Hughs Blog

People don't plan to fail…

This past week I piloted a new version of our popular ReClaiming the Clock time management seminar. In this version the learners get a condensed seminar in the morning followed by 45 minutes of coaching at their desk and a follow up coaching call one week later. The idea is to provide less workshop content, but more support on turning the lessons into action. Each person’s abilities are benchmarked prior to the seminar and measured twice afterwards as they practice their new skills.

The results have been overwhelming! I don’t think we have ever received as much positive feedback immediately after a training program. After three pilot programs with three companies (one credit union, one food manufacturing company and one large vehicle insurance agency) there were some fascinating trends that we noticed.
In this blog I thought I would share some observations.

Folks aren’t planning. It’s like the old adage “people don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan”. Without exception we saw a lack of planning tools being used to match long term objectives with daily tasks and new initiatives.
Some people blocked every task they needed to do in MS Outlook Calendar like an appointment and then spent time everyday shuffling these missed “appointments” as interruptions and staff requests took them off their plan. Some used post-it notes as their planning tools, some stuff papers from meetings in a drawer and then periodically went through them to look for work that they had committed to doing.

And the most popular planning device was the ubiquitous “black book”. Many of these senior managers carried around a large journal that they would fill in as they attended meetings, planned their day, coached staff etc. There was no rhyme or reason to the note taking and there was no system for translating a note into action or a bring forward, delegation, etc.

Lesson No. 1: The most important change we shared with each person was the need to have a visible plan for the week and for the day in front of them every day. The only way I know of for moving from reactive to proactive is to invest in reviewing progress, and objectives every day and creating a new game plan every day. Everything else is just window dressing.

In my next blog I’ll share my new formula for success: My Daily Vitamins (it’s better than fish oil!).

Tags: culver