Project management has been around for as long as human beings have endeavored en masse to complete tasks and projects of all shapes and sizes: from the Great Pyramid and Great Wall of China, on through 21st century workforce management by way of virtualization and the cloud.

Below is a brief, visual history of project management that illustrates a rich timelime of project management methodologies, advancements, and the overall evolution of the field. Now, more than ever, the ability to effectively manage projects large and small to successful completion is a vital and in-demand skill.

We hope you'll consider joining us at our next free webinar, "How to Use Visual Project Management for Greater Productivity" on 7/11/13 at noon PT where you'll learn the latest visual approaches to project management including virtual whiteboards, and much more.

—> Register now for the FREE webinar!

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Summary

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.” –C.S. Lewis. Today, we live in an era of constant distraction: a fast-paced digital age of multi-screens, electronic alerts, instant messages, and alarms, social media, and near-infinite web search & surf possibilities. At work the temptation toward distraction is a very persistent reality; and it’s making us not only less productive but less smart, too.

In a Carnegie Mellon experiment cited in the article (“Brain, Interrupted,” NYT), it turns out that an interruption made test takers “20 percent dumber” than the control group. In the second part of the experiment, a portion of the test takers were interrupted again, and yet improved to 14 percent (still lower though than the control group). Meanwhile, the other portion of test takers, who were told they’d be interrupted and were not, improved by 43 percent—even outperforming the control group.

Commentary

The authors conclude this last group may have focused to “steel themselves” against the interruption that never came, or that an awareness of imminent interruptions better prepared them. People-OnTheGo helps professionals develop this exact power of “micro-level focus,” and offers many strategies and webinars to this end. Here are 3 tips to help get you focused right now:

1. Create a distraction-free work environment.

2. Use a Micro-Plan™ and timer.

3. Quickly “capture” any distracting thoughts in a paper journal so you can remain focused on the task at hand.

Discussion

How do you handle distractions at work? What strategies and techniques are you currently using? What are your greatest interruption challenges? Do you feel you’d be more productive if you learned to better manage interruptions?

Productivity Webinars You Might Enjoy

By Jennifer Weland

It’s no secret that exercise is good for your health. Building a habit of regular exercise into your life is a key part of managing your weight and keeping your heart, lungs, and other bodily systems in tip-top shape. But it can also dramatically impact your life in so many ways, helping you perform better at your job and enjoy life more outside of work.

Moving more not only helps you accomplish more, here's why it’s also critical to being your best at work and in life: From making you more productive, to boosting energy and stamina, to spurring creative thinking, to elevating your mood and even helping you sleep better—moving more each day can dramatically help you live and work better. 

With all of these benefits, you’d think everyone would be exercising all the time, right? Unfortunately, no. We’re now more sedentary than ever.

• Less than 2 in 10 Americans gets even the bare minimum amount of activity each week recommended by the American Heart Association.

• Even worse, 40% of Americans say they never exercise.

• We’re awake about 16 hours each day. But according to the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sport, our muscles are inactive most of that time—even for those of us who exercise!

How is that even possible?

Take a second to think about your average day. After rushing out the door, you sit in the car or on mass transit on the way to work. At work, you sit at your desk. Or you sit in a series of endless meetings. On the way home, you sit some more. And when you get home? It’s couch time. Then you go to bed. It’s easy, then, to see how your muscles could be inactive for most of the day.

Plus, I’m betting exercise consistently slips down the priority list when you look at your packed schedule. The same is true for so many of us. Not only are we not getting all of the benefits of regular exercise, but we’re actually harming our health by sitting so much.

The good news is all is not lost. You can reverse the affects of “sitting disease.” And you can reap all of the benefits that regular exercise delivers. I’ll tell you how during my Move More to Accomplish More webinar. Here’s just some of what you’ll walk away with:

• How your body adapts to exercise

• The very real health benefits of exercise and other surprising benefits

• How much and what kind of exercise you need to reap the health and other benefits

• Tips to move more throughout the day and reverse the affects of sitting disease.

Check out my blog for more healthy tips, recipes, and workouts you can do anywhere.

Additional Resources

• Move More to Accomplish More

• Eat Well to Accomplish More

• Stress Management

By Pi Wen Looi, Ph.D.

