I normally hate business books written in a fictional fable storytelling style. But for some reason I managed to read and enjoy this one – with one or two minor annoyances which we can cover later.

The book suggests that sometimes we cause our own problems, or at least make problem situations worse through our own attitudes and behaviours. We do this when we fail to view other people as people – instead viewing them as object, and view their needs and desires as less important than our own.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

The self-deception comes in when we refuse to see ourselves as part of the problem.

A particularly good summary over on ZeroMillion.com http://www.zeromillion.com/business/deception.html

The summary points presented in the book itself don’t convey the journey like spirit of the book, and make the book’s message seem all very simple and obvious.

Self Betrayal (quoted from the book):

• An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of Self-Betrayal.
• When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my Self-Betrayal.
• When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted.
• So – when I betray myself I enter the box.
• Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.
• By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box.
• In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other the reason to stay in the box.

Conclusions:

• Self betrayal leads to self-deception
• Focus on results and not on your needs
• Learn and teach
• Hold yourself accountable
• Find solutions
• Earn Trust
• “Don’t try to be perfect. Do try to be better.”
• Apologise and in the future do better.
• “Don’t focus on what people others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help.”
• “Don’t worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others. “

Minor Annoyances:

• No bibliography or follow on reading – despite a supposed basis in academic research.
• The protagonist doesn’t get it quite as fast as the reader so the book dragged a bit in places, but at only 170 pages it does not drag for long.

I class these as minor annoyances. The book seems to have done a  lot of good for many of its readers and I found it an enjoyably simple book and a useful reminder that when work gets tough, others probably experience it that way as well.

Related Links:

• Arbinger Institute
• Terry Warner – wikipedia entry on the Arbinger Institute Founder
• Buy @ amazon.co.uk
• Buy from amazon.com
• An ‘in the spirit of the book’ summary over on ZeroMillion.com
• Official Excerpts from the book
• Related Articles from the Arbinger Institute
• Summary Notes from “Leadership Edge” blog
• David Mays Notes
• A Squidoo page on the book
• Leadership and Self-deception, serialised by Meridian Magazine
• Bonds That Make Us Free by Terry Warner, serialised by Meridian Magazine
• The Anatomy of Peace, serialised by Meridian Magazine

Before started reading I noted down what I expected to see advice about:

• becoming more effective,
• getting rid of underperforming staff now and quickly,
• driving out a bonus on sales culture,
• etc.

I did have the concern that I would see too much advice on short term unitary costs and ignoring end to end transaction costs – and after reading I think I still have the concern that Wileman didn’t deal with that topic effectively.

All other topics get excellent coverage and worth a read. Andrew provides a lot of other useful advice that I did not initially think of.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Andrew Consistently makes the point that cost cutting responsibilities lie with all managers – whatever their level, and that this behaviour (rewarded or not, noticed or not) always benefits. This responsibility makes up a large proportion of a manager’s time and the the decisions that you have to make do not fall into the easy category. But as a manager you shirk that responsibility at the expense of your department/team/business expense.

The book has the subtitle “How to manage and cut costs intelligently” so early in the book we learn:

• to keep a constant eye on the costs
• coupled with continual improvement (to gain efficiencies)
• tenacious pursuit and dogged persistence of reinforcing the message
• frequent checking of progress and impact of cost reduction
• constant checking of the ‘why’ for proposals for investment

In fact chapter 2 probably offers the most value in the book.

Numerous techniques get presented in the book, including:

• for gaining visibility into costs
• planning for big wins above smaller wins
• cost trends
• tackling people costs, including outsourcing and managing average and poor performers

Suppliers and negotiation with suppliers gets a full chapter to itself. We receive the advice to maintain multiple and competitive suppliers so that you don’t get locked in to a single supplier and remove your bargaining power. A very important chapter with many strategies presented.

Several case studies help towards the end of the book – in particular a pretty damning analysis of the UK’s labour government’s handling of public spending on civil service and other government department costs which perked the book up towards the end.

We also receive advice on using technology to help lower costs through effective use of the internet. And more general advice on:

• Effectiveness
• Simplification
• Quality
• Let the customers do the work
• Turn cost into revenue

The only issue I have relates to the notion of end to end transaction costs. Which I don’t think comes through the  book strongly enough. Andrew Wileman uses a comparative example of travel expenses where Jack Welsh would allow his managers to live the high life in good hotel rooms, and Sam Walton would share rooms with his managers to save costs. The question “So which is right?” The answer aims towards the frugal. But what we really require to answer the question involves and end to end analysis of the costs.

