Time management in a digital era

It is said that we live in a digital world. Whoever has a smartphone, understands why. The Internet and the constant technological progress are changing both our private and professional lives.

We now need to be faster and we expect everything around us to be fast. 

Therefore, technological improvements that are helping us to “Save time” are extremely valued. At the same time we need to face new time thieves, especially from the online environment.

What to do?!

Here are some thoughts on how adapt time management to the digital era.

If you don’t plan your day some else will do it for you

This will continue to be true no matter how much the technology will impact our daily lives. If you start the day without having your own plan, you will end up drifting away through random tasks coming from other people. All of them will have the tendency to be important and urgent, which will eventually bring you to frustration and overtime.

So step 1: Start your day by writing down your plan.

Step 2: Stick with your plan. All other new things that are coming during the day you should plan for a time convenient for you.  This way you will manage to control our schedule and time. At the beginning it might be difficult for the others to understand that they need to wait, but after the first situation, they will know what your working style is and adapt to it.

Use the technology in your favor

Choose an online calendar or planner and maintain your daily tasks there. With the help of the multiple functions most online calendars have you can set reminders, postpone activities, make notes, search for past activities and many other things. 

At the end of the day you will not only achieve more and avoid forgetting things, but you will also have the satisfaction of looking at all the things you have completed during the day.

Plan your ‘update’ breaks

Being all the time connected to the internet and having access to so much information can be very tempting.

The innocent and quick checking of the social media accounts is taking much more time than one can imagine. Besides the time actually spent checking the updates of the people in your network on different social media websites, there is also the time you need to get back mentally into the topic we were before. 

Planning the short ‘update breaks’ will help you not only reduce the time you spend doing this but also realize that you haven’t missed anything by not checking 2 hours your accounts.

How good are you in managing time at work? What are your best three things you do to manage time at work effectively?

The world outside our comfort zone

During one of the interviews I had a few years ago, I have asked one candidate what made her stay for 5 years at a company where her experience was not valued. 

Her answer was: “Well… the colleagues are nice, I got used with everything in the company and the management is also not that bad.”

She knew the whole time that she could do much more. However she continued there for so long because it was cozy.

Recently I have had the chance to talk again with her and I have found out that she is still with the same company but much happier. What happened?

She had decided to take the risk and try something new. She has discussed with her manager, she has been assigned to new projects, had to learn new technologies, was noticed by the management and got promoted.  She had left her comfort zone and decided to go for more, take risks and work hard until she got what she wanted.

When was the last time you have tried doing something new? What was the biggest step you took out of your comfort zone?

Here is a good illustration about the comfort zone and what could happen if we dare to get out of it.  

Just got promoted and don’t know where to start?

Until yesterday you were discussing with your colleagues about the management of the company, now you are one of the management. You used to debate about the bad news or decisions of the company, now you are to one who has to give the bad news.

Being promoted as the manager of your own team is for sure not an easy thing and people who are in such situation face very often hard times.

The first and most important step is to understand the new role and responsibilities. Moving to a management position is nothing else but an extension of your interests as employee to the interests of the company. The scope of the new role in the organization is primarily to make sure that the team members are working towards and achieving the goals of the company. 

Most of the new promoted managers have difficulties in adapting into the new role and they tend to keep the “employee” perspective. They continue doing what they were doing before, concentrate on their individual duties and enjoy the new title. 

The problems appear when they need to take measures that are not seen as positive by their team members, to make and communicate decisions and to take responsibility for the results of their team.

The sooner the new promoted managers understand their role, the more effective they will become as managers and therefore help the team be productive. 

Why some people seem to never fail?

When was the last time you failed at work?

Some people will answer right away having fresh in mind the last time they missed a deadline, did something wrong in a presentation or couldn’t deliver a report. No matter how much experience and knowledge we have, some of the things we do won’t have the desired outcome.

Some people instead will not be able to answer this question. This is not because they never fail, but because they almost don’t have this word in their vocabulary. They approach failure in a different way and somehow they manage to concentrate on the next thing they want or need to do. These are usually the people we consider successful.

So, coming back to the first question: Why some people seem to never fail?

