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The Organizational Cancer

meir — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 07:15:02 +0000

Hello and welcome to TimeMaker’s next tip for efficiency and effectiveness.

Today we will be covering the silent killer of any organization – cancer.

Much like a body, the “organizational cancer” is silent. But what is cancer in the body really and what is the organizational cancer?

Most people cringe just at hearing the word “cancer”, but most people also don’t really know what it is…Cancer is a belief by a part of the body that it has no future. Therefore, that part of the body goes into an insane effort to survive and recreate itself and hence, like any insane action, this brings about destruction.

Cancer happens in a body due to long-term nutrition disturbance that causes an incomplete operation of one or more parts of the body.

The body is an organization (like any other) that is composed of “anchor” points. An anchor point is any vital point on which a foundation is built. The body has anchor points like the head, arms, elbows etc. The body also has a communication system and a mind. The body gets its commands from the spirit.

To have cancer, one or more parts of the body does not PRODUCE what it is supposed to produce – or it does not produce properly in some way. That part stopped being part of the team – –the body.

Now, let’s look at an organization.

An organization is composed of anchor points (like people, phones, computers, etc.). An organization has a communication system (the lines by which information flows); and an organization has a mind (the organizational data). This is all controlled by its executives (the spirit behind the activity).

To have cancer, like in the body, one or more parts of the organization does not PRODUCE what it is supposed to produce – or it does not produce properly in some way. That part stopped being part of the team – the company.

The results can be seen as DELAYS.

DELAYS ARE THE ORGANIZATIONAL CANCER.

The key indications by which one can tell an organization (or life) is experiencing the Organizational Cancer are as follows:

It seems the day is over before one managed to do what one needed to do.
One continuously confronted with bad news and situations which need handling.
One feels overworked.
One’s inbox is full, things get delayed and one experience backlog.
The more one’s pushes the harder it is.
The income simply refuses to go up despite all efforts.
The profit drops.
The atmosphere is tense.
Work is no fun – you feel sick.

Familiar with this? Read on…

Delays happen for the following reasons:

Unknown Workload: The work load (how much work one allocates, by the hour, for actual productive activity in a given day) of employees is unknown to staff and executives. LOOK over your post (job) and your juniors’ posts and check – can you tell yourself clearly what you have to do every hour in the next week versus what you planned, wanted or needed to do? If you do not have a tool that SHOWS you the full picture at a glance, then you do not know what is the workload and you will develop the organizational cancer sooner or later… if you haven’t already.

Inability to Demand Results: Inability to demand compliance comes about due to the fact that you cannot see what needs to be done. When you cannot see what needs to be done you can not demand compliance… You need to be able to SEE and therefore demand productivity where due.

Unknown Results: If you do not have a way to compare past results to what was supposed to have been done, you will manage by rumors and so will inevitably make mistakes.

Lack of Workflows: Assuming you have a product to sell, the basic barrier to expansion will be a lack of administrative systems. Missing the needed, set out, and organized workflows will bring about major delays.

Injustice: Lack of the above knowledge will result in injustice. Justice is any action you take on a group member to ensure he operates on the agreements of the group. Sending a person to jail would be defined as justice because you are ensuring that person does not break group agreements any longer. Injustice is the opposite. It is enforcing agreements but wrongly or to the wrong person. It is sending an innocent person to jail. So, an inability to correctly see the above data and information will lead to injustice in your organization. Targeting the wrong people, etc. You need to be able to apply justice to the correct people and in correct situations. Injustice leads to an unwillingness to produce. Correct justice leads to increased morale for all.

The above five points are not opinions – they are proven facts.

The following do’s and don’ts will give you the basic handling so you no longer suffer, or will ever suffer, from this cancer:

Do Not:

Assign work without a clear picture of the workload of the person who is supposed to perform the job.
Manage without a clear picture of the overall plan – broken down to what needs to be done per day and per hour – yes PER HOUR.
Handle work as unique. Work actions are not unique. 99% of all things in life repeat themselves, and it’s the same with work. Working without a specific workflow (set out steps in sequence to achieve a particular result) for the handling of most activities in your business will create delays that will eventually kill your organization.
Note: The difference between big successful companies and small companies, given the fact there is a product to sell, is one thing: Big companies have most of their activities work flowed (see McDonald, Starbucks, AT&T etc.), while small companies handle most of their activities as unique.
Organizational skills, believe it or not, define your success.
Manage without statistics that show exactly what were the results of the person’s activities.
Penalize productive people – regardless of the situation.

