7 Tips for Managing Your Schedule Like a Pro

Something Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, once said has stuck in my head: "Never let anyone own your schedule." It's simple and obvious, yet genius.

Over the years, whenever I didn't follow this advice, I was stressed and unproductive. Gradually I learned that planning and following a routine makes a huge difference in how I feel and what I get done. Here are some of the things that help me manage my schedule that you may find helpful:

1. Create a routine

No matter what you are working on, create a routine. Block times for specific activities, and stick with the plan. Turn your calendar into a bunch of blocks, and put activities into those blocks. Whatever is not planned, you don't do. If you want free time, plan it.

Your routine may change through the year, but at any given time it's better to have a plan. For example, if you are working on launching a company, and need to do customer discovery, coding and hiring, then prioritize and block specific times for each activity. 

Here is a sample calendar I made that illustrates some of the concepts and ideas from this post.

2. Group meetings and calls into blocks

For example, if you need to have outside meetings, block two and a half days a week for those meetings, and go to the outside meetings only during those times. Do the same thing for in-office meetings. This way you are not only creating a chunk of time for meetings, you are also creating other blocks of time that you will be able to important work. Do the same thing with calls, and book them all back to back.

3. Optimize time for different meeting types

Personally, I am now a big fan of 30-minute meetings and 10-minute calls. I think 10-minute calls are a great way to initially connect with someone or give someone quick advice. You can do a Google Hangout or Skype if you prefer to see the person instead of just hearing them. The reason 10-minute calls work is because people skip BS and get to the point. Try it. Ten minutes is actually a lot of time, if you focus. I prefer to do these calls on Fridays, when I am usually working from home.

I am not a big fan of introductory coffee meetings, lunches and dinners. I am a huge fan of coffee and meals with people I already know. Those meetings are typically productive and fun, but the first time you are meeting someone, it's more productive to do a call or an actual 30-minute meeting in the office. 

Here are the types of meetings you might want to book:

• 30-minute meeting in the office to get to know someone or catch up
• 45-minute meeting outside of the office. Allow 15 minutes for travel.
• 10-minute call to help someone who needs advice
• 15-minute daily standup -- great for startups and engineering teams
• 30-minute weekly staff meeting

Whatever meetings you hold, group them into blocks depending on your particular schedule. If you feel like a particular type of meeting needs more or less time, then adjust the block accordingly.

4. Use appointment slots

There is a great feature in Google Calendar called Appointment Slots. It allows you to book a chunk of time, and then split it into pieces. For example, I can book three hours of outside meetings and then split it into three meetings -- one hour each. Or I can book one hour of calls and split it into six calls at 10 minutes each. There is also a bunch of specific tools, such as doodle, that do that too. 

The next step is to create bit.ly links for different blocks of time.You can have a link for your outside meetings, another link for 30-minute inside meetings and yet another one for 10-minute calls. You then share these links, and they can book the time with you. I've done this with Techstars candidate companies and it was amazingly effective. It minimized the back and forth on email and saved a ton of time for me and the companies

This won't work with everyone, because some people may find this rude. In any case, if you are not comfortable sending the link to a someone, then you can use your own appointment slots, suggest a few meeting times, and then book the specific slot yourself.

If you are asking someone to meet, always propose several specific alternative times such as Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m. on Wednesday. David Tisch gave a great talk that covers scheduling meetings and many more basics of communication. 

5. Block time for email

This is the most important tip in the whole post. Email will own you unless you own it. To own your email you must avoid doing it all the time. To do that you need to schedule the time to do your email. It is absolutely a must. In fact it is so important that I wrote a whole entire post about managing email.

6. Plan your exercise and family time

Unless you put it on the calendar, it won't get done. Well, that applies to your exercise and time with your family. Whether you go in the morning, afternoon or evening, do it three times a week or every day, put exercise time on the calendar. My friend and mentor Nicole Glaros makes it very clear that her mornings, until 10 a.m., belong to her. She hits the pavement or the gym, depending on the weather, and rarely deviates from her routine. 