Dr. Pi Wen Looi and Dr. James Ware will be presenting at our complimentary Lunch & Learn Webinar, Leveraging Mobile Work to Engage Your Employees, Thursday, March 7 at noon PT. Register now for this free information session on the latest remote work findings. 

The recent Yahoo internal memo that requests employees to work in their offices has stirred up quite a lot of discussion on the Internet. And it’s no wonder—most knowledge workers and Gen Y employees are accustomed to the flexibility of working from home sometimes. People are increasingly working on-the-go. The boundaries of office, workspace, home, and third-places are increasingly blurred. Enabled by the latest mobile devices, tablets, and easy access to the Internet, work is more about what you do or accomplish, not where you get it done.

Numerous studies have shown that people working away from their offices are more productive because they are less likely to be interrupted by coworkers who drop by their cubicles, take fewer sick days, and save time on their long commute. These positive results extend to call center employees, as well. People who telecommute are also more satisfied with their work/life balance as they are better able to control their workflow during the day.

So why is Yahoo requiring their employees to return to work in offices?

It is hard to say what’s the ultimate goal of the new policy. Based on discussions on the Internet and blogosphere, it seems that some Yahoo employees have taken advantage of their telecommuting policy and are not performing at their jobs. The memo points to the benefits of having better communication and collaboration when people work side-by-side, and increased insights, speed, and quality when employees work in the same physical locations.

Regardless of the tone of the memo and how it’s communicated with Yahoo employees, let’s take a look at the key issues Yahoo raised:  productivity, communication, and collaboration.

Productivity. By now, many studies have shown that doing work remotely or telecommuting does, in fact, increase workers’ productivity. The issue at Yahoo seems like a performance issue, not a telecommuting issue. If Yahoo employees abuse their telecommuting policy, it’s imperative that managers/leaders take action to hold employees accountable, recognize their performance, and follow-up with employees who do not perform. Perhaps this new policy is the first step Yahoo leaders are taking to hold employees accountable for their performance.

Communication. While it is true that the serendipity that happens at cafeterias, hallways, or water-coolers can lead to great insights, there are many technologies that facilitate effective communications, from smart-phone to online meeting tools. Regardless of whether you work in the office or in a remote location, there are ways to communicate with coworkers. The key is to ensure that access to the company intranet, relevant technology, and the speed of connection are not barriers to remote workers.

Collaboration. Similar to communication, there are many online collaboration tools that enable employees to work together while they are physically apart. Work is increasingly distributed. For companies that have dispersed geographical locations, it is impossible to require a team of employees to always work side-by-side in a conference room. There are stages of collaboration. Sometimes your team will need to work together to ideate, confirm objectives and strategies. Other times your team members will need to go off to do solo work or have quiet time to think before they get together and collaborate on ideas. Solo work and thinking may best be accomplished while working from home or in a space without constant interruptions.

The bottom line:  remote work is here to stay. It’s the employees’ responsibility to earn trust from their managers, be accountable for their performance, and accomplish what they set out to do. It’s the management’s responsibility to have relevant people practices that facilitate remote work, hold employees accountable, and have clear consequences when employees do not perform. Last but not least, employees should have easy access to the information and resources they need, either in the cloud or on company servers, to enable productive work from anywhere.

What do you think? Is remote work a peril to productivity? How would you address the issues highlighted by the Yahoo memo? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Join Dr. Looi and Dr. Ware at our free Lunch & Learn Webinar, Thursday, March 7 at noon PT:  Leveraging Mobile Work to Engage Your Employees. Space is limited. Reserve your webinar seat now!

Pi Wen Looi, Ph.D., is the founder and principal of Novacrea Research Consulting. For more information, please visit www.NovacreaResearch.com.

Did you know that only a fraction of the people who want to write a book ever do? Why?

Even those who normally breeze through a blog or article often freeze when faced with the challenge of 200+ pages in a book. Add in hectic schedules, and the idea of writing a book gets more daunting.

Sound familiar? You can overcome these mental obstacles and start enjoying the business-boosting benefits of a book/e-book with these kick-start techniques:

1. Imitate to innovate: Find a book you love, a book that’s similar to the one you want to write. Often, what you admire is what you aspire to. Now deconstruct its style. Study how the book starts, finishes, and everything in between. You’ll quickly have a blueprint for your book.