One of the reasons is because they have a different attitude towards failure.  

Failure is normal and we can control it

Failure is most of the times a matter of expectations and perspective. It’s up to us to consider a setback the end of the world or a phase in reaching what we want.

Instead of being frustrated about having failed, a much more constructive approach is to say: '' I couldn't succeed this time. What could I do better next time?''

Take responsibility

Blaming others will not help. This will position us in the role of the victim from which is hard to get out. As we can't control what others think or do, the only attitude that will bring us forward is to take responsibility for what happened and figure out what WE should've done differently.

Learn the lessons

It is vital that we don’t repeat the same mistakes especially in a professional context. This can only be done when we are ready to find out the factors that led to our inability to complete a project or assignment properly.

Accept the failure and ask for help if necessary

Not being successful in a situation will not take anything from what we are as a person. This is what most people don't understand and therefore will try to hide or never accept their mistakes. Overcoming our setbacks instead will make us grow and add value to our professional and personal experience.

Asking for help from our team members is a matter of trust. We need to trust that they will be willing to help. At the same time asking for their help will consolidate the trust within the team.  

Move on

The time spent thinking at our failure after realizing what we could have done differently, is a wasted time.

All the compassion of our colleagues and friends, all the bad feelings and frustrations that we have will not actually make us get out of the situation. What will bring us forward is a positive attitude and the confidence that the experience gained will make us ready for the new challenges.

''I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'' Thomas A. Edison

The road to our goals and the people along the way

A few years ago I have heard "The story of the tiny frog" and I always think of it when it comes to achieving goals. Here is the story:

The Story Of The Tiny Frog

There once was a bunch of tiny frogs who got together to arrange a competition to reach to the top of the highest tower in town.
As the date for the competition was announced, the news spread everywhere and crowd in large numbers gathered around the tower to see this interesting competition and cheer on the contestants. The crowd did not really believe any of these little frogs were going to make it to the top of the tower. Yet they were curious…The competition began, the frogs quickly started to ascend and the crowd cheered!
As a few moments passed, someone from the crowd shouted, "Not a chance that they will succeed! The tower is too high!"
Another spectator said, "Yes, they will never make it to the top. It's way too difficult!"

As the competition continued, some of the tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one… tired… exhausted… But the race continued… as those who still had the fight left, passionately continued to climb higher and higher…
In the excitement and anxiety  the crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult. No one will make it!"

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up. They all continued to give up one by one, until there was only ONE little frog left in the competition who continued to climb higher and higher and higher…
This one wouldn’t give up!
This one tiny frog who, after a big effort was the only one who reached the top! This little soul was the winner! He made it! He got the glory!

Naturally, everyone wanted to know how this one tiny frog managed to pull it off when every other contestant gave up. Everybody wanted to know how this tiny frog had found the strength to reach this goal that everyone else thought it was impossible. So, they asked questions.

It turned out that the winner was deaf.

The Moral Of The Story: Be deaf when people tell you that you can not fulfill your dreams and goals.  

I would say it´s better to stay away from these people or at least donˋt share your plans or goals with them.

Even if they actually have good  intentions and they donˋt want us to get hurt or demotivated if we donˋt reach our goals, their negative attitude might make us start doubting our own abilities and eventually give up our goals or lower our target.

On the other hand, those people who have a positive attitude, even if they are thinking our goals are too high they will not discourage us. Instead they will share their relevant experience, try and help us make a plan, give us ideas on where to get more information or how to reach our target and even boost our self confidence. These people know that reaching the goal is not the most important thing, but what you learn on the way. They are the ones who will help us grow and who we will always remember with gratitude.

What kind of people do you have around?

How many of them encourage you achieve what you want and are supportive?

How do you handle the ones who under the excuse of being realistic, are telling you how hard it will be for you to get what you want and that it would be better to have lower expectations and goals?  

And how about you? Are you telling others: "You will never make it to the top. It's way too difficult!"?

3 things we can do instead of complaining

In everyone of us there is a little complainer. 