Do:

Establish a TOOL that will show you, in real time, all delays and all current and future workloads.
Plan exactly what needs to be done – breaking the actions down to daily and hourly actions.
Figure out the workflows in your organization and establish a SYSTEM that will put most actions in the organization on workflows – this is the key for success.
Establish a way to collect and analyze ALL people’s results in the organization and reward and penalize people ONLY based on their results. An ideal system, in fact, would pay all people in the organization based on their results and not based on time.

And that’s it! Read the above a couple of times if needed because the information is KEY.

It is clear that to operate as described above one would need the help of technology – a software.

After years of research I have found that NO SOFTWARE actually takes care of the above. In fact, the software designers did not understand the problem (funny enough) and therefore did not create the correct solution.

TimeMaker developed the only software that is the cure for the organizational cancer!

I invite you to contact me for a free presentation. I guarantee it will be the start of a new life for you and your organization.

Contacting me by the 22^nd of June will make you eligible for TimeMaker’s special 15% discount. E-mail me NOW at Sales@TimeMaker.org.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

This week, cure cancer! And have the best week yet!

Best Regards,

Meir Ezra

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THE KEY FOR SUCCESS

meir — Mon, 28 May 2012 06:55:29 +0000

Hello and welcome to our next tip!

Today we will be covering a very important subject which most people know is important, yet somehow hardly use properly.

It is actually so vital that without it, nothing can exist. With it, you can take any dream in life, in business, even in relationships and make it come true.

It is, in fact, the key to ANY success.

It is planning.

This subject is so vast and powerful that cramming it into one tip is impossible. Therefore, this tip will be broken down over two weeks.

This tip is appropriately called TO PLAN OR NOT TO BE as a twist on Shakespeare’s famous line, “To be or not to be.” Because in fact, without planning, you cannot BE – nothing can exist if it’s not planned.

Let me explain.

Planning turns dreams into reality – without planning, nothing will happen.

ALL the things you see around you, from your watch, to your computer, to your food, even to your body were dreamed up at one point or another. The only way these dreams became a reality was because someone planned and then executed the PLANS.

The reason people fail to achieve their dreams and eventually stop dreaming is simple (by the way, this is the point at which a person dies – that moment he stops dreaming) – they FAIL TO PLAN and so they get busy executing actions that don’t forward them towards their dreams.

If you will sit and list all the things you have done in the past week and then ask yourself which SPECIFIC PLAN each item forwarded, chances are that most of the actions are things you “needed to do” but they did not forward any real plan.

If you will look back in your life you will see those things that became a reality were planned and those that stayed at the dream stage simply were never planned. To make one somehow “comfortable” with himself, one decided the dream was unreal, or too big, or whatever – these are all an attempt to explain why one did not turn the dream into a reality – but unfortunately these reasons are all false.

Dreams do not become a reality ONLY because the steps needed to turn those dreams into reality never got planned and so there was nothing to execute. Unfortunately, most people don’t know these steps…

Aside from specific do’s and don’ts, there are 7 laws for planning which, if understood and followed, open the door for all success.

It is this very subject we will cover in next week’s tip.

It is quite a technical subject but, as you can imagine, it is beyond vital.

If you can’t wait for next week, I don’t blame you… For this reason, I will be holding a free webinar which I will be personally delivering. In it, we will cover:

The seven laws of planning.

What you must NEVER do if you’re trying to make a dream come true.
The planning secrets which have been right under your nose, but you’ve just never seen or known.
What you NEED to make sure happens as you’re creating a plan.
Any questions you’ve had on any of the tips (including this one).
And much more…

By fully understanding the principles you will be unstoppable – and that will be the product of this webinar.

The webinar will be held on (this date) and (this time). To register, CLICK HERE.

Get ready to TURN YOUR DREAMS INTO REALITY!

For all the rest, I look forward to seeing you next week with Tip #8.

