Engagement or agent provocateur?

 

Storytelling has the power to inspire, influence and persuade. Any arguments out there? Hopefully not. If so, please step away right now and mind the gap. 

In Employee Engagement, in the right hands, it has the power to challenge the cultural assumptions and fundamentally change the normal thought processes and modus operandi, which is the key lubricant in freeing up any organisation's innovation inertia and engagement levels.

Internal communications for me is primarily about looking at ways of delivering stories, not just to engage and inspire change but to make anyone think,' What if I….??'

The best stories are the ones with the slight twist, the ones that have the ah-hah moment as opposed to the ha-ha moment. There is only an 'h' difference but that 'h' is a mighty big letter.

I was in a meeting at an NHS establishment a few weeks ago. An organisation that is redefining the concept  'change management'. 'Revolution management' would be more apt. This brainstorming session was focussing on just one of myriad new process rapidly turned into a therapy session for one of the participants. He suddenly woke up to the fact that the reason he was so unhappy at work, why he was so stressed and the reason why he couldn’t keep on top of the basics was that he kept passing the responsibility for the decision onto other people. Justifying this to himself with a laudable desire for building inclusiveness; instead of just simply doing it.  The resut was that all decisions and any subsequent actions just got mud-logged.

I remember talking to another group about a time I had had to make some not insignificant changes to the intranet web site copy. The group in question, who were working in that organisation, asked how I had got through the mass of approvals they would normally have to go through? I told them I just did it. I didn't ask. By the time the permissions had worked their way down through the mass of emails and cc’s (continuity cock-ups) the opportunity to address the immediate issue would have disappeared. And the chance to make a salient point, improve something with a simple yes or no decision had evaporated. I hate wasted (good) ideas. So I just did it and hoped that my naive enthusiatic approach and the reason for my indiscipline in the ranks would allow me to escape the headmaster’s wrath.

The result was really interesting. Firstly, the powers to be didn’t even notice, and then, when I did mention it in passing because I was feeling a little guilty towards the person who should have been at the head of the approval food chain, they were not only supportive but began a process to shortcut the process in future. She is, not unusually, continually stacked up with e-mails and appreciated that making no decision is worse than the wrong decision, in virtually every situation.
Waiting for approval for stuff when they pay you to use your judgement and experience to produce is just nuts. Frustrations with poor communications and irrelevant controls are sited as the major reason that employees leave companies and the atmoshere employee disenagement.

Another interesting point. Ask your boss and they will say they feel exactly the same. Our bosses feel the exact same frustrations believe me.

So, if you do find a renegade in the ranks, don’t build walls around them or fire them; nurture them, culture them, and then activley help them get them to spread the word. To tell their story. Then stand back and see what happens.

Love letters to Heal and Transform

19 tips to change the story in your organisation

Change to circumstances, adapting to new roles, new responsibilities, new operations require a shift in the internal stories that are told within an organisation.  It is the stories that both define and measure corporate engagement and not the new policy manual.  

Following are 19 ideas you might like to think about in considering transition, change and internal communication that will ( possibly) generate a new set of stories.

1. Don't always question.

I know it is what most of us do, and what the Gurus told us do in the 'old days' of last years management fad.  They implored us to 'Question everything. Challenge every assumption'. You can still do that, just don't get obsessed with it. 

Instead, revitalise the casual conversations and information sharing as a normal business practice and devote as much as half of your time to developing that dialogue. You can't expect to learn a lot just by challenging your staff. They will, more often than not, give you the answer they think you want, especially if they have to give answers off the cuff. Welcome, without qualification, another's thoughts and opinions and give them time to respond.

2. Establish a nil tolerance for Mediocre Practice but don't polarise the process and focus too much effort on establishing Best Practice.

Instead focus on ways to eliminate worse practice. When is best good enough anyway? A 'best practice' will invariably come out in the end anyway if you are initiating the other 19 ( or so) principles. Well a few of them anyway. Incrementally it is a much quicker fix, for both you and the customer. In any case the question you should be asking is 'Are you benchmarking yourself against the mediocre, the safe, and the obsolete? Is it just a 'me too' action. Do you want to give a karaoke performance of Britney Spears or Ella Fiztgerald. For a lot of people Britney is good enough. But for some....