The same applies to planning time with your family and significant others. If you are a workaholic like me, you will end up stealing time from your family unless you book it in advance and train yourself to promptly unplug. Many people in the industry have talked about planning family time. My favorite is Brad Feld, who talks about it a lot.

7. Actually manage your time

I think about my time a lot. I think about where it goes. I think about where can I get more of it, and how to optimize it. When I was running GetGlue, I had an assistant who was managing my time. She was awesome. But when I joined Techstars, I decided that I will manage my calendar myself. I have to confess that I am happy about this decision.

I find myself thinking about what I am doing, who am I meeting with and why a lot more. I meet with a lot of people every week. My schedule is particularly insane during the selection process. Yet, because I manage my calendar, follow a routine, plan meetings in blocks and use appointment slots, I find myself less overwhelmed and less stressed.

Taking ownership of my calendar and planning my days and weeks made me a happier and more productive human. I hope this post helps you get there too. 

I would love to hear your productivity tips. How do you manage your time? How do you handle your calendar? What tools do you use? Please share in the comments section below.

This article was written by a member of the AlleyNYC contributor network. AlleyNYC is one of the world’s largest innovation hubs, helping foster the growth of startups in its flagship location in New York City. Entrepreneur Media is a partner and investor in AlleyNYC.

What A Music Conductor Knows About Leadership: Hugh Ballou

Leadership coach Hugh Ballou spent the first 40 years of his career with his back to the audience

In my recent article on Cooperative Capitalism I promised more information from CEO Space faculty co-lead Hugh Ballou, who directs that effort together with multi-award winning author and expert on integrity in business Dr. David Gruder. The two coach, train and provide keynote addresses and learning experiences for corporations, both individually and jointly.

Of particular interest to me was seeing the way Ballou’s years of background as a music conductor have contributed to the skills he presents to leaders of organizations of all sizes including the world’s largest musical efforts, church organizations and even Fortune 1000 CEOs.

Says Ballou: “In 40 years of music ministry I conducted my work with my back to the audience.” Now, in his leadership training, he is addressing the challenges corporate leaders face head on.

Ballou defines a leader as one of three things:

1. A person who gets things done.
2. A person who learns how things get done.
3. A person who accomplishes work by influencing others.

Sometimes the influence is autocratic and negative. In other cases it’s based on inspiration, through trusted relationships (which is the path he selects and promotes).

Orchestrating Success
Have you ever watched a musical conductor at work? It’s leadership in motion. There is never an instant of indecision or a moment of doubt. The musical conductor is always in control. This may sound and seem like a dictatorship, but it is not, Ballou says. Nor is it a democracy, as a single person directs the will of others and the artistic vision that will shape the result.

On a corporate team, the leader articulates a vision through carefully crafted goals and empowers and directs key players in their role to the outcome and success.

In either case, the leader inspires the maximum result by inspiring and empowering the team of participants. If the leader is open and straightforward, the team will engage and do their best to succeed. But if the leader is ill-prepared, guarded and uncommunicative…the result is subpar (or perhaps a disaster).

Each player is highly skilled, and each person contributes the best of their unique talent. Together, the team creates a result that far surpasses what any individual could produce on their own. If the leader tells an expert oboe player how to play oboe – by the next season that player will likely be gone. But if he or she can bring out the greatest creativity and enthusiasm in the player, magic ensues.

Today, leadership coach Hugh Ballou trains leaders ranging from startup entrepreneurs to Fortune 1000 CEOs

From a musical conductor we can observe the following, Ballou says:

• If the leader is autocratic, there’s a limit to success.
• The leader should strive to portray a commanding presence—not a fearful dominance.
• The leader is only as effective as his or her success in inspiring and leading others.
• The leader defines how the result is expressed:
  • With passion and commitment
  • With unanimity of movement and expression
  • With a combination of skills that create momentum
  • With unity of pace and harmony
  • The leader invites people to participate through the aura of their presence
  • The leader knows and communicates that the team can only achieve its result with every member doing their best

Conductors and leaders inspire the highest possible performance from the groups that they lead. They are alert to circumstances and make adjustments and changes needed as the program progresses to ensure an optimal result. According to Ballou, corporate leaders can do much to sharpen their skills and understanding of ideal leadership by attending a symphony performance and observing the nuances and non-verbal signals that separate the merely good and acceptable from inspiring and unforgettable.

