Why “Short-Term Strategy” is a Misnomer

Have you ever been stuck in a strategic planning session, complaining to yourself: “This is nothing more than a continuation of old, tired thoughts?” You need to intervene and somehow shift the level of thinking. But you don’t know what to say, and you certainly don’t want to make things worse. Do you suffer in silence? Or attempt to provide some leadership?

The truth is, you may already be someone who has been looking ahead and wondering why your company isn’t seeing the future the way you do. If you are, realize that this is uncommon. Most of your peers are fine going with the flow.

Want to be different? Don’t sit back waiting for a juicy, post-retreat “I told you so.” Instead, harness your commitment by challenging your team to think strategically. Here are some ways to steer the ship.

  1. Insist on planning for the long-term

Start by insisting that “strategies” are not the same as “tactics”. In this vein, there is no such thing as “short-term strategies”. Tactics should only exist to implement a strategic plan, which should always be long-term. While it’s entirely possible to engage in daily tactics without a strategy, it’s not likely to be sustainable. At some point, your lack of foresight will lead to actions which make things worse.

While some say they have a “long-term, 5-year strategy”, you should immediately object. Once again, there is no such thing. If asked, explain that a 5-year strategy is just a lazy extrapolation of past events, plus a few tweaks. It’s the easy way out – the path of least resistance.

However, this is the same thinking that dooms companies. There’s a reason GraceKennedy created a 25 year strategy in 1995 and subsequently left its competitors in the dust. Most can’t even remember who they were.

Remember Kodak? The reason Fuji (their arch-rivals) became a chemical company as Kodak went bankrupt is a case study in short verus long term thinking. In 2000, both were on top, but only 12 years later, Fuji’s pivot was paying off while Kodak was reaping the results of stale, tactical judgment.

The point of a long-term strategy is to future-proof the organization, and assure its ongoing success. That won’t come by restricting your thinking to the comfortable future, as Kodak did.

Instead, your company needs to look over the horizon and pick a destination. In other words, it must be like Columbus. Fellow sailors in the 1490s were afraid of sailing off the edge of the world. Today, managers are just as scared to craft plans too far into the future. Consequently, they limit their companies.

  1. Emphasize the next generation

Short-term planning also tends to be a selfish exercise, by default. After all, it’s only human to care about oneself first.

However, a team which creates outcomes 15-30 years in the future instantly turns on a switch. As if by magic, it automatically focuses on the next generation.

For example, a Caribbean company that intended to enter Latin America crafted big market-share goals. However, via detailed planning, they discovered they would need a headquarters in Miami. Over time, the corporation would become American.

After confronting this fact, they decided not to permanently disenfranchise future generations of Caribbean leaders. To keep the company in the region, they scaled back the plan significantly.

But even in the face of such useful thinking, some argue that technology is moving so fast that you can’t plan for it. However, in long-term planning sessions, teams learn that customer’s core needs don’t change. The only question they need to keep asking is, “How will they be fulfilled?”

In this context, technology changes the way customers’ unmet needs are addressed, so emerging innovations must be considered. But the overall goal of serving customers doesn’t change from one generation to the next.

Therefore, the main question to ask now is “Where is our company headed in the long-term, and what technologies and human capabilities should we invest in…today… in order to get there?” Good answers are hard to find, yet executive teams have no choice but to embrace the struggle. Why? In part, they will always have limited information. And disruptions have become a fact of life.

In the face of these limitations, you must still employ long-term thinking. As Churchill said, “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.”

The point of a long-term exercise is not to be correct. Or accurate. Instead, it’s to engage in the difficult planning and decision processes that can make or break an enterprise. As a participant in a session, it’s a worthy challenge to inspire your team to tackle.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

