Get Everything Done

I just finished reading a book on managing your work: "work less achieve more" by Fergus O'Connell, largely a rehash of his "Simply Brilliant". The thrust of the advice is to set your agenda, plan projects then daily do your agenda, your projects then anything else that is key and push back on the rest. All good advice... but back in my world several questions came to mind:

1. I do a job where I have a team of 5 professionals, we have a lot of routine work that must be done, a lot of ad hoc questions to answer and some biggie projects. The planning where you set out step by step what you are going to do, how many days it'll take, who is responsible I could do for our large projects. Trouble is our projects are usually something we haven't done before so we don't know what the later steps are or how long they'll take. The projects also evolve as required so I'd spend ages redoing these plans all the time rather than working. What simple project planning do people use and how do you use it to monitor/report progress. BTW I am not thinking gant charts or ms project here.

2. Do people use these "push back" techniques. For example I read in one book that you could delete 75% of your e-mails by filtering by title and sender, then only dealing with e-mails making a specific request for delivery in the next 2/3 weeks. Does anyone do this?

3. One of my fears in push back (I am in-house tax advisor) is that if I ignore (or brush off nicely) requests for advice that are for low value and infrequent transactions (on the basis they are not a good use of time) then when the business has a big problem they may not bother to get in touch with the unresponsive tax department. What do people think?

I think the thrust is a good idea. Sounds slightly like Mark's stuff too.

1) Read about Agile processes. Scrum seems like a good example to study. One thrust of these processes is that you don't plan everything in detail, but you do plan the next iteration, ~2 week chunks. Every 2 weeks you would report tasks done, and tasks remaining. Do NOT develop a detailed comprehensive plan. Just an overview is necessary.

2) I do sort by title and/or sender. The suggestion takes it one step further and makes sense.

3) Rules should be different for clients. Their query is part of what they are paying you for. Would you consider their cash low value? Get back to them in due time.

It sounds like the author advocates focusing on priorities and pushing back or ignoring other stuff. I think there is a risk in ignoring things, as you may be angering a potential client or missing an opportunity because you don't recognize an email. I do think email has caused people to be more impatient and think everything gets immediately responded to.

I think you can use scheduling to help here. Maybe set aside time boxes for project work and time boxes to jump on email and clear it. You do need some kind of system to record the actions you may need to take from the emails if they require more than just a response back

At my office we use simple project plans in a word processor which are three columns - Activity, Responsible Party and Due Date. We update these frequently and add things as projects evolve. I find they are just enough organization to keep things on track.

Gerry

1. For delegated work, I find a weekly review of a page with three lists is usually enough:
- what has been achieved
- what needs to be done in the next week
- problems/ help needed
Some people like to add the 2-6 key milestones
Some people like to colour code risk of delay

2. I probably don't push back enough. I do try to route a problem to someone who can help. If I can't, though. and if I'm on the TO distribution, I reply to a request for action. Generally, people appreciate a quick, clear judgement of whether you can help or not. And if you can't help, add a couple of lines explaining what you can help with. The thing to avoid at all costs is to sit on a request for days/ weeks/ forever while you try and decide whether you can help.

I very much doubt that I look at the body of anything like 25% of my emails. I keep my inbox by "From" so I can easily scan for responses I'm waiting for, but when I get to the "Mail" task in AF, I copy the inbox to a "process today" folder grouped by conversation. This way, I go straight to the last mail in a conversation and ignore the others. When I have worked through the folder, dragging across any actions I can't deal with immediately in less than a couple of minutes, I drag contents of the whole process folder to my reference folder (on my hard drive, indexed for fast search). Takes 10 minutes to process a typical 50 mail inbox. I aim to do it 2 or three times a day. After working with mail for 20 years, I can honestly say that this approach works by far the best for me.

3. I don't think this should be a problem if you tell them what you do do with each brush-off. "...I'm sorry that we can't help you at the moment, as we are only staffed to deal with cases where the risk to the company is greater than $1bn. Your country Financial Controller (copied) will be interested in your problem/ (if the request is from a country controller) cases such as this are handled by your local advisors."

Of course, you do need a clear picture of how the "other" requests should be handled and an up to date list of the people involved. Which is not always easy. But this is the essence of workload management.

