6 Key Actions To Deal With Performance Problems.

Working with employees to resolve performance problems is one of your key leadership responsibilities. How well you meet that responsibility will depend on your ability to fully understand the nature of each problem you face. By identifying desired and actual performance, you begin building that understanding. 1. Identify the desired and actual performance in specific, behavioral terms. Write them down.

2. Determine the negative impact of the problem — the ways others are affected — in specific terms. Write them down.

3. Identify the realistic consequences the employee will face if the problem is not resolved. Write them down.

4. Check "past practices". Have similar problems occurred elsewhere in the organization? How were they handled?

5. Determine what type of discussion is appropriate: Coaching? Counseling? Formal Discipline?

6. Seek counsel and obtain necessary approvals if formal discipline is involved.

Without question, the most critical component of the problem-solving process is preparation. How you handle this activity will, with few exceptions, shape the discussion, employee's response, the outcome, and the nature of your long-term relationship with each other.

Want To Knock It Out Of The Park Every Day At Work? Expect Top Performance.

"Not failure, but low aim, is crime." - James Russell Lowell 1. Be conscious of the self fulfilling prophecy: When you expect something to happen (positive or negative), you unconsciously act in a manner which makes it more likely to  occur.

2. Involve your team in setting standards that are achievable, but also require them to stretch their knowledge and skills. Avoid settling for mediocre or sub-par work. Remember that regardless of what you say, it is the performance you''re willing to accept that becomes your true standard.

3. Think of each member of your work group as a high jumper. Celebrate the reaching of new heights - then 'raise the bar' together. But don't forget, as you're raising the bar, so is your competition.

4. Make sure you walk the talk - earn the right to hold others to high standards by meeting them yourself.

4 Ways To Coach Your Team.

"Coaching isn't an addition to a leader's job, it's an integral part of it." - George S. Odiorne 1. Pay attention to the middle stars. Avoid the trap of focusing only on the "superstars" (those with exceptional performance) and the "fallen stars" (those with significant performance problems). Most people shine somewhere in the middle.

2. Schedule a short meeting with each of your direct reports once every two to three weeks. Discuss their work in progress, provide feedback on how they're doing, and ask how you and others can contribute to their success.

3. Go back to school. Read articles or books, watch videos, listen to audio books, or attend a workshop that deals specifically with coaching techniques. Then apply what you learn.

4. Build an 'Everyone's A Coach' Environment. Begin by identifying the characteristics and behaviors exhibited by good coaches. Then ask everyone for their commitment to practice those behaviors. Consider providing coaching skills training to help each person assume their new coaching role.

To Succeed, Sometimes You Need To Change Your Game.

Watching my son's baseball game last night, I saw the coach do something that I didn't like, but I know he had to do. They were down 2 runs and it was the last inning - they had to somehow stack the deck to even the score. What did the coach do? The sides changed, my son was about to be up at bat, and the coach made the decision to move the batting order around (they are allowed to do that) to favor some of the more heavy hitters. What happened? They tied it up and eventually won the game. Now to your career. Sometimes when faced with an immovable obstacle, one needs to change what they are doing. The more hard-headed one is - the bigger the obstacle will become.

Try something new — either go around the obstacle or don't deal with it at all. Some suggestions:

• Job boards and recruiters are not helping your job search - try networking and connecting with influential people.
• Someone on your team keeps complaining about their work — give them one of your projects to work on — they might shut up.
• Feel stuck in your position — build your potential — read books, go to lectures, take a course. Start a blog! Expand your horizons.
• Continuously at meetings all day — stop attending 1 or 2 of them. See what happens. Leave early/show up late.
• Have an open door policy? Nice guy — no time to do anything else. Limit your exposure to the troops. Close that door.
• Current contact list not delivering that job? Time to make a new contact list — get out there and meet some influential friends. Do you know your mayor? Your representative? You should — they are well connected individuals — call them for an appointment today.
• Boss not listening to you? Try another communication method. If email is getting lost in the shuffle, pick up the phone or even better, stop by his door for a quick 2 minute discussion.
• Resume not getting any response? Time to update it with better keywords, action verbs and most of all - Be Concise! Still not working? Try a resume writer (call me for the best ones).

Bottom line - stop hitting your head against the wall. Changing your game — even a little bit — might make all the difference. You might hit a home run.

Stretch Your New People.

I hear it all the time from my clients when hiring — "I can't find someone that is "just right" for the position." Or "They don't meet all the qualifications for the job." Well - they're wrong. It's a big mistake to expect that the possible candidates have to own ALL the qualifications for the said position. Why?

1. It's unrealistic. Even in times like these, where there are a lot of people on the street, the system of finding the right person with the perfect qualifications is slim to none, and slims out of town. What happens is that the recruiter or HR associate puts unrealistic demands on every candidate at the start and rarely lets anyone with real potential in. They focus on capabilities and not on personality.

2. It's not long-range thinking. Think about hiring for a bank manager. If you hire a previous bank manager with all the qualifications for the position, they're going to be pretty bored within six months doing the same thing that they did at their last location. Once you learn how the company 'works' and all the people's personalities - the job gets pretty basic after awhile. Then they get bored, sloppy, or start bothering you for a promotion.

You need to STRETCH your new people. The basic rule is to hire at least one grade below the stated position to ensure that you are challenging that person. What will happen? For at least the first year while they step out of their comfort zone they will push themselves and build new potential. In addition, when you stretch your pick, you might find that they do things differently from the previous manager — who might find innovative ways to attack their position and motivate their troops.

For those that are in the market looking for that position, use this info as a retort to the interviewer's response that you might not have the requisite experience for the position (by the way - a frequent excuse used ALL the time). Tell them that it's better to hire someone where it is a stretch - they will have more content employees that are consistently challenging themselves and doing things differently.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this - feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section below. Thanks!

4 Ways to Use "Pull" to Increase Your Success

A friend had just received an inscrutable error message. Err = 8008, it read, entirely unhelpfully. What mysterious problem was there this time? He'd set his heart on the fourth season of HBO's hit series Entourage that evening, and now the download was stalled.

By John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison at HBR

Then he realized: What if he Googled the error message? Sure enough, an answer was to be found on the Apple support wiki, and soon he was watching season four on the family laptop.

It's a small example perhaps. But it's symbolic of powerful new abilities individuals have acquired in the world of pull. These play out at three levels. The first enables us to access what we need when we need it — as when we transform previously annoying error messages into vital information. Particularly on the Internet, many of us have already begun to take this first level of pull for granted.

But what if we don't have an error message to enter into a search engine? As the big shift takes hold, and the world becomes ever less predictable, many times we're no longer certain what to look for or what questions to ask. That's where a second level of pull becomes more useful: the ability to attract people and resources you didn't previously know existed. Some percentage of these, once you encounter them, turn out to be relevant and valuable — just what you were looking for. This level of pull works through serendipity rather than search. Social networks are prime spots for serendipity to play out as we unexpectedly encounter friends of friends or even total strangers that ultimately prove to be helpful.

