Part 4 of 5: Synthesize Large Volumes of Information

This is Part 4 of 5 in the series, "The Four Skills Every Executive Needs to Practice".

In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overhead view of the four skills that every great executive practices.

Part 2 dealt with the first skill, managing email.

Part 3 dealt with the martial art of running meetings more effectively.

This post addresses something that most rising leaders might miss- the ability to navigate a seemingly huge volume of information, process it and then use it to make better decisions.

The fact is, most of us have way more information coming at us than we know what to do with.  While we may feel like this is something new, past generations dealt with it as well.  We call it information overload and it's definitely real.

But, even with all of the information available to us on a daily basis, Skill 3 is about much more than just avoiding the overwhelm that comes with too much information.

Rather, it's about three things:

1. Building a habit of daily reading.
2. Establishing weekly blocks for reflection in your schedule.
3. Training your mind to think critically, resulting in quality, objective decisions.

The best executives I know carve their day like a knife through a watermelon.  While the rest of us stress over small, seemingly insignificant details, the great ones just roll with the punches and seem to absorb things better (i.e. smarter) than the rest of us.  

Now let's dive into the three components of making this skill work for you.

1. Building a habit of daily reading.  I've written about this before.  Podcasted about it too.  It's super important to become an avid reader.  My wife, Cary, finds it hard to sit down and tackle an entire book. As a busy mom of four active kids, there just isn't a lot of extra time.  What does work for her is to use her drive time to work for "reading" or listening to the news.  This is "reading" but not in the traditional sense.  I count Cable TV news as "reading".  Same with books on tape.  Count podcasts too.  If you have a commute, this is a built-in advantage as you may have 30-90 minutes per day that could be converted into learning time.  I like to read at night when I come home from work. I also find podcasts absolutely essential.  Becoming a reader will mean that your decision making is richer, has context and has a literary background that will always benefit you.
2. Establishing weekly blocks for reflection in your schedule.  This one is often overlooked- schedule time each week to get out of the office and think.  That's right- think.  Get alone with your thoughts and ponder the big rocks that fill your list of priorities.  I often will use Thursday mornings to go to Thinking Headquarters (a.k.a. the nearest Panera!) and review my strategic plan.  If I schedule it, I'll do it. If not, it just won't happen.  
3. Training your mind to think critically, resulting in quality, objective decisions.  This step is about discipline.  The more you read, the more you'll think and the more you'll be likely to be an objective thinker.  Guess what?  Objective thinkers are almost always more likely to make good decisions.

What kinds of information do you need on any given week?  Financial information, information about your staff, planning materials, reports and much more.  The list goes on and on.

So here's to your practice of this skill.  With an open mind to practicing the three steps above, you'll become an information ninja and make better decisions.

Part 3 of 5: Run Effective Meetings

This is Part 3 of 5 in the series, "The Four Skills Every Executive Needs to Practice".

In the introduction to this series, we made the case that grad school programs and most organizations don't teaching rising leaders the skills they need to succeed in the workplace.

In Part 2, we discussed the importance of managing your email daily.

In this post, I'd like to discuss the second ninja skill of workplace leadership and it deals with meetings.

The average executive spends a lot of time in meetings. These can be any of the following:

1. Informational meetings

2. Status reports

3. Brainstorm meetings

4. One-on-Ones with your boss or those who report to you

5. Standing meetings with those two steps above or below you

6. Strategy meetings

7. Board meetings

8. And on it goes!

The volume of meetings isn't necessarily the problem, although attending too many can definitely constipated your calendar.

No, the real problem is that meetings as we know it suffer from a number of serious ailments. These include:

1. Not having a clear purpose: "what's the reason for this meeting?"

2. Not having a good moderator: "who's running the show here?"

3. Not having an agenda: "what do we want to get done in this meeting?"

4. Not having a set end-time: "what time do we finish?"

To make it worse, too many organizations foster a culture that warps the mindset of its workers. This results in either a) people dread meetings or b) people feel that meetings are the only way to make decisions.