A Love Letter to Note-Taking

In this week’s ProductivityCast episode, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art voiced their thoughts on note-taking—the value of note-taking, methods we use, and tips and tricks for taking notes in different contexts. Note: I say that we're covering note-taking methodologies in this episode, but we will actually be discussing those in the next several episodes, so stay tuned. Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing A Love Letter to Note-Taking, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | A Love Letter to Note-Taking Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | A Love Letter to Note-Taking Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. OneNote Workflowy Cornell Note-Taking Method Mind Mapping 3 Best Note-Taking Methods Common Note-taking Methods 7 Most Efficient Note Taking Methods Evernote FreeMind/Mind42 Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:22 I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to be talking about some fundamentals in the productivity world. And that is note taking. What I'd like us to do today is for us to talk about why we take notes that is we around the roundtable here at ProductivityCast, why we take notes, why maybe you should take notes. And then what I'd like for us to do is do a survey, kind of an overview of the top five or so, note taking methods that we know about and or use or have used in the past. And that will hopefully help you get a better understanding about how to take notes better. And so let's start off with why take notes. What is the what is the reason for taking notes, and I will step outside of that answer for just a moment to note that the note taking space, that is the industry around notes is roughly a billion dollar industry and is supposed to grow to about $1.3 billion by 2026. So in just under, you know half a decade, we're gonna see this explosion of the note taking software market, this is just in software, we're not even talking about paper planners, which is another multi, you know, billion dollar industry. And it's really interesting to see that note taking software is so popular, even though note taking itself is not the most sexy topic that people really think about when they think about productivity. It's just one of those things that kind of rests into the background. But it's something that I think all of us do, in some way, shape or form. And I'm curious why you take notes, what was the impetus for you to start taking notes? And why do you take notes? And what do you take notes of today? Art Gelwicks 2:01Well, for me, it's pretty straightforward. It's because I can't remember everything. And it's for the things that I need to remember. And it will, when I think about notes, everything goes back to academic note taking we think about sc...

The Chief Strategy Officer in Mexico Study

If you happen to be a Chief Strategy Officer or someone in charge of the strategy function in your company, you may be looking for useful information to help you play the role.

But there’s not that much you can find with a simple search.

Here’s an exception – one which should appeal to Caribbean strategy professionals. Please share this with your colleagues across the region!

It outlines some interesting roles that CSO’s play, plus other findings that should impact the role of strategists in your company.

The Chief Strategy Office in Mexico – Report

Four-Day Workweek’s Impact on Productivity

The four-day workweek is lately in the news. Its promise is greater economic benefits for businesses and governments, and increased productivity for organization’s human resources. How should we think about this from a personal and business productivity perspective? Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art share their thoughts on the four-day workweek. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/120 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing Four-Day Workweek's Impact on Productivity from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Four-Day Workweek's Impact on Productivity Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Four-Day Workweek's Impact on Productivity Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. The Day After Tomorrow: an Autonomy study on the 4 day week in the private sector Related: The Five-Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness by Stephan Aarstol Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:22I'm Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:25And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of productivity cast. Today, we are going to be covering something that I think is quite kind of interesting, it will give us an opportunity to really think through something that we have just kind of taken for granted, it kind of sits in the background. And that is the workweek, how we structure our lives is so built on the routine around this structure of really the eight hour work day. And the concept that we work, a regular set of hours throughout our work week and our weekends being structured to be this space where we rest between work. And the reality is, is that much of it is a bit of a farce. We spend so much of our time thinking inside and outside of work when we're on so to speak. And yet at the same time, we don't really recognize the fact that we are always working in a way, whether that be being applied to life work or work work. There's kind of both of those pieces going on. And I'm really curious from the ProductivityCast team hear our thoughts around this. And what piqued this was that autonomy, which is a consultancy, based out of the UK, they put out a recent study that discusses the profitability of UK businesses, if they were to implement this four day working week concept. So that came to prominence in my own mind, we've talked about this on in on ProductivityCast In the past, and now the study came out. And in essence, it covered some really interesting and I think compelling arguments for the case of having a four day workweek. And so what I thought we would do is cover kind of the big ticket items that the study identified, and then talk about how we all view the four day workweek in the context of the US and other jurisdictions how they wo...

Strategy: Intentions or Predictions?

As a leader of your company, you may notice managers and board members struggling to be strategic. Trapped in low-level thinking, they habitually think micro when macro is needed. How do you help them craft inspiring visions that shift the way your organization operates?

At the start of each year, it’s only natural to aspire to be new, lofty and game-changing. As your followers look to you for direction, you know you need to say “something”. But the past couple of years may have led you to become cautious.

Perhaps your COVID-era plans now seem like bad jokes. You went out on a limb and called for big results, only to see them crushed. Today, you are gun-shy. You would be happy to exit 2022 without being forced to close your business. And if you don’t own a company, you just want to keep your job. It’s only natural to “small up” in the face of such realities.