From Music Conductor to Meeting Conductor
One of the great problems Ballou notes that leaders seem to universally face is that they want to blame others for the problems they helped to create. Perhaps they are unclear about specifics or time frames and fail to provide mentoring.  Sometimes as leaders we confuse mentoring with micromanaging, Ballou says. When leaders fall short, he suggests they turn around once again, to take a close look in the mirror.

As Ballou teaches leaders he often uses his orchestra experience as an analogy:

• The orchestra lecturn holds the score (the strategic plan.)
• Every event that will happen is notated, with clearly defined roles and parts.
• The action plan is directly tied to the musical score.
• The CEO directs from the score (as opposed to playing the music). Their highest value is inspiring and allowing other people to perform to their highest level of expertise.
• As a conductor, the team lead (or CEO) begins with the “why” of a given performance, influences people with a common purpose, then gives them a clear pathway and coaches them to excellence.
• The choir or orchestra’s job is to listen to each other, and to use their level of expertise and also combine it with others then to attain a harmonic ensemble result. Many leaders inadvertently squelch these possibilities by being the “answer person” rather than allowing people to function in the areas they know best (a phenomenon leadership expert Murray Bowen has described as “irresponsible responsibility”). The result: A burned out leader and a frustrated team.

“In audiences and in facilitations it’s been interesting to note that 65-75% of those who attend have had some musical experience, and the rest have generally observed a conductor,” Ballou says. “So when I create the analogy, I hear ‘Ah’.”

“I particularly enjoy working with startup entrepreneurs,” says Ballou. “In these cases, companies can create a ‘ground up’ culture of high performance.”

That culture is vital, he notes, in that the U.S. currently suffers from an estimated 70% disengaged employees, according to research numbers from Gallup. It is an epidemic that costs organizations millions of lost hours and billions in lost revenue, particularly when we consider the vast hours leaders spend undoing conflict, much of which they’ve inadvertently (or occasionally even purposely) set up as a misguided ploy to show strength.

Relationships, trust, and a sense of ensemble are vital for optimal companies and teams, Ballou says.

"I love the concept of Jazz ensembles as an analogy,” he says. “It’s the most creative musical form we have in America. But it is not at all haphazard. In a group you have a chord structure, a rhythm, and there are rules of the road to dictate behavior such as if you don’t have a solo, you don’t play loud.”

“Yet we have leaders declaring, ‘I don’t want to be held back by a plan’. With a good structure, you have the room to be creative. Leaders tell me ‘I don’t have time to write down my goals.’ So do you have time to redo your projects, I ask?”

Finally, Ballou shares a set of leadership principles that music conductors know best:

1. Know the score. Know your vision and plan, and set it down in advance.
2. If you want a good ensemble, hire the best players. Look for good skills and good potential to grow.
3. Build effective relationships. Leaders lead people; managers manage money.
4. Every fine ensemble rehearses for every performance. But we often run straight to execution in business and then we execute poorly. By doing so, we build the DNA for poor performance. If we don’t rehearse what we want to accomplish as leaders, we’re modeling poor leadership (which others will copy). Is this the legacy we want to instill?
5. Prepare for meetings by preparing for the outcomes. Within meetings, allow people to play their instruments and to do their parts.
6. Value the rests. The pauses in any musical score are there for a distinct reason. They are punctuation. Yet as leaders we don’t value rest and we don’t put it into our calendar. We need time to plan, evaluate, think, rest and play. In doing this, we deprive ourselves of the chance to perform as a whole person, so we don’t show up as our best selves. An anxious leader communicates anxiety that is contagious throughout the whole human system. So we should value the rest periods and we should perpetually work on ourselves.

Cheryl Conner,

The Seven Imperatives to Keeping Meetings on Track

by Amy Gallo 

There's nothing more annoying than a meeting that goes on and on and on. As a manager, it’s your job to make sure people don’t go off on tangents or give endless speeches. But how can you keep people focused without being a taskmaster or squashing creativity? 