Every now and then we find ourselves complaining about different things in our lives. We complain about all kind of things like weather, politicians, our financial situation, partners, our managers, colleagues, jobs, neighbours and the list can go on.

What is all the complaining for? 

Maybe for attention, sympathy or validation. Maybe because it's easier to complain than to find a solution, maybe to avoid responsibility or just because we might think it's a good conversation starter. 

Since we spend so much time at work, this is also most of the time a great source of reasons for complaining: colleagues, management, offices, policies, AC, equipment, coffee, Mondays, working hours, parking places, cleaning person and about so many other things. Whatever the reasons are, if we do it too often we will not even realize that it has become part of our attitude. It has become a habit and we have become complainers. 

Complainers usually transmit negative feelings, they are pesimistic and they are not open to think about solutions. If in the private life we can choose the persons we spend time with, at the workplace we can't always do this.  

Since it doesn't make  much sense to try and change the people around us, here is what we can do so that we don't end up being a complainer.  

Generally there are three healty things we can do about unpleasant situations: 

• Change the situation. We do something right now or make a plan that will help us change the situation and make it better in the future,
• Totally accept the situation. We take the things as they are and we will not have negative thoughts or complain about it.
• Leave the situation. We consciously decide to move on and leave behind  the things, environment or people related to the bad experience.                                                                                            (Eckhart Tolle, The power of now)

If we find ourselves in a situation we don't like, the worst thing we can do to ourselves and to the people around us is to stay in the same situation and complain.

Just complaining will not bring anything good.

Women's career and 21st century solutions

Women and work. Women rights. Women discrimination. These are some of the worldwide always actual topics.

Gender equality, salary differences based on gender discrimination, women and top management positions, modern slavery, domestic abuse, right to property, harassment are still issues affecting the women of the 21st century.

During the whole 19th century, women had no political rights though there had been some movement in other areas to advance the rights of women. By the early 19th century, acceptable occupations for working women were limited to factory labor or domestic work. Writing and teaching where the only professions where women were not excluded from. In some European countries,  until 1965 married women did not receive the right to work without their husband's permission. Later on, despite their increased presence in the work force, most women still had primary responsibility for housework and family care.

A crucial issue for many women was maternity leave, or time off from their jobs after giving birth. Although in most states, a full-time worker was entitled to time off and a  job when she returned, only a few states by the early 1990s required the leave to be paid.

Today many women are continuing to strive for their career and at the same time to build up a family. They don't only want a job, they want their merits to be recognised, to get management roles and to eliminate salary gaps based on gender discrimination. They want to be independent, to decide for their life and actions.  

Companies who are chasing valuable candidates have noticed how strong  this social trend has become and some of them came up with measures that are meant to encourage women to focus on their career by postponing their family life. 

Two of these companies are Apple and Facebook. Recently, the two international companies announced that they are or will pay the egg freezing for the employees who are interested in this procedure. This was presented to the public as a great benefit that is responding to the needs of the employees.

It seems to be the perfect solution for those who have to or want to postpone the childbirth.

However, I can't stop thinking at the actual message behind this program.

What are the employers encouraging? Is this going to be a relief for the employees or it will actually put more pressure on them?

In my opinion, the fine print text that comes with this program is: "A woman's career is not being compatible with motherhood. Therefore we help you to postpone the childbirth as much as possible and concentrate on work ".

How about paying for nannies, flexible working time or home office in the first 1 - 2 years after the baby's birth, longer parental vacation for the father and programs to encourage fathers to get more involved in their parental activities, creating or supporting a kindergarten near the company?

Arenˋt these types of measures the ones which truly encourage and support families and career?

In my opinion they are and they should be used and promoted as much as possible. These are also the measures who will help companies to gain the loyalty and commitment from the employees.

Although things are going in the right direction, it will still take lots of effort for our society to get to the point where women are not discriminated because they are young and want to have both career and family.

A change in the pulic mentality has to happen, politics needs to set the ground rules and the employers need to change their perspective on family vs. commitment to the company.

Effects of INCONSISTENT management

Consistency in the workplace helps employees feel secure about their work responsibilities and workplace demands. Consistent management builds trust, respect and credibility and will encourage a rational and reliable behavior. 

