family) which applied the same theory in a family context, so I found Silos, Politics and Turf Wars particularly predictable. Lencioni’s style is simple and uses basic language with a distinct absence of adjectives. It’s the reading equivalent of listening to Jack Johnson or Enya; the words kind of wash over you, leaving you feeling slightly happier than before you read them. It’s a perfect on-the-bus book, as the chapters are short and the story moves quickly. I found the semi-autobiographical nature of Silos, Politics and Turf Wars somewhat distracting. It paints the author as either a genius with enviable business insight or the luckiest darn consultant in the world who is making a fortune using simple common sense. Lencioni differs from Blanchard in the way he structures his books, separating fable and theory into two distinct parts. This gives readers a choice in how to tackle the book. You can read the fable and then review the theory in part 2, read the theory first and then the story to see how it’s applied, or ignore one part altogether. The theory section covers some important ‘what if’ questions to help readers apply the concepts, so it’s definitely worth at least a skim read. This structure makes Silos, Politics and Turf Wars even more readable, and is particularly helpful if you want to dip back into the book a month or more after your first reading. Would reading this book enable you to squash politicking within your organisation? The approach that Lencioni proposes is a top-down solution that could work within a team as well as across a whole business. For me, the approach seems simplistic and the practicalities of applying it are not displayed with sufficient rigour in the story for me to believe that it would actually work. If you’re not a manager or leader of a group, Silos will likely not meet your needs unless you can influence your leaders to put the idea into practice. Read this if you like:
To learn more, attend these courses with Pollak Learning Alliance:
Susan Dyster |
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Contact us - 1300 658 388 - info@pollak.com.au - www.pollak.com.au Sydney - Level 21, 580 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Melbourne - Level 4, 470 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 Parramatta - Level 8, 91 Phillip Street, Parramatta NSW 2150 |
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