Meir Ezra,

Founder – TimeMaker

This tip was brought to you by TimeMaker – the #1 task and project management software in the world – specializing in saving you time and money.

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SMILING FOR FILING

meir — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:35:31 +0000

Hello! I hope you are enjoying and have been applying the tips you’ve learned so far. This is the 6th of fourteen e-mail tips. It is simple but effective, and we’ve included some helpful videos and the usual do’s and don’ts – enjoy!

Ah… good times… nostalgia… We love these sorts of memories. Imagine life with no memories! This is why our mental records are so important – so we can look back, think about moments, enjoy them and learn from them. But it goes much deeper, and this is what this tip is about.

A person uses his memory to make decisions by referring to past experiences. The better a person’s memory is (meaning his or her record and the ability to access that record), the more data he has to work with and, thus, the better his decisions are.

A person without memory or with an inability to access past experiences will be extremely limited in his abilities – he or she will be slow, confused and will make mistakes. Makes sense, right?

A COMPANY without a memory or with an inability to access its past will be extremely limited in its abilities – it too will be slow and confused.

The company’s memory is composed of its written and spoken communications.

Spoken communication carry the liability of not being recorded and so inevitably bring about misunderstandings (arguments, upsets, things not getting done when you clearly told the person to do it, etc.) – more on the handling of this specific “disease” in future tips.

So, a company should insist that the majority of its communications be written. A company should put up a red flag at any production-related communications which have not been reduced to writing – this has a serious potential of becoming a problem!

To be able to access the written communications of an organization or any group FAST, they should all be filed in a specific, organized manner.

Most of today’s written communications are in e-mail form, and this tip is about how to give the correct solution for managing e-mail communications!

Do not:

Use your inbox or your “Deleted Items” folder as your e-mail storage location and/or archive. Using your inbox as an e-mail storage will eat away your attention units!! Remember? (See “You Touch It, You Play It” tip). Using your inbox as storage or filing will make it hard to find what you need and will slow you down (every time you need to sift through it all, blah blah blah – not good!). Of course, on top of what you’ve received you also have the Sent items folder with all the sent communications.

Clearly the e-mails start adding up quickly and soon you have thousands of e-mails to sift through to find just one – and don’t think search tools will help (sometimes you can’t remember key words, it’s slow, you end up not finding things anyway, etc.)! Again, not good!

Using the Deleted Items folder is not only dangerous (you may lose the data!) but also, since the data is not organized, it will be hard to find and will slow you down.

Do:

1. Create folders based on a subject (for example “Company X’s Contract”) or based on a person’s name and file all related e-mails to that folder. Though it seems like extra work, it is such a time saver and you will be thanking yourself later!

2. Remember to handle junk e-mails or other unnecessary mail CORRECTLY by applying Tip 4, “Annihilating Junk E-Mails Once and For All”.

3. Ensure the e-mail software you are using allows you to easily create filing rules. This is a new, very powerful concept for CORRECTLY filing emails. To understand this better, click here.

4. Lastly, there IS a correct way to deal with Sent Items. Just like paper, the fact its electronic makes no difference – these e-mails should be organized too!

They actually should be filed in the SAME folder as the corresponding received e-mails and should not be stuffed in the Sent Items folder. For example, all mail received and sent to and from Company X should be put in the same Company X folder.

This way, you have a perfect chronological order of all communications in one easy to find, organized location.

Your e-mail software should also do this for you automatically. Again, this is a revolutionary concept. To understand this further, click here.

When these rules are applied you become completely airtight. Everything is sealed and nothing falls through the cracks. Writing cannot be argued with, and when it’s all recorded, stored and easily accessible, you are that much more ahead in being efficient now and for the future.

I look forward to seeing you next week with Tip #7. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions, comments or feedback.

Cheers to efficiency, power, money and, of course, well kept memories!

Meir Ezra,

Founder – TimeMaker

This tip was brought to you by TimeMaker – the #1 task and project management software in the world – specializing in saving you time and money.

