When you hear about non-traditional work arrangements, you probably think about a hot tech startup where employees come to work on Segways wearing Hawaiian shirts but most companies now offer some type of non-traditional work arrangement. The most common is flex time and work from home. These arrangements benefit the employees & employer.

The employee gets a comfortable home work environment that is distraction free and saves dozens of travel hours. The employer gets a more productive employee and considerably reduced secondary costs (office, phone, internet, etc).

Although Work From Home is mutually beneficial, research has shown that it does have one major negative repercussion: a negative perception of those using these non-traditional arrangements (particularly Work from Home). It seems these employees aren’t given the same amount of credit as the traditional office bound employees. This seems to be a natural (sometimes unconscious) bias suspecting that employees who are not in the office are not working “as hard” or “as long” as their traditional counterparts.

A university study entitled “Why Showing Your Face Matters” found that employees working with non-traditional arrangements typically receive lower performance evaluations, smaller raises and fewer promotions than the office bound control group. These negative impacts exist even if the remote employees work harder and longer than the control.

If you are an employee working from home, there are steps you can take to improve your situation:

Stay In touch – Stay in constant communication with colleagues, customers and supervisors. Regularly email, Instant Message and call. By always staying available and in touch, people understand that you are “actually working”
Get face time – Make it a point to periodically come into the office and when there, use this time to meet with your boss and do visible work you can’t do from home.
Build alliances – Identify influential people (working from the office) that can help your cause by being supporters. Keep these people update about what you are working on. These people can be excellent references during peer reviews (for evaluations).
Prove your dedication – Work from home employees tend to start working earlier and finish later (since there is no commute time). Highlight this fact by sending emails or leaving voicemails during these extended periods. Think of these as tangible proof of your dedication.

As an organizational leader that has managed thousands of remote employees, I hope the above recommendations help you and your career. These are proven strategies that work and I recommend you take them seriously.

To to handle interruptions at work

January 5, 2012Economy, Management, Motivation, Organization, Strategy, Team building, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

With the economic realities we have been living with since 2008, companies are forcing employees to do more with less. Not only are companies asking employees to be more creative and use less resources, they are also asking less employees to do more work.

An interruption is anything that distracts you from the primary task at hand. Common workplace distractions are emails, phone calls, drop-in meetings, etc

This means that most people you talk to, working in a corporate environment, have too much to do and not enough time. This means a small number of daily interruptions can have a huge impact on your productivity.

I wrote an article about MAC OS Lion January 2011 and one of the note in it said :

The Research The truth is that when we attempt to multi-task, we become much less effective. Modern cognitive research clearly demonstrates that when people multi-task, they perform less work and miss information. Researchers discovered that re-orienting yourself to the task at hand, after a distraction, takes 10-15 minutes. Quantifiably, performance for multi-taskers can drop as much as 40% along with a marked degradation of memory and creativity.

The reality is that you cannot completely get rid of distractions. They are a natural part of your work life, the key is to managing them efficiently.

You cannot improve that which you cannot measure

Having managed large operational groups for some multinationals, there is a mantra I repeat to most of my managers. You cannot improve that which you cannot measure. Before you start panicking about how many interruptions you have to deal with on a daily basis, make an objective inventory. Using a simple sheet of paper and a pencil, write down at least the following information (each time you are interrupted):

Date / Time
Duration of interruption
Who interrupted you
Why they interrupted you (the subject)
Was the interruption worthwhile?

I recommend you log interruptions for at least 2-3 weeks before you conduct your first review. At the end of your first logging period, it's time to make the data sing. First determine which interruptions were worthwhile and valid. Are they coming from a particular person or group? Do they concern a particular topic? Determine if you can stop these interruptions by making time for these topics or people as planned events in your calendar. You can then inform people to keep these issues until the planned meetings.

You will most likely have interruptions that were not worthwhile and you have to address these. Talk to the people in question and explain why you believe they were not valid and how they should address these in the future. Coaching is the key here. It is useful to explain how these interruptions impact your productivity.

Voicemail is your friend

Most people I talk to at work don’t know how to configure their phone to send calls straight to voicemail. Now is a great time to find out. I’ll wait here while you go and ask the question to a colleague or support person.

If you are working on a tight deadline or simply need some uninterrupted time, send calls straight to voicemail. I recommend you change your voicemail greeting every morning so callers know you are in. Your voicemail message should mention that you are busy and will be checking your messages sporadically during the day.

Do not disturb sign

Whether you work in an office or cubicle, people may drop by unexpectedly and demand an audience. Most of the time, you should you the log method but there may be times when your work is too important and you just can’t afford the interruption. For these times, I recommend you create a notice printed sign that says you are working on something important and would appreciate not being disturbed.

Hand this sign just before people come into view so they do not break your concentration. Explain to your team that you expect them to comply with the sign when they see it because it is only up when absolutely necessary. People generally understand and will comply.

Reserve some available time

If you are a manager or team lead then a good habit is to reserve some “general availability time” in your calendar. There is no magic rule of how much time or how often. You should reserve as much time as needed but no more. Share these windows of opportunity with your various stakeholders and ask them to leverage these when they need your attention.
There are people that you interact with on a regular basis. These are people for whom you should have dedicated reserved time in your calendar.

Conclusions

Hopefully you found some good ideas to help you be productive. Feel free to send me comments, questions or ideas.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) Weekly Review Process

December 5, 2011Evernote, Management, Organization, PersonalBrain, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

As a GTD fan, I have read the book, listened to the 10CD audio seminar, read the articles on GTD Times and subscribed to David Allen’s audio blog. In all of these mediums, one of the key messages that seems to come up over and over, is the requirement to do the weekly review. What would happen to your car if you never changed the oil? The car would get sluggish and eventually the engine would die. Same thing for GTD. You need to review your system and fine-tune it weekly otherwise it will die a horrible death.