With Sam Walton – did the staff get enough privacy to conduct their own business, did one person snore and cause the other to lose sleep and therefore become inefficient? Did GE pay too much? Would cheaper rooms provide the essential soundproofing and comfort required to allow a manager to do their job properly, without going so cheap that they felt cheated or hard done by. The notion of balance and value did not come through well enough for me.

Deming provides a good example of end to end costs in “The New Economics” where the company cut down on costs of travel so much that the staff took far longer to travel than necessary and ended up tired and inefficient as a result. Sometimes ‘cash’ costs do not tell the whole story and I don’t think that “Driving Down Cost” does enough to stress that – although I think the early portion of the book does edge towards that.

So a well written fast and enjoyable read. But I don’t think it provides the whole story – so throw in a reading of Deming as well and I think you’ll have a lot of good information and techniques for reducing your costs.

Related Reading

• Preview on Google Books
• Review of Deming’s The New Economics
• Los Angeles Times Review of “Driving Down Cost”
• Official Book Website
• Andrew’s official (but value free) website

• his ‘system of profound knowledge’
• the purpose of management
• removal of numeric targets and incentives
• the Shewhart Cycle for learning and improvement
• Variation
• the Red Bead Game
• control charts

A highly recommended read because ….

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Deming starts by looking at the complacency of the American workplace. His complaint? That even when on top, when the companies have the money to improve and better survive they don’t. They may make individual elements more efficient but they don’t look at how their company, and  its products, fits into the wider environment. The production of quality goods does not mean survival. The organisations survival requires continued sales. And the leaders and managers have to look ahead and make the necessary changes to allow their company to survive for the future.

The staff on the ground can improve the system locally. But the management team have to set and direct the improvements for the future. Deming points out that quality doesn’t just refer to the localised goods and products. Quality of the system, and its fitness within its environment requires looking after too.

Deming looks at some of the prevailing management practices that help compound this poor situation:

• short term thinking – which people get rewards for doing
• focus on a stock price and dividends instead of a long term view
• failing to optimise through time
• ranking staff and rewards based on ranking
• incentive based pay
• failing to view the organisation as a system
• creating individual profit centres (encourages areas of the organisation to compete against each other rather than help the overall organisation)
• setting numerical goals rather than improving the process
• management by individual results instead of identifying variation and actions to take
• delegation of quality to an individual or a group instead of making top management accountable for quality

Deming moves on to consider the elements of an effective system, a few highlights of this section include:

• Create an aim for the organisation
• Optimise to support the aim
• Consider the future – lifelong learning for the employees, what should the business look like in 5 years? 10 years?
• Increase the boundary of the system. Instead of teams or departments, increase the boundary to the company, the organisation, the industry sector. The bigger the boundary the bigger the potential benefits, but the harder to manage and plan for the future.
• Consider working with your competitors.
• Create job descriptions that describe how the job contributes to the aims
• Managers resolve conflicts and remove barriers to cooperation between interconnecting elements.

Wikipedia contains a good summary of “The system of profound knowledge” so I shall make my summary very short:

• Transform the individual to learn and apply the principles and they will act as exemplars, listening, teaching and helping move people forward.
• Understand the system
• Understand Variation – special and common
• Understanding epistemology (theory of knowledge)
• Understand psychology – the use and abuse of rewards and motivation
• “The obligation of any component is to contribute its best to the system, not to maximise  its own production, profit or sales…”

Leadership has an entire chapter dedicated to it. Wherein we learn that the leader transforms the organisation. Using their theories, persuasive powers, plans of actions, and predictions of results.

Following leadership, Deming considers Management of people:

• Understand and communicate the aims of the system and how an individual’s work supports those aims.
• Help people see themselves as components in the system and work in cooperation with the rest of the system
• Understand the individual needs of each staff member and optimise their unique strengths and attributes.
• The manager constantly learns and encourages learning in their staff.
• Coach and counsel rather than judge.
• Understand a stable system and the interaction between people.
• Uses the 3 sources of power judiciously: Authority of office, Knowledge, Personality and persuasive power.
• Study results to improve their own management performance.
• Look outside the system.
• Create trust and environment that supports freedom and innovation.
• Do not expect perfection. Listen and learn without passing judgment.
• Develop understanding of the staff – their hopes, aims and fears.
• Understand the benefits of cooperation and losses from competition.
• Manage the system as a whole, do not optimize individual elements in isolation.
• Management involves the use of the Shewart Cycle (John Seddon recommends starting at ‘study’ or ‘check when looking at improvement of existing systems).
• Move towards Joint or sole responsibility instead of divided responsibility.