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Atmosphere is EVERYTHING…

meir — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:04:06 +0000

Hello! I hope you enjoyed and have been applying the tips you’ve learned so far. This is the 5th of fourteen e-mail tips. I believe you will learn a lot in the following:

In life, no matter where you are or what you do, the atmosphere of the area sets the stage for what is about to come. It is a kind of soundtrack to your life for that moment. If you arrive at a party and there is a tense and awkward feeling in the air, chances are the party won’t get off the ground unless something changes. Much like in a movie, where the music sets your emotion (is it scary, is it cheerful, is it sad…), at work, your environment is your atmosphere and your soundtrack. Your environment defines your state of mind and, hence, determines whether or not you are able to operate smoothly and productively.

When you work in a noisy, disruptive, unorganized environment, this is the atmosphere set, and your production (if you do actually manage to get anything done) will be limited.

It is a known fact that power (explained in Tip # 2 – FIFO) gets generated by a concentrated effort on what is being worked on. You can’t push a car while smoking a cigar. You need to get all your attention on ONE thing to generate true power. With anyone successful, if you look, you’ll see they have a high ability to concentrate on one task at a time (refer to Tip #1, You Touch It, You Play It). This is the measurement of efficiency and power.

Take a step back and think about yesterday’s production. How was it…? How did you operate…? You will probably realize most of your time was spent on “internal noise”. By “internal noise” is meant unnecessary additional clutter or actions (whether it is sounds, a dirty space, people saying things to you all the time, stopping and checking your favorite social networking sites, etc.). This “noise”, or lack of focus = the wrong atmosphere.

YOU can set yourself up to work in an optimum atmosphere.

Imagine you had an extra four hours per day… How much more money would you be able to make? How much more could you do and get done?

The following do’s and don’ts will guide you through correctly setting up the atmosphere. This, guaranteed, will increase your productivity, create more time for you to do the things you love, and you will feel GOOD.

Here they are…

Do not:

Have people constantly coming to your office with questions, problems etc.
Have your phone, Skype, or any other communication devices on while answering your e-mails (or getting any work done, for that matter).
Have your TV, Facebook, or other internet-related things running in the background.
Have other forms of disruptions or active notifications.

Do:

First of all, ensure your computer performs properly.
Have your space clean and neat. Every morning or so, wipe down your desk, your keyboard, your screen. Crazy as it sounds, a clean space makes a huge difference. A clean environment equals a clear state of mind.
Set up a specific time slot for the handling of e-mails, and, at that time, handle your e-mails. At all other times: produce what you are supposed to be working on and ensure it forwards the company’s strategy.
Bonus Note: Most people drop their dreams thinking they were unrealistic in the first place… but, the truth is, they just do a lot of things that don’t forward their original dreams. Therefore, they mistakenly conclude their dreams are not even achievable. People, sadly, keep dropping dreams until, when one drops his or her last dream, the lights go out… This will not happen to you! We’ll be covering it much more in depth on the future tip – TO PLAN OR NOT TO BE.
Work in a space that is separate and quiet if possible. You can also make a simple “Please Do Not Disturb” sign for your door… it works.
Ensure all your e-mails arrive to one inbox (route Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. to your preferred e-mail program).
Turn off all communication devices – ensure nothing can disturb you. Yes, phone off, Skype off, etc.
Turn off the TV and also all internet-related pages.
Some people enjoy working with music and it doesn’t distract them. Some people can work with music that has no words. Some people get distracted by music. Determine this for yourself.
If you use a mobile device such as Blackberry, ensure any action done on the mobile device is totally in sync with your computer. In other words, we don’t want double work – If you delete or file an e-mail on your phone or computer, they should both line up, same thing goes for Calendar appointments, etc.

The idea is to be able to work distraction-free – to have a beautiful, paradise work atmosphere so you can GET THINGS DONE efficiently. There may be some things you thought of which haven’t been listed, that’s good – work on those as well! It all sounds simple… and you may be saying, “I already knew that!” Well, have you been doing it?

Looking forward to seeing you next week with Tip #6. Any questions, comments or feedback is more than welcome!

Meir Ezra,

Founder – TimeMaker

This tip was brought to you by TimeMaker – the #1 task and project management software in the world – specializing in saving you time and money.