2. Write 100 words for 100 days: If procrastination holds you back, this could be your breakthrough tool. Psychologically, you know you can fit 100 words into your schedule. And many days, you’ll write much more because once you’re on a roll, the words tumble out.

3. Write fast first drafts: Don’t worry about the quality of the words—and don’t edit as you go. Just get your ideas down as fast as possible. (This also increases your creativity.) Capture that jumble of thoughts so you can turn it into something great—later. You can fix a messy first draft, but you can’t fix a blank page.

4. Plunge in: Start wherever you feel passionate. Jump into the middle or end—you don’t have to start at the beginning. You’ll find your creativity is super-charged when you’re excited about the section you’re writing.

5. Take breaks: This may sound counterintuitive, but it works. As Pierre Khawand describes in Accomplishing More With Less, work on your book (or any task) for 40 minutes and then take a brief break. That’s 10 or 15 minutes longer than other performance studies, and here’s why in Pierre’s own words: “… while 30 minutes is reasonable and achievable, after 30 minutes of focused work, the ‘engine’ is now fully warmed up and functioning optimally, so those extra 10 minutes are ‘pure’ performance.”

Why not start your business-boosting book today? If you need one more nudge, just think about what it’s costing you not having a book/e-book to promote your business and expertise.

Lynda McDaniel is a writing coach and co-founder of The Book Catalysts. www.bookcatalysts.com/writing-class

Additional Resources

• The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook

• Business Writing for Success

• How to Write Attention Grabbing Content

Haven't heard about our summary+commentary (s+c*d) format? Learn more!

Summary

Corporate employees send and receive about 105 emails daily. Writer Nick Bilton thinks that’s a big problem as he tries to manage his more than 6,000 monthly emails, using everything from filters to away messages to no avail (see "Disruptions," NYT). He cites a 2012 UC Irvine report stating that those who didn’t check email regularly at work were less stressed and more productive than those who checked more often. Bilton considers other forms of messaging instead, like Google Chat or Twitter, or even not responding at all.

Commentary

We relate with Bilton about email frustration, but “avoidant inbox disorder” is not the solution. Our methodology at People-OnTheGo is that email is a task you schedule into your day. This enables you to focus your work effort, while saving time for collaboration (email, social media, etc.). We have a unique inbox strategy that helps you prioritize emails, daily and weekly; no more switching tasks to attend to every alert. We also agree with the UC Irvine study:  those who check email less regularly—though we would add “and more strategically”—are less stressed and more productive.

Discussion

Are you frustrated and overwhelmed by email? Do you try to avoid it? Are newer forms of communication like chat and social media messaging more preferable to you? What are some email solutions that you use in the workplace?

Additional Resources

Do you remember the days when you needed a dedicated business card scanning device with its proprietary software to scan business cards? And when integration with other business applications was rudimentary? Well that is then and this is now. The ScanBizCards app is now. After presenting at a conference recently and finding myself with 50+ business cards, this prompted me to take a look at the latest business card scanning apps, which resulted in getting ScanBizCards for the iPhone and significantly streamlining the process of managing business cards.

The ScanBizCards app in a Nutshell

1. You start the app and take a picture of the card. ScanBizCards gives you a nice visual of the scanning process mimicking an actual scanner.

2. ScanBizCards recognizes the text on the business car and therefore populates the name, title, company name, e-mail address, phone, and other relevant fields. When in doubt, the app allows you to make adjustments and reassign and/or edit the unrecognized information.

3. Now comes the magic. You are presented with several options including

• Sending an e-mail to the contact

• Connecting on LinkedIn

• Exporting to Salesforce.com (as well as Evernote and others)

• Adding a follow-up reminder

• Emailing the card

• And more!

4. In addition, your card is stored in your device (my iPhone in this case, even though the app is also available for Android and Windows), and you can easily go through the cards that you scan just like you would if you had the paper cards in your hands.

(5. You throw the original card in the recycling bin!)

Estimated productivity gain

If you regularly deal with business cards and more than just a few at a time, you can expect significant productivity gains from ScanBizCards. The obvious gain is the time saving in getting the contact information in your preferred database (my estimate would be a saving of 5 minutes or more per card).

But the more important gain is the ability to quickly integrate the contact information with your various applications and cloud services (such as LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, Evernote, etc.) and therefore being able to easily manage the follow-up with this contact. This can translate into another saving of 10 or more minutes per contact and the opportunity to leverage your contacts instead of having their business cards collect dust on your desk.