Deming then discusses the Read Bead game, of which much description already exists.

The chapter on Control Charts discusses a simple way of tracking common and special variation. Again the internet has many descriptions of this topic.

The Funnel experiment description then examines the effects of tampering.

The final chapter 10 then discusses variation in more detail.

Summary

A very good book with many important lessons to incorporate into your management style and to remind you of their value if you have already started to use them. I shall certainly re-read this.

Related Links:

• Limited Preview on Google Books
• amazon.co.uk | amazon.com
• Deming @ Wikipedia
• The W. Edwards Deming Institute
• Understanding Variation by Tom Nolan and Lloyd Provost
• Russell Ackoff
• Schewhart
• Epistemology: Epistemology (Standford Philosophy Encyclopedia),  Principia Cybernetica Definition, Keith DeRose Epistemology Links
• Read Bead game
• A good summary from the Management and accounting web

But I just wanted to mention the only useful book I read about CVs when researching the CV book market. When I read this book I gave up on writing a CV book because it pretty much covered the notes I had made (previous 2 blog posts) and gave useful information for building up an effective CV.

Pitch Yourself, by Bill Faust and Michael Faust.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

The basic summary: You have less than 30 seconds to impress. You’re CV needs to answer the question “What can you offer me?”. CV needs to provide evidence, create interest. Make your next employer buy you.

Change your CV from a linear reverse order snapshot of where you have worked. Turn it into something that says where you can go.

A traditional CV hides competencies and looks the same as everyone else applying for the job.

Write an elevator pitch. Based on your “Transferable Assets” – competencies you have demonstrated in multiple situations. Who you ‘are’. What you do. How you do it.

Identify competencies appropriate to the role. Identify times when you had capability for that competency, what you did, what happened as a result. See also HRSG articles

Create a career DNA – table with the columns:

• company name
• dates worked for them
• short desc of company
• job title
• job dimensions
• responsibilities
• benefit of your job
• education, training, received

Develop a list of competencies by deconstructing your career using an Objective-Analysis-Action-Results (OAAR) approach

• Objective – task you had to deliver
• Analysis – your thinking and evaluation of the options you had to deliver the task
• Action – implementation of your chosen options
• Results – outcomes of your actions

Actions may lead to other objectives and help you expand the competencies and evidence

Group the OAARs identified into competencies.

Identify transferable assets to group OAAR into.

A very practical book, which results in CVs that I would want to read. Recommended. The only CV book you will ever need.

Related Reading:

• Google books with preview
• Publisher Web site entry for contents etc.
• official website, sadly rubbish
• amazon.co.uk
• amazon.com
• How to write a CV that a hiring manager wants to read
• More notes on writing a CV that a hiring manager wants to read

Now some tips about how I read a CV. So make sure you write your CV to support my reading of it.

Contrary to some advice – I don’t really mind how many pages the CV has. I care about the relevancy of the information and that it demonstrates to me what you will bring to the role.

I have a multi-pass approach to CVs:

• pass one: Is this CV even worth reading?
• pass two: Who is this person?
• pass three: Could they meet my needs?
• pass four: Are they lying?
• pass five: Do I want to speak to them?

Is this CV even worth reading?

Should I even bother to read this CV?

• A quick scan to see if the CV contains the basic information I want to know.
• Will I learn anything from reading the CV.
• Does it look like a lot of cut and paste text between the roles?
• Does the person know how to communicate in writing?

Some CVs don’t make it past this stage.

Who is this person?

I look for the general summary of the person.

• You do have one of these right? At the start of your CV? A description of you and what you do.
• An elevator pitch that sells yourself to me the recruiter?
• What makes you unique?

If not – write one. Amend it. Edit it. Get it right. The hardest part of the CV to write. But a good sales pitch here can really add to the summary details against the roles.

I scan for statements of learning and unusual things.