3. Actions SHOUT.

I'd like to introduce you to the CASER principle, with apologies to Gordon Gould, the first man to use the word, laser, whose acronym I have blatantly hijacked. (Laser actually stands for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation for all you pub quizzers out there, which is why you shouldn't really spell it with a 'z'.)
I have made up my own version. CASER which stands for Creativity Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Results.

If you can vividly show the effect, good or bad (It turns out that it doesn't matter which actually) that results from the implementation of their ideas you reinforce the feed back of the original signal. Show them that you take their ideas seriously, and they will trust you more seriously to share their ideas.

3. Actively Look Out.

Scan the distance, not just through the myopia of market analysis or forums or the telescope of your marketing or sales department. That is an awfully narrow field of view. Have regard not just for at the usual suspects, the competitors in your field or your own market, but from other sectors, other agencies or business models. How do they do it?

Most of the good ideas don't come from your own staff (Or you for that matter). You are not the stewards of all things 'magnificent'. Humbleness is truly attractive and inspiring. Acknowledgement of others contribution wins friends and accomplices.

4. Experiment Persistently.

Assume absolutely nothing. Enlightened trial and error outperforms any planning of human intellect no matter how flawless their rationale may appear. You can, and must, plan ahead to know where you want to go, and what steps you will have to make to get there.  But then put the plan aside and focus on the first steps. But regularly stop to look at the outcomes of the action and then wash, rinse and repeat the process.

5. Let go of the need to be right. It's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.

Your mistakes are your experience. Pass it on to everyone. If you malign failure, you destroy entrepreneurship, snuff out innovation and in the end you harm the company. On the other hand if you "forgive and forget" because you want to be that great boss you always wanted to work for, that same mistake will be repeated twice or a dozen times. Failure is normal, accept it, move on but demand that lessons be learned and communicated through the entire organisation.

Expect no less from everyone in your organisation.

6. Empower but support

It is absolutely all right, positively, to give assignments to people who have never done that particular task before. The rider is that, if you do, then it is your absolute responsibility to provide them with a network of advisors whom you trust. Legitimacy lies in competence as much as what position they may hold in the organisation chart. Position without competence results in disaster. Competence without position results in frustration.

7. Don't refer to the 'Internal organisation'.

Talk about specific people. Referring to other organisations of the company as "them" is laying the ground for future excuses about the lack of results for everyone and blame deflection.

Organisations are almost inevitably impersonal, complex, and change every 24 months anyway. People and communities however are far more stable, resilient and trustworthy.

8. Kill off internal client-supplier relationships.

The internal market approach is the very worst possible form of internal collaboration. It damages the social network and value of the organisation and paralyses its ability to solve problems for the customer. If you want to reinforce the silo mentality that is the next best way of doing it and kill of any hint of client supplier relationships.

9. Before deciding on a plan, always ask with whom the plan was discussed.

The raison d'etre of the corporate manager is not to come up with the bright ideas, but with ideas shared with other stakeholders. It is a brave and serious  woman, or man, who can reject all proposals and action plans bearing only the signatures of your staff. But 'Brave'  actually works. Stick with it.

10. Involve people collectively in your thinking.

If you merely want compliance (at best) rather than real commitment then use managerial authority to deploy programs and plans from the top-down. Then find somewhere comfy to sit back and watch it all unravel. If you want people to adopt your views and act accordingly, you must engage in meaningful conversations with them, and not rely on "cascade down" or "communicate messages". If you have a teenager then you will l know exactly what I mean.

Think about the power of stories. No-one is ever really won over by a PowerPoint presentation, a chart, other peoples mission statements, or an Excel spread sheet. Well they shouldn't be. Nor will they ever adopt for themselves another's goals. In theory, in the short term it may possibly work - short term in this case being the five minutes after the 'Ra-Ra' speech until the next problem hits them as they get back to their desk. For medium or long-term participation you need to connect emotionally (How to do that? Well that is the tricky part and the reason why 99.999% of all managers, including you and me are not Steve Jobs)

11. Management is not so much about delegating to individuals than about organising and empowering groups.

Effective action ("execution") in any organisation is all about coordination and synchronisation. Speed of execution is best achieved by competent people who understand and trust each other and then self-synchronise, while you get the hell out of the way. The first job of a manager is to detect who these people are and make sure they work together in the right setting. Or isolate them if they are in a dysfunctional group. Ouch!