What the Experts Say
The good news is that meeting management isn’t rocket science; you probably already know what you should be doing. The bad news is that keeping your meeting on track takes discipline, and few people make the effort to get it right. “The fact is people haven’t thought about how to run a good meeting, or they’ve never been trained, or they’re simply too busy,” says Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, senior fellow at Brookings Institute, and author of Extreme Productivity. “Organizations are moving faster and faster these days and few managers have time to think through their meetings in advance,” says Roger Schwarz, an organizational psychologist and author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams. But rushing now is only going to cost you more time later. So whether you’re getting ready for a weekly team meeting or convening a larger group to discuss your division’s strategy, it’s important to put in the effort. Here’s how to make your next meeting your most productive one yet.

Make the purpose clear
You can head off a lot of problems by stating the reason for getting together right up front. Schwarz recalls seeing a sign in a conference room at Intel’s headquarters that read: If you don’t know the purpose of your meeting, you are prohibited from starting. This is a wise rule. Send an agenda and any background materials ahead of time so people know what you’ll cover. Consider sending a list of things that won’t be discussed in the meeting as well.

Schwarz suggests that you list agenda items as a question — rather than “Discuss video schedule” write “When will videos be completed?” to show what outcome you have in mind. Next to each item, you can also indicate participants’ roles — are they sharing information, contributing ideas, or making a decision?

Control the size
Meetings can get out of control if there are too many people in the room. “Chances are they won’t be attentive or take responsibility for what’s happening,” says Pozen. But with too few people, you may not have enough diversity of opinion. Only include those who are critical to the meeting. “Don’t feel you have to invite everyone who ever thought about the problem,” he says. “If you think someone might be offended, you can send out a memo and loop back with them afterward so they know what’s happening.”

Set the right tone
As a manager, it’s up to you to ensure that people feel comfortable enough to contribute. “You’re there to be a steward of all the ideas in the room,” says Schwarz. Set the right tone by modeling a learning mindset. Instead of using the time to convince people of your viewpoint, be open to hearing other’s perspectives. Explain that you don’t have all the answers, nor does anyone else in the room. Be willing to be wrong. Schwarz says you want “participants to see the team meeting as a puzzle — their role is to get the pieces out on the table and figure out how they fit together.”

Manage ramblers
“People often give speeches instead of asking questions,” says Pozen. It’s tough to cut a rambler off, but sometimes it’s necessary. Schwarz suggests saying, “OK, Bob, you’re absolutely right and is it ok if we talk about that later?” Getting his buy-in will ensure that he doesn’t return to his speech at the next opportunity. For someone who is prone to long-windedness, talk with her ahead of time or during a break, and ask that she keep her comments to a minimum to allow others to be heard.

Control tangents
Sometimes it’s not that an individual goes on too long but he raises extraneous points. “If two or three people bring up things that are contiguous but not really related, the meeting can degenerate,” says Pozen. Try to refocus them on the stated agenda. On occasion, someone may intentionally go on a tangent. Maybe he feels territorial about a decision you’re making or is unhappy with the direction you’re taking the conversation. “Rather than accuse the person of trying to derail your meeting, ask what’s going on. Pozen suggests you say something like, “You’ve diverted us several times. Is there something’s that bothering you?” Addressing the underlying issue head on can help appease the dissenter and get your meeting back on topic.

Make careful transitions
“Typically leaders go from topic to topic, moving ahead when they’re ready to,” says Schwarz. “But people don’t always move with you and they may get stuck in the past.” Before you transition from one agenda item to another, ask if everyone is finished with the current topic. “You need to give people enough air time,” says Pozen. This will help keep the conversation focused.

End the meeting well
A productive meeting needs to end on the right note to set the stage for the work to continue. Pozen suggests you ask participants, “What do we see as the next steps? Who should take responsibility for them? And what should the timeframe be?” Record the answers and send out an email so that everyone is on the same page. This helps with accountability, too. “No one can say they’re not sure what really happened,” says Pozen.