To respond to a), how can you blame them? When the last few meetings either started late or had no clear purpose, who wouldn't want to avoid the next meeting?

Regarding b), this is more insidious. If "having a meeting" is the only way to make decisions, it will ultimately produce sub-par results. Why? Simply put, when you craft a lousy meeting, lousy stuff is bound to come out. This then brings the entire organzation into a slower mode of productivity and it saps the creative energies out of its employees.

So what's a rising leader to do?

First, a personal story. I recently was invited to attend a meeting. Some of my best directs were to be in attendance. The topic, though, really didn't apply to me so I simply didn't attend. After the meeting, my #2 just gave me the cliff-notes version of what went on and the rest is history.

The bottom line leads me to Strategy One: only attend the meetings that you absolutely have to. I realize that if you're not a supervisor or "the boss", you may have less flexibility than others but the principle is the same. You've got to guard your calendar at all costs against lousy meetings.

Strategy Two is directly related to you when you are asked to facilitate a meeting. If you have to run a meeting, do it well.  My suggestion is to address the items that we mentioned above, one at a time:

1. Have a clear purpose: "the reason why we're here is ______________________"

2. Practice good moderation: keep it moving, start on time, involve everyone, clarify follow up tasks, take notes, publish follow up minutes, get out on time.

3. Have an agenda: you may or may not need to publish this in advance. If it's a small group, you could simply start with, "First we want to discuss X and then move to Y and finish with Z. Then we'll know that we're done and can get back to work."

4. Have a set end-time: you'll need to remind folks of the guardrails of the meeting, giving them permission to end on time (or better yet, end early!). Attendees need to know that the meeting will probably only "need" 15 minutes or 30 minutes, etc. 99% of meetings should last 30-45 minutes.

By practicing these two simply strategies, you'll become a meeting ninja and be seen by those above you as efficient and productive.

Here's a bonus tip: when the meeting is over and you are the facilitator, simply stand up and thank everyone for coming. This signals to the group that "we're done" and can get back to whatever is on the calendar. This will feel rude at first but after a while, folks will learn that meetings don't have to be long. Try it out and see for yourself.

Part 2 of 5: Manage Your Email Daily

This is part of the series entitled, The Four Skills Every Executive Needs to Practice

In Part 1, I outlined the why behind this series- we have tons of executives who lack the necessary skills needed to lead.  Grad school doesn't prepare them.  Mentors are usually hands off and infrequent.  

What's a rising executive to do?

Part 2 deals with the first skill and it has to do with email.  

The truth is that email is part of the noise that we all face in everyday life.  We face more noise today than ever before:

• Email
• Voicemail
• Snailmail (remember that?)
• TV watching
• Web surfing
• Social media
• And much more...

Email above all is critical for executives.  The bad news is that it is also a problem.  Here's why:

a) Email is still the primary means for communicating to groups and individuals.

b) Most people have poor email routines, making email less effective than it should be.

c) Email is cheap and easy, thus flooding our inboxes with a deluge of both important and non-important bits of information.

There is a ton of great advice when it comes to email, some of which I'll provide at the end of this article.  Some productivity gurus will promote getting to "inbox zero" daily.  The problem with this is that it's probably unrealistic and might be unnecessary.  

The real problem is that most young executives deal with email in one of two ways:

1. They deal with it all of the time, smattering their day with a habit of "checking".  This not only makes the day totally choppy but it creates an addiction to new mail.  
2. They deal with it so infrequently that they miss critical pieces of information.

You might be thinking- "what's the big deal"?  "So I don't do email all that well... what's the problem with that?"

The thing is this: email represents us to those around us.  A real example- a colleague of mine missed an important email once, resulting in a missed meeting which was an important opportunity for the colleague.  

The other reason why email is so important is that people judge us based on our email habits.  Now, I'm not saying that you'll get a promotion based on how you handle email.  But, you might not get that promotion is you build a reputation for being disorganized and unresponsive.  Fair or unfair, folks judge us based on how we handle (or don't handle) email.