However, these are exactly the fearful instincts that will turn out another Blockbuster Video, Nokia or Blackberry. They crashed out of industries they once dominated in a matter of years.

What do you need to do to lead your company effectively from the future rather than the past, even when your recent track record has been spotty?

  1. Stop Trying to Predict

By definition, a prediction is an extrapolation of the past. In stable, predictable times, you could use this tool to plan the future and your strategy.

But that’s exactly what you were taught. Your job as a manager was to produce results in the short term based on the recent past; tactical thinking that won’t help you when strategy is needed. Unfortunately, those days are over.

Now you must lead even if your prior predictions were terribly wrong, and you looked bad, foolish or stupid. Your natural tendency may be to think in shorter time-frames in order to make fewer mistakes.

As a leader crafting a fresh future, you need to stop predicting. Coming up with a new vision was never about making predictions and never will be.

  1. Replace Predictions with Intentions

The best strategic planning is about crafting intentions rather than predictions. They are always born in the future. Imagine a six-year-old saying “I want to be a doctor!” Good parents don’t scoff at such intentions, even though they aren’t based on facts.

However, the same child, if asked to predict, would probably say, “I want to keep playing with my toys!“

As an adult, you should gather all the facts you can muster. But at the end of the fact-finding, you must still craft an intention that is merely informed by the data, not limited by it. In other words, there will always be a risk when creating intentions which are meant to be ground-breaking, or transformational.

But what if your last few intentions produced nothing at all? What should you do then to be an effective leader?

  1. Close Out Prior Intentions and Craft New Ones

Even if recent efforts have failed, your organization still needs you to lead from the future. However, you could be hampered by your track record.

If so, consider bringing previous intentions to closure so your followers can hear a new one.

This may sound challenging or painful, but it isn’t. Simply take a critical mass of employees along a journey to explore the facts regarding the last failed intention. Doing so will lay the ground for whatever is coming next.

But be clear about your role. As a leader, you are the limiting factor. When you fail to create an effective, inspiring vision, don’t expect your managers to take up the slack. Their skills are limited.

However, as the leader, you have no excuse.

Your job is to get up in front of your staff each and every year with a vision of breakthrough results. When you shy away from doing so, you are dooming your organization. Don’t be surprised when it returns the favor with mediocre performance.

Seems impossible? If you can’t manage, get expert help. As the new year starts, your company needs you to be at your best, on top of your game. Call your personal development the recurring price to be paid by anyone who is in your position.

Also, you may need to train your managers and board members to think from the future, and be inspiring. At the very least, they should understand what a strategic vision is meant to do, so they don’t become obstacles.

But the buck stops with you. It’s your job to demonstrate that everyday management may be about predicting, but strategic leadership is about crafting inspiring intentions.

In summary, your people want to be led. As the occupant of an executive position, do your job.

Building a Memory Palace

In this week's episode, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art explain the concept of building a memory palace (a/k/a Method of Loci, or Journey Method) and then discuss its veracity in work and personal life, and some productive uses of the memory palace for someone starting out. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/119 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing building a memory palace from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Building a Memory Palace Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Building a Memory Palace Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Method of loci https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsA Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to listeners to another, I think, action-packed episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we are going to be talking about something that goes by many names, but is all the same thing. We're going to be talking about the method of loci, also known as the memory palace method, or the Journey method. And what we're going to do today is really talk about its history. I just want to go through a little bit about what the history of the method of loci is, then we will talk about the method itself, how it actually operates, what are the functions of the method, the primary part of our conversation will then center on whether any of us have used the memory palace technique or the journey of method, technique, and what our experiences are with other kinds of mnemonics in either studies or at work. And then we'll close out with maybe some productive uses for you. And where you can apply the Journey method. Let's get into first, the history and the idea of the Journey method. The method of loci really started out in the concept of the ancient Greeks and Romans talking about the idea of memory, and how the brain really works, how the mind works. In this particular case, the, the ancient Greeks and Romans had a different perception or conception of where the mind lived. So we won't get into that. But in essence, it was used for memorizing everything when you studied in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, you were memorizing full treatises, and all of these things were required of you in order to be a learned individual, the mnemonic system known now as the Journey method, method of loci or the memory palace was developed. And so this is an very ancient concept. And so what I want to do is just cover what and how I understand the method. And then gentlemen, you can jump in with any questions that you might have. So the way in which I think about the Journey method is four distinct components. I use the acronym alles AI ls to remember it generally.