I have a quick look to see how you keep up to date and if you have any hobbies relevant to the role.

Could they meet my needs?

I start to look at the detail in the roles.

• Do the descriptions tell me about the transferable skills that you bring to my role from those roles?
• Do you meet the basic description that I slaved over for the job spec?

I tend to make a lot of notes on the CV at this point which I review in pass five.

Are they lying?

• At this point I’ve probably spent about 20 minutes on the CV. So I start to look critically at the CV.
• Does the CV claim to expertise without the CV giving me the feeling that they have it? Just description and lists of skills (all talk), or does it detail results (walk the walk?)
• Valid dates? Could they do all this in the time period? Could they have done more in the time period? Any gaps?
• Did they work with anyone I know? I check.
• I’ll look you up on the Internet. I’ll read your blog if you have one.
• Do you have a LinkedIn profile?   (normally positive)
• Do you have a Facebook profile? (sometimes negative)

Do I want to speak to them?

I look at my notes.

I list my doubts.

Do the positives outweigh the doubts?

I make a decision about a face to face interview.

I write up my notes about what I want clarification on in that interview and write questions to help me dispel my doubts and confirm my positives (or not).

Time Invested

At this point I will probably have spent about 30 – 40 minutes with your CV. I would rather waste my time in the review process than waste all our time on phone interviews, or worse, on face to face interviews.

I expect the CV to help me

So a good CV will have:

• bullet points and summary statements.
• items in bold that you want to draw out,
• URLs to find out more information
• an effective layout
• numerous edits to make the text as concise as possible

First some don’ts – so if your CV does any of these… stop it, now, edit it, fix it:

I don’t care:

• about the size of your last employer,
• how many staff they employ,
• about their annual turnover,
• what they do to make money.

Why?

Because I hire you – or you want me to – so do tell me:

• their name (I can use Google and find them if I want to),
• when you worked for them,
• where you worked for them,
• what you did for them,
• about how you creatively used any gaps in your CV. e.g. I spent 6 months not working, instead I wrote a commercial software tool. I didn’t make any money doing it but my CV has this as a positive because I learned so much.
• how many people you managed.

I want to distinguish between the candidates so ensure the CV tells me:

• Something about each role that makes me think you did a good job,
• What you learned on that job and what skills you bring forward,
• Anything pragmatic and creative that you did that added value.

I want to see relevant information to the role:

• I don’t care about the time you worked as a barman, but I might care about what you learned that you can carry forward.
• I don’t care about your high school grades, but I might care about any ‘special’ projects that you learned more stuff.

I don’t need a list of tools that you have used at work:

• I want to know how you used the tools
• Any creative ways you implemented the tools
• Unconventional tools to get a job done

Things I do like to see that I rarely see on CVs, but everytime I see them I have hired the person:

• how you keep up to date with your industry,
• how you keep your skills up to date, if you only learn on the job (forget about me hiring you)
• your blog details, but you need to have more than two posts.
• relevant publications that you have written,
• conference talks that you have given,
• open source projects that you have contributed to, and I do check this.

A common theme runs this lot. I don’t intend to recruit you because of what you’ve done. I intend to recruit you because of what you can do for me. What you can bring to my environment that I do not yet have. Your enthusiasm for your chosen role should shine out of the CV.

If you don’t do any of the above and so can’t add it to the CV.

If you have no enthusiasm for your role.

Then either start, or find a new career.

I don’t recruit for average, or less than average. If you excel, but your CV makes it look as though you don’t, then do something about it.

As a team member I typically had one or two tasks or priorities. At the end of the day I generally knew what I had done.

As a manager I have more priorities, more ‘things’ on the go, a broader view of the work going on. If I don’t have a good handle on that then I start to question if I really know the activities and work done on a project.

A result of this:

• I plan my day,
• I track my day,
• I evaluate my day.

I have changed the way I do this over the years, and I will continue changing this as each project has different needs, each company I work for has different tools and I learn to track what I do better.

I shall describe my experiences with, and with not, tracking time.

Calendar & ToDo

I used to rely on a calendar and a todo list.

I also kept an unstructured notebook – i.e. it would sometimes have dates and sometimes not, it would get very very messy.