More resources

• ScanBizCards App from ScanBiz Mobile Solutions

• ScanBizCards Review

• ScanBizCards Review Video

Guest blog article by Liz Guthridge

How’s your world—your VUCA world, that is?

VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, a term coined by the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the weeks before September 11, 2001. It’s a popular phrase with Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow and former president of the Institute for the Future.

According to Dr. Johansen, who shared his 2011-2021 forecast at theAssociation of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Global Conference in early April, our VUCA world is not going away. In fact it’s just going to spin faster during the next decade.

In his talk “External Future Forces That Will Disrupt the Practice of Change Management,” Dr. Johansen noted that VUCA is not necessarily doom and gloom. While VUCA can provide threats, it also can offer opportunities, especially if you translate VUCA as “vision, understanding, clarity and agility.”

As for his two big predictions for 2022 for organizational change agents, they are:  

1. “The digital natives (now 16 years or younger) will create new practices to make change through gaming.” (The other key phrase besides gaming in this sentence is “make.” Dr. Johansen predicts that a culture of makers will drive the next generation of change. And as a result, leaders need to show the “maker instinct” trait.)  
 

2. “Reciprocity-based innovation will focus on the economic, social and psychological value of reciprocity.” (Two important traits for leaders are smart-mob organizing and commons creating. Think Creative Commons.)

Dr. Johansen challenged the 825 of us in attendance to figure out how to help people and organizations adapt to these changes and others. To do this, we should watch our terms and our questions.

For example, one of the questions we should be asking is not, “What’s new?” but “What’s ready to take off?” Quoting author William Gibson, who coined the term “cyberspace,” Johansen said Gibson was absolutely right when he said “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”

Both gaming and reciprocity-based innovation are here already. If you use or are familiar with Dropbox, Evernote, Doodle or any of the other cloud-based tools that offer free basic levels, you know about reciprocity-based innovation. The companies and others like them are giving away free services and products in the faith that they will get back even more in return. (And yes, they also are collecting our data….)

As for games, their value is that “they present obstacles we volunteer to overcome” Dr. Johansen explained. Gaming experiences are a powerful way to learn. 

In thinking about terms, Dr. Johansen observed that change management is an outdated term. Nobody wants to be managed anymore. And change is everywhere all the time. 

Yes! But what is that new term?

As I continue to mull that over, I will commit to these three actions to help myself and others better adapt to our ever evolving VUCA world:

• Get fit. According to Dr. Johansen, this is the age of the corporate athlete. We need to be organizationally, mentally and physically fit. This supports what Tony Schwartz has been advising with The Energy Project. The mental fitness also reinforces what Dr. David Rock of theNeuroLeadership Group teaches about the importance of keeping people in a “toward” state. Otherwise, it’s too easy to hijack people’s brains, which makes them want to fight or flee.  
  

• Do peripheral learning to enhance peripheral vision. To look for people, insights and resources that will help us fine-tune and invigorate our ways of working, we need exposure to things outside our regular stomping grounds. This means hanging out with different people from a variety of different disciplines than our own and becoming aware of what they’re doing and thinking. Exposure to cross-cultural experiences is also helpful. Breaking out of our echo chamber is more important than ever.
  

• Refresh language frequently. This involves more than updating our obsolete language, as I recently wrote about. It’s also tracking signals to see what people are thinking and talking about, and making sure you’re using words, symbols and visuals that resonate with them. 
  

For example, the phrase “executive presentation skills” is so last century. Instead, people want leaders with conversation skills who can build rapport, not just share reports. These leaders—and others too—need to convey complex ideas simply, not simplistically, and listen to what we say.     

What other actions do we need to take? And can you help me find a more up-to-date, accurate phrase for “change management”?   

Note: Please join us next week to get more of Liz's insights at her lunch & learn webinar: Communicate in a more brain-friendly way

In this video session at CBS Money Watch, we got to work at the whiteboard and discuss Google+ and Facebook and their usage in the workplace. As you know, I spend a lot of time researching and working with productivity tools, and tools impacting productivity, like the social media platforms. Naturally, I’ve played around with Google+, the new kid on the block. So in this white-boarding session, I got to discuss some of the key difference between Google+ and Facebook and the potential impact that these differences have in the workplace. Most importantly, I pointed out that neither Google+ nor Facebook are truly for the workplace. They are still public platforms and not appropriate for sharing internal information. I predicted that at some point, it is conceivable that an internal version of Google+ might be offered as part of Google Apps (however the recent release of Google+ in Google Apps was just the public Google+ that we all know—so we are not there yet!).