Example of why it’s important

When I get in the execution zone, I start completing one task after another, after another. This means that I sometimes complete tasks and forget to mark them as complete in my system. This also means that some of my projects may be without their Next Action Item, which is bad in the world of GTD.
Even though I try to diligently capture everything in my inbox, I sometimes forget and end up with to-dos in my head. The weekly review is a great time to clean out my head.
Just like my oil change example, without proper maintenance and care, your GTD system will eventually become crusty and no longer applicable. Keep it relevant by constantly maintaining it during your weekly review.
Mental nirvana. I get a feeling of calm control when I realize that everything is in my system and being tracked properly. Even if my system is perfect and well maintained, there are mental benefits to doing the weekly review and realizing everything is capture and your life is in control.

How much time does it take?

There is no magic rule of thumb here. It should take as much time as you need but no more. Some of my weekly reviews take 30 minutes and others can take upwards of 2 hours. It all depends on how much action I had that week and how I managed to maintain my system on a daily basis.

I’m convinced, what do I do?

This is a question even experienced GTD practitioners need a refresher on from time to time. It is super simple.

When I sit down for my weekly review, here is my process:

I do a brain dump and make sure I “empty” out my mental to do list.
I ensure my emails are brought to zero and captured in my inbox
I ensure my voicemails are all listened to and captured in my inbox
I ensure my physical papers are all reviewed and captured in my inbox as appropriate
I now process my inbox and bring it to zero
I go through my calendar for the last 2-3 weekly and check if I missed any open loops. You will be surprised how many times this reminds me of things I may have forgotten.
I go through my calendar for the 2-3 upcoming weeks, and determine if all of my open loops have been captured
I then go through each of my lists and context to ensure the items are valid. Did I complete something and forget to mark it as such? Do I have a project with no next actions? Did someone owe me an item from the Waiting for list?

How do I do it?

My weekly review is planned in my calendar every Friday afternoon for 2 hours. For me it is a hard coded obligation. There are times when other activities become a bigger priority and I cancel my weekly review but this is the exception more than the rule. I never skip more than 1 review in a row and the next review (after a skip) will likely take double the time.

Other GTD Articles:

Management versus Leadership

November 3, 2011Apple, Behavior, Management, Organization, StrategyEdward Kiledjian

As people read the new authorized Steve Jobs biography, they are realizing that although he was one of the greatest thinkers of our time, he seemed to lack “management skills”. This brought up an interesting management debate about which is more important for the success of a company: management or leadership.

What is Management?

Management is the art and science of controlling people, processes and technology to deliver maximum value through the prism of corporate values and beliefs.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is the gift of vision and direction. A true leader can think outside of the proverbial box and drive the business towards a completely new and yet undiscovered direction.

Leadership without Management

In an organization with a strong leader and weak management, the vision and direction are there. The company knows exactly where the leader wants to take them, however execution is usually sloppy which may even lead to the inability to exploit an otherwise fantastic new opportunity.

Management without Leadership

In this scenario, the company will lack vision and will exploit its existing position. The company may be a lean and mean operating machine but will eventually shrivel and die because their market will become smaller and smaller.

Leadership and Management

When a company has both, they are unstoppable and Apple is a prime example. Its fearless leadership duo was lead by Steve Jobs and Jon Ive. Two incredibly talented visionaries: one created new markets and the other one ensured the products had high desirability though impeccable design.

On the other end was the management mastermind Tim Cook. Many have said Tim is the supply chain genius that crafted their unique vendor management strategy that gives Apple unique access to brand new technology for 12-18 months.

This is a great time to take a step back and evaluate your own company. Who is leading your company? Does it have a little of both?

Research shows that Nice Guys DO Finish Last

October 18, 2011Behavior, Management, Money, Motivation, Organization, Persuasion, Team buildingEdward Kiledjian

If you have read any self-help books, you have undoubtedly read the adage “Nice guys finish last”. Now research from Notre Dame and Cornell Universities show how being too agreeable negatively impacts your earnings.

More recent research from Stanford, Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon) continued on the same path showing that people who are overly caring, for overs, generally tend to make bad leaders. In particular, being overly nice generally means that you will likely fail in 2 important leadership domains: prestige and dominance. Prestige comes from sharing within their group while withholding gave the person dominance.

The researchers said:

We predicted that contribution behavior would have opposite effects on two forms of status – prestige and dominance – depending on its consequences for the self, in-group and out-group members. When the only way to benefit in-group members was by harming out-group members (Study 1), contributions increased prestige and decreased dominance compared to free-riding. Adding the option to benefit in-group members without harming out-group members (Study 2) decreased the prestige and increased the perceived dominance of those who chose to benefit in-group members via intergroup competition. Finally, sharing resources with both in-group and out-group members decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance compared to sharing them with in-group members only (Study 3). Prestige and dominance differentially mediated the effects of contribution behavior on leader election, exclusion from the group, and choices of a group representative for an intergroup competition.

Their research showed that in situations of group competition, individuals preferred having a dominant leader over a prestigious one (since the prestigious individuals were perceived as more submissive). So nice guys (the ones that share) are seem as prestigious and thus nor thought worthy of leadership during trying competitive times.

You can therefore assume that when things are going great and no major competition or risk is felt, people then prefer a prestigious boss.

Why working from home may harm your career