Inconsistent managers are a nightmare. 

It is always very hard to work with such people because you never know where they stand and they cannot be trusted. They appear at times to be physically present when their brain has left the building. Sometimes they show empathy sometimes they act as small dictators.

Other than a tremendous annoyance, does leader's inconsistency really cause harm?

YES!

Inconsistent management can damage the morale, self-esteem and productivity of the employees and even impact the overall success of an organization. The potential impact on performance is considerable.   

Let’s take for example inconsistency in commitments.

One of the most demotivating and exhausting aspects within teams at workplace is the wasted time, attention and effort on initiatives or projects that are great and important for a few weeks or a few months and then ignored as leaders move onto the next “hot” idea. If you have committed to a course of action, be consistent and follow-up, seeing it to its end.

Managers who are not consistent in their decision making and behavior will create fear and uncertainty throughout the team.

A manager has always the attention of his team members and he needs to show the same positive and consistent face them.  Of course, we are all humans and not all mornings are nice and shiny. However, self-control is absolutely necessary in order to avoid outbursts of anger, mixed messages, or other destructive and morale-sapping leadership behavior.

How do employees naturally react to inconsistent management?

They don’t trust their manager anymore. They will doubt any advice, guidance or promises and they will act accordingly.

They will start skipping hierarchical levels and go to those managers that are consistent and reliable.

They will approve, but not agree. Most employees are afraid of conflict especially with their managers and therefore, they will never tell their manager directly that they don’t understand a decision or that their manager is acting out of character on a certain occasion. They will simply nod and smile and go back to their office thinking “Here we go again. Another nonsense and useless decision.”

They will have a very slow reaction to the guidelines and requests of the manager. All of their time and energy will be spent talking about or complaining about their manager and about his irregular moods or missteps and work won’t get done.

Consistency makes very often the difference between failure and success. Even the best business plans will fail without a dedication to consistency.  

About self-responsibility at workplace and insanity

Self-responsibility can be defined as the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management. 

Whether in personal life or at the workplace, when something goes wrong or it doesn't go the way we want, most of us try and find excuses or to find the people guilty for the situation. There will always be someone else or a certain context we can blame and if we can’t find anything rational, then we choose to think that we had bad luck. 

This way we move on and doing the same things we did before because we are convinced the problem was somewhere outside of us or out of our control. We hope that the people around us will do things right next time, we wait for a better context or for the good luck to come. Taking the responsibility for our actions and for our lives is not the most comfortable way, but is for sure the way to change those things in our lives that we are not happy with.

The best thing about realizing that we are responsible for what is going on in our lives is that, this implies the fact that have also the power to do something in order to change the things we don’t like. We don’t need to wait for others to do things better or for a turn of good luck. We can do something right away and it’s up to us to decide what or how we will do it.

In the workplace environment, avoiding responsibility can be easily recognized whenever we hear statements like: “We could have finished the project on time if the Accounting would've given us the right calculations” or “The meeting would have been much more successful if we had a better agenda.” Each of these statements exemplifies what it means to place blame on another member of the team, rather than working to solve the problem as a collective unit. Moreover, individuals tend also to place the blame on others for their under-performance. Affirmations like “I could have reached my objectives if I had a better training” or “I could work more effectively if my colleagues would be more organized” are examples of situations where self-responsibility is avoided. This attitude will only create unnecessary animosity among coworkers and managers and will definitely have a negative impact on the performance and motivation of the employees.

If we are honest to ourselves, we will be able to recognize all the situations in which we are shifting the responsibility for our professional mistakes or failures on external factors. This is the first step in taking personal responsibility. 

The next step is to think about what our role in that specific situation was and what we could have done differently or better. Although every one of us has different tasks to accomplish, there is always something everyone can be doing to have a more positive and progressive impact on the workplace as whole. 

The link towards positive change is to take action in order to avoid future failure or mistakes. If we are not sure exactly what would be the most important or the best thing to do, we should at least try to do something different until we will find out what is that thing that brings us where we want.