I eventually found this too static, while I knew what I had planned to do, and I could see what I had done (that I had planned on ‘To Do’ list), I didn’t have a handle on the variation taking place:

• what meetings finished early?
• what overran?
• what happened in that gap in the calendar?
• how did I implement that ToDo?
• did I ‘do’ that ‘to’ in a contiguous action or in disparate pieces?
• What context surrounded that splitting of work?
• What led me to split that up?
• Could I have planned that that split would happen?

I didn’t have a basis for evaluating these questions in order to ‘get better’.

Better use of Calendar & ToDo

So, sticking with the ToDo and Calendar notion I started to print out my daily calendar and physically mark on it the main aims and todos of the day that I would focus on in addition to the daily planned activities.

By doing this I could see the variation during the day, the meetings that got shifted and cancelled, what took their place, which todos got done on a day and which got moved to the next day.

The printout nature meant that I could write down notes on ‘next actions’ what we did, what decisions I made. Coupled with this, my physical notebook where each date had a heading with any notes that I made during that day so I could have a persistent record of my thoughts as I went through.

But I lacked the ability to easily track this variation and work done in a report format to ‘see’ actual numbers for how much time went on different acts.

Use of a Time Tracking Tool

So I started to use the JWorksheet tool. (EvilTester.com review)

I like a number of things about this -

• The discipline of tracking what I did with ‘actual’ times.
• The forced pre-thinking to create projects and tasks and decide how I want to categorise my time.
• The ability to generate reports of where I split my time. I can then check that those splits match up with the priorities that I have decided on for those tasks and projects.

Dislike:

• I can’t put enough information into the tasks to describe exactly what I did.
• I can’t tie up variation in time in terms of what I planned to have happen so I still have to keep a notebook log to track that variation.

I don’t know of a perfect time tracking tool – if you know of one then leave a comment and let me know.

JWorksheet works they way I currently work, so I find it useful.

Dangers I have found with this approach? The creation of too many categories.

I created so many tasks for so many projects that eventually my list became unmanageable. The solution? Only record what you want to measure. Identify the actions and projects that you care about, that you need to/want to report on. Trim out those that you don’t.

What if I went back to my old habits?

As an experiment I decided to go back to my old ways for a week and just use a calendar and todo list. I found myself lost at the end of a day and didn’t really know what I had done, I had ‘tracked’ things (done, some work (i.e. meetings or blocks of time) but didn’t know how I had ‘actioned’ them (what I had done on them).

After the 2nd day I couldn’t take it any more. I have no idea how I worked like that in the past. I had no visiblity into my thought process or learning or the actual progress on tasks.

Doubts?

When I started the logging process I thought it might take too much time. I thought that I would spend my whole time, tracking what I did and managing my time tracking than I would actually doing stuff.

The things I feared did not manifest. Instead the reverse happened. Minimal time spent logging. I then spent less time wastefully thinking – did we do that? did we do enough? what decision did we make? I did not clutter up my head with that information and could more clearly identify what “next thing” needed doing.

Summary

It takes discipline to write down what you have done. You can develop and learn this over time. I recommend this practice. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I read a fair few ‘productivity’ books to see what other people recommend but if anyone reading this blog entry has some immediate tips that they want to pass on then I shall gratefully receive them.

The first half by Roger Mavity tells the hard won lessons from a marketeer. The second half by Stephen Bayley reads like a standard book researched management text.

I only found value in part one so this review has its basis in that text.

The first half of the book roars along, peppered with anecdotes and words of wisdom.

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

So…when you pitch “you are trying to get someone else to do what you want them to do” and this has more to do with emotion than logic. Start with the problem and identify the one or two BIG issues. Write out the pitch as a storyboard and make your pitch a compelling story. A story that moves from problem to solution. “The bigger the problem, the more valuable the solution”

Keep it simple, then amend it to get it simpler. Use simple slides. Have the confidence to keep it clean. “The simpler your idea and the simpler your presentation of it, then the more likely you are to emerge the winner.” Use rehearsal to simplify further and keep going until it feels right.

Make the central idea in the pitch crystal clear and powerful. Create one slide that captures that idea. Then, in the presentation, dwell on it – “if you remember just one thing, remember this”.

Have a simple, powerful summary – at the end of the pitch. Build to this summary of the argument, not the supporting facts.

Structure it from high to detail. “Exposition, development, recapitulation”. Say what you’re going to say, say it, say it again.

Never read a slide – tell them the key point that the slide makes.

You pitch as a confident partner, one who can afford to walk away from the deal – never as a serf.