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THE EXCEPTION AND THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF

meir — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:15:17 +0000

Welcome to our 3^rd tip! In our last e-mail, “First In, First Out”, we discussed the fact that it’s a necessity to deal with the oldest items in your inbox first – no matter what – and only then handle the more recent ones progressively. This is absolutely true – with just one exception:

For most of us, life is not a quiet and boring road. It is exciting! But it also has an aspect which we all have a certain love/hate relationship with – PROBLEMS.

There are only two kinds of problems in this world: good problems and bad problems.

Good problems are those which challenge us but we still feel we can solve and we just love to tackle; while bad problems are those which we feel are overwhelming. We feel like we can’t solve them at all.

Many of us don’t want problems. If a genie could give you a life with no problems, it would sound like a good idea and you’d probably go for it. However, I can promise you – this would be a boring and useless life, and you would quickly call the genie right back and ask him to give you at least some issues to handle! People love problems because it makes life exciting and gives something to solve!

When you look at a problem and decide it is within your abilities to handle, you will embrace the problem and start handling it – it will no longer be considered a problem as such – it will become a challenge!

When you look at a problem and decide you can not solve it, you will ignore it, avoid it, run away from it or freak out. Any of these options are deadly for you and will always worsen the situation (time heals nothing). Of course there is an “option b” and that is to face and deal with the problem (this is always the correct option with anything in life). The moment you decide to tackle it will be the moment it turns from a problem to a challenge.

So, good problems are considered challenges and bad problems are just considered looming, scary problems.

Problems (not challenges) come about only due to a lack of foresight or planning, and they come in the form of emergencies.

Most people and companies operate on 80% emergencies and 20% planning at best. Therefore, even the best mostly deal with problems and emergencies.

You should know that it is possible (and much easier) to operate on 80% PLANNING and 20% emergencies, and we will cover this subject in further detail in the “TO PLAN OR NOT TO BE” tip. However, emergencies are a fact of life, you do have to deal with them and yes, they do show up in your inbox as red exclamation points.

We also need to cover the “false alarms” situation… People who mark non urgent e-mails as urgent create a kind of false alarm, and if it happens often enough, urgent items start getting ignored. This is no good – it’s like the boy who cried wolf, but for the business world.

So, in light of the “First In, First Out” rule, the question becomes – how do you handle the emergencies that come to your inbox?? Do you deal with the oldest items first and then come up to the emergencies? Nope! Here is the exception.

The rules are:

1. Handle urgent items first and within a maximum time of four hours.

2. Ensure urgent items become rare

3. Minimize the frequency of false alarms.

Following the next simple do’s and don’ts will make sure you properly deal with urgent e-mails or other items.

Do not:

1. Accept that “emergencies are a part of life”. They are not! They can be dealt with and minimized!

2. Fail to handle the people who cry wolf.

Do:

1. Most importantly, always handle items marked as urgent within a maximum time of four hours.

2. Get your urgent items grouped at the top of your inbox (this can be done if you use advanced e-mail software).

3. If you hold an executive position, you must issue a policy defining what you consider as urgent and ensure your staff and public know and apply it! If you don’t, you should let friends and colleagues know what should be marked as urgent so they don’t create false alarms for you.

4. Finally, figure out the source of the emergency! Set up (as an executive) the administrative system so that it will detect and avoid such emergency from happening in the future. If you are not an executive, do the exact same thing in your area of responsibility.

The purpose of this tip is to enable you to efficiently handle urgent tasks and communications and to make them rare! This will save you a lot of time!

Looking forward to seeing you next week with Tip #4 – HANDLING JUNK EMAILS FOR REAL!

As you know, your feedback, comments and questions are more than welcome! If you like this, odds are your friends will too! Feel free to share this with anyone!

For more tips and ideas, check out my blog at – http://tips.timemaker.org

Meir Ezra,

Founder – TimeMaker

This tip was brought to you by TimeMaker – the #1 task and project management software in the world – specializing in saving you time and money.

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Emails – a blessing or a curse? …the secret !

meir — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:16:25 +0000

Let’s face it – e-mails were created for chit chat and not for managing complex business. For that very reason, e-mails are the biggest time eater in today’s business world and all with very limited return…

Most executives notice they are so busy handling e-mails that they have very little time left for actual work or creation of future for their business. Funny as it may sound, e-mails become the modern day slave masters…

However, you will agree it’s almost impossible to manage without e-mails, and so we face the modern day problem: E-mails – you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.

