More Space blog/book project
I’m thrilled to announce that my proposal to join the More Space project, a collaborative effort to produce a collection of 10,000 word essays by business bloggers, has been accepted. The list of bloggers participating includes some of the folks I’ve been reading, both online and offline, for years and I’m grateful and honored to be included. You can learn more about the project here and read my proposal here.
My essay will focus on productivity (like you couldn’t have figured that out, right?) and will be in some ways an expanded riff on my Equation for Serious Productivity posts. The focus of the essay will be more on technique and implementation than on specific tools.
I’ll be doing most of the development work here on Marc’s Outlook on Productivity blog but will post an occasional milestone notice on my Office and Tablet PC blogs as well. Please watch my progress and contribute your comments and suggestions. The whole point of this exercise is for the authors to create these essays as transparently as possible and to take advantage of the collective wisdom of our readers.
Unlike the Equation blog posts, this essay will focus on techniques, strategies, and what I call “better practices” for teams. I call them “better“ and not “best“ because they only become “best practices“ when they're adopted, adapted, and committed to. This essay will actually be the first published thoughts on a set of ideas I've been percolating for some time to be the basis of a book I've been developing with the working title Making Things Happen. As readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done system for personal productivity and have been shepherding the GTD Zone here at OfficeZealot.com.
I'm fortunate to work at a company that has adopted GTD as an essential part of the way we work and we have incredible support to practice what DA preaches. For example, I just spent the entire day last Friday doing “GTD Purge Day” a blocked-out day the company makes available to every employee to clear out the files (analog and digital), do a mind sweep, and get the decks cleared for a new year. But at VanDyke Software, we've integrated more than just the GTD principles into a way of approaching work that produces consistently excellent results and it is this integration of techniques and practices I'll be describing in my More Space Essay.
Some of the elements of this approach to serious productivity are:
- An e-mail tagging system that makes every e-mail actionable and meaningful before it's even opened.
- A “contract for communications” that clearly defines
- How and why meetings are held to make them something to be looked forward to rather than dreaded.
- Roles, rights, and responsibilities of team members
- How to listen “with intent“ and respond respectfully and positively to your teammates.
- A discussion of how mind maps can be used in meetings and to manage dynamic projects.
- How Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats theory can make every meeting run like clockwork.
These techniques, strategies, and “better practices” can produce an incredible, high-performance workplace that generates measurable results, sustained productivity, high morale, and a true sense of purpose. I'm not projecting this as a theory - I live in just such an environment every day!
I hope you'll join in the conversation as I develop this essay and help me make it an inspiring piece of the More Space project.