12. It's not about giving objectives.

It's about making sure they understand your intent. If they really understand your goals and if it makes sense to them, they will figure out what to do by themselves. It is by far more difficult to articulate a clear intent than to give objectives. Those that figure out that particular trick are the true leaders. Remember the power of the story.

13. Never give targets without negotiating them first.
Giving measurable quantitative targets without negotiating them with those responsible for making it happen is just bad, bad management. But negotiate hard and if you do shift their comfort zone, give them the support to deliver. Not an excuse to fail.

14. Don't Squirrel knowledge (or the coffee)
Don't think that you always know what information is 'good' for your staff. Let them know what you know, give them access to every document you have, unless it is explicitly confidential or for a damn good reason. Don't work on a "need to know" basis. No one ever said 'Oh, that Barry bloke, he communicated way too much'. Let them sort out the information overload. There are plenty of tools and tricks to help them. Even if you do cocoon them they will always find out or jump to conclusions but via half-truths, conjecture, second-guessing, the water cooler whispers and arrive completely at the wrong picture. Paranoia is a part of almost every human activity so don't give it more oxygen. It is far easier to manage any fallout than motivate the disenchanted.

15. History is good - Look back.

Encourage the promotion of the myths and legends. You need to balance market studies, action plans, specifications etc. with case studies, lessons learned, good practices and document the cock ups Spend some time reflecting on past experiences. And embed all new employees and stakeholders with the story. Commitment to the past reaffirms the company's culture and the brand.

16. Don't promote people that sound smart, but those who make sure that smart things happen.

 
The company's promotion process is the primary driver of employees' emotional positivity. It isn't money, or perks or glory. It can build or destroy confidence or simply reinforce the CGAS attitude.

17. Don't expect dedication from someone who fears for his job.

All efforts are retarded by the fear of job loss. If you need to fire or move people, do it at warp speed, and make sure it appears to all as an exceptional event.

18. Never manipulate your staff. You actually can't!

Employees are hypersensitive to inconsistencies and incoherence across an organisation. They immediately detect every ripple of manipulation when they hear conflicting messages. Largely, because they are looking for them and we come circling right back to the paranoia thing again. Establish trusted relations with your peers first. Trust is the bandwidth of communication

19. Get yourself a knowledge technology coach.

 
Communication and collaboration technologies are dramatically changing. E-mail for collaboration is becoming extinct. You need to up your game.

Want to drop in any more??? Make it up to 20??

Non Customer Service Story- How the deaf are 'aided' by one UK mobile phone provider

I heard today an interesting story from a friend about customer no-service, imbecile scripts and shoddy training. She is translator for the deaf. 

Deaf people use mobile phones most of the time, pretty obviously for texting.  They have become a lifeline, one of the more useful useful devices and often really on them so if something breaks it makes life a bit pretty tricky. So if it does you would imagine that your mobile phone provider would have system for dealing with just this situation I mean we have we have ramps for building access…

Our hero today? Let's call him Colin, because that’s that is his real name,  and let’s call his cell phone provider ‘Four ’as that’s pretty close. You figure who it is..

Colin’s phone has broken so he enlists the help of my friend who can translate for him using sign language

.  

So his interpreter rings up 'Four’s’ customer services.

The conversation went something like this:

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‘Hello, I’m speaking on behalf of one your customers.  He  is deaf so I am translating for him…

‘OK, but I need to authenticate that he is the owner.’

‘That’s a bit tricky. He can’t speak.’

‘But  I need to speak to him.’

 

Well, as I say that’s a bit tricky as he is deaf and you probably wouldn't understand what he is saying.’

‘But we need to speak to him to authenticate that he is the user.’

‘OK I’ll put him on.’

 Colin tries his best but he’s not very good a vocalising because… he is profoundly deaf.

‘Did you get any of that?’

 

No. Not really. Are you speaking from the phone  number of the owner?

No. That would be lovely but we can’t because it’s because it’s broken' that is why we are ringing you'

‘Well  I can’t process anything until I have authenticated him…’

‘Look, I have all his details, his credit card,bank details, his pin number, his date of birth, is that not enough to prove that he is who he is.?’

‘No’.

‘Well can I speak to your manager  then?’

‘I can’t pass you through until I’ve authenticated the account.’

Interpreter looses it… Creative expletives.

‘I’ll put you through then..’ Phone rings for five minutes then cuts off.