Principles to Remember
Do:

• Make the meeting purpose clear and send an agenda out ahead of time
• Talk to anyone who might monopolize meeting time before you get in the room and ask him to keep comments to a minimum
• Send out a follow-up email after the meeting that lists next steps, who’s responsible for them, and when they’ll get done

Don’t:

• Feel obliged to invite lots of people — only include those who are critical to making progress
• Move on to a new topic until everyone feels they’ve been heard
• Let the group get distracted by tangents — ask if you can address unrelated topics another time

Case study #1: Let everyone be heard
As the vice president of maintenance, repair, and overhaul at American Airlines, Bill Collins was tasked with improving the company’s relationship with unionized workers. To help facilitate conversation, Bill set up town hall-style meetings with Tulsa operation’s 6,500 employees. He quickly realized that these gatherings weren’t efficient or productive. “There hadn’t been town-hall meetings in 15 years and people had a lot of pent up anxiety that they wanted to get off their chests. They wanted to hang me,” he says. The meetings were scheduled for one hour but often lasted two.

Bill decided to make some changes. First, he made the meetings smaller by dividing them up by business and shift so that each only had about 250 people. “They still wanted to hang me but as least the conversation was manageable,” he says. Second, he changed the tone of the meeting by opening with a proposed agenda and asking for input. “I’d say, ‘Here’s what we want to discuss. What do you want to discuss?’” And if someone wanted to talk about something that wasn’t on the agenda, Bill would respond, “We’ll go to any level of detail you’d like on that topic during the Q&A. Is that OK?” He’d then wait for at least a head nod before moving on.

When Bill first described this approach to his fellow executives, many expressed concern that the meetings would take even longer if everyone had the chance to be heard. But he was invested in making it work. “The natural tendency for the workforce is to not trust management,” he says. “This process builds trust.” And, after the first of these newly revamped meetings, he had the proof he needed. “There were no raised voices,” he says. “It was calm, cordial, and it ended well. Leaders of the local union said it was the best meeting they’d been to.”

Case study #2: Actively manage disrupters
When Betsy Stubblefield Loucks took over as executive director of HealthRIght, a nonprofit focused on healthcare policy in Rhode Island, one of her responsibilities was to convene a monthly meeting with 20 people from various organizations with a stake in healthcare reform, such as labor, hospitals, insurers, and consumer advocates. The goal was to problem-solve and reach agreement about how the organization should approach different aspects of reform. In the past, the meetings were structured around specific topics but they didn’t have stated outcomes or a process for reaching resolution. As a result, participants would often just talk about issues they cared most about. “People had hot button issues and would make speeches about them,” she says.

Betsy decided to do something different with the agenda; she put the desired outcomes for each meeting at the top. This helped focus the conversation. She also made an effort to build relationships with people who tended to dominate the conversation. “Health care reform is a very broad — and deeply sensitive — topic. Our members are very passionate about their issues, and some people would have the same debates over and over because they didn’t feel heard,” she says. She set up meetings with these participants in advance of the monthly coalition meeting to let them vent to her personally and check her understanding of their perspective. Then when the group was together, she would represent that person’s opinion — with their permission — in a more concise way.

For particularly difficult people, she would assign someone to actively manage them during the meeting. “There was one person who would give the same stump speech over and over,” she says. So she asked a member of her executive committee to sit next to him, and when he started going on, to interrupt him. The executive committee member did this respectfully saying, “I think you’re making a great point,” and then would summarize his perspective. This helped the rambler feel like his point had been understood. It also helped Betsy keep focused on the meeting. “That way I wasn’t the only one playing traffic cop and he didn’t have to get mad at me,” she says.

Betsy uses these same approaches in smaller meetings as well. “Anytime I meet with more than one other person, I use these tactics. When I have the right people in the room, send out a clear agenda, and talk to any difficult people in advance, my meetings go much more smoothly,” she says.

Amy Gallo

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. 

Employee Engagement: Making it happen for the Customer

I've mentioned unions before in previous posts, and how some folks find unions to be an obstacle to getting things done.  This week, I'd like to give you another example of a success story from a unionized plant.