* * *

After working with thousands of executives and staff, we isolated the secret to coping with the never-ending stream of e-mails and actually becoming productive. To stimulate your taste buds – the secret is just 14 easy-to-follow rules.

Our personal purpose is to help, and we consider the only value a person has is how much he or she actually helps. Therefore, we have decided to share those secret rules with you totally free and we 100% guarantee and promise you these secrets are literal time makers.

If you are interested in finding out the underlying rules of success and efficiency of top executives, we are about to tell you the rules which have never been published.

Reply to this e-mail with “I love an empty inbox” and you will receive the fourteen e-mail secret rules, and we will send you a rule every week totally free.

Additionally, we promise we will not sell or share your e-mail address with anyone.

Get ready for an empty and handled inbox!

Sincerely Yours,

The TimeMaker team

www.TimeMaker.org

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YOU TOUCH IT, YOU PLAY IT…

meir — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:07:58 +0000

Welcome to the first installment of our e-mail tips! Today, right now, you will learn the first of fourteen rules to e-mail efficiency. Let’s dive in -

In today’s world, for whatever reason, probably the hardest thing to do is to “do what you do while you’re doing it”. Again that’s, “do what you do while you are doing it.” If you can do ONLY what you are working on or doing, with nothing else involved, you will become a power house.

Conversely, when one does many things at once, he might feel like he is “multi-tasking” and getting more done, while in fact he would be much better off handling or doing just one thing FULLY at a time.

Let’s see why.

In life, every person has a certain total attention capacity. That attention capacity can break down further to what is called attention units. When your attention units are taken up, your attention capacity becomes limited and your power as an individual is demonstrably reduced.

Here is an example: A computer works much like the human mind. A computer has a certain Processing Capacity. When you open up one program, some of that Processing Capacity is in use. When you open up several programs at one time, there is a noticeable decrease in speed and power. Eventually, after opening up many things at once, downloading a video and sending out messages, for example, the computer will crash. It’s the same with life.

We’ve all had those moments where we just feel like we can’t take on any more or else – Crash!

The following “Do’s and Don’ts” we are about to reveal will ensure you operate with all your attention units and experience zero crashes. You will be amazed at the power and speed you will get by following these very simple rules:

Do not:

Read part (or all) of the e-mail and decide to reply or handle later…

File it in a different folder with the idea of working on it later…

Start to reply and stop in the middle…

The above will prove to be fatal to your ability to handle future tasks and actions, as every time you do that, an attention unit UNKNOWINGLY is occupied, and you become weaker and slower!

Do:

One of the following:

Note: The universal routine you must follow is – The moment you click on and open the e-mail, read it, work on it and finish it right away, right then and there. You touch it, you play it.

If you expect an action or answer in return to your e-mail – Convert the e-mail to a task with a defined target date (Outlook and other similar programs have task management features – yes, they are limited, but they are better than nothing). Setting up a task that will remind you when you need to take the next action eliminates the need of occupying any attention units. This is the most important action, and other than ensuring you do not waste attention units, it also ensures nothing gets forgotten.
If you don’t expect an answer in return to your e-mail – Simply reply to the e-mail. However, concentrate on replying in a final way which will ensure the communication does not drag out or end up needing further communications.
If no further action is needed – file the e-mail in the appropriate organized and easy to find folder. Yes, you need to keep nearly all e-mails (other than junk) as they are the “memory” of the organization.
If no further action is needed, and you do not need to retain the email – delete the e-mail and release the attention unit.

The purpose here is to create time by ensuring one does not do the same work twice, while also ensuring that no communication, task or action is ever dropped or forgotten, and you keep your attention units free all the while.

Try it out over the next couple of days. It’s simple, but it’s magic!

See you next week with the next tip – FIFO – FIRST IN, FIRST OUT…

Meir Ezra,

Founder – TimeMaker
www.TimeMaker.org

This tip was brought to you by TimeMaker – the #1 efficiency software in the world – specializing in saving you time and money.

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