2021 in Review, 2022 in Preview

In this week's episode, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art gathered round the microphones to discuss what they noticed happening in the world of personal productivity, and then what their plans are for next year (in terms of their own systems and other work they are doing). (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/118 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing 2021 in Review, 2022 in Preview from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | 2021 in Review, 2022 in Preview Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | 2021 in Review, 2022 in Preview Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. ClickUpZoomGoogle MeetApple FaceTimeProductivity unicorns like ClickUp face off in competitive market What the future of work means for productivity tools - ProtocolEvernoteGoodnotesZapierIFTTT Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:23And I'm Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:25And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:27Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to be doing a year in review and a year in preview for personal productivity, both in the world of productivity and in our systems. So we're just going to cover some of the notable things that we kind of noticed this particular year. And it was a kind of an odd year, considering we've been dealing with the pandemic over the past two years. And so we're gonna highlight some of the notable items there. We're then going to talk a little bit about the things that we think happened, notably in our own personal productivity systems, or kind of in our world, and then what would like to what we'd like to happen again, the good things, and what we'd like to be different the areas of improvement, so to speak. And then we'll talk a little bit about what we're planning for 2022. For those of you who kind of follow it, pay attention to what we're doing out there in the world, you can kind of see and follow along with us as we make these kinds of implementations into our own worlds. And so let's start off with what were the kind of notable productivity events of 2021. What were the things that you really noticed in the personal productivity world that happened? Art Gelwicks 1:37I mean, I think the biggest things that everybody is knee deep in right now and have truly recognized that wasn't necessarily new in 2021. But it became part of our norm is the understanding that the office as we used to know it has changed working from home hybrid from work, full remote work, whatever you want to call it, is here, and it's not going anywhere, it's no longer just a perk, it's no longer just a fun thing that you occasionally get to do this, this is a part of the new norm and will not be going away. And from a personal productivity standpoint,

WhatsApp Groups for Employee Engagement

In today’s COVID era, local companies have seen a dramatic rise in the use of WhatsApp groups among staff. It’s been a love/hate relationship for most, but online groups have become a critical channel of communication. Is your organization boosting employee engagement via these groups, or sitting by hoping the fad will die off?

Remote work has made virtual, intra-company communication more important than ever. By replacing its digital sibling, email messaging, WhatsApp has become the popular default choice. Now, your official email updates are being ignored. Your employees’ habits have shifted; they are using the app over a hundred times per day.

Unfortunately, a number of poor practices have also arisen. In response, most executives and HR departments watch from the sidelines as the software shapes their organization’s culture. No-one knows what to do, or even whose responsibility it is to ensure this channel adds productivity. How should your company influence a change which is already underway?

  1. Accept WhatsApp’s power and limitations

Understand that you can only influence WhatsApp, not control it. Unlike email, the messages being shared aren’t sitting on IT’s servers, where management can observe and dispose of them at will.

Also, individual accounts don’t belong to you. Disgruntled ex-employees can continue their hourly gripe sessions with key workers for months to come.

As such, WhatsApp groups have a life of their own. For example, a small chat between friends can quickly grow to reach the limit of 256 users. Any hot topic can dominate the space and take over attention, including office gossip. Individuals can use it for self-promotion, or to attack others.

Unfortunately, the range of responses is limited. For example, when a group develops a nasty sub-culture, an administrator may only see a single course of action – to delete the group. However, this final act of desperation doesn’t prevent former members from forming a brand new chat to continue the discussion.

Yet, despite this danger, WhatsApp remains the most effective way to have a conversation within a small to medium-sized group of people. It’s already your employees’ most popular app. Some companies try to counter its power by launching their own app. If you try this tactic, “Good luck!” Be prepared for staff to bypass it. Instead, they’ll discuss your attempts to take over their chats in their groups.

Your best bet? Accept WhatsApp’s role as today’s trusted, and most frequently used, channel of corporate communication between staff.

  1. Play the Role of Coach

If the channel is already out of your control, the best option is to provide workers with skills to use the platform effectively. Essentially, this “if you-can’t-beat-them-join-them” strategy is your way of spreading sound WhatsApp principles to others. You hope that they’ll act in ways that support the well-being of your employees.