Eventually they take him into the City to a ‘Four ‘shop.  They explain the problem, their staff are pretty helpful…they do not have the phone he needs so they say they will contact him to tell him where he can pick it up from.

So they do, and leave him a voice message!!

Did we learn nothing from 2012?

Innovation is a thousand stories

 

 

Ok, to start a few questions for you.

 

Which is the most successful company or organisation in your sector?
Depends what you mean by success of course. May I suggest that the chances are that it’s the one that applies imagination and creativity to meet their customer needs.

Who is the most valuable person in your business?
It’s the girls or guys who actively think, and then help others to think and provide solutions. Sometimes referred to as the mavericks, the rebels, the oddballs, the revolutionaries - they would probably have a surfboard strung up over their desk if they could and are bellringers or bungee jumpers, bullfigthers or role players in their spare time.

And who is the happiest person you know?
Again what do we mean by happy? I'd venture that it is the one person you know who has found the point where their passions and talents meet.

What do all the three have in common? Well apart from feeling very proud of themselves, and so they should, you could say that each has found a way to plug into and use their creative power within themselves.

But, before we go on, first let me tell you what creativity isn’t.

The word creativity has been hijacked somewhere along the line. Its use now is as a catchall, encompassing word, sometimes applied in a slightly derogatory way; especially when used by those who ‘don’t get it,’ to describe the slightly bohemian, hippyfied amongst us, those people who march to a different drum. It is used as both as an adjective and a verb to describe those that write paint, play, dance, sculpt, do stuff with their hands, or generally hang around at Hobbycraft. It is often accompanied by a slight shaking of an exasperated head. We have a guy in Barnsley who wears shorts, knee high scarlet socks and a matching bobble hat every day of the year. He is just brilliant and you can see him marching proudly around our shopping centre almost everyday in any weather. Is he creative or just weird? Bit of both really, but creative definitely.

So here is my view. Our definition of Creativity It's so much broader than that - you just can't begin describe the immesnity of the impact creativity and innovation has made and will continue to make in our World, but here is a sound bite.

Creativity is what happens when imagination has focus; innovation is what happens when creativity has a bottom line; enterprise is what happens when innovation meets ability, entrepreneurship is what happens when all the aforementioned are put on the same cart and passion becomes the fuel.

If you ask most entrapraneurs, which is what I do a lot in my creativity workshops and after they get over the shock of realising that they can actually make money from something they love, most will say that it’s the fulfillment of creating something from nothing that makes them feel warm and fuzzy. And then it’s a compulsion to do it again and again. They like the money too, obviously. but not as much as you would think.

 

But it's not just the entrepreneurs but the intrapreneursthe ones inside an organisation who have the same drive and passion; the ones inside an organisation  who disrupt the status quo. Who want to build something splendid too, who want to change a process not just for the sake of change but to make it work better. Becuase they can. Now that is creativity. OK, it’s a bit of over simple analysis I grant you but at least it may get you thinking. Let me move on a bit.

To this bit actually. Something we take for granted. There are roughly 6000 languages spoken in the World, ( although we have just lost Manx apparently) These weren’t dreamt up spontaneously by the dictionary compilers or an infinite number of immortal blindfold monkeys with typewriters but all were arrived at by humanity's inherent ability to create. It is like storytelling, hardwired into all of us, in-grained into everyone us. We just forgot how to use it.

 

And we can see it everyday, if we were only to look.

There is a glorious bloke down my road who has some fabulous flower beds in his front garden. Juts a year round chaos of colour.I see him everyday on my way to work. He is a retired bus driver who drove the same route for 34 years; arrived at the same point within seconds day in day out, a world of timetable and turnarounds. A working life constrained in ways few of us could ever understand or tolerate. But he is proof positive that everyone has that certain spark to illuminate, the ability to look at things in a different way, to see a new pattern. And it's not just his garden. On his last day of work 65 year Bill, steady Bill, the Bill  who had three days of sick in his life, kidnapped his own bus, took his number 14 home and then loaded up all his neighbours and family and  and took them for a picnic to the seaside 80 miles away. As he said 'what where they going to do, fire him?'