The first two levels of pull — the ability to access and attract — are ultimately static. They assume that the people and resources we need already exist and that the challenge is to find or discover them. Yet each of us may need to further develop our own personal and professional skills before we can even recognize how best to access and attract what we need and want. Said differently, we need to master a third level of pull — the ability to pull from within ourselves the insight and performance needed to achieve our potential and help other people do the same.

What follows are four broad ways each of us can use these three levels of pull to increase our personal success:

1. Make your passion your profession. Do you love what you do? In today's economy just having a job is cause enough to be thankful. But the pace of change keeps none of us safe: a more uncertain world requires working harder to keep our professional skills competitive. Since most of us put intense effort only into those things that provide us meaning and emotional engagement, we must make our passions our professions or the world will pass us by.

2. Expand — and engage — the edges of your social network. You're probably on Facebook, LinkedIn, or some other social network by now. But how adventurous are you there? Serendipity works best when we extend the edges of our social networks. People on these edges represent "weak ties" connecting us to new insight, experiences, and capabilities that provoke us to improve our own game. Over time, these edge connections become part of our core network, transforming that core in deep yet unexpected ways.

3. Participate in spikes. As we begin to pursue our passions, something remarkable starts to happen. While a few of us will choose to remain in, or even migrate to, remote geographic areas because of our passion for certain physical locations, many more of us will be drawn to emerging spikes of complementary talent in densely settled geographic areas. Social networks in virtual space will amplify the forces of pull being generated in spikes as our passions motivate us to seek out people who can help us get better faster. 4. Maximize return on attention. Hearing these recommendations, some readers will ask how any of us will have enough time to expand our networks and explore talent spikes. Aren't we time-constrained already? Yet by adopting new tools and services we can all improve our "return on attention" — the value we get in return for the time spent looking for what we want and need. Search tools help improve this value immensely. But serendipity tools may prove even more helpful as they connect us to people and resources we don't yet know exist.

What about you? Would you accept a "friend" request on a social network from someone you'd never met? In what ways have you noticed serendipity at work in your own life and career? Have you found ways to shape serendipity to increase the quantity and quality of unexpected encounters?

Less People, More Work? Try Gold Standard Leadership.

After decades of time and millions of dollars spent on leadership development and mentoring programs, why are we still facing a leadership crisis at many levels of the business world? By Steve Farber at HBR.

By now, most business leaders have learned that our job is to expand and develop our own capacity, while simultaneously preparing the next generation of leaders to take the reins. Develop talent, we've been taught. Be helpful. Be a coach. Mentor someone. But it doesn't happen all that often — at least, not in any significant way.

I believe it's time for us to set a new gold standard for what it means to be a leader of substance and influence.

We need to pick up where many "programs" leave off by realizing that it's simply not enough for us to be helpful coaches and advisors to the people around us at work. The greatest, most successful and well-respected leaders that I've encountered in my two decades of consulting, advising, writing, and speaking are not just helpful: they've come to understand that the true measure of their greatness as leaders is their ability to develop leaders who go on to surpass them — who rise to a level greater than themselves in skill, influence and ability.

There are pitfalls, of course. Devoting yourself to another's elevation potentially carries a whole boatload of emotional (or egotistical) baggage, for example. But I won't argue those points here or try to convert the skeptics; instead, just for the sake of this discussion, I'll assume you're with me on this and offer these 6 steps to help you get started on your own "Greater Than Yourself" endeavor:

1. Choose Wisely While, ideally, Greater Than Yourself (GTY) is something you should do with many people ("all people" may be a bit of a stretch for even the most high-minded among us), it's often best to start small. In the beginning, you should choose one person as your "GTY Project." But choose wisely. Pick someone you trust and deeply believe in. It should be someone whose personal aspirations can be served by your unique experience, skills, values, and network. Be conscious and deliberate about the qualities you seek in your GTY: pick someone who has the drive, energy, heart and desire to take full advantage of what you have to give them, and whose values are congruent with your own. And — most important — it should be someone you (dare I say it?) love. Okay, I'll accept "deeply care about."

2. Open The Door and Invite Them In Sit down with the person you've chosen and have a frank and open discussion about what your intent is for him or her, and make sure that they're willing and up to the task. Let them know that your job will be to do and give whatever you can to raise them up above yourself in capacity and success in the appropriate arena. For example, my GTY project, Tommy Spaulding, wants to excel in the arena of writing and public speaking — my professional playground. In the very beginning, I made a commitment to Tommy that I'd do everything humanly possible to help him become a better-known, more influential author/speaker than I am, as long as he was willing to take full advantage of the opportunities and contacts, etc. I would offer to him. He was.

3. Hook Them Up Think through your entire network of contacts and determine who would be valuable to your GTY. Who can help? Whom should they meet? Then open the floodgates and make all the appropriate introductions. Hold nothing and no one back. I've introduced Tommy to my favorite speakers bureaus, my business manager and my publisher. He just got his first book deal through those contacts.

4. Sing Their Praises Think of yourself as the advocate for your GTY's value and talent, and talk about them every chance you get. Shine the spotlight on their accomplishments when they have them. Look for opportunities to let others know about your belief in this special individual.

5. Practice Tough Love Someone once said that feedback is a great gift until you get some. Of course you'll want to offer plenty of words of encouragement, but you'll also need to hold them ridiculously accountable to their own goals and aspirations, which means smacking them around when necessary. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

6. Demand the One Commitment GTY is fundamentally selfless act (think of it as The Golden Rule on steroids), and you should expect nothing in return, no quid pro quo. With one exception: demand that your GTY take on someone else as their GTY, and so on down the line. It's the old pay it forward approach, and the implications of such a commitment are significant.

The idea of changing the world has become more than a little clichéd, of late. But this on-going commitment to another's enrichment really will add up. Maybe it won't change the "whole wide world," as we used to say when we were kids — but it can certainly change the world of your company, your business unit, your team, or your community.

And I can't think of a better, nobler way to solve a leadership crisis.

Losing Your Job & Breaking Shovels.

I broke two shovels today. This weekend, my family and I spent the day digging forsythia bush roots out of the ground. If you've ever done this before — it's not easy. There is a lot of effort with shovels, pick-axes, crowbars, pitchforks, saws and just about every other tool I own. In combination, you try to dig under the main mass of roots and slowly cut/sever each main root from the root ball so it will eventually come out. But enough of removing roots. What did happen during this process is that I broke two shovel handles trying to pry the root ball out of the ground. The first one was a surprise to all of us — honestly, we're pretty lucky that no one got hurt. The shovel gave way when it broke and part of the handle flipped into the air, giving everyone a quick jolt of adrenalin. We then stepped back, took a quick breather, and then attacked it again with another shovel.

And then the second one broke. The funny thing is that we were not as surprised — and frankly — we all started laughing. I probably had too many Wheaties for breakfast this morning. We then didn't give up — we just attacked the root ball with even more vigor (and more robust tools) and eventually got all four root balls out.

It's a lot like losing your job. The first time it happens, people are pretty shell-shocked. They do a lot of soul searching (why me?), denial, hatred of their company, boss, etc. — you know the drill. Ultimately, when the adrenaline dissipates, they get down to business and look for a new job. The second time someone loses a job (and this happens more often that you realize in this economy), they tend to almost laugh about it, pick themselves up quickly, and go after that next job.

Moral of the story — losing your job is not a life or career ending experience. In fact, the faster that you move forward, the faster you will find that next position. The more that you sit and question yourself (and procrastinate) - the less likely you will climb back on that horse and ride into the sunset.

So pick up that shovel and start digging that root ball out!

Out of Work? Here's How To Socially Network & Get That Job!

By Robert "Scobleizer" Scoble at Scobleizer.com. Robert is the KING of Twitter, Facebook, All software, and social marketing in general. This article hits so many personal points I discuss with clients that I just had to post it. So let's all lift our glasses - here's to Robert!

I’m getting a LOT of chats from people who have been laid off. Most of the time I find that they just aren’t presenting a good face to me for me to help them find a new job.

If you are laid off, here’s what you need to do:

1. Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.
2. Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you. We do look. If we see photos of people getting drunk with you that is a bad sign. Get rid of them. They will NOT help you get a job.
3. Demonstrate you are “clued in.” This means removing ANYTHING that says you are a “social media expert” from your Twitter account. There is no such thing and even if there were there’s no job in it for you. Chris Brogan already has that job and he’s not giving it up.
4. Demonstrate you have kids and hobbies, but they should be 1% of your public persona, not 99%. Look at my blog here. You’ll see my son’s photo on Flickr once in a while. But mostly I talk about the tech industry, cause that’s the job I want to have: talking to geeks and innovators.
5. Put what job you want into your blog’s header. Visit Joel Spolsky’s blog. He’s “on software.” That’s a major hint that if he were looking for a job that he is totally, 100%, thinking about software. If you want a job as a chef, you better have a blog that looks like you love cooking.
6. Get rid of any 'smart' name/acronym like "LOLCats". Do not argue me on Twitter about this. Google finds Twitters. Do you want your future potential boss noticing that you post LOLCats all day long? Believe me, you do not. It will NOT help you.
7. Post something that teaches me something about what you want to do every day. If you want to drive a cab, you better go out and take pictures of cabs. Think about cabs. Put suggestions for cabbies up. Interview cabbies. You better have a blog that is nothing but cabs. Cabs. Cabs. Cabs all the time.
8. Do not beg for links. If you did the above, you can Twitter me and say “check out my great software blog” though. Include @scobleizer in the tweet so I’ll see it. I’m an egotistical person so I read all Twitter replies that include my @scobleizer name in them. Hint: I haven’t met a blogger yet who is not an egotistical person. Take advantage of it. But no begging.
9. If you want to be a plumber, look for other plumbers to add to Twitter, friendfeed, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remove all others. Be 100% focused on what you want to do.
10. On Twitter you can tell me what you had for lunch, but only after you posted 20 great items about what you want to do. Look at Tim O’Reilly’s tweet stream. Very little noise. Just great stuff that will make you think (he wants a job as a thinker, so do you get it yet?)
11. IMPORTANT: Invite influentials out to lunch. Getting a job is now your profession. If you were a salesperson, how would you get sales? You would take people out to lunch who can either buy what you’re selling, or influence others who can buy. That means take other bloggers (but only if they cover what you want to do) out to lunch. That means taking lots of industry executives out to lunch.
12. Send out resumes. Make sure yours is up to date and top notch on LinkedIn and other sites where employers look for employees. Craig’s List. Monster. Etc.
13. Go to industry events. I have a list of tech industry events up on Upcoming.org. If you want to be a plumber, go to where contractors go. Etc. Etc. Make sure you have clear business cards. Include your photo. Include your Twitter and LinkedIn addresses. Your cell phone. Your blog address. And the same line that’s at the top of your blog. Joel’s should say “on software.” Yours should say what you love to do. Hand them out, ask for theirs. Make notes on theirs. Email them later with your LinkedIn and blog URLs and say “you’ll find lots of good stuff about xxxxxxxx industry on my blog.”
14. When you meet someone who can hire and who you want to work for - Follow them on Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Their blog. Stalk them without being “creepy.” Learn everything you can about them. Build a friendfeed room with all their stuff. That way when they say on Twitter “I have a job opening” you can be the first one to Tweet back.
15. Tell others where the jobs are. One thing I learned in college is by helping other people get jobs you’ll get remembered. So, retweet jobs messages (if they are relevant to your professional friends and to you). Blog about job openings. Help people get jobs. Hold lunches for people who are jobless. Some of them will get jobs and they’ll remember you and invite you along.
16. Do what you want to do. Let’s assume you’ll be laid off for a year. Are you going to lay around on the couch waiting for a call? No. You will do exactly what you want to do. Want to be an engineer at a great startup? Go and volunteer to work there for free. Make sure you do a blog post about every day you do what you’re doing for free. Say “I could do this for you, call…”
17. Do some work on SEO. Make it possible for people to find you. THINK about how people would search for someone with your expertise and skills. Here’s how, Visit the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Do a search on a word that you think represents best what you want to do. I just did one for “Electrical Engineering” and it brought up a ton of great info about what people are searching for. Include those terms in your blog. And, even better, blog about those things!
18. Remove any hint that you hated your old job from all your online things.

Good luck. It sucks. I know that. I was laid off last time and, who knows, might be laid off again, but if you’re doing all this stuff and you aren’t finding a job, let me know. You know where to find me.

Don't Give A Speech — Put On A Show.

When you attend a workshop, keynote, or lecture, you usually go to see the speaker not to hear what they have to say. You know what they have to say. That's why you go to see them. How many speeches have you heard? How many of them can you remember? See where I'm going? They're all blah . . . blah . . . blah.

In a song, we first remember the melody and then we learn the words. Instead of giving people the benefit of your wit and wisdom (words), try painting them a picture.

Tony Robbins is a master of this art form. Even if you don't like him or his message, you have to say that he is a powerful speaker. His arena events change people's lives — he uses music, visuals, and physical energy to rev up the crowd. You don't need to be like Tony, but you can appreciate some of the elements of his talks.

Bottom line, the more strikingly visual your presentation is, the more people will remember it. And, more importantly, they will remember you.

Leadership Blind Spot: Recognizing Your Team.

"There are two things that people want more than sex and money - recognition and praise." - Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay Cosmetics

We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal - recognition and acknowledgment. When you neglect it, your teams tend to wander and lose focus. When you regularly insert it into your leadership practices, you'll have the best performing and energized team money can buy.

1. Be A Star Catcher. Regularly "catch people doing things right" and recognize them for it. And, Make recognitions self-perpetuating by recognizing those who recognize others. Remember: What gets recognized gets reinforced, and what gets reinforced gets repeated.

2. Develop A List of At Least 20 Ways To Recognize Others. Some ideas to get you started: a homemade Thank You Card or Praise-A-Gram; small gifts: special assignments, etc. If you would like the best Rich Gee recognition tool - check this out.

3. Customize The Recognition You Provide. Ask each member of your team how you can best demonstrate your appreciation for them. Then provide "different strokes for different folks."

4. Let Everyone "Hold The Trophy". Be sure each contributing member shares in the recognition for achievements.

If you practice and regularly schedule (not with a calendar, but in the moment) these tips — you will realize that some of the best things in life are free!

Resume Writing Tips for CEOs.

Baby boomers who’ve enjoyed an uninterrupted string of successes, and have been laid off, are struggling to recapture the magic. By Michael Winerip, a staff reporter at The New York Times.

Greg Sam, 50, has always been a rising corporate star. In his most recent job, as a vice president for Millipore, a company that services the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Mr. Sam built a quality-oversight program from scratch into a staff of 350 working worldwide, from the corporate headquarters in Billerica, Mass., to offices in China, Japan, Ireland and France.

For this, he earned a mid-six-figure income and traveled the globe, making two dozen business trips a year. At Millipore’s 50th anniversary celebration in Puerto Rico, Mr. Sam delivered the keynote speech in Spanish. In France, he sometimes conducted business in French.

In fact, Mr. Sam was so good at what he did, he was fired.

“He came in, built us a global quality assurance program, but now that it’s in place, we don’t need a person of his skills and caliber to continue running it,” said Dr. Martin D. Madaus, the president of Millipore, who fired Mr. Sam during a round of 200 layoffs in December. “Someone with lesser expertise can do the job, because Greg essentially did such a good job.”

As Dr. Madaus explained when he visited Mr. Sam’s office to deliver the bad news, it was nothing personal. But because Mr. Sam was so highly valued until he was fired, Millipore added about $40,000 to his severance package for job placement services.

“The higher up you are,” said Dr. Madaus, whose company employs 6,000, “the longer it takes to find a new job.”

For three months, instead of going to work, Mr. Sam has come to a handsome fifth-floor office in a renovated warehouse overlooking Boston Harbor that is the headquarters of New Directions, a top-of-the-line job-search firm. As its literature says, New Directions specializes in helping unemployed “C.E.O.’s, C.O.O.’s, C.F.O.’s, C.I.O.’s” find their way back up the corporate ladder.

Situated in the heart of Boston with beautiful views; staffed by friendly professionals with advanced degrees; stocked with plenty of fresh-brewed coffee and free lunches; offering glassed-in offices for making calls, New Directions feels like an exclusive corporate retreat — except that the participants have lost their corporations.

Like Mr. Sam, most of the 85 current clients are baby boomers who’ve enjoyed an uninterrupted string of successes that have seemed almost magical, but now, in very bad times, they are struggling to recapture the magic.

Mark Gorham, a Harvard Business School grad and a former Hewlett-Packard vice president, has been unemployed for six months. At first, he said: “I sat around thinking someone will realize how great I am and call me out of the blue. Next, I figured, I’ll throw out my great résumé to search firms and someone will come knocking.”

Now he’s learning networking from Jeffrey Redmond, his personal job coach.

“Mark grew up in an age when being understated about yourself was valued,” said Mr. Redmond, a partner who has been at New Directions since its founding 23 years ago. “At 53, he has to learn to tell his story and, like a marching band, toot his own horn.”

Mr. Gorham is looking for a job using his management skills in the renewable-energy field.

“We try to work on it a little every day,” Mr. Redmond said. “Three contacts today, three tomorrow. At the end of month we have 60 people thinking about this guy who can bring all this knowledge to a growing industry.”

Mr. Gorham dreaded his first networking call in January. For weeks, he and Mr. Redmond rehearsed.

“Like a lot of senior executives, Mark was used to going on and on,” Mr. Redmond said. “He used to give speeches to thousands of people. When there was quiet, he was the one filling in the air.”

They practiced answering questions in 45 seconds.

“Jeff told me I could just talk 40 percent of the time,” Mr. Gorham said.

Mr. Redmond had him write a one-page script.

“We rehearsed to get it shorter,” Mr. Redmond said.

“Before calling,” Mr. Gorham said, “I must have rehearsed five more times at my office at home.”

THAT first call was to a colleague he hadn’t spoken with in eight years.

“I knew he’d be nice,” Mr. Gorham said. “We weren’t supposed to pick the toughest one for our first call. It went a hundred times better than I thought it would. Part of the dread was saying I didn’t have a job. I’ve never not had one. But I realized, I wasn’t calling to say, ‘Hey can you hire me.’ I basically was letting him know what’s going on and getting his advice on my plan. He was very engaged and threw out a bunch of ideas. He said, ‘Let’s get back together.’ Afterward I wondered why was I so worried.”

Mr. Redmond said in its 23 years, New Directions has served 2,400 executives and, typically, they find new positions in seven to nine months, although in a recession that could be a year.

If it is a year, Mr. Sam said his severance will cover him, but after that he would have to dip into savings.

“My frame of mind is realistic, a bit anxious,” he said. “Last night I sat with my wife and we looked at our finances. My philosophy is, be aware of it, manage it, but don’t get obsessed by it — that’s not doing myself or family any good.”

ON a recent Tuesday, Mr. Sam sat in on a seminar about LinkedIn, the online business network. Many of the men attending were dressed as they had for work, in jackets and ties. Though sitting in a room full of such bright, urbane unemployed people could be worrisome, Mr. Sam found it calming.

“When you’re at home,” he said, “you feel you’re the only one.”

He spent six hours at New Directions that day. He had his weekly meeting with his job coach, who gave him tips on cutting his résumé from five pages to three. (Too many bulleted lines like: “Performed due diligence on M & A targets and developed integration plans to extract value and support growth.”)

He met with the New Directions research director, Claire Burday, and asked her to do a search for Food and Drug Administration-regulated companies with sales over $10 million that had offices within 30 miles of places where he would like to live, including his home in Andover, Mass., and his cabin in Vermont.

He spoke with the staff psychologist, Dr. William Winn, who’d given him a battery of tests, and for several hours interviewed him to make sure he was suited for the jobs he’s seeking.

Dr. Winn concluded that it wouldn’t be wise for Mr. Sam to take a position that would focus solely on what’s wrong with a company. Mr. Sam is a builder who needs to be involved in fixing what’s wrong, Dr. Winn noted.

Indeed, asked what he missed about his old job, Mr. Sam said, “There was still plenty of opportunity to improve the company.”

Later, sitting in one of those glassed-in offices, a mob of gulls hovering outside his window, Mr. Sam checked his BlackBerry.

“A call last night from Millipore,” he said softly. “More layoffs. Two directors who worked for me were let go.”

Great Leaders Empower Others.

"The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what they want done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Theodore Roosevelt 1. Share authority. Let each person be the owner of something meaningful. Having ultimate authority changes the scope and perception of a responsibility that is already part of the job description.

2. Create opportunities for non-managerial people to shine. Invite them to participate in, or even chair, task forces and project teams. The frequently untapped potential of this group is one of your organizations greatest Hidden Assets.

3. Never turn your back on people after giving them authority. Instead, increase communication, feedback and interaction. Make sure they understand the parameters and expectations of that authority. And, help them be successful by providing the resources and support they need.

4. Speak ENERGETICALLY. Add statements like these to your vocabulary:

• "Would you like to take the lead on this one?"
• "How can I best support you?"
• "It's your call." (my favorite)
• "I trust your judgment."

The more you step out of your managerial comfort zone and empower others, you will get more accomplished, have more time for strategic projects and have an energized team that makes you look good. How can you lose?

To Be A Great Executive — Be Flexible.

"In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital." - Warren G. Bennis

Encourage others to break tradition, when appropriate, in order to find better ways of doing things. Remember: If you continue doing what you've always done, you'll continue to get the same results.

Understand and appreciate that others may not do things exactly as you would do them. Be open-minded . . . you might discover their way is even better.

Remove Stop Signs to Progress by avoiding statements such as "We've tried that before" or "That's not the way we do that here."

Don't cast all decisions in cement. Be willing to modify them as changing circumstances or data dictate.

Working Longer, Never Get Anything Done? Rid Yourself of Interruptions.

"Hey, you got a minute?" That's a question - not a demand. Don't get angry with the interrupter if you answered, "Sure!" to their question. General rule: If you cannot eliminate the interruption, make the interruption as short as possible. 1. Meet them at the door. When people arrive to interrupt, meet them at the door and talk outside of your office. Letting them in may add minutes to the interruption.

2. Stand Up! When someone shows up unannounced, keep standing until you decide if you want the conversation to continue. Standing is not comfortable for most people and the length of most interruptions is in direct proportion to the comfort level of the interrupter.

3. You're the Timekeeper. Signal the end of the time allotted by politely saying, "One more thing before you go." Be respectful but  take control. Remember that this is your office and you're responsible for the time here.

4. Get rid of extra chairs in your office. You can always pull one from somewhere else if you need it.

5. Positioning. Arrange your office so that your desk doesn't face the door. People are less likely to interrupt if they can't see your face.

Henry Ford was always dropping into the offices of his company's executives. When asked why he didn't have them come to him, he replied, "Well, I'll tell you. I've found that I can leave the other fellow's office a lot quicker than I can get him to leave mine."

10 Killer Executive Interview Questions (to ask and answer).

Interviews have morphed into very weird experiences for my clients. I've heard some of the most stupid questions, tests & assessments come out of highly respected organizations. My opinion? I think they're lazy.

Bottom line — you want a good candidate for that position? You'll have to work for it. Ask very specific questions and see HOW they answer.

Here are some of my favorite questions I would ask executives interviewing for a position under me (I found it in an old file from my days in corporate):

1. RESULTS - Tell me about the results you have achieved at your last two positions. How did you achieve them? What was the effect to the business?

2. KNOWLEDGE - Give me an example of how you understand my business (broad). Where do you think the growth areas are? Where do you think we can do better with customer experience? Give me an example.

3. RISK - When was the last time you took a risk? What did you learn from it? (Cause & Effect - learn from mistakes; learn from successes).

4. COMMITMENT - Show me how you are committed to your customers, associates, peers?

5. COMMUNICATION - Tell me about a time when you communicated effectively (up-down-across — effective, clear, convincing).

6. SPEAKING UP - Give me an example when you pushed back, made some noise, offered constructive dissent.

7. STYLE - From where do you manage (Desk, email, phone, floor, in-person)? When do you make your BEST decisions?

8. PEOPLE - What are you currently working on (personally)? What are your people working on? How do you grow them?

9. EXECUTION - What actions do you take to deliver on time? How do you connect yourself to priorities?

10. ROLE PLAY - Show me how you solve problems (I give them a typical scenario they would face in that position).

You can easily modify these questions for yourself - whether you are promoting internally or hiring externally. You can even develop powerful PARs (call me, I can explain - 203-500-2421) for YOUR interview and talk to these points. You will come off looking like a true professional.

Stay Alive: 10 Career Tips to Win in Bad Times.

I know - things are bad out there and you're worried about your position. Firings are capricious and no one knows where the axe is going to fall next. Based on many of my current client sessions and 20+ years of management and coaching, here are 10 productive actions you can put into practice to solidify your position. 1. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. The news is sensationalized and fear sells. Things are rarely as good as they seem and things are rarely as bad as they seem. If you allow yourself to give in to the news, you will determine your destiny. When people tell me about the bad economy, I tell them “I have chosen not to participate. So let's get to work.”

2. Reach out to your contacts - NOW. Past and present contacts, colleagues and friends are the lifeblood of any career (“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”). The ’robustness’ and recency of your contact list is a great barometer of your career’s health.

• Call your closest contacts & colleagues and ask them how they are. Listen. Don't talk, offer help. Have lunch, drink coffee, and strengthen those contacts!
• Send birthday or ‘just for being you’ cards to keep in touch and make them feel special. No one does this and it makes the recipient feel special.

3. Focus on what you do best. You need to present a extremely positive persona to management - this is the time where they might be looking at cutting the bottom 10%.

• Be a partner to your boss - ask for more work. No one really does it and you will stand out as a “can-do” member of their team.
• Come in early or stay late (or do both!). The perception of a hard worker is a valuable one during bad times. In addition, you might be there when your boss comes back from a grueling exec meeting and needs help with the newly assigned project.
• Be smart and flexible - look at all of your activities and projects - which ones are more important and which are the ones that can be shelved, streamlined or retired?
• The 80/20 rule comes into play - make a list and then review with your boss.

4. Keep your ear to the ground. It is essential in down times to have a clear picture of where your company’s revenues and expenses come from. Companies are retrenching and focusing on the areas that will deliver the highest ROI.

• Stand back and see what projects, departments, or people are slated to be cut.
• Ask questions, read industry journals/blogs, and keep up on the business news.
• Track your company on the web - sometimes you hear something that isn’t currently communicated in your company. But take it with a grain of salt.
• Listen to what your colleagues are saying - but don’t accept it as gospel. Also, don’t add to the gossip or play “what-if” scenarios with them - it will waste time.

5. Look at your “product”. It’s IMAGE, IMAGE, IMAGE. How do you clothes look? How does your hair look? How do YOU look? Hate to say it - it’s perception people. Not only when people first meet you - it’s when they work with you day in and day out. Critically look at yourself and see what you might need to change and how you would go about it.

• Always dress one step above everyone else. No excuses. If everyone is casual, you wear country-club casual. Ensure that your clothes are made of the highest quality and are regularly pressed and clean.
• Spend the money and go to a better barber/stylist. I don’t have much to work with and I still go to one of the most expensive barbers in the area. He makes me look as good as I can.
• Do you need to tone your physique? Hit the gym - watch what you eat. It’s that simple.

6. Connect with new people. The best defense is a good offense. This may be a sports cliche, but right now, it rings true. Now is not the time to go into hiding, based on fear of the recession. It’s the time to ramp up your networking, personal public relations, and marketing to actively remind people of your presence.

• Go to associations, meetings, conventions that are associated with your profession.
• Not only will you meet a lot of engaging people, you will re-energize your batteries AND your might get a lead on a great position!
• Set up coffees and lunches with people that you don’t know, but want to know. We all have people that we admire - reach out to them - take them to lunch. They eat just like you do! And what is the benefit? They are always on the lookout for new talent!

7. Review your resume. Too many people let their resumes grow old gracefully. When they really need them, they have to scramble and cobble together a mish-mash of experience that no one really wants to read. You need to get your resume in order NOW. So some tips:

• Use a professional resume writer. They should run $200-$400, but you will get an incredible document that sells. Call me - I know the best!
• Keep it concise. Unless you have been in the business for 30 years or are a CEO - keep it to 2 pages or less. Again - people are looking for someone who can say less with more impact - your first chance is your resume.

8. Get financially fit. One of the biggest worries people have during downturns is losing their job. They crawl into a hole and hope for the best. Usually, it is financially motivated. How would you feel if you had six months worth of available funds if you suddenly lost your job? A little bit better? A little bit more confident?

• Start now. Having 3-6 months of current income stashed away in a cash account (savings, money market) will allow you to act normally during times like these.
• Worst case scenario? If you do lose your job, you have 3-6 months of full-time looking to find a new one before you begin to really deplete your savings. In addition, you probably will get some type of severance with COBRA - so stop worrying!

9. Talk with your boss. During an economic downturn everyone is skittish and hungry for information. You’re wondering how the company is doing, whether the team is vulnerable to layoffs, or if the strategy for the next few quarters has changed.  Even if the situation is tight, being upfront with your boss about your concerns creates and reinforces an environment of trust.

• Catch them at the end of the day - sit down and just converse with them. During a pause ask (in a very light interrogative tone): “So how are we doing? Is there anything we need to worry about?”. Your boss will probably open up and tell you info that normally they would not tell the team. Try it - it works.
• But if you have a boss that tends to keep information or hide things, watch their body language - if their eyes look downward or away from you when talking - they might be hiding bad news.

10. RE-vision your career. I love downturns in the economy. Why? When executives get scared, they get going and they get SMART. They begin to look at everything they do - how can they use time more effectively? If the company is losing customers, where can they find new and different customers/clients?  Take a step back and RE-vision your career - understand your key interests and strengths and investigate new opportunities in YOUR marketplace.

• Are you still a hot commodity on the market?
• If yes, great - get out there and sell YOU to potential new bidders.
• If no, you need to re-vision your career - measure your capabilities and apply them to the NEW marketplace. I know of a lot of realtors, hedge fund managers and financial planners that are doing this right now.

You need to partner with an expert and co-create your new career vision and direction.  So get going!

How to kill e-mail (before it kills you).

E-mail has become a pandemic disease. Here's the cure. By Mike Elgan at Computerworld

The average executive spends two hours a day on e-mail. That adds up to roughly one day per week.

We probably waste a lot of time every day on phone calls and meetings, too. The difference is that the demands on your time don't grow automatically as they do with e-mail.

E-mail has become a pandemic social disease. The more you get, the more you send. And the more you send, the more you get.

And I'm not just talking about e-mail viruses. The longer you use it, the more of it comes at you. The quantity of e-mail you get grows and never stops growing.

In the 1990s, e-mail was all good. At first, you had to be on the same office system or consumer service to exchange e-mail. But then the Internet made it possible to send messages from AOL to CompuServe, and from CompuServe to MCI. E-mail was wonderful. You could search it. You could send attachments and links.

Slowly, gradually, e-mail became something else. Every communications medium has its own costs and benefits. But with e-mail, the costs grow over time as the benefits shrink.

What's wrong with e-mail? In a nutshell, the medium is perfectly designed for information overload. Both message size and quantity are essentially unlimited. Unfortunately, electronic communication is like a gas: It expands to fill its container. It's way too easy to copy everyone and "Reply All." It's also easy for companies to automate the sending of e-mail. There are almost no barriers to an unlimited number of people sending you an unlimited quantity of random stuff. But your time and attention are truly limited.

Because e-mails tend to be so many and so long, it's not friendly for reading on a cell phone. So, as we become more mobile, e-mail becomes less compatible with how we live and work.

E-mail has always suffered from another flaw: It facilitates miscommunication. When you're typing out words, you're thinking one thing, but the receiver can perceive your intent as something else. You're being funny. They perceive hostile. The reason is that humans are designed to communicate with words, facial expressions, body language and hand gestures all together. When you send only cold, black-and-white words, the other person can easily read into your message inaccurate intent or emotional content.

The experience of using e-mail has become like walking through a bad, big-city neighborhood at night. This person wants to rip you off; that person wants to offer you drugs or some shady sexual service; yet another is trying to infect you with a virus. You're literally dealing with organized crime syndicates every single day. Who needs that?

Everything -- from the most important business communication to love notes from your spouse to software that will damage your computer to bank fraud -- is all dumped into the same in-box in random order. In order to find an important message from your boss, you have to wade through raw sewage.

Meanwhile, the most precious resource you have is your own attention. At the very least, e-mail is a massive, constant distraction. And because you really do live in an attention economy, all that objectionable e-mail you get every day is taking money away from you and your company.

While the signal-to-noise ratio of e-mail has declined, other forms of communication have emerged and improved. Now we have free video messaging, chat, social-network messaging and Twitter.

Those are nice, but that e-mail just keeps coming.

It's time for you to reboot your entire communication strategy and start over. The goal is to transition to better forms of communication, and stop using e-mail altogether -- at least stop using it the way you have been doing. Here's how:

1. Set up a Twitter account. You can use your account as a way for people you don't know to contact you.

2. Set up a "public" e-mail account as a data repository. Use an online e-mail service. I prefer Gmail because it has better spam filtering and better search than other services.

Use the public address for whenever you set up an account with any service and it requires an e-mail address, and give it out as your one e-mail address. In most cases, you can just use your existing e-mail account for this.

Set up an autoreply message informing e-mail senders that you do not check this e-mail. If they would like to contact you, they should call you on the phone, message you on Facebook or send you a direct message on Twitter. But here's the trick: Give them only your Twitter name, not your phone number or Facebook profile address. (People you know should already have your phone number or Facebook profile. If they don't, they can ask on Twitter.)

(If you want to explain what you're doing, just link to this article in your autoreply and let me explain it for you.)

The purpose of all this is to set up a barrier or a filter. If people want your attention, they'll have to earn it. Only real, motivated people will be able to contact you, not automated message servers, not Nigerian scammers. When they do, they're forced by the system to keep it short. If you don't want to hear from them again, you can block them on Twitter with one click.

If you have to send long-winded e-mails for whatever reason, you can use this public account to do so. If others have to send long-winded e-mails to you, they can use this address, too. But they'll have to inform you on Twitter, and you can decide whether it's worth the trouble.