         

            Acknowledging our part of “guilt” will make us learn and act differently in the future. Otherwise, we will do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. 
This is what Albert Einstein called Insanity. 

Self-presentation in interviews - Practical Tips

Tell us something about yourself. 

This is maybe one of the more underestimated interview parts of all. Everyone thinks it’s such an easy task to talk about ourselves and most candidates don't prepare at all for this. Talking about ourselves it sounds easy because we know very well what we have done and what our responsibilities were. However, in an interview we might discover that things are not so simple. If we don't prepare in advance, we will end up saying things that are not so relevant for the employer, that don't make too much sense or we will talk too much about the less important things.


It happens to me quite often, when I talk to candidates prior to the interviews, to hear "Self presentation, yes...I know what to say...I have been to many interviews before". My question 'Were those interviews successful?' makes them wonder and be quiet for a while.

Having a good self-presentation will help us to draw the attention of the interviewer(s) to the best of our strengths and away from your weaknesses. Ideally we should prepare a tailor -made presentation for each and every interview. If this seems too much, one option would be to write our highlights into bullet points and adapt it to the type of job we are applying for.

Usually approximately 2 minutes should be enough for the self-presentation. Here are the main points that should be included in the speech:

• personal background,
• educational background,
• achievements in our past or current employment;
• one or two examples of projects/responsibilities/achievements relevant for job we are applying
• our future career goals and how the job we are interviewing for would fit into our plans;
• summarization on why we are at the interview (explain how the job and our expertise would contribute both to the company and our career goals in the most satisfying manner).

Self-presentations should be prepared in advanced and before going to the interview we should ask ourselves:
Is the presentation interesting, overall?
Am I able to present the highlights of my achievements and strengths accurately?
Am I matching my skills to the needs of the vacancy the interview is for?
Am I confident when I am speaking?
Is my style of speaking clear and loud enough, fast/slow enough?

After having our presentation ready, it comes one of the essential parts: practice.  We should be careful to maintain a continuous flow, have a confident tone but not being too loud or arrogant and exclude the breaks of ‘aaaaa’/ ‘hmmmmm’ from our speech.  

What also always helps is to be critical to ourselves and after every interview to think about the way we presented ourselves. Recognizing the moments where we could have said things in a better way will help us to improve from one interview to another.

And remember that having many interviews doesn't necessarily mean that we are also good at it.  

“You can do it!” - why encouragements can fail

Managers have more than other people the power and tools to influence people’s lives. Employees look up to their managers for examples and for feedback. They try to learn and find those qualities who could also make them successful.

Self confidence is a quality that can be trained and that needs to be feed with constant reassurement so that it will stay at a high level. Even the people who have generally a high level of self confidence go through moments of uncertainty when they need someone to tell them “You can do it!”

It happens quite a lot to hear encouragements from our managers but somehow only a few of these incentives have an impact on us. Why? Maybe because we don’t appreciate those persons, because we think they are just saying it to make us feel good or because they don’t know us good enough to be able to estimate if we can do what we want or not.

I was asked many times who is the person who influenced my professional life and whom I appreciate as a professional. My thoughts go always to one of my first managers because he encouraged me to pursue my dream. He said I have all it takes to achieve what I want and he is convinced I can do it. For me it meant so much, specially because I was at the beginning of my career and I was not sure if I had chosen the right area to work in. His words had such an impact on me and motivated me to work very hard for what I wanted professionally.

Thinking back, I realize that this specific encouragement had such a positive impact on me because I had a great respect for that person, I was impressed by his career and we worked together for enough time so that he could see my performance and potential. And there was something else. There was something in the way he talk to me. I had the feeling he is honest.

The risk of encouraging someone is to be perceived as fake and therefore cause more damage than good.

We shouldn't say “You can do it!” to someone if:

• we don’t know the other person good enough to tell what are his\her skills and abilities
• we think the person can’t do what she\he wants but we say it anyway because we find nothing better to say and we think it can’t hurt
• we don’t have enough information about what the other person wants to do
• we don’t have any examples and arguments to support our encouragement.

