Short of time today?

I guess so. I don’t know anyone who isn’t.

In fact, in our recent Tuesday Tips Survey, ‘lack of time’ was – by far – people’s biggest challenge.

Here are six ways to help you save time. Many you will know. But how many do you do?

• Focus on the ‘do’ first: when communicating, focus first on what you want others to do after it, rather than first thinking what you want to say. Once you know the ‘do’, ask yourself ‘what is the minimum I need to say, to convince and help them to do it?’
• Shorten meetings: ten people meeting for an hour is ten man-hours of resource. Does the agenda really warrant that level of investment?
• Never read emails twice: opening an email, reading, closing and leaving it in your inbox leaves your ‘e-desk’ untidy… and means you will read it again (and again… and again). To make sure you never read emails twice, do one of the Ds: Deal with it, Delete it, Delegate it or Diarise to reply later. Then, remove it from your inbox.
• Use your commute time effectively: fascinating though free newspapers are, there are probably more productive things to do on the way to work.
• Use the right channel: A conference call where twenty people listen to someone download information would often have been a better (and shorter) email.
• Shut up: when you want someone to do something, and they say ‘yes’, stop talking!

If you did these six things every communication, all the time, how much time would you save every week? Minutes? Hours? More than none, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’d better stop. I know you’re busy…

Action point

Identify one simple way to save time. It could be one of the above ideas; it could be something different. Then do it. And embed it.

After all, when you are short of time, there is ‘more than nothing’ you can do about it…

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Conference calls… an hour of mind-numbing tedium – too long, too pointless, too rubbish.

Harsh?

Not really. They can be horrific.

These techniques will help…

1. Before the call

1a. Identify…

1. What you want the attendees to do after the call (this gives the call a purpose)

2. Why it’s in their interest to do it (this acts as a motivator)

3. The minimum topics you need to discuss, to achieve the ‘do’. Keep it to three or under, if at all possible

4. How long it should take (make it less than 30 or 60 minutes. Don’t just schedule calls to fit beautifully in your outlook)

5. Any pre-read that will make the call quicker

1b. Send an invite covering the above points, maybe using this template (note, the title contains the benefit – point 2 above)

Invite: telephone meeting to discuss how we can have a successful Q4

Purpose

The purpose of this call is to give each of us 2-3 actions we can take, to boost our chances of a successful Q4 [i.e. points 1 and 2 above]

Maximum duration

The call will last a maximum of 20 minutes, but I expect it to be less [point 4]

We’ll be discussing…

• agenda items 1,2 and 3 [point 3]

To get best value from the call

Please read the attached doc called ‘X’. It will only take a few minutes, but will help us all have a quick call [point 5]

Please confirm your attendance

I really want you on this call. Your views will help us. Please confirm whether or not you can make it, so I can prep effectively.

2. On the call

Start by reading the title and top sections of your invite, then go straight to agenda item one…

‘Thanks for dialling in to our call to discuss how we can have a successful Q4. As I said on the invite, the purpose of our call is to give each of us 2-3 actions we can take, to boost our chances of a successful Q4. The call will last a maximum of 20 minutes, but I expect it to be less. So, let’s get straight into it with the first agenda item X’

With a start like that, it’s clear the call with have pace, purpose, buy-in, focus… and it should be quick. Also, since many people hate conference calls, I’ve not called it a ‘conference call’…

Action point

This week’s action is self-evident, I guess. For your next conference call, do the steps outlined above. Keep doing it this way and your calls will start to improve, and – if people start copying you – so will theirs.

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Important communications have three elements – prep, delivery and follow-up.

However, I frequently see people only put one of these in the diary – the delivery.

But this causes you to have to fit the prep and follow-up around your diary. And in my experience, this means people…

• prep at home at the last minute
• don’t follow-up at all

This clearly reduces (eliminates?) your chances of an optimal outcome. Poor prep often leads to poor communication. Zero follow-up often leads to zero action.

A simple way to combat this is to have three diary entries:

1. Put ‘prep’ in your diary, at a time when (a) your brain is at its best (morning?) and (b) you’re unlikely to bump it in favour of other things on your to-do list
2. ‘Delivery’, as you usually would
3. Put ‘follow-up’ in your diary asap after the delivery. Ideally, it will happen immediately after it. This could well only be a 5-10 minute entry, but it helps ensure you start rolling the ‘Momentum Snowball’ you wanted your communication to initiate

And, when you follow-up, if people have already agreed to do the actions you asked, don’t ask them again in the follow-up. Simply send an email which says something like…

‘Thanks for agreeing to the next steps we discussed. To confirm, I’m doing X by tomorrow, Bob is doing Y this week and Jill is doing Z next week. Any questions, just call’

Action point

What’s your next important communication? Have you diarised the prep and follow-up? If not, schedule them in and see if it helps. If it does, you’ve got a great technique for all future key communications….

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Scenario 1: Mr X gives a book to Mrs Y that she thinks Master Z might want to read. She runs to his desk, throws the book at him, says “read this”, and walks away.

OK, it’s a weird scenario. After all, why would Mrs Y do something like that? What’s Master Z going to think? What’s he supposed to do with the book? Why will he think she’s given it to him? Will he be grateful to her? Confused by her? Would he read it?

Scenario 2: Mr X emails Mrs Y an attachment that she forwards on to Master Z with the message “FYI”.

If you didn’t work in the corporate world, you’d think this scenario was equally weird. Again, what’s Master Z supposed to do, think, feel…?

But maybe the weirdest thing of all – the world is full of FYI-loving Mrs Ys …

When you send something FYI, what are you expecting the receiver to do? Read it? File it? Absorb it? Email you their views? Any of these? None? Does it matter?

As I once read, FYI often means “You’re probably not interested in this. But I’ve covered my back by sending it to you”.

So, if we shouldn’t use the words ‘FYI’, what is the best alternative? Well, like most things, it depends. But usually your email should contain at least …

… a scene-set, to give context; and

… an action, to give direction

So, alternatives would include …

‘The attached relates to X that we discussed yesterday. Have a look, and tell me what you think’

‘I received this from X, and think it might help us with X. Check out section 3. Should we change our approach?’

‘Head Office sent the attached to me, concerning X. I haven’t time to read it now, but think it might be interesting to you, because of X. If you agree, have a read and – if appropriate – please feed back anything you think I need to know’

Doing this takes longer than writing ‘FYI’ (though not much, to be honest). But it’s better for the reader – and therefore better for you – to do so. After all, you would never throw a book at someone saying “read this”. So why do the equivalent when you email?

Action point

There are none this week. It’s just FYI.

Only joking. This week’s action point is…

Check your Sent Items. Do you send many FYIs? If so, change to the above two-step approach. Then, when you get improved responses, keep doing it.

When you receive FYIs, save yourself time (and help the sender achieve their objectives) by replying “Thanks for this. What would you like me to do with it?”

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The quickest route to success is…

…learning from, being inspired by and working with experts.

So, to improve your ability at ACTIVITY (leading, communicating, building relationships etc), ask for advice from the best EXPERT (leader, communicator, relationship builder) you know.

A number of people have recently asked me which experts I learn from, and for a link to their equivalent of Tuesday Tips. The three experts I use most, and the ones I suggest you look at are…

• Marketing legend Drayton Bird. He has improved the marketing of some of the world’s leading brands, from American Express and Airbus to Peppa the Pig, The Royal Mint and Virgin Wines. He was pivotal in helping me build my business. He sends regular advice about how to grow your business through direct and online marketing
• Master consultant, Alan Weiss. In his words, ‘my Monday Morning Memo is my fuel to begin your week in a thoughtful, informed manner in just two minutes’. I find these a great way to kick off my week. They always make me think
• Media/PR guru Alan Stevens. His MediaCoach email comes out every Friday, is hugely popular, funny and always has at least 2-3 ideas I can implement immediately

Action Point

Two actions this week…

1. Remember to ask the expert… Think of your current biggest problem. Then, think of an expert who is good at solving problems like these. Then, ask for their advice.

2. If you want more weekly advice than just Tuesday Tips, here are the links to the three gentlemen..

• Drayton Bird
• Alan Weiss
• Alan Stevens

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Have you ever been to a meeting and thought “Just think … this hour of my life that I’ve wasted here … I will never get that back”.

This feeling is never pleasant. We’ve all experienced it…

To minimise this happening too often, it’s best to take action before the meeting. Here are a couple of techniques that our clients have found worked for them …

Technique 1: explain it’s in the Chairperson’s interest for you not to go

When you receive an invite to a meeting that (a) might be pointless and (b) you can avoid attending without causing problems for you or them, say something like …

• Thanks for the invitation
• I want to ensure I bring maximum value to the meeting, do you mind if I ask a couple of questions?
• [They can only reply “Yes”]
• What is the purpose of the meeting – in other words, what are you looking to happen after it?
• [They will tell you ... and, if it’s something that you can’t/don’t want to influence ...]
• I’m glad I rang. Given your answer, I can’t help you achieve that. The last thing I’d want to do is dilute what you’re looking to achieve. It’s best I drop out of this meeting
• (if appropriate, you might want to add “Maybe we could catch-up for 5 minutes afterwards?”)

