Time Management

Martin Manser

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780007358847
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The time management secrets that experts and top professionals use.

Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Time Management.
Includes how to:
• Identify your biggest priorities and find time to achieve them
• Deal with the biggest hidden time-wasters
• Communicate effectively with colleagues and clients
• Cope with information overload
• Take control of your inbox and voicemail

Communicate more effectively

We live in an age of instant communication and email is the most frequently used form. It is not always the best form of communication, though. Sometimes a phone call or talking face to face with a colleague is more effective. The secret is knowing why you are communicating. To just check facts or to build a relationship? In this chapter, you’ll need to focus on how you use the various tools of communication and learn how to be a more effective communicator.

6.1
Think about how you communicate

Most communication in offices these days is through the form of email. It is important to consider other ways of communicating: face to face and the phone.

Here are some of advantages and disadvantages of each form:

• Email. Advantages: It’s fast, gives a permanent record, works across time zones, can have data attached easily, can communicate to many people. Disadvantages: It does not build relationships as well as more direct communication. It is also not good for dealing with sensitive issues.
• Telephone. Advantages: It is more personal than email, illicits an immediate response, is good for developing a rapport and allows you to explain your message further if necessary. Disadvantages: You can’t communicate easily to a large group of people, and it cannot be used throughout the day across all time zones.

case study Sandeep uses his Blackberry a lot. It’s ideal, as he travels extensively, and he can receive all his emails and phone calls at one point, and text friends and colleagues easily. The only problem is knowing when to switch it off, as it can control his life – and that of his partner too. He now disciplines himself to switch it off when he gets off the train at the end of his evening commute.

Face-to-face. Advantages: This form is the most helpful for giving bad news or discussing sensitive information. Likewise when you need to impart important information and when you need to see someone’s response. Disadvantages: It may be expensive in terms of time spent.

Certain kinds of communication should be handled in certain ways:

• When arranging a date for a meeting, phone the one or two people you definitely want at the meeting to get a choice of two (or a maximum of three) potential dates. Then email others to see who can come on those dates.
• When making contact with a new client, phone or email to make an appointment for a face-to-face meeting so that you can build a good working relationship.
• If you’re asking colleagues for comments on a draft proposal by email, state when you want their comments back by.
• To confirm details agreed in a phone conversation, it is best done by email, but to make a legal agreement that both parties have to sign, then a letter is best.
• If you need to explain to your boss why a project is delayed, that is best done in a face-to-face meeting.

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Email is efficient, but may not always be the best way to communicate.

6.2
Cope with email

In the last few years, email has revolutionized the way in which we communicate around the world. It’s cheap, fairly reliable and, above all, it’s fast. But how can we cope with the email inbox?

You will be distracted from your present task if you constantly check emails, so schedule certain times of the day to open and respond to them. Don’t always give in to the pressure to reply immediately.

Here are 10 commandments of email use:

1 Make the subject line clear: this will help your reader see what you are writing about and how important it is.

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2 Include a greeting and close. Having no greeting and/or sign-off is unfriendly. There is no fixed etiquette: the style of greeting in emails is more informal than a letter but putting “Hi Adam” to someone you have not dealt with before is too too casual. Set up your email signatures with a range of phrases you frequently use, such as “Good to have met you on…” and “I look forward to hearing from you”. Include contact information (phone number, address etc) in your ‘signature’.

3 Only send copies to those who really need to see the email: keep to a minimum the number of people you send copies to.

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4 Work out what you want to be the response to your email. Is it clear? Do you want them to reply or not? If you do, by when?

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5 In long emails, give particular attention to the information that appears on the opening screen. Your reader will use that as a basis for deciding whether to scroll down further or not.

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6 Be careful to use the appropriate tone. One of the disadvantages of email is that the words can seem abrupt. You may need to soften the tone to build a relationship with your reader.

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7 Don’t be careless: email is no excuse for inaccurate grammar, spelling or punctuation.

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8 Take care over presentation. Email doesn’t mean that you can write in long rambling sentences without proper paragraphs. Think clearly; draft the text, then go back over it to revise it. For important communications, print the text and read it on hard copy, as you will spot more errors that way.

