8
Personal performance business development skills 157
What choice might have an effect on other people?
What is most fun . . . the thing that you have most been looking
forward to doing?
Which of the tasks has the most pressing deadline?
What state of mind, mood or health do I need to be in to get certain
things done?
What actual time makes the most sense to do specic things?
If something unexpected were to crop up . . . which one couldn’t wait?
Will it make a difference to the outcome and result when I do the
task?
Focus your mind on each task and ask: What would the consequence be of
not doing that particular thing today?
Master your e-mail
Many people quite reasonably complain about e-mail and information
overload, but do absolutely nothing to limit the amount of time they
waste handling the never-ending torrent of e-mails, 75percent of which
are unwanted promotional junk. I have encountered many folk who have
simply given up and accepted ‘e-mail time loss’ as a necessary evil of
society. The good news is you don’t have to.
You can’t make the problem go away completely, but you can and should
adopt a number of simple, damage-limitation strategies to minimise the
effect. What you need to do is to ask: What are the things relating to
e-mail overload that I can control? The answer is that there are several
areas of activity that are partially within your personal sphere of inuence:
Control how often and when you check your e-mails. You don’t have
to check every few minutes. Have a set time for this once or twice a
day.
Control who is sending you e-mails. Get off unwanted lists.
Control when you send an e-mail. You don’t have to respond
immediately.
Control how you write the e-mail to minimise problems for the
recipient. Often this will be reciprocated. If you write long chatty
e-mails you are likely to get them back.
Control the IT tools you use to manage the process better. Make use of
any tools you have on your computer for managing e-mails.
158 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
Master your meetings
If you want to nd a way of wasting valuable business development time,
have a meeting to discuss business development!
Have you ever been to a meeting, particularly an internal company one,
where you left feeling uplifted and excited, like you had really achieved
something useful and that this was a great use of your time? I have, but not
often! I struggle to think of more than a few which have been necessary and
totally constructive. There seems to be a culture in many organisations of
simply holding meetings as a substitute for actually getting on with the job.
It never ceases to amaze me, how much time is squandered in meetings.
I once attended a formal gathering of a major legal practice which had 20 partners
present, all of whom charged about £250 per hour. The only issue to discuss was
what percentage shade of grey their new brochure front cover should be printed in.
This discussion went on for three hours. If you do a bit of basic number crunching,
this vital meeting and decision cost them 60 hours of time and at their charging rate
amounted to £15,000. Time and money well spent, don’t you think?
It is astonishing and ironic that one of the things that business develop-
ment people spend so much of their work time on is regarded, by them, as
one of the biggest time traps of all.
Here are just a few of the comments I have heard when I have asked people
about meetings in their organisation:
‘Given e-mail and other modern ways of communicating with each other, it
is incredibly outdated to think that every time we need to speak to each other
we have to have a meeting.’
‘We have weekly business development meetings. Every time we virtually
discuss the same things. We talk a lot and no one ever does anything.’
‘On the whole I think business development meetings here are a waste of
time. The only good thing about them is that I can stock up on sandwiches,
fruit and chocolate biscuits.’
Of course, the reality is that some meetings are productive and are abso-
lutely justied. What is it then that differentiates the worthwhile from the
time-wasting meetings? Here are a few tips on how to master your time
when it comes to meetings.
8
Personal performance business development skills 159
‘Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.’
John Kenneth Galbraith
tips on mastering your time spent in meetings
Have very specic objectives.
Cancel the meeting if key people are not there.
Have as few people involved as possible.
Have an agenda – a planned list of things to discuss.
Have xed start and end times.
Don’t arrange a meeting unless one is absolutely necessary.
Don’t travel to a meeting unless it is essential.
Don’t serve refreshments unless hospitality is a key part of the meeting.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.