This means that someone needs to become versed in the apps’ best practices, such as:

  • realizing that group chats are not the same as individual chats – once the number of participants grows beyond 10, a unique space is created.
  • setting up a moderator and establishing guidelines or rules of engagement.
  • developing a strategy for large groups, such as splitting it when the number of members reaches 100.

Where do these come from? This short list is based on my experience in regional WhatsApp groups of all sizes. Your company needs to develop its own insights in keeping with your policies and strategy.

The sad fact is, most companies don’t train their employees to be productive in either meetings or electronic messages (email and WhatsApp). The net effect? A ton of waste, even as these activities take up a reported 25-50% of employee time.

  1. Encourage Exception Reporting

Unfortunately, WhatsApp’s design encourages users to think of themselves as individuals, not corporate citizens. Therefore, they act in their own interests, first and foremost.

However, there’s another dimension which you must consider: the impact of online discussions on the entire staff. For example, when an employee quits, but doesn’t exit a WhatsApp group discussing sensitive company matters, everyone is affected.

Your organization should act to introduce this broader perspective.

In cyber-space, employees need to ask a new question: “What is best for all concerned?” In this context, someone can act to protect a fellow employee, a department or their entire company by intervening and alerting others when trouble is brewing.

The truth is, these are uncharted waters. Executives who ignore the powerful immediacy of WhatsApp Group communication are putting their heads in the sand, hoping it will go away. It won’t. Gear yourself and your staff for the new reality of remote work dominated by digital messaging at scale.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

Overcoming the Flaw of Forgetting Tasks

Like most people, do you share the challenge of keeping track of your to-dos, especially during the holiday season? You may think it has something to do with your personality, but…surprise: it doesn’t. Here’s why.

We human beings have a flaw. When we make future commitments, we find them hard to track, manage, and trigger at the right instant. Consequently, quite often, we simply forget to do what we intend.

In fact, the further away in the future a tricky activity must be performed, the more likely it is to fall through the cracks. In those moments, we blame our memory, or psychology. We suspect it reflects a lack of personal motivation.

But the most effective professionals have found a way to recall tasks later, every time. But their performance has nothing to do with their mental ability or willpower. What can you do to be more like them?: flawless.

1. Forget About Using Memory

Some believe that the right answer is to cut down your commitments, but that isn’t a real solution for people of even average ambition. Don’t surrender. Instead, craft task management techniques which match your aspirations.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. First, you’ll have to undo mistakes you are making and untruths you were taught.

One mistake is to continue using your memory to track tasks. Why? Unless you have relaxed into a simple retirement, you are already committing to more tasks than you can recall. This is the direct outcome of being an engaged employee.

Unfortunately, your brain is no longer 11 years old. It cannot track tasks the way it once did, without help. Inside of a complex life, it doesn’t keep up.

Instead, give your memory the sack. Take away the job of tracking tasks and hire an external tool. You’ll stop complaining about the onset of early dementia, and, like the most accomplished professionals, your focus will shift.

When these exceptional individuals fail to manage their tasks, they talk about systemic issues instead of personality weaknesses. They know they use a system comprised of a range of paper and digital tools, and they are willing to upgrade it as needed to stay on top of a growing task volume.

As such, when there’s a failure, they change their system, rather than feeling guilty, or stupid.

Thus, they reverse a pernicious untruth. In school, we were shown that smart kids who did well on tests could remember everything; hence, their high marks. The irony is that, as an adult, the wise move is to do the opposite and stop using what’s called “prospective memory” for to-dos.

It’s fine to use “retrospective memory” to recall facts and figures. If you’re in the horse racing industry, don’t forget the number of yards in a furlong. You need this kind of memory to perform your job.

But when it comes to prospective memory, the best practice is to overturn what you were taught.

2. The Replacements

Once you make the commitment to unlearn the use of memory, don’t delay. Most start with a task or to-do list, usually written on paper. But nowadays, some of your younger colleagues are skipping over paper, going straight to a simple task app on their smartphones. So can you.

That should work for a while until you take on more tasks. Then, you should upgrade to a more powerful task management app. After that, with more growth, you will need to switch to using a calendar or even an auto-scheduler.

But these aren’t just matters of taste.

You should follow the described sequence in order to augment your capacity. To illustrate, think of a spoon as a device to transfer some soil. But if you want to move more earth, you should probably switch to a hand-trowel, shovel, wheelbarrow or tractor. Notice that each tool has greater capacity. But the “right” solution is the one that fits the job at hand.

