Not enough hours in your day? Make better choices

Feeling a little pressed for time these days? (Who isn't!) It turns out you have more time than you think.

In fact, that's the title of a great book new book by journalist Laura Vanderkam - "168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think."  (168 = the number of hours in a week.)

According to Vanderkam, the issue isn't too few hours in the day; it's how we choose to use those hours. In fact, her #1 time management tip is this: minutes and hours are choices. If we don't like how we're spending our time, we need to change our choices and priorities. Granted, choices bring consequences. But it all starts with recognizing that time does not dictate our daily agendas. We choose how we spend our time.

Vanderkam believes that trying to find more time in the day represents an exercise in futility. Suppose you could magically make each day 15 minutes longer. At the end of the week you would have gained a grand total of 1.75 hours.

Instead of trying to "find" time by rearranging busy work or trying to multitask, Vanderkam suggests a different approach. Start by filling your weekly allotment of 168 hours with the things you care most about in life. Instead of squeezing the activities that nurture your family, health and career in between all the "busy stuff," put them first!

This may require some difficult choices. It may also require saying "no" to some people and activities that are hard to turn down. But as Vanderkam points out, our options are to continue complaining about our busyness or get busy building the lives we want in the time we've got.

Which brings us to one of my favorite business leadership topics - staying focused on the destination.

Today's work world moves so fast that I sometimes think the new business attire should consist of running shorts and track shoes. With so much on our plates, it's hard not to get caught up in all the "to doing" each day. The meetings, the voice mails, the emails, the twitters, the juggling of multiple tasks and activities, the Internet and all the information that comes our way. It's no wonder that we tend to lose focus on where we're going and what winning looks like.

It's also easy to get caught up in the fantasy of "if only I had more time!" instead of taking responsibility for how we spend our time. So we run as fast as we can from one task to another, and we constantly yearn for more hours in the day when none are forthcoming.

Here are some of the ways we try to run fast in a desperate attempt to find more time: Multitasking. Working longer hours. Putting off the important for the urgent. Becoming slaves to our emails and mobile devices. Making decisions without taking the time to question our assumptions or review the data.

Intuitively, we know that these aren't the best strategies for getting work done. But running fast is an instinctive human behavior in stressful situations (fight or flight). It makes us feel like we're accomplishing our goals, or at least getting closer to them. So we continue to run as fast as we can without checking to see whether we're running in the right direction or making any real progress at all.

The solution?  Slow down to go fast.

What if you started each day by pausing to review your destination, which includes your definition of what winning looks like for your organization? And what if you then organized your day around the tasks and activities that truly help you reach that destination rather than whatever happens to jump out and land on your plate? Think that might produce a dramatic change in the choices you make about how to use your time?

I'm not talking about a lengthy process. Just five or 10 minutes each morning to review the most important things you can (and should) be doing and making sure they're first on your to-do list.

As you pause before starting your day, ask questions like:

• What are the top three to five things I need to be working on?  How much time have I committed to those activities today?

• Of all the things I think I need to do today, which will have an impact a year from now?

• Are there items on my to-do list that should be handled by someone else? If so, what do I need to do to delegate them?

• What tasks or activities do I feel compelled to find more time for?  Are they really top priority for me or am I succumbing to the urgent over the important?

• If I only had half a day instead of a whole one, which tasks and activities would I work on and why?

It also helps to keep visual reminders in front of you at all times. Put your goals and objectives on your computer screen. Carry them in your notebook. Set up task reminders to ping you. Write them on your whiteboard. Post them in the lobby of your office and on a mirror at home. Do whatever works to stage your field of vision and keep those things that matter most from falling victim to the things that matter least.

When you slow down to go fast, good things happen.

You develop criteria for making better decisions about where to spend your time. It becomes much easier to prioritize, based on what gets you closer to your destination versus what does not. And you progress much more quickly towards where you want to go.

When you focus on the activities that move you closer to your destination, you also spend less time trying to solve other people's problems, which benefits you and the organization as a whole. When you do for others what they should be doing for themselves, it inhibits their professional development while distracting you from essential activities.

"Slow down to go fast" doesn't seem to make sense. But neither does wearing track shoes to work. Stop trying to "find" more time and start making better choices about where you spend your time. You'll be amazed at how much faster it gets you to your destination!

About the Author

Holly G. Green is author of "More Than A Minute," and the CEO and Managing Director of The Human Factor, Inc. She has more than 20 years of executive level and operations experience in FORTUNE 100, entrepreneurial, and management consulting organizations. She was previously President of The Ken Blanchard Companies, a global consulting and training organization as well as LumMed, Inc. a biotech start up. For more information, visit her at http://www.thehumanfactor.biz and http://www.morethanaminute.com

Build empathy to show customers and employees you "get it"

Many people don't associate the word "empathy" with effective leadership.

In fact, ask people to identify the top 10 leadership traits and you won't get many who put "the ability to understand and share the feelings of others" on that list.

I believe it should go on the list.

Today's workers don't blindly follow leaders as they might have in the past. Leadership requires building trust and rapport with others. If employees don't believe you can understand or see things the way they do, you will not earn their trust.

Empathy is also essential for building long-term relationships with customers. Like employees, customers want to be respected and heard. They want to know that we care about their issues and concerns. And they appreciate it when we take the time to understand their world.

To build empathy with employees:

Expose your thinking.

When you introduce a new idea, plan or initiative, you've had plenty of time to discuss it with your management team, work out all the possible scenarios, and thoroughly debate the pros and cons. By the time you announce the plan, you're convinced it's the right thing to do.

Employees, however, are usually hearing it for the first time. In addition to the "what" and "how," they also want to know the "why" and "how we got to this point." Explaining the assumptions and thought processes that led to your decision helps people understand the "why," which makes them more open to the new course of action. People also appreciate you taking the time to expose your thinking, which contributes to building trust as well.

Get inside your employees' world.

To further build trust, have employees expose their thinking. After laying out your plan, ask for their input. For example, "I understand this is new to all of you, and I'd really like to know what you think about it." As they give their feedback, don't defend or argue your position. Instead, delve deeper into their thinking by asking, "What leads you to conclude that? Can you help me understand your thinking here? Where did those assumptions come from?"

One of the most powerful and empowering things you can do for employees is to actively solicit their ideas and input and then listen carefully. Today's employees have a strong need to be respected and heard. Few things do more to fulfill that need than asking them to explain their point of view and how they arrived at it. When people feel respected and heard, trust grows in the relationship.

Asking employees to expose their thinking takes time. It may feel like you're moving through quicksand when you need to be running fast on solid ground. But getting people's buy-in, trust, and commitment in this manner always saves time and energy in the long run.

To build empathy with customers:

Put aside your assumptions.

One huge obstacle to developing empathy with customers is what you think you already know about what they want and need. Customer needs change frequently. What you knew to be true a year or even six months ago may already have changed. The next time you talk with a customer, consciously tell yourself, "For the moment, I'm going to forget everything I think I know about this customer and just listen."

Ask questions.

The best salespeople listen at least 70 percent of the time during a sales call. Put this principle to good use by casting aside your assumptions and asking a lot of questions.

• What are we not doing well that you would like us to improve on?
• What else can we offer that would make your job even easier/your company even more successful?
• Suppose you ran my company. What would you do differently to serve a business like yours?
• What are we doing well that we should keep doing?
• When we are a trusted business advisor, what core things are we doing for you?

Get inside their world.

Understanding your customer's world requires more than just a current assessment of the relationship. It also involves taking a peek at the future. Ask questions like:

• What has changed in your business/market/industry since the last time we talked?
• What worries you about where your market or industry is headed?
• Where are the biggest opportunities for your business in the next year or two?
• What is the biggest threat to your business? How can we help?
• What could we be doing now to help you adjust to new market realities?

Spend time to look for data on industry trends and shifts that are happening in your customers' world, including with their competitors. Share information with them.

Ask your customer to expose their thinking.

As customers respond to your questions, they will likely give you "what" and "how" answers. To gain a deeper understanding of their world, ask them to explain the "why" as well. Ask them to identify the assumptions that lead them to see the world the way they do. This will provide greater insight into your customers' needs while also strengthening the relationship.

Change your perspective to meet their needs.

Depending on what customers say, you may have to do a lot more than temporarily set aside your assumptions. You may have to discard them completely. Don't allow yourself to get caught in the trap of thinking, "Well, that was interesting but we've been doing this a long time so we know what's best for our customers." Or, "We hear what our customers are saying, but it doesn't apply to the way we do business."

Instead, look closely at how you define the value of your product or service and whether it truly aligns with your customer's perception of value. The wider the gap between the two, the more you need to shift your thinking. Ask, "If we shifted our perspective to match that of our customers, how would that change the way we serve our market? What would we need to do differently in order to deliver maximum value?" Once you've adjusted your perspective, keep your new definition of value visible at all times so that it guides organizational behaviors.

We all want to feel respected and heard, including customers. Building empathy meets that most basic human need while developing the relationships your organization needs to achieve its goals.

About the Author

Holly G. Green is author of "More Than A Minute," and the CEO and Managing Director of The Human Factor, Inc. She has more than 20 years of executive level and operations experience in FORTUNE 100, entrepreneurial, and management consulting organizations. She was previously President of The Ken Blanchard Companies, a global consulting and training organization as well as LumMed, Inc. a biotech start up. For more information, visit her at http://www.thehumanfactor.biz and http://www.morethanaminute.com