MOK, thanks for the book suggestion, I found it to be excellent-never read anything by Fergus O'Connell. It is disappointing that in the US a few select authors have a foothold it seems on the market of time management, whereas Europe seems to have a wider range of systems going that fit different lifestyles. Maybe I just haven't spent enough time in the appropriate section of my bookstore here, but have found myself buying more and more books from abroad on these topics.

Man of Kent. I was glad to see someone saying something that relates to my own experience. All the various systems I've investigated GTD, AF are working fine for my 'own' one man band projects. But fail to help me manage my team of 8 and the 'small' projects we manage. With us its not the size of projects thats the problem its the quantity.

I'm also a keen reader of Project Management material, including Fergus's work. Nothing I've read thus far fits. The closest I've been to anyting matching my reality is Managing Multiple Projects, authored by Michael and Irene Tobis. Thus far the Project Management material I've digested works on an assumption that we have time to stop and communicate with one another. Couple that with endless customers calls to an IT HELPDESK - yes we're an IT Services Department.

This response is really saying - I know how you feel - and if anyone has some brillient ideas that can help I'd all ears.

I'm a big fan of Mark's work but I think he'd have to admit that AF for example is really suited to EXECUTIVE type work. Whereas many of us are MANAGERS.

RLI, have you read DIT? The five pages on prioritising projects and delegation are as relevant to managers as to anyone else. These principles can be applied whether you are using DIT or AF.

RLI, just thinking here. Are you a 24 hour service, or a limited hour service? Either way, there is a period of time before and after your group of people are servicing calls. If you can take that time (say 15-30 minutes), use that to communicate.
I suggested Scrum, but that's a process for isolated teams that get to choose their work. That's not you. I suppose you could garnish ideas from Lean/Kanban and Kaizen teian. These offer principles and strategies usable in integrated manufacturing environments for getting everybody working towards improved quality and efficiency.

I haven't read anything yet specifically on tracking, delegating, and managing in these materials, but if you follow the principles your team ought to be able to evolve such management methods.

I think.

Many thanks everyone for your comments. I have read DIT and as with all Mark's books thought it excellent.

Some more background. We operate a HELPDESK between 7h30 and 16h30. As usual with an IT helpdesk the calls are either because something isn't working or because the caller wants something changing. Those changes range from simple "can I have a replacement mouse" to full blown projects. There are app 20 departments within the Educational organisation I work for. So if they have just 1 project each thats 20 projects.

I would like the team to be able to work projects through systematically. All the project management books I've read advocate "planning" which I can't disagree with. However, planning takes time and time isn't a luxury we have. This isn't to say we run around like headless chickens. We are actually very good. i would just like us to be a) better and b) more relaxed. But there is a constant fight between being reactive and proactive.

Better and more relaxed: That's what Kaizen achieves, through little improvements: Instead of every day lifting weights onto the weigh-scale, you lower the scale. The techniques of improvement don't require central planning.

In the organization I work for (a large development/retail house), the helpdesk holds office hours before 9-10am and 3-5pm. Most requests, such as for a new mouse, come in during the office hours. For urgent tasks, we use a ticketing system that is universal across the company—much like a software bug tracking system on steroids. Of course we could use the phone, but it's easier to track things in the ticketing system.

All the project time happens in between office hours. As I'm not actually on the helpdesk team—just a big fan of it—I can't say how they go about planning their projects; but I can say that they are really effective.

An update...
I'm now taking a morning briefing session with nearly my whole team. In true Mark fashion we have declared a Backlog on all our Service Requests recieved before we began our daily meeting. We are systematically DISCUSSING and working that list down. Now we let a days worth on NEW service requests build up and then process that list at the next days briefing. Also at the morning briefing everyone gives updates on progress made with our longer-term strategic projects. All this as well as communicating with helpdesk calls and problems that are being dealt with.

My key message and observation is 1) have a system and 2) communication between members of a team is vital. The system doesn't even need to be perfect. It can be improved over time.

Thanks for reporting back. It's always good to hear what methods work because it informs my own directions. Glad to see you were able to squeeze the group meeting into your team, and diminish some of the urgency as well.

What you're doing now resembles Scrum in a number of respects. Anyhow, it sounds good to me, and hope it continues to work for you.

Hi !!
Nice post.I liked it.
I have read "work less achieve more" by Fergus O'Connel..It's awesome.
I liked it and this book helped a lot to me in maintaining a proper balance between my team members.It's concept and tips are really useful for me.
Thanks !!