At the first B2B manufacturing business I worked for, whenever our general manager was going to be away on vacation, he rotated the job of assuming his role among the members of the management group.

Eventually it became my turn to run the morning production meetings and coordinate production schedules and customer orders for a week. Things started out being very much a routine.

We had an order in house for a new product we were doing for the first time for a new customer my team had been developing.  It wasn't a complex product - just a foil lid for a major yogurt producer - but our production team encountered a serious problem.  The foil we had received to run this order had some significant quality issues that adversely impacted how easily we could run the product on our presses and downstream operations.  It wasn't something we could easily replace.  The lead time for this particular grade of foil was 16 weeks, and the customer's purchase order required it to be delivered the week I was in charge.

Our production manager suggested running the order on an older press that wasn't used much, but we had only a couple of operators who'd ever been trained on this press.  He suggested we ask for volunteers to put together a crew to run this order.

The union assisted us in assembling a crew for this old press and managed to finder an operator from among their membership who had once run this particular piece of equipment.

We met with the crew and explained the challenges to running the job and offered whatever help we could.  They agreed to give it a try.

Not only did they manage to run the order, we also managed to deliver it on time to the customer.  The order took longer to run than we would normally have planned, but the job needed to be run slowly so the press crew could maintain control over the substandard foil they were running.

At no time was the customer aware of the problems we had in producing their order.  The product ran fine on their lines.

At our next communications meeting, the management team recognized the crew who ran the yogurt lid job, and they got lots of cheers from their union mates - and a lot of respect from our management team.

In this case, the men on that crew wanted to demonstrate their skill in running a very challenging job.  None of them wanted to let the customer down.  They came through without the traditional union-management rhetoric.  it was just one instance in which union and management showed they could both be on the same side - the side of the customer.

 

Ron Jamieson

 

I'm a leader who transform businesses by igniting the sales and marketing teams to significantly grow revenue and profits by entering new markets, developing and launching innovative new products, and by forming strong alliances with customers and suppliers.

View my complete profile

 

Timeless Business Lessons from Don Draper

Ignore everything you see on "Mad Men" ... except these two smart solutions.

Everett Collection

 

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Catch an episode of "Mad Men," the award-winning cable drama about a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s, and you’ll see dozens of lessons about what not to do in business today. Womanizing, heavy day drinking, indoor smoking, and lying about your identity aren’t things to emulate.

Still, as I watched the most recent season, I was reminded of the business lessons that still ring true. Here are two that stand out.

Lesson No. 1: Solve the Real Problem
I won’t spoil anything for you, but in a recent episode, the firm is presented with a challenge when trying to reel in Chevy as a new client. In the eyes of Chevy, the small firm doesn’t have the resources to land the business. Don Draper’s firm manages to figure out what the real problem is for their clients and offer a solution.

Understand your prospect’s real, underlying objection … and then come up with a creative way to tackle it. True innovation often comes in the way of an insight into what problem you’re trying to solve, which isn’t always the one that’s stated.

Lesson No. 2: Don’t Forget Face Time
Given the setting of the show--1960s New York City--communication options were more limited. Without email, texting or cell phones, it was necessary to sit down with people and engage them on a personal level.

In-person meetings still matter. Now, I’m not recommending that anyone take clients or potential clients out on the town the way they do on "Mad Men." But despite all the new digital communication options, there’s no substitute for actually meeting someone face-to-face.

I remember, in the early days of SurePayroll, traveling around the country to meet with partners. We’d always sit down for a nice dinner and talk about things outside of work. When problems came up, knowing the people we did business with really counted. A personal relationship makes it much easier to handle a crisis.

If you watch the account men on "Mad Men," you’ll see that they’re classic relationship managers. And while we certainly don’t want to go back to a 1960s mindset--there are many deeply objectionable parts of the show--it’s a good reminder of the value in knowing our customers and understanding how we can give them what they want.

Michael Alter is president of SurePayroll, America’s leading online payroll service. He received an MBA from the Harvard Business School and holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Northwestern University. @michaelalter