After the migration of VDX to OCLC servers, OCLC will assume primary responsibility for maintaining the infrastructure that supports the VDX and My ILL applications. CDL will continue to manage customer service for these services and to maintain the integration of VDX with Request.

Moving VDX to an OCLC-hosted environment will allow UC to manage the service with fewer resources, implement upgrades much faster, and be well positioned to move to the new OCLC service, WorldShare ILL, when VDX is retired in 3-5 years.

Sometimes our post will arise from a skill we already have and want to share; sometimes it’s from a wish to learn something new so you can learn it too. Often, we’re inspired by talented bloggers who generously share their ideas and their uplifting spirits. We want to highlight a few of our favorites in this post — and what more appropriate time to show our gratitude than the week of Thanksgiving?

3 Blogs That Inspire Us

1. Speaking About Presenting: Lena and I presented a workshop at a conference last month. We started our rehearsal by checking out Olivia Mitchell’s great advice on effective presentations. (A “hat tip” to our colleague Joan Starr for introducing us to this blog). This is a rich resource of public speaking skills that new and experienced presenters can both utilize. We happily absorbed her confidence-building advice about How to Look Authoritative When You Feel Anything But.

2. Innovate on Purpose by Jeffrey Phillips is dedicated to ideas, conversations and approaches for sustainable, repeatable workplace innovation. His advice is eminently practical in its focus on creating a culture of innovation over the long term. We were particularly struck by his recent post explaining the importance of finding the right people to innovate and getting them into the right roles.

3. Pick the Brain is a blog about self-improvement — personal productivity, motivation, and self-education. A small team of experts provides advice that is great for the workplace but also works well in many facets of our lives. Lori Taylor’s recent advice about How To Stop Focusing On People & Focus On Issues (It’s Easy If You Do This) gave me a path forward in a sticky situation.

Now It’s Your Turn

What blogs do you follow (besides this one, of course)? Share your inspirations in the comment section below!

For more about what inspires us to blog and how we choose our topics, see our interview in University of California’s LINK newsletter.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

A post-mortem is generally conducted at the end of the entire project, but it is also useful at the end of each phase of a multi-phase project. The agile development method uses a brief post-mortem at the end of each short phase or “sprint” to improve the success of the next sprint.

An honest post-mortem takes a certain amount of trust among the project team members, so you’ll want to work throughout the project to ensure that people’s concerns are heard and they feel they are owners of the project success.

9 Steps for Holding a Successful Post-Mortem

1. Ensure the project post-mortem is listed as a task on your project plan. When you review the project plan with the team at the beginning of the project, explain the concept so everyone knows what to expect at the end.
2. Think about the outcomes of a successful post-mortem and work backwards to plan the meeting. Who should be invited? What are the “rules of engagement?” How will the results be used?
3. Develop a set of possible questions as a guideline. These questions might refer to different phases of the project or different topic areas such as communication, planning, vendor management, or user feedback. Reading these questions gives participants a structure to help them think through the issues they want to bring up, so no key project areas are missed. See these Project Post-Mortem Review Questions.
4. Engage a facilitator and a scribe if possible. Especially for a large project, this provides a neutral presence so that everyone is on equal footing and in the same role as a participant.
5. Invite the participants. Remind them of the purpose of the post-mortem and send the questions in advance. The goal is to make everyone feel comfortable, so provide enough information beforehand so participants know what to expect.
6. State the “rules of engagement” either in your invitation or at the outset of the meeting. The goal is to maintain trust throughout the exercise; you may want to change these guidelines based on how well the team has worked together throughout the project. Sample guidelines:

• We all understand that the goal is improving the next project, so we’ll try to be as honest as we can.
• Everyone gets a chance to talk and all perceptions are equally valuable.
• Respectful listening is key. This is not the place for rebuttal or push-back.
• We’ll start each discussion section with “what went well” before we analyze what we could do better next time.

7. Conduct the post-mortem. Make sure the room is comfortable and that participants won’t be disturbed. If possible, ask them not to multi-task or use laptops during the process, so everyone is equally engaged. Make sure you have flip charts and pens (or the high tech equivalent) to record key concepts.
8. Compile the report. It’s helpful to have a summary section where you discuss the process, share major findings, and list the lessons the team can apply to the next project. In the appendix, you can share the details. Be sure to send all the participants a draft of the report to make sure their ideas were heard. Once the report is final, store it in a place that is easily accessible to everyone.
9. Share the “lessons learned” with your organization. This kind of sharing helps all the project teams to do a better job — to learn from your successes and avoid some of your missteps.

“A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it.” — Scott Allen

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Read more about conducting a successful post-mortem:

• Conducting Effective Post-Mortem Meetings (Part 1 of 2)
• Conducting Effective Post-Mortem Meetings (Part 2 of 2)
• Looking Back, Looking Ahead (The Project Retrospective)

2. Ensure you’ve included a post-mortem in your current project plan.

3. Go back to the notes from your last project. What were the lessons learned? What can you apply to your next project? This is particularly valuable for software upgrades, since the lessons from the last upgrade may be directly applicable to the next upgrade.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

How to Manage a Virtual Meeting

1. Before the Meeting

• Send an agenda in advance. If it’s a lengthy meeting with many people attending, your agenda should also list the timing and outcomes (or objectives) for each agenda item. If you don’t know why you are holding this meeting — don’t hold it. It’s your job to make sure people don’t waste their time. Your advanced preparation shows respect to the participants and to the organization.
• Appoint a backup facilitator and review the agenda with them. Make sure they know the host code to your conference call or virtual meeting software, so they can run the meeting if you are absent.
• Practice with the technology. Most companies have a favored software for webinars, online demonstrations, and web-based meetings. Make sure you can navigate confidently and use the features you need for your meeting. And prepare some contingency plans, because invariably the technology will fail you at a key moment. Best advice: talk to an experienced web presenter in your office and learn their technique.

2. At the Beginning

• Be there early (in the room, on the phone, and online) so you can boot up and test — there’s nothing worse than watching and listening as someone fumbles with the technology; you can feel the energy dissipate before the meeting even starts.
• Greet each arrival as they “beep in” to a phone meeting by asking, “Hi, who just joined the call?”
• When everyone is assembled, introduce the attendees and their roles. Make sure everyone knows why they are at this meeting.

3. During the Meeting

• Begin the meeting on time, and don’t start over for late-comers. It is unfair to the people who make an effort to arrive on time, and it stops the meeting dead in its tracks. Add a note to the agenda that late-comers should wait for the facilitator to check for new attendees (perhaps at the 15-minute mark).
• Do not multi-task. You will quickly lose focus and lose control of the meeting. You already have a big job: watch the clock, take brief notes, and make sure the discussion is moving. Your goal is to help the group reach a specific objective or outcome they need to move forward, so keep your eye on the ball.
• Keep the pace lively. You don’t have the luxury of visual cues the way you might with an in-person meeting (cues like sighing, eye-rolling, doodling, dozing, etc.), so be sensitive to pacing and don’t let the air leak out of the meeting.
• If you are sharing your desktop as a presenter, avoid excessive scrolling, sudden rapid cursor movements or jumping too quickly between pages; it can be disorienting for viewers.
• Make sure everyone gets their say. Keep track of who is not participating and call on them periodically in a gentle way. You can ask: “How might this apply to your area?” or “What factors would contribute to making this work?” Virtual meetings can devolve into a conversation between the host and one participant. Try to get all participants to engage with each other, not you.
• If there are some attendees in the room and others on the phone or online, the remote attendees will invariably feel left out. Keep down the private jokes, side conversations, or facial expressions. Be sensitive to their isolation