The same applies to your choice of paper task list, simple task app, complex task app, digital calendar, auto-scheduler or trained administrative assistant. Once again, pick the right one from the lineup for your current circumstances. Then, keep an eye on early warning signs, which indicate it’s time to switch.

These aren’t common lessons taught in school. However, as quality task management becomes a hallmark of high professionalism, they are becoming widely accepted.

It’s ironic – the best memory for all your adult to-dos isn’t actually memory at all – not if you want perfection. Use a system that matches the depth of your commitments. In these tumultuous times, this is a terrific aspiration to create for 2022.

P.S. Registration is now open for the Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit coming up on March 3-5, 2022.

Why CEO’s Want HR to Transform Itself

Human Resource departments are facing an unprecedented demand to become analytic and data-driven. But few are answering the call. What should HR practitioners and consultants do to respond?

A few years ago, I substituted for a VP-HR of a major company who died suddenly. For four months, I attempted to pick up the pieces while seeking a replacement. I discovered that he didn’t leave much of a structure behind. Everything, it seemed, was in his head.

Fast forward to today, and HR organizations are under increasing pressure due to the COVID-era need to digitize functions. CEO’s have longed for HR Departments which look more like Finance, Operations and Sales, whose employees are digitally savvy.

Unfortunately, there are few HR teams I have worked with who have sufficient skillsets and mindsets to embrace technology, analyze data and provide dashboards. Case in point: after facilitating numerous strategic planning retreats, only a single presentation by HR stands out in these areas.

Such was the situation before COVID. Now the pandemic has widened the gap. HR, with low tech skills, has stayed in the same position, watching others surge ahead with new capabilities. This observation is backed up by global research from the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR). Some 60% of HR Professionals say they are falling behind their more tech-savvy colleagues in terms of efficiency and impact.

What can local Human Resource Practitioners do to catch up and close the gap?

  1. Embrace the CEO’s Perspective

Perhaps what scares C-Suite leaders more than anything else is that the pandemic has made HR’s role more important than ever. But, it’s also annoying them at the same time. Why?

They don’t have visibility into staff-driven operations. While most agree they must make fresh investments in people to thrive in a new economy, they lack the data.

For example, while they are painfully aware of talent gaps, HR usually cannot predict what happens after key roles are filled. Will individuals stay? For how long? And should they be paid at the 25th or 75th percentile of the average wage? To what effect?

When such quantifiable questions can’t be answered, it’s easier for executives to invest in a new piece of equipment. After all, it usually comes with an easy-to-understand cost-benefit ratio.

Unfortunately, I only know a couple of CEO’s in the Caribbean who have HR backgrounds. As a result, most leaders don’t intuitively understand the invisible tradeoffs HR must make. And without data, no-one can offer a clear, numbers-driven explanation.

The solution is for HR to think like CEOs who need to implement big, fact-based decisions.

  1. Hire and Train

Maybe not surprisingly, the AIHR survey showed that the best place to develop such talent is at the bottom of the organization. Often, the newest and youngest employees in HR are the most digitally proficient. They are the ones who should drive improvements by picking up new capabilities and teaching them to others.

At the same time, hiring savvy mid-career HR professionals may help fill critical gaps – if they can be found. But the most difficult choices surround those HR team members who don’t have the capacity to grow fast enough. Their future might be grim as their lack of quantitative skills makes it hard for them to find employment.

All these changes add up to a major investment in talent acquisition and development within HR. However, most organizations have not recovered from the deep cuts made in training budgets during the 2008 recession. Arguably, this led to the problems we see today.

  1. Be Strategic

The fact is, most HR departments aren’t in a position to advocate for these investments on their own. They need the company’s entire strategic plan to call for a transformation in staff and talent in order to thrive in the future.

This kind of widespread change requires informed leadership from the top. Consequently, HR must focus on educating other executives using tools such as analytic reports and dashboards. This approach could ultimately lead to the game-changing decisions that can drive any or all other strategies the company pursues. As CEO’s know from painful experience, trying to make big changes with the wrong people in place will fail.

What would it be like to have a top class HR function in your organization? While the global standard has suddenly been raised without warning, take this as an opportunity rather than a rude surprise. Everyone will benefit when HR steps up to the challenge of transforming itself to use analytics. While it probably won’t be the first unit to do so, it has the potential to influence all company functions.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.