Are You Too Available?
11 November 2015‘Simon, what’s your biggest challenge?’ I asked. He was having a follow-up coaching session after a half-day’s training. ‘I think I’d call it delegation,’ he replied. ‘I seem to be interrupted all day long with team members wanting help. I don’t want to send them away – I know we have to be available for […]
How to Save Time – Do It Right the First Time
22 September 2015For the first six months of this year I was housemother/flatmate/grandmother for my oldest grandson Sam, aged eighteen and in his final year of high school. His parents were on an overseas posting. Many times over that period I found myself saying, ‘Don’t put things off. Do it right the first time and you’ll save […]
Don’t be so available
9 September 2015How much assistance to your staff is too much? Surely good staff management and delegation is to be available when people have questions? Not necessarily. Actually, being ‘there for my staff’ 100% of the time is neither good management nor good delegation. Instead, it causes bottlenecks, frustration, low morale, and blocks your people from learning […]
Consistency: The Key To Better Time Management
30 October 2013When I ask people about what they struggle with the most when it comes to time management, consistency is a reoccurring answer. This makes sense, because creating a new timetable or “to-do” list isn’t the difficult part of managing your time. Applying the new schedule in your life is. This step is always overlooked. A […]
How to have fewer mistakes in the workplace.
29 July 2013Susan Cain’s comments about work spaces in ‘Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking’, make me really excited. Based on years of research I strongly believe that too many open plan office layouts are very poorly designed and grossly inefficient. The businesses who think they’re saving money by cramming […]
Who To Delegate To, Even When You’ve Got No-One
4 April 2013The comments to my last article about delegation hit the nail very firmly on the head. One reader said: ‘The biggest problem with this scenario is that before you can delegate you need to have someone to delegate to.’ And this was answered very well by: ‘The step to employing someone is the hardest step […]
Take the pressure off – cut yourself some slack in your time commitments
5 December 2012Louise Trowbridge attended one of our Breakfast Club sessions in Christchurch a few months ago and reports that she’s been managing her time and tasks a lot better lately. She then went on to share a really good strategy: “Among other things, we hire caravans for accommodation in Christchurch. [A great post-earthquake solution to the […]
Without health we don’t have the energy to maximise time
14 November 2012Dr Libby Weaver, author of best-seller ‘Accidently Overweight’ has recently released ‘The Rushing Woman’s Syndrome’. At first I assumed, by the title, that it had to do with time management. Instead, it’s about the biochemical, emotional and health effects of always being in a hurry – and how to change that sense of being constantly […]
Stacey’s simple stress-reducer
18 September 2012I’ve been working with Stacey* for a couple of months as her productivity coach. She’s the GM of a successful company in the engineering field. She used to be a big list maker. Often she’d have five pages of items ‘to do’ – but hardly anything got done and the lists just got longer. Result? […]
Get Faster, Work Better – By Doing Things Differently
2 August 2012What do I mean? I learnt something very interesting last night. I was MC for the National Speakers Association of NZ’s National Awards and had the pleasure of listening to our guest speaker Wade Jackson, a Double World Champion of Improv and founder of New Zealand’s Improv Bandits and Covert Theatre. One of his points, […]