Technique 2: offer to attend some of the meeting only

When you receive an invitation to a meeting where you can only influence a couple of the agenda items …

• Thank you for the invitation. I’m keen to be involved
• I have a challenge though … I can only make the first 15 minutes of the meeting
• Would you mind moving agenda items 4 and 7 to the start, so I can contirbute to those?

Some important points to note

• When doing this, always phrase things from the Chairperson’s point of view (notice how the above scripts do this)
• Remember the golden rule – first, do no harm. Never use either technique if it might harm things for you by not being there/suggesting you won’t be

Neither technique is easy. But think of the alternatives – a blunt “I’m not coming”, not turning up, turning up but using your Blackberry throughout, being frustrated as you waste your precious time….

When you look at it like this, these techniques may well be your best option.

Action point

Look at your diary for the next few days. Identify imminent meetings that (a) might be pointless, or (b) that you can avoid attending. Try one of the two approaches.

(REMEMBER… FIRST, DO NO HARM)

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We’ve all been to pointless meetings, attended tedious conference calls and sat through awful presentations.

There are many reasons for poor communication, of course, but one is that the channel was wrong… conference call downloads that should have been an email; lengthy emails that should have been a conversation, and so on.

One way to choose the best channel for a communication is to ‘Good Grief’ your options. This means giving each channel two scores out of ten, to show:

• Good – how likely that channel is to produce fantastic results (where ten is very good); and
• Grief – how much grief this channel is likely to bring – cost, time, hassle, your hatred of it (where ten is maximum grief)

Both are important: if it isn’t good, it won’t work. If there’s too much grief, you won’t want to do it.

For example, if you have to communicate an unpopular message to your direct reports…

• A conference call might score (3, 8 ) – 3 out of 10 for ‘Good’ because it’s not that likely to work; 8 out of 10 for ‘Grief’ in that everyone will hate it
• A group email might score (2, 7)
• A presentation from you to them might be a (6, 9)
• A round-table dialogue might be an (8, 2)

You want the closest to (10, 1), in that this channel is most likely to work and bring the smallest amount of grief. Here, the round-table option is clearly best (though, if you hadn’t applied ‘Good Grief’, you might have chosen your usual weekly conference call).

You’ll find ‘Good Grief’ helps you approach all sorts of decision-making in a clearer way. Even better, it can help you persuade others to change their current thinking. For instance, once a group of salespeople has seen that cold-calling scores (1, 10) and referrals score (10, 1), they never cold call again. A potential blessing for everyone!

Action point

Two actions this week: use ‘Good Grief’ to help you…

… choose how to deliver an important imminent communication; and

… help your team identify how best to proceed with an important initiative

Both could well result in you breaking current sub-optimal habits – always a good thing.

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A recurring theme of Tuesday Tips is that communication is never finished. The more people hear key messages, the more likely they are to remember them.

To that end, I thought it might help you to revisit previous Tips, to ensure your favourite ones stick.

I’ve grouped all the Tips under the following headings:

• Improve your influencing skills
• Enhance your personal impact
• Be a better leader
• Get more done, more quickly
• Be more interesting and memorable 
• Deliver better presentations and keynotes
• Improve your sales and marketing

Action point

To access the Tips you’ll find most useful, click on the above link(s).

To view the other advice on our new website, click here

To receive Tuesday Tips, click here

A different approach this week…

Instead of 3-4 paragraphs containing one tip, here’s one paragraph containing lots of quick tips…

Click here for quick wins when communicating

This link goes directly to the Quick Wins page of our new website, The site contains more new advice in different formats – webinars, audios, videos etc. Please feel free to check it out…

Action points

Click here to access the quick wins.

Click here to see the new advice on our new website.

To receive Tuesday Tips, click here.

Very few people love reading business documents.

Nobody likes reading them twice.

When writing, it’s important your reader can glean all your key points quickly. Studies show that readers prefer…

• Portrait, not landscape
• Short paragraphs
• Lots of white space
• Minimal use of capitals
• Inclusion of good graphics
• Lots of relevant sub-headings
• Congruent look and feel… if your message is important, your document must look like it is

This list contains few surprises. I guess the biggest surprise is that people often don’t do all of them.

Action point

Have a look at one of your recent documents. What 1-2 simple improvements could you make, to make it easier to read?

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The biggest time-waster with communication is when it doesn’t work.

All that chasing, re-writing, finding time to meet again… and, even if your second attempt is a success, other things cannot always be recovered as easily – loss of reputation, trust, engagement, momentum, belief, focus…

We all know that failing to prepare is preparing to fail. We also all know that preparation and practice is, therefore, critical. But many people prepare at the last minute, often starting with “what slides have I got that I can use?”.

Time invested in preparing communication will often repay itself many times over. But, it’s not just the communication itself – spending time…

… at the questioning stage increases engagement and likelihood of subsequent success

… rehearsing shows you care, and will help you impress

… crafting an actionable Call To Action saves the stakeholder time, as they can instantly see what they have to do, to progress things

It is not always easy to find the extra time needed to prepare. But it’s never easy to find the extra time needed to correct communication that doesn’t work.

Action point

The key question to ask is not “what is the minimum time I can spend on this?” but “what is the minimum time I can spend on this, so it works first time?”

Next time you think “I’ve not got time to prepare properly”, ask yourself “have I got the time to fix things if they don’t work?” If you haven’t, give yourself more prep time – it could well save you huge amounts of time later.

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My four criteria for effective communications:

1. It achieved your objectives
2. Your audience liked it
3. You liked it
4. It was as short as possible

“Yes” to all four means a successful communication.

“No” to any…. It could have been better.

“No” to all of them… really bad.

Action point

Identify which of the four criteria you feel least proficient at, and select 1-2 steps to take, to improve (a good place to start: choose someone you think is good at it, and ask them how they do it).

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Cluttered inboxes are a drain on your time, your focus and – occasionally – your will to live.

If your inbox is too full, there are only two possible causes:

1. You have lots of emails you’ve never opened, and/or
2. You have lots of emails you’ve opened more than once -“it’s not urgent, I’ll deal with it later”

This means there are only two steps to emptying your inbox:

1. Receive fewer emails
2. Never look at emails twice

To receive fewer emails:

• Send fewer emails – your inbox will contain some/many responses to emails you’ve sent where you should have telephoned instead
• Where appropriate, contact people who send you emails you don’t want/need, and (politely) tell them not to send them to you

To ensure you don’t look at emails twice, remember the five Ds…

• Deal with it – when the email requires a quick or easy response. Then, file/delete the original
• Delete it – when you’ll never need it again
• Delegate it – when someone else can handle it. Then, file/delete the original
• Drag it to a folder – when you want to keep it, but it needs no response
• Diary it – transfer the email into a previously set-up daily diary entry called “answer non-urgent emails”. And address it when your diary reminder tells you to

Each D results in the email leaving your inbox. Even better, each D only takes 30 seconds max. So, in the next 20 minutes, you could remove 40 emails.

Action point

When you close this email, check how many emails are in your inbox. Is it too full? If so, use the Ds to remove as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

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Have you ever been on a conference call that was tedious?

I thought so. Everyone has.

Here are six simple, effective ways to improve them:

1. Get the mechanism right: my most important tip – ensure it should be a conference call. For instance information downloads and weekly updates often make better emails than conference calls.
2. Focus on the “do”: when preparing, focus first on what you want the attendees to do after the call, and then work back from there, to decide on your agenda. This minimises unnecessary items being discussed.
3. Get the duration right: most conference calls last 30 or 60 minutes, simply because your calendar is split into 30-minute chunks – not the best rationale for deciding meeting durations. If you think the call will take 5 minutes, schedule it for 5 minutes.
4. Use names: asking open questions to a group of people who cannot see each other usually results in silence. Using people’s names makes people aware of who should reply.
5. Persuasive invitations: a diary entry called “Weekly update – conference call: Friday, 9-9.30am” does not make people rush to the phone. Instead, set the tone for your call in your invitation. For instance…
   • A title containing a benefit (eg ‘Conference call: improving our performance’).
   • Purpose i.e. what attendees are to do after the call (eg ‘To identify 1-2 improvements each of us can make, to help us hit our individual and group targets’)
   • Duration – not 30 or 60 minutes – (eg ’Maximum duration: 20 minutes, though I expect it to be less)
   • (if appropriate, send pre-call reading with the invitation. This removes as much of the dry information download as possible)
6. Follow-up: the minute the call ends, email attendees the action list of who is doing what, by when. After all, which conference call would you rather attend? One starting with “Today’s meeting will last 60 minutes and the agenda is …”, or “This meeting’s aim is to help us do X and Y. As soon as we can, we’ll finish”?

Action Point

For conference calls you chair…

Implement all these steps in your next call (the easiest is point 3 – instead of “duration will be 30 minutes”, say “maximum duration will be 20 minutes”)

For conference calls you attend…

If appropriate, forward this email on to the Chairperson.

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