The following strategies are recommended in order to take a reasonable approach to email:

1. Decide to tackle email only twice a day.  Once in the morning and another time later in the afternoon.  
2. Get to zero once a week.  This may be part of your weekly review but be sure to get your inbox cleared out once a week.  Zero, none, nada.  I'm serious.
3. Learn how to use email to your advantage.  Only send emails about one topic.  Be brief and to the point.  Avoid emailing groups unless you absolutely have to.
4. Know when a phone call is better than an email.  If you need to say a lot, pick up the phone.  If you don't want something in writing, pick up the phone.  

Now that you have the four key strategies, here are some supplemental materials that might be helpful as you tackle email and get it under control:

• Email Overload: How to Escape the Tyranny of the Inbox
• Email Overload is Costing You Billions: Here's How to Crush It
• Stop Email Overload

Part 1 of 5: The Four Skills Every Executive Needs to Practice

A young man told me he was about to enter the seminary.  A friend shared that he wanted to re-imagine his career as a teacher instead of as a software engineer.  Both people wanted something different for their futures.  Both had vision.

Neither knew the "skills" that would be needed in order to thrive- one as a future priest and the other as a future teacher.  

Grad school tells us a lot about theory and history and "best practices" but little about skills.  I'm not tooting my horn, but I have a lot of graduate degrees and each has been a blessing in a different way.  What each has lacked, unfortunately, has been a healthy dose of the practical skills needed for the profession I'm in.

How about you?  Have you become excellent because of OJT ("on the job training") or because someone taught you the skills needed to be great?

This post begins a four-part series called The Four Skills Every Executive Needs to Practice.  You'll find only practical tips for being great at work.  The skills are as follows:

• Manage your email daily.
• Run effective meetings.
• Synthesize large volumes of information.
• Control your calendar.

You may be looking at these skills and say to yourself, "Why do I need a four part series on these?"  Quite simply, the answer is this- we need to learn these skills because no one person, no grad school program or self help initiative, is wrapping them up in one package.  

Worse yet, countless potential executives aren't learning these things on their climb up the corporate ladder. The result is the next generation of leaders who will be sorely lacking in the "blocking and tackling" of servant leadership.

That's where this blog comes in handy.

I hope that you enjoy the series and upcoming podcast with the same title.  

Smart Ways to End Emails

Have you ever been frustrated because people don't get back to you in emails?  The problem, according to Robert Williams, might be in how you are finishing your emails.

For example, if you finish an email with "just let me know..." or "we should do something", you are less likely to get a response.  The reason: you are adding work to their task list and their brain just goes on freeze mode.

An alternative might be to give them something very specific to do as a next step.  A-la GTD and "what's the next action", an effective email might wrap up with any of the following:

• I suggest we meet on Friday at 10am in the conference room.  Can you do that?
• I'll call you in two days to follow up.  
• Can you let me know about item #5 and if that is agreeable to you?

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Pay attention to your emails.  If people aren't getting back to you, there may be a reason and a slight tweak could make a big difference.  

Why You Should Use Canva for Your Next Resume

Resumes are important, really important.  We place so much effort into such a small part of our portfolio but so it is- hiring agencies still put tons of stock into resumes.  

A lot of people struggle with resumes for two reasons: they don't know to format them and they haven't worked on one in years.  As a result, the resume is unattractive and somewhat bland.  

When I'm looking to hire someone, I look at two things very closely:

1. The resume
2. The cover letter

If the cover letter is nicely written, this is a sure sign of intelligence.  If the resume contains a background of experience, the person will likely get an interview. 

I recently came across a candidate whose resume was so attractive that it made me think that maybe we need to place a higher value on aesthetics when it comes to our resumes, i.e. how our resume looks.

All of the graphics I use for the blog are made for free in Canva.com.  If you have yet to try it, you should! It's easy and fun. Even someone with a slight sense of design can make something beautiful in Canva.  

Now to your resume- you may want to use Canva for that as well.  I've included a few of their ready-made templates that can be totally customized to draw hiring agencies to you and your strengths.  

What will your next resume look like?