Whenever you need to access the stuff that flows into this e-mail address, you use Gmail's search feature to find it. It works just like Google itself.

3. Set up a "secret" e-mail account for content. This second account is for content, namely e-mail newsletters. Use whatever service you want for this. Move all your subscriptions to this account. Now, whenever you want to read your newsletters, you can do so without spam or all the other clutter and junk that normally accompany e-mail.

4. Set up a Facebook account. I recommend doing all messaging with people you actually know well (friends, family and co-workers) on Facebook because people need your permission in advance to send you messages.

5. Set up a Skype account and get a webcam. When you get in the habit of using Skype video calls instead of certain types of e-mail, you'll skip all the needless miscommunication that happens with e-mail. Let's say you need to discuss a personnel issue with a subordinate working in another city, or discuss a personal matter with a relative. Do yourself a favor and do videoconferencing. It will be faster, and you'll communicate without misunderstandings.

The idea here is to take all that stuff you're getting via e-mail and separate it into an appropriate place. Each type of communication is directed into a vastly more effective process based on who's sending it.

Random information is autofiled into a searchable system in case you need it. Newsletter content is all put in one place so you can read it with concentration. Strangers are forced to contact you on Twitter in a short message. Friends, family and co-workers that you approve send you messages on Facebook. And video Skype is for any conversation prone to miscommunication.

Once you've set this up, you've eliminated e-mail from your life, and with it, the spam, scams, junk, long-winded messages and other massively time-wasting garbage. Meanwhile, you're forcing anyone who wants to consume your most precious of resources -- your time and attention -- to get permission in advance and keep it short. And it's all mobile-friendly, too.

If killing e-mail is proscribed by company policy, you'll have to modify these instructions. A typical scenario is that an employee is required to give the corporate e-mail address to business contacts and to reply to e-mail on the company system. But you can still redirect all Web site sign-up traffic, e-mail newsletters and other stuff to the "public" and "private" Gmail accounts. You can urge colleagues or contacts to call you, or use chat. In other words, you can minimize, rather than kill, your company e-mail. And, of course, you can kill your personal e-mail.

E-mail is a disease. By taking strong action to cure yourself, you'll radically reduce the quantity of messaging in your life, while improving its quality.

Stop Micromanaging.

All managers want their employees to be more productive--to collaborate more energetically, to work more efficiently. But in pursuit of productivity, many fine managers have traipsed down some perilous paths. by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay at HBR

Yes, we're talking about micromanagement. It's a natural tendency, even among seasoned managers, to think close examination of a direct report's work will improve it. Sure, such scrutiny might reveal opportunities for improvement: processes she could streamline, shortcuts she's taking that undermine quality, shortcuts she's not taking that she should.

But tread this path too often, and any gains realized from process improvements will be offset by the deleterious effects of disengagement.

What is disengagement? Fundamentally, it is a state of distance from one's work. A disengaged employee puts in time but little else, and his apathy affects not only his own productivity but that of his colleagues. Because a consistent pattern of micromanagement tells an employee you don't trust his work or his judgment, it is a major factor in triggering disengagement.

And disengagement is costly.

According to the book "12: The Elements of Great Managing", absenteeism caused by disengagement costs a typical 10,000-person company $600,000 a year in salary for days where no work was performed, and that "disengagement-driven turnover costs most sizable businesses millions every year." By contrast, engaged employees are more likely to show up to work, to stay with a firm longer, and to be more productive while they're on the job. Gallup research cited in the book finds that highly engaged teams average 18% higher productivity and 12% greater profitability than the least engaged teams.

The good news is that you, as a manager, have enormous influence over your direct reports' engagement levels. So what can you do to increase their engagement and hence their productivity? For starters, you can take a page from the Gallup playbook and make a practice of building on employees' strengths.

Say you have a direct report who rarely submits sales reports on time or fills them out correctly. Ask yourself, "At what tasks does this person excel?" Maybe he's great at troubleshooting customer complaints. Or he's a consistent source of creative ideas for the next promotional effort. Whatever his strengths, think about ways to build on them so that they can add more value to your organization. At the same time, see if you can minimize or redistribute some of the work at which he's less successful. Budgets, capacity, and other constraints can sometimes make this impossible, and the best course will be to let the person go. But given turnover costs and the looming talent shortage, figuring out a way to make an employee's strength your strength is likely to be worth the effort.

Other actions you can implement:

• Be clear about performance expectations for new hires. As they grow more comfortable in their roles, lessen your direct supervision of their work.
• If you find yourself feeling consistently negative about a particular employee's performance, check that you're not falling into the set-up-to-fail syndrome described by Insead-affiliated management scholars Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux. This syndrome is marked by a downward performance spiral. The manager, expecting poor performance from the employee, starts noticing only mistakes and overlooking or minimizing successes.To avoid this pattern, regularly challenge your perception about the employee by asking yourself: What are the facts about her work? Is it as bad as I've been thinking? Of course, it may be that her performance is so bad that you'll have to let her go. But in some cases, adjusting your lens might reveal that she's actually doing some worthwhile work.
• You don't want to create a culture that says you're always right, and the employees are usually or always wrong. So invite employees to challenge your opinions. Over time, as they grow more comfortable in this role, they'll feel freer to discuss any performance concerns they have with you.

When your employees perceive that you value their strengths and their judgment, everyone benefits. As their engagement increases, it's likely that their performance will as well. And the time you might have spent micromanaging them can be put to more productive use.

15 Steps to a More Productive Workday.

We often face the challenge of getting the most productivity out of our time and achieving maximum efficiency. To be successful, you’ll have to place a priority on productivity and find techniques that work for you. From the blog:  Vandelay Design

Each of us is unique and no process will work for everyone, but all of us have plenty of things that we can do to improve our workflow. In this article I’ll cover some of the lessons that I have learned through my own experience.

For me, productivity is a constant goal, and always interested in finding new ways to get more out of my time. I’m far from perfect in these areas, but making consistent improvements. Hopefully some of these things will help you in your own work.

1. Have a Task List for the Day The best way to have an unproductive day is to work throughout the day without a clear definition of what you need to accomplish. Simply having a to-do list will go a long way in keeping you on track.

One of the problems with work is that there is usually a million different things that you could be doing on any given day. While all of these things may be helpful to your business in some way, they’re not all equal in terms of importance and urgency. Without a task list you run the risk of working all day on things that seem like they are benefiting your business, but in the end you’re not focusing your efforts on the right tasks.

2. Prioritize Tasks One of my biggest frustrations in my daily work is that it seems like I’m never able to do everything I want to do in a day. In this case, a task list is likely to have a few things left untouched at the end of the day. Because of this, it’s important to not only create a task list, but also to prioritize the items that you’re looking to get done. Your tasks will differ from day-to-day, but it’s likely that you’ll have a few very important things that must get done, and then some others with varying levels of importance and urgency.