For some people it is natural to make positive and effective encouragements, however most of us need to learn this ability and to refine it in time. I find this to be an essential ability for every manager because this will help to build up and maintain an increased employee motivation. Employee who have a high level of self confidence can also have a great performance and do whatever it takes to reach the goals of the company.  

When the training ends - learning, behaviors, results

"All men by nature desire knowledge."Aristotle

Training at the workplace provides both the employees and the company with benefits that make the costs and time invested worthwhile. The only condition is that the employees will also apply what they have learned  during  the training.

At one training I have been a couple of years ago the participants agreed at the end of the first training session that they will adopt and implement a certain working model for 40 days. After this time, there will be a  second training session and the employees will have to report on how did the implementation of the method go, what were the results, what was their general feedback. What do you think it happened?

Form a group of 10 people:

-  3 said they tried to apply the model for a couple of days but they returned to their old system because it was more convenient for them

- 5 applied just some parts of the model and only occasionally

-  2 people applied the model entirely and through the whole period of time

Of course this is just an example and it can’t be generalized. However, I realized one again how important is to measure the effectiveness of training.

Most training sessions, especially those that are done  with  an external trainer, usually end with  a questionnaire regarding the perception of the participants. This  kind of  measurement is only showing if the participants were generally ‘happy’ with the training but they don’t give any information on how much they have learned, what is the probability for them to apply the things they have learned and most  of all what are the end results.

The organization through the line managers and up to the board of directors should be the ones having the greatest interest in evaluating and validating the training and learning. In this regard they should ask for support from the trainers and  most importantly to support all the that is being presented during the training.

On the other hand, every employee has the responsibility to take the most of every training and apply it, at least when it comes to the ones paid by the company. More than a moral responsibility this should be seen as an opportunity for personal and professional development. Applying the new things learnt in training will take us most of the times out of our comfort zone.  Nevertheless, as Kristen Wiig said: ’When you go out of your comfort zone and it works there’s nothing more satisfying.’  

Trust at workplace – from words to actions

Trust is one of the most important elements in building relationships both at work and in private life. It is one of the essential parts in managing people and building high-performance teams and organizations.

Trust is built on actions not on words. Many leaders see trust as one of the core values of the organization that need to be communicated to employees and to the public. However, communicating alone is not sufficient to change how people behave and what they believe. Trust should be seen as an operational necessity. Without it the members of the team will not feel safe enough to open up, to admit when they have made a mistake, to take risks and to collaborate with each other. Building and maintaining a work environment where trust is not just a declared value, is one of the keys to have a functional and productive team.

When looking at the organization form hierarchical point of view, the top management should be the source of inspiration for all employees when it comes to organizational values. Then, through departmental and team managers the values should be transmitted and adopted from all employees. How can managers build and maintain trust in their team? What are the behaviors and actions that help can built at the workplace?

Leading by example

Leaders need to be a living example of the values of the organization and show people that they trust others. Team members are always watching and learning from their managers. Every employee wants to trust and believe in their managers. They want see that their managers are really looking out for their best interests and that they can rely on them when it comes to work related situations. 

Consistency between words and actions

Doing what we say we will do is one of the basic conditions when it comes to gain other’s trust. People need to know that they can rely on us and that things agreed it will also be done. Without this the interactions will be superficial and unproductive. There are of course situations when because of different factors we will not be able to deliver what we initially said. When this happens it is essential to be open and communicate the obstacles as soon as possible, ask for help if necessary and/or communicate what we intend to do.

Ownership of mistakes

Working together often brings mistakes. Blaming others it might seem the easiest way, however when everyone starts pointing fingers, an unpleasant atmosphere will be developed. What can be done instead is to encourage the team to think about the mistake in a constructive way: find the best solution, think about ways to avoid that in the future and learn from the mistakes.

Trust is the foundation of all solid and healthy relationships and while it can take a long time to build, at the same time can be destroyed by a single action or misconception.

Can trust be rebuilt after it has been betrayed? What does it take for that to happen? People and situations are so different and is almost impossible to generalize and give a clear answer. What it can be done is trying to build and maintain trust and when we fail in doing that, to do our best in rebuilding trust. Only this way we will find the answer to the two questions from above.