Watch the Google+ and Facebook in the Workplace video (3 min)

Additional Resources

Our tech blogger Steve Loosley has written dozenz of articles about Google+ and the Google technologies recently. Here are a few highlights:

• Google Plus: What does it mean for +You?

• Google+ Putting it to work

• Google+ Facebook, and Twitter: which is best? 

As we continue to explore the topic of productivity in the workplace and the various factors that impact our productivity, like people, process, and technology, I asked Deanna Moncrief, our faculty member at People-OnTheGo and the facilitator of the Eat Well to Work Well Workshop, a few questions about nuitrition and productivity:
 
Question 1: How would you describe the relationship between nutrition and productivity?
 
Deanna: There is a clear relationship between the two.  Poor nutrition habits such as fewer than 5 servings of fruits & vegetables per day; diets rich in refined, processed, pre-packaged foods; skipping breakfast; consumption of more than 12oz (1 can) of regular soda (not diet) per day; and not enough water, can lead to various ways our productivity is impacted.  One way this happens is that the body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs to function properly.  It’s like operating at 60% capacity.  We feel tired in the afternoon and productivity drops because we can’t concentrate, or we’re unable to efficiently handle the stress of our workday, or we have indigestion that is distracting us and preventing us from being in a good mood.  We know that a person’s health affects their productivity (and, by the way, likelihood of getting hired or promoted), and what a person eats affects their health.

Question 2: Do you think that the new digital age (where knowledge workers are tied to their computers a good part of the day) is impacting our nutritional habits and how?
 
Deanna: There have been many credible studies that show this is the case.  For example, those who are sedentary at work (any desk job), often choose low quality foods for various reasons, such as eating out of candy or snack jars for a quick pick-me-up, or they’re too busy to bring a healthy lunch or go out to get one, or even because their workplace culture isn’t big on “health food.”  As a result, putting on extra weight over time is very common.  Further, being overweight is now considered a causative factor for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), a common and painful condition for those in front of computers much of the day.  Extra body weight causes the heart to work harder to pump more blood to the extremities, and sometimes circulation isn’t as efficient as it should be.  Overweight individuals are more than 60% likely to develop CTS than people of normal weight.  Poor diets are also directly linked to diabetes and cancers of the breast and colon, even if body weight is normal.  These serious conditions can not only lead to lost productivity because the afflicted person doesn’t feel well, there is also lost time from work for medical appointments or hospital stays.

Question 3: What is your top 3 suggestions for improved nutrition? And how do you think these would translate to improved workplace productivity?
 
Deanna: Great question!  Workplace productivity has been shown to improve when certain things happen: consistently stable blood sugar, adequate hydration, and proper body functioning (also known as good digestion, nutrient absorption, and elimination, for health aficionados).  How does a person get to that point?  It’s really not that hard.  My suggestions, in this order, are:
 
First, eat a breakfast every day that contains protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fat.  This could be as simple as having a yogurt and a handful of walnuts.  Or an egg and a slice of toast with peanut butter.  We’re not talking three course meals here, just something to “break the fast” and get your blood sugar stabilized for the next 3-4 hours.  
 
Second, ditch the sodas, flavored sugar waters, vitamin waters, and anything over two cups of coffee and just drink water!  Our bodies are mostly water and the feeling of thirst is a sign that you’re already dehydrated.  Dehydration causes mental and physical fatigue, two definite productivity-zappers.  
 
Third, eat as many non-starchy vegetables as you can.  If you wait until dinner to have a salad or a side of asparagus, you’ll never make it.  Start at lunch and have a salad as a bare minimum.  Make it colorful with lots of beautiful foods like radishes, broccoli, beets, carrots, celery, tomatoes – even fruits like mandarin orange segments or diced apples.  Be careful not to drown it in creamy salad dressing, although salad dressing is hardly the culprit for our American obesity problem.  The important thing is to get at least 5 (though I’d recommend at least 9) servings of vegetables per day.

In conclusion, Deanna added 

Additional Resources