My personal approach with prioritizing is to simply to set the tasks that must get done, and then I also list a few stretch goals for the day. If and when I get all of the most important items done for a particular day, at that point I can move on to the stretch goals, which usually carry less urgency than my main tasks. This way I don’t finish my work early and have nothing to do, and I also don’t have too much on my plate that causes adverse effects when I can’t get everything done.

3. Finish Tasks Rather than Starting New Ones Most executives have a few different projects going on at all times. On top of that, each project may have several different tasks that need to be done, and you may even have some of your own personal projects that require time. With all of these things fighting for your attention at once, it’s tempting to dig in to new tasks before completing others. By doing this you’ll usually be costing yourself more time and effort later when it comes to finishing those tasks and projects.

In order for an executive to keep the income flowing, it’s critical that projects are getting finished. Being able to finish a project will help you to get paid sooner and allow you to move on to another project. From my experience, when I’m struggling with too much to do, it’s best if I can devote time to tasks and projects that are near completion. Being able to get things crossed off the list feels good and helps to reduce stress and create a more productive environment.

4. Know the Strongest Times of Your Work Day Some people work best early in the mornings, others prefer afternoons or evenings. Everyone has times of the day that are stronger than others in terms of focus and productivity. I tend to get up early, but I’m not at my peak for the first few hours of the day. I’ve found that rather than fighting this and trying to get more done at the start of my day, I’m better off to use that time for tasks that are less demanding mentally. During the times when I struggle to concentrate I’ll clean out my email inbox, moderate and respond to comments on my blog, evaluate my overall process on current projects, or anything that requires time but not the highest amount of mental focus.

With this approach I’m able to make productive use of my least productive times of the day, and that will save my best hours for more taxing activities like working on a client’s website or writing articles. With the varied tasks of a executive, there are always plenty of things that need to get done that require different levels of intensity in terms of work and focus. If you can match your best times for work with the most intense tasks, and your least productive times with more routine tasks, you’ll get more out of your day.

5. Give Yourself Some Flexibility I’ve already talked about the importance of having prioritized tasks and the use of different times of the day, but it’s also important to not get so rigid with this that you don’t leave yourself some room for flexibility. There will be some days that don’t go quite as planned and when you don’t feel like you do most other days. Allow yourself to have some flexibility to change things around according to the circumstances.

6. Have a Specified Ending Time for Work One of the biggest challenges that I face throughout the week is knowing when to end my work day. When you’re working for someone else it’s much easier to make a clear break, but as a executive there is always a temptation to keep working.

With so many things to do and your income riding on getting things done, it seems like you will be more productive by working longer days. But from my experience I’ve found that I often feel like I get the most done when I have something going on that forces me to end the day at a specific time.

With a set ending time it’s easier to get moving quickly and to get more productivity out of each hour, since they are limited. Without a set ending time I often find myself working with a little bit less efficiency since I feel like I have plenty of time.

On those days I wind up with less time away from work and I often don’t seem to get that much more accomplished, even with the extra hours of work.

7. Bulk Process With so many different things to do, it’s likely that your day is broken up into many small blocks of time for specific tasks. In order to achieve more efficiency and productivity, try to use larger blocks of time and get similar things done all at once (depending on the nature of your work this may or may not be possible).

For example, if you can avoid working with your email open you may be able to spend less time each day on email by checking in 2 or 3 times throughout the day and emptying your inbox each time. Checking email many times throughout the day may lead to more time than necessary. An example from my process is writing blog posts.

My preferred method of producing content for my blogs is to have specific days set aside where this is my only focus. I can finish one post and move right on to the next. I may have a list of ideas that I want to work on so I don’t waste time trying to decide before I start writing. With this approach I feel like I’m able to get more out of my time as opposed to writing a post here and there whenever I have time.

8. Track Your Time You might be completely surprised to know exactly how you spend your time throughout a work week. Tracking your time can help you to find inefficiencies and ways to improve your productivity. Without knowing how your time is spent, it’s hard to know how you can improve the use of your time. I’m not suggesting that you need to track your time everyday, but if you do it for a few typical days you may be surprised at how easily you can identify some areas for improvement going forward.

9. Recognize Your Distractions One of the benefits of tracking your time is that it helps you to identify things or activities that may be distracting you in your work. Whether or not you are tracking your time at any giving point, one of the first steps to working productively is to recognize your distractions. Eliminating or controlling these distractions will lead to greater efficiency, but in order to do so you’ll first have to accurately recognize and understand specifically what challenges you have when it comes to working productively.

10. Have Realistic Expectations Ambitious executives will often feel the pressure to get more done than is humanly possible with a given amount of time. This can obviously lead to increased stress and pressure, not to mention a lower quality of work. Realistic expectations will allow you to be able to accomplish the things you set out to do with a day of good work.

The biggest part of having realistic expectations is the amount of work that you assign yourself for the day. Taking on too many projects at once and trying to juggle too many different tasks will result in a cluttered work day with unimpressive results. Resist the urge to try to get too much done, and focus more on doing your best work with what is currently on your plate. If you struggle in this area you may be able to increase your productivity by outsourcing some of your tasks.

11. Plan Your Next Day at the End of Each Day This is probably more of a personal preference, but I have found that if I take a few minutes at the end of my day to plan for the next day, I’m typically more aware of things and I can do a better job as opposed to waiting until the next morning to plan the day. If I wait till the next morning I find that it takes me a few minutes to remember exactly where I was on certain items at the end of the last day, and I may overlook something that I would have remembered had I taken care of this the day before.

At the end of each day I can look at my to-do list for the day and quickly see where I stand on the items that I wanted and needed to get done. At that point, planning for the next day is a quick process and I know exactly where I need to start, without running the risk of forgetting things. Now I’ll waste no time the next day trying to figure out what I need to do.

12. Get Enough Sleep the Night Before During my time as an executive, particularly when I was freelancing part-time on top of a full-time job, I’ve averaged less sleep than at any other point in my life. However, sleep is an important part of a productive schedule. Each of us functions differently in this area, but personally I tend to notice it the most at the very beginning and end of the day. If I’m feeling well-rested I can be productive through these times. If not, I struggle to stay on task.

13. Eat Healthy The food that you put into your body can have a big impact on your energy level and your feelings in general. I’m not going to go into detail here because I’m not that knowledgeable on the topic, but generally eating healthy foods will allow for better productivity.

14. Get Fresh Air One of the things I dislike about working from home is the amount of time that I spend inside the house. I often find that it helps just to take a few minutes for a walk or a drive to get some fresh air. Sometimes working in a different environment and getting out of the house for a while can really lead to a boost in productivity. This is something that you can accomplish with just a few minutes of your time, but it may have a noticeable impact for the next few hours.

15. Work in a Comfortable Environment As a executive, you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in an office. Making that office a comfortable space is important in terms of increasing your productivity. What you do with the office isn’t really important, but it should be an area that allows you to focus on your work comfortably for long periods of time. I recently wrote a post at DesignM.ag on the essential qualities of a home office that takes a more in-depth look at this subject.