I am digressing slightly. Why is creativity or innovation so vital and especially now in our current economic and social conditions? Well some would  say me included, that the current situation is largely the result of 'a distinct lack of innovation and a preponderance of 'karaoke' thinking in the banking and public sector industries; which largely became an exercise in jumping on bandwagons, in this case on the track that lead over the edge of a cliff. The fallout of this age of Innovation Impotence will be felt for years. The old ways, management techniques, methods and rule books are having to be torn up. The impact and success of companies will now depend on as much as the ethical way they do business, their CSR programmes and how they manage their customer relationships to establish trust and credibility as much as the value of product or service they market or provide. Innovation and different thinking has never been so keenly needed to be enabled and empowered universally, not just by individuals but by every public and private organisation.

Innovative organisations attract innovative thinkers who contribute to them becoming more innovative and attracts the….so the cycle goes on. What are you doing today to address the innovation gap?

You may like to reflect on this. ‘Creativity can be applied to any aspect of human endeavor and enterprise’. Well there is brassy and bold statement. Certainly it can be used to improve or change a process, or a product, or a service, or to improve a relationship.

For what its worth I believe that anyone can be creative. The label 'creativity' applies to just about any progressive thinking. The creative superstar starts to think where  others stop. They break out of pattern, they zig while the others zag. You both get there in the end but they go via a different route and sometimes fail. Bit often suceed superbly. By doing so they uniquely separate themselves out from the rest. And, curiously they appear to have a hell of a lot more fun and fulfillment than the zaggers in doing so. The happiest person you know? Maybe, probably.

The really good news, and this is really, really good news, is that anyone and any organisation can learn to harness creativity in all its manifestations. It's not as hard as you may think. Learning to unleash your creativity is like learning to play golf. We can all swing a club and hit a ball, the excpetion being my mum, and every so often anyone, even my mum, can connect and hit that one beautiful shot. It is the promise of repeating that shot that keeps us coming back for more. Everyone has that in them, the possibility to hit a hole-in-one but…. not all of us can be Rory McIlroy everyday. Creativity requires practice and the more you practice the better you get. But somebody has to show you how to do it right, to start you off or help you so you can experience that feeling of the sweet sound of connection and power as the ball flies into the sky as often as possible.

Alternatively you and your colleagues can be (un)happy with your lot, and sit feeling sorry for yourself, quietly fermenting in the culture of mediocrity. Conformity and risk aversion has come home to roost and he is a big, big turkey with a bad attitude.

If you were to ask me, and I hope you are, embracing creativity and innovation, at its fundamental core, is the recognition of the fact that that we don’t know everything but it’s really fun trying to. Finding new stories to tell isn't just great, its astonishing in its power to amplificy. Well that’s the answer I would give today, but I’m not sure about tomorrow.I may have found a new story to explaining it.  That is the point. But what I am sure of is that the only people who will lead us out of this mess are those that can truly embrace change, and apply their creativity muscles and that she who tells the best story will be the winner.

My own hero Darwin was right on so many levels. We have before our own eyes proof that it is not the Survival of the Fattest that will prevail. It is those that can adapt most quickly to opportunities that survive and flourish. And to help su do that we have a tool that surpasses every other leaping, flying, jumping, seeing, skill. Our creative minds. An incredible tool that can visualise a Billion futures and a Billion solutions. We had better start learning how to use them again.

No Time to do a To-Do List?

If I hear another person say to me, ‘You have to work smarter not harder’, I may loose the plot. It’s the sort of consultant speak, sound bite that wrankles to the core of my bone marrow. This is not just because everyone uses it; it’s become a consultant's karaoke song, like 'Imagineering' or 'lean manufacturing' or 'just in time'. Urgh! The simple act of just writing the phrase down gives me that squirmy, goose bumps feeling. Because, as a piece of advice, it is sooo utterly useless.

If I was smarter I wouldn’t have to work harder now would I?

I’d love the time to get myself 'smarter'. To be ultra efficient, successful, smug. It can’t be that hard. I mean look at my dingbat competitor down the road. He's running his business yet plays golf everyday and picking up his kids from school and was in the bottom set for maths!

‘What you need’, the life coaches and mentors tell us,’ is to take control of your 'to do' list’. It’s a start I suppose, and I take their point but I am a little bewildered. For a start exactly which list are they talking about here?

I have a few.

Is it the one I have on my Windows Outlook on my laptop that I started in that fog-bound European airport departure lounge in a fit of organisational sobriety while I had nothing better to do? Would this be the very same task list that I’ve forgotten to update or delete the items I actually did remember to do, that pops up with those annoying reminders every time I open my e-mail?

