All of us aim to become more effective
managers at our workplace. Yet, at times, we find ourselves
wanting on some count or the other. Through this series of
articles based on the set of seven books called “Key to Personal
Effectiveness” (distributed by Pentagon Press), we will focus on
seven things that we can do to become a more effective manager.
The book series is divided into seven books, each delving into
one aspect of personal effectiveness. The articles in this
series will synopsize the key ideas presented in each of the
seven books in the “Key to Personal Effectiveness” series.
The first book of the series deals with a problem many of us
face – that of “Getting Organized”. Jeff Olson, the author of
this book titled “Getting Organized” opines the basic
fundamentals of getting organized are two pronged in nature –
firstly, in order to get organized, we need to banish our mental
clutter. Most people who have too much clutter in their lives
take life as it comes and believe that they need to get through
life and need not take control of it. However, in order to be an
agile manager, it is important to recognise that clutter has the
impact of slowing one down and therefore focus on reducing
clutter and one way to do this is by creating goals. It is
important to create meaningful goals in each key area of your
life. The author urges us to set challenging goals for ourselves
at work and focus on results. Secondly, the author opines that a
key aspect of getting organised is to simplify our life. Some
methods to do so at our workplace would be to prioritize our
work tasks through the creation of a to-do list and ensuring
that the most critical tasks are at the top of the list,
preparing a contribution chart which would help us to identify
which tasks are critical, which can wait and which tasks are
likely to be time-wasters. We should also focus on getting
today’s work done rather than dreaming about tomorrow. Lastly,
the ability to say “no” to tasks, activities or people who are
not important to you would go a long way in getting organized.
Jeff Olson also states that there are three key elements in aiming to get more organized. They are in the form of “Organizing to save time”, “Eliminating Time Wasters” and “Leveraging Yourself. Let’s look at each of these:
Effective time management is a key skill that
we need to acquire on the path to getting organized. One of the
first steps is to find out where your time goes. Keeping a time
log would tell us how we have spent our entire day. It may be a
difficult process at first, however, it would give us rich
dividends by way of letting us know where and how we have spent
our time productively and on what tasks have we wasted our time.
A second tool to manage our time is to have a to-do list. A
to-do list written out the night before helps us to plan our day
much more effectively. Giving ourselves deadlines is a secret
trick used by achievers. This does wonders for organizing our
time.
Jeff Olson also outlines another tip to get ourselves organized
to save time and that is to organise our assignments and
projects in a structured manner. The author outlines six steps
to complete an assignment successfully:
The author also urges managers to refresh their mind regularly as a step towards getting organized. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy is a saying that we are all familiar with. Some ways of relaxing ourselves and refreshing our mind could be in the form of indulging in a hobby, getting some exercise and getting enough sleep.
Peter Drucker once said, “For one either meets, or one works”. Time wasters are the biggest enemy of one’s efforts towards effective management of time. Several activities that are potent time wasters could be unnecessary meetings, reading reports and memos which are not relevant to us, unnecessary travel, waiting to get finished work from others, people who waste your time, poor communication and indecisive actions to name a few. Some of the tips for managers to eliminate the time wasters in their work life could be in the form of:
A key step on the path to getting organized is
to learn how to leverage yourself well. Most managers do not
realise that delegation of work is one of the easiest ways to
create more time for themselves. However, some points that must
be kept in mind while delegating are – what is the task to be
delegated, who is the right person that the task can be
delegated to, defining the task clearly so that the person doing
the task knows exactly what is expected, checking in
periodically to monitor the task completion process and
evaluating how the delegation was executed. In addition to
delegation, a manager can leverage himself by planning and
leading meetings that are effective and result in least loss of
productive time and also communicating skilfully so that time is
not lost in miscommunication.
In summary, the book on “Getting Organized” by Jeff Olson helps
us to not only focus on managing their time, but also
identifying matters that are important to us and then working at
organizing our life so that we can attend to these important
matters. By getting organized, we can not only reduce the effort
required to get results at work, but we can use that saved time
to get back to our non-work life activities like hobbies etc to
make us into a well-rounded individual.
Through this article, we have explored a few ways in which we
can try to get organized. In order to get a deeper understanding
of the same, I strongly recommend you to read the book series
“Key to Personal Effectiveness” (Part 1 – Getting Organized by
Jeff Olson).
Prof. Kala Mahadevan
Assistant Professor,
DR VN BRIMS, Thane
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