Phew… the the second half becomes mired in bookish artifice, or padding as I prefer to think of it.

Such a shame – if the publisher had had the courage to put out the small simple 142 page first half, this would have worked much better than its current form.

Related Reading:

• Official book site
• On Google books
• Beyond bullet points
• amazon.co.uk
• amazon.com

So… what do we learn?

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Leadership. Motivation. Performance. Teams. Change. Manage Yourself.

The family stories come thick and fast and sometimes I just wanted the author to get to the point. But Since the author writes well they flow quickly. From the notes below you will see that, like many management books. you already know these things. But we read these books to have reminders and to get additional insight.

I enjoyed reading Ian Durston’s book and the writing in the Assertion chapter seemed to have come from experience and I found it useful.

A quick gentle, recommended read. Don’t expect it to change your world, but enjoy it.

Leadership

• You learn to manage, in the same way you learn to parent. By making mistakes, and paying attention to the signals you receive from the child/staff. A manager, unlike a parent, typically inherits a team – you do not groom them from scratch, they come with their own foibles and systems, so change management has a bigger focus for a manager than a parent, so the book does not focus on this particular scenario.
• Leadership – giving direction, setting the strategy and taking your team with you.
• Strategy – the big picture, and how your team fits into it. Stick to that strategy.  Try something different if things don’t work.
• Have clear values. Work with integrity. Teach your values so your team can share them.
• Set an example. Work as you want your staff to work. Behave as you want your staff to behave. Act consistently. What you do counts far more than what you say.
• Earn your team’s trust. Admit to mistakes.
• Have courage to make hard decisions.
• Act like yourself and present your sense of humour.
• Assert the boundaries that you have set. Communicate what you want done unambiguously. Listen, but don’t get dragged into lots of why’s and wherefores. See “conflict as a perfectly acceptable process to go through to get to the right answer rather than something negative ” that you avoid. “Everone has a right to their own opinion.” You have this right so you can stand up for your case. “when conflict arises you have as much right as the other person not to give in and to be the one who comes out on top. As a result, assertiveness becomes easy.”
• “A passion for what you do leads to great things”

Motivation

• Pay attention to your staff.
• Try to catch your staff doing something right and praise them for it.
• Tell your staff the ‘news’ and keep them involved. “If people don’t  know what’s going on, they become suspicious.”
• Bring some frivolity to your team and make work fun.

Performance

• Set goals and objectives.
• Encourage people to take risks and let them learn from their mistakes.
• Ask your team ‘the right’ questions.
• Address poor performance by tackling the behaviour and the expectations your have. Understand the reasons behind the poor performance.
• Own up to your mistakes and forgive other’s theirs.
• You get what you expect.

Teams

• Create a shared purpose.
• Recognise the individuality of your team members.

Change

• Have a vision.
• Communicate the end point, the justification, and the process of change.
• Take your time.

Manage Yourself

• Maintain a strong self belief in your vision, and your team’s ability to achieve it.
• Delegate complete jobs. You still retain accountability.
• Don’t expect to perform the best at everything. Hire better people.
• Get Feedback.
• Never stop learning.

Related Links:

• Times Online Article/Interview
• amazon.co.uk
• amazon.com

But really we already bought the book to change our habits – so give me the details. Tell me the system…

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Hints from this section:

• Work out what your job involves – track what you actually do, compare it with what your job spec says. What you do adds value, not what the job spec says.
• Build value without putting in lots of hours.

Section 2 “Method” – so now do I learn what to do… hold on their cowboy – not ready yet.

Hints from this section:

• look at the things you do afresh – do you really need to do them?
• create a “day map” plan of the day based on your energy levels throughout the day
• work in 20 minute bursts
• one touch (decide what to do), two touch (do it), three touch (one touch too many)
• write down your major activities and rough percentages (solo, group, delegated)

Section Three “Detox” – so now we learn? Why yes we have hit page 161 now.

• 10 days of: drink water, clear out stuff you don’t want, tidy desk, clean desk, change habits, communicate effectively, …

If section Three seems like a let down – then I thought so too. Useful things to do, but a whole book to tell us this? Maybe it would work better for you?

Related Reading:

• amazon.co.uk
• amazon.com
• Read excerpts from Wiley
• Guardian Article
• Theo Theobald Books on Google Books with excerpts