Or, perhaps they mean the list on that piece of paper in the hole thingy in the car door where you put stuff so it doesn’t disappear into the foot well while your testing your ABS. Under the sticky stack of car parking tickets?

Or, possibly, is it the list stuck under the magnet on the fridge beneath the pizza delivery number and the invitation to a swimming party. (Please excuse me while I go off at a tangent here. Those invites often say ‘Adults are welcome'.….welcome to do what exactly? To turn an interesting shade of pale blue and stand around catching verrucas’ in last year's all too snug swimsuit, trying not to stare at cleavage or cesarean scars while you try to suck it in to the point of hyperventilation - Mental note to self. Book tanning session at gym before aforesaid party. That January induced membership should be used for something. Better put it on the to-do list).

There must be some better way of organising our lives. If we can put man on the Moon and crash a beagle into Mars surely we can have bash at some personal organisation?

Frankly, I’ve got no tips to offer personally. I could try to delude myself that I am some sort of guru or practitioner in the art of time management. But numerous editors and colleagues will gleefully attest to by deficiencies in this area. Frankly, and I can say this from behind the sofa of anxiety attacks, that finding this article on my to do list was a bit of a surprise and completing it almost a Herculaneum task. Whenever, by some chance of devien intervention, I do actually remember what the knot in my handkerchief was actually tied to remind me to do, I have to lie down in a dark room with a wet towel on my head to recover from the shock.

But, I know a man, or in this case a women, (why isn’t that so surprising?) who really knows about this stuff. She is one of those adorable American woman who can run a law case in three cities, solve a murder, referee her kid's softball game and figure out how to print out her spreadsheets so that they fit on just one piece of paper yet maintain readability without optical aids, all on the same day. And then, to add insult to injury, she even has the time to share with us, on her life coaching blog site, her daily dose of assertiveness training and motivational adrenalin while casually throwing in the fact that she has today, as well as qualifying as an airline pilot, won the high-school moms home baked cookies competition. She is Oprah on speed…

So I asked Melissa.

Melissa’s number one tip is to actually use paper, don’t make digital to-do lists on your computer or electronic devices. Slighlty radical and before I get the tree conservationists rounding on me, and rightly so, I probably will need to remind the readers that even though they, and they know who I am talking about here, will probably input all the relevant information into the Hogwarts of their hard disk. They will then, more likely than not, probably print this list out anyway. This will take up three lines on a piece of A4 paper, hiding pitifully in one corner. Then they will fold it in half and stick it in their filofax or under a pile of papers and loose it. The paperless office is just a mirage. (Interesting side note here. Just read a pamphlet on the paperless office. Did the irony get lost somewhere?).

The advantage of using paper is that you may also use both sides, which will probably be really useful as you have run out paper anyway as you didn’t put ‘getting more printer paper’ on your to do list.

The technophiliacs amongst us, may well be using a spreadsheet to help you with managing this list. Now this is fine but, if this is the case, my advice to you is that you and your Excel should really be getting out more often. I used to work at a company (in fact most of them) where Excel prowess was seen as some sort of light sabre for the Jedi management classes, where management peer respect was gained by your manipulative skills of spreadsheet dynamics. It was not uncommon to see a 'droop' (my collective noun) of managers peering intently over a screen of grids with numbers in hushed conversations about what the benefits of a ‘pivot table’ in this application could be. (See, I know the jargon at least)

But that’s another story, for another time. The whole point of paper to me is that it is so.. err …substantial. There is something oddly alluring in experiencing the pleasure of scribbling in the margin and that thoroughly satisfying feeling you get when crossing something off the list. It is the same feeling you get when watching the Sunday afternoon films after your mum’s Sunday dinner and the dishwasher is on its cycle. I know it's pathetic, but these are small battles won.

Somehow, if it is on paper, you feel you own it, it's personal. Digital is antiseptic. Not quite there. Maybe it one of these left side, right side brain things, a psychologist somewhere will undoubtedly have a word for it. It's like your pump bag at school; it may be embarrassing but it is yours and if anyone nicks it you will cry. If you ‘own’ it, you are more likely to take an interest in it and actually do something about it.

M’s next world shattering tip knocked me bandy. To be honest she was on a roll and there were several she mentioned actually but I want to build up the excitement. She asked me to ask myself, or indeed you, this question. Should the item even be on your to do list? Does it actually need to be done? What would happen if you didn’t do it? Would the sky fall on your head? Should somebody else be doing it? If not, why not?

I felt a wave of feng shui flow through my nether regions. Here was a new personal mantra. I was aligned! And then she gave me a new chant. Only ever put three things on your to do list. Wow there, mister! Three? Really? But, she added, keep two lists; I knew there was a catch.

Apparently you have to have two lists, one in the back of your filonotethingybook, and one in the front. You move things to the front only when they have to be done. Now this is radical stuff. But it actually makes sense. I can cope with about three things at a time, anymore and I get sidetracked and end up not finishing anything. I can hear the sound of heads being slapped across the Kingdom. There is nothing common about common sense is there? We just need to be reminded about it once in while. Pity it has to be by an American;-)

My friend also told me to tell you that if you do something for 21 days you will develop the action into a habit. For most of us getting past 21 minutes is tough enough. There are so many more interesting things to distract us. Like the satellite remote control or putting the kettle on. Not necessarily to make a drink, just putingt it on and forget you have.

By now light bulbs were popping on in my head like a deserted fairground and a kid with a catapult and grudge but we haven’t finished yet.

Don’t open your e-mail box before you look at the to-do list. E-mail and to do lists are non-compatible. Like olive oil and gravel. Didn’t Bill and his buddies realise this when they wrote Outlook. It has become some unwritten law, but one I’ve never actually seen it in any operations manual, that the reading and the replyment thereof of the new e-mails of the day shall take preference over all life processes in the Universe, even it is only from your mate discussing the lamentable merits of Leeds United FC’s 4:3:3 system. As soon as you hit your mail in-box your intentions to tackle your tasks, keenly honed on the commute to work, are gone like a leaf on the breeze. Take a deep breath and be brave! The World will not collapse into a black hole if you don’t look at your e-mails for ten minutes. Honest Injun!

Finally, two gems Melissa thought we should share in the spirit of sharing and caring as her 'Blogyourwaytolove' web site puts it.

Firstly, prioritise the list, even the three things you have on it. OK, so that is pretty obvious but some tasks are always much more important, relatively. An air traffic controller’s to do list- example, item 3. Must get the other plane to change altitude and course in the next er.. five seconds, has a smidgen more urgency than say, putting together a budget for indoor plant decorations.

How to prioritise though? That’s easy. Number one priority every time, is the completion of task on the list that is going to make my boss look good? After that, really just take a pin.

Mel's last tip was how to deal with the big items that sometimes appear, hysterically, the week before you go on holiday. For example, the complete, new interactive catalogue for a brand new e-commerce site in fourteen languages that the MD wants to launch at the sales conference in two weeks. Piece of cake!!!

Before we go into M’s solution I just wanted to flag up this Alert! More consultspeak. You may well have been already wooed with the idea that you ‘should break these big projects into smaller projects; that you really can ‘eat an elephant, if you do it one piece at a time’ or that ‘epic journeys start with one step’. OK, that’s fine I get that. The fact is though that you will still have to eat some pretty unsavoury bits of an elephant that, frankly, make the bush-tucker trials look like a picnic. So, and I agree with Melissa here, you should be thinking of ways to make the unsavoury bits more user friendly. Maybe share that task with a friend or colleague. Or better still, delegate.

The 'Pass-the-Buck' technique only works, of course, if there is actually somebody to delegate to. You may well be looking down from your heady heights at a ' responsibility vacuum'. The clue for you here that this strategy won’t work for you is when you realise that you don’t actually have to appraise anybody yourself. No leverage!

Or, you could try to do it in a different way, in another environment. Like brainstorming at Starbucks and wash it down with a Caramel Machiatto to get rid of the taste.

Speaking of which, that reminds me, I notice that beverage replenishment is fast approaching on my mental to do list. Now if I could only find my filofax, make sure my Ipad is charged up and my Iphone is synced I’ll be in complete control of my appointments, contacts and list and able to work on the run. I’ll be off but before I do I will leave you to ponder this.

In the words of Melissa. ‘The knot in the hanky of life is there to simply to remind you. It won’t do it for you. Getting your thumb from out of your arse will always help’. Thanks Melissa. Hold on a sec, was she talking about me? Must add doing a to-do list on to my to -do list.