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9 Use only abbreviations that are generally known, not obscure ones that may be perceived as jargonistic.

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10 Avoid capitals: these indicate SHOUTING and should always be avoided. An email is not the place to be emotional.

Learn to control your use of emails.

6.3
Speak on the phone

Rather than emailing, I prefer to use the telephone if I want to build a business relationship with a colleague in a different organization. The tone of their voice comes over in a phone conversation and I can explain something more easily if I sense that the other person hasn’t understood what I have said.

Remember that phone calls require preparation, though. Make a list of the relevant points you want to discuss or confirm before you call your colleague. As you finish your call, agree and summarize the action points, such as who will do what and by when: “So you’re okay to let me have the details by the end of the week?”

Make a note to file of the key points, and, if important, confirm what you have agreed in an email. Your note to file could be a hard copy in your project file, it could be made electronically on your computer, or could simply be jotted down in your diary – something such as to check at the beginning of the following week that details were sent, and, if not, to chase up that task.

When speaking on the phone, I sometimes ask, “Is now a convenient time to speak?” If it isn’t, then I arrange to speak at a different time that is more convenient to them. I’ve even jokingly begun by saying, “Please excuse this old-fashioned form of communication.” It’s

one minute wonder When making a call, always be prepared to leave a message on an answerphone. Speak more slowly than you would normally; state your name and succinctly explain why you are phoning. Then leave your contact details so the other person can call you back without having to search for your number. It’s surprising how often this is forgotten.

a bit of levity, and also tests the water on whether the call has caught them at a bad moment or busy time. If you sense it has, stay in control of the situation and offer to call them back at a more convenient time.

When speaking to a colleague on the phone, put points across and listen to the response of the other person. If you detect hesitation, you can offer to explain the point again or expand upon it to clarify.

If you are making an arrangement on the phone, minimize further phone calls by saying something such as, “Let’s leave it that we’ll meet at 3pm unless I ring to say otherwise”. This means that you would only have to make a further phone call if the arrangement changed, not simply to confirm it.

Key points when communicating by phone:

• Prepare the points or questions you want to make beforehand.
• After the call, make a note of the key points that were covered.
• Check that everything’s clearly understood during the conversation and agree actions to be taken if required.
• If you are calling to set up a meeting, decide on all the arrangements rather than necessitating a further call to confirm the venue etc.

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Prepare for an important phone call by writing down in advance the relevant points you want to discuss.

6.4
Make better use of your computer

Your computer is more than a typewriter. It contains useful tools that will save you time. Learn what those are to make better use of your time.

• Track changes. Use the ‘track changes’ facility to correct work so that it is clear who has made corrections.
• Create templates. Do this for work that you undertake regularly.
• Make files easy to find. For example, I work on some projects for the publisher Zondervan. But I give these the file name “azondervan” so that it is alphabetically nearer the top of my root directory to save me time when I want to open it.
• Use coordinated software. Outlook or similar software is able to coordinate your email, calendar, contacts, etc.

case study I’m a great believer in ‘tools auto correct’ – a facility that automatically corrects a word that you have keyed in wrongly: “abbout” to “about”, for example. I used it when I edited a 9-million word reference book. As I set up the project, I knew that I’d be keying in very common English words many times. So I looked at a list of the 100 most common words and devised shorter forms that would be auto-corrected. “Because” was “bec”, “would” was “wd” and “the” was merely “t”. I reckon I saved myself several weeks of keyboarding time simply by developing these short forms.

one minute wonder On PCs, shift F3 will change all caps to lowercase or initial caps: useful if you’ve left the ‘caps lock’ key on by mistake: highlight the words and press shift F3. Shift F7 will give you a list of synonyms (thesaurus) – this is a more extensive listing than is available by just right-clicking the mouse.

• Create macros. A macro is a group of computer commands that can be set up to be performed automatically by a single click. It saves time for tasks that you perform frequently.
• Back up your data. Make sure...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Author's note
• Learn how to use your time effectively
• Know yourself
• Know your work
• Get organized
• Work better
• Work better as a team
• Communicate more effectively
• Take control of your time
• Jargon buster
• Further reading
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher