How to get your productivity back on track

As our lives have been turned upside down over the past 6 months, among the many issues that people are encountering, is the issue of limited productivity as their normal work routine has been hijacked. Many people that I have spoken with are feeling overwhelmed by a never ending stream of office work, video conference calls, and, if applicable, kids homework.

I am sharing with you the 3 principals that many great leaders and companies adopt - it is called The Rockefeller Habits (Verne Harnish has a great book out called Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, put it on your must read list!). Here are a few suggestions that can help you feel more in control of your days so that you can get your life back.

1) Prioritize - the hardest thing to master is prioritizing your day or week. Human nature tends to go to easy and quick victories first, but if you can spend some time at the beginning of each week prioritizing your schedule, this will help you keep your focus and keep you from being sidetracked. Remember, you don't want to use your time prioritizing "tasks". You want to reflect and make sure that the items on your list are value added activities for both you and your company / customers. Make sure to block time off on your calendar to allow you ample opportunity to do this work throughout the week.

Pro Tip: I have found using both Microsoft's Planner application, as well as my Outlook calendar, has added visibility to my day and week and ensures that I am staying on track with my most important value-added items.

2) Data - for anyone in a decision making role, having data at your fingertips can allow you to quickly make decisions so that your team can then prioritize their day and activities to support the company goals.

Pro Tip: Using a CRM system, such as Dynamics 365, allows you to create dashboards that give you real time visibility. You can customize the views to what is important to you and your decision making. Gone are the days of CRM being only for sales and marketing. Kandid Insights can help you pull disparate information from various sources, including critical business & operations systems, into a single view for the ultimate management tool.

3) Rhythm - checking in with your team and sharing critical information on a regular basis is vital to the lifeblood of your company. You want to set up regular meetings with your team and customers to ensure there are no communications gaps.

Pro Tip: Utilizing Microsoft Teams is the most efficient platform for sharing information and pulsing at regular intervals with your team. This is more than just a video conferencing service - the Teams platform allows you to keep all of your work in one place with file sharing capabilities across various groups (called channels in Microsoft terminology), instant chatting and calling capabilities, and it interfaces to all of the Office 365 tools, such as OneNote, Word, & Dynamics 365, so that you have a one stop shop for all of your communication tools.

Please reach out to Kari at kari@kandidinsights.com or at 724-936-1374 for more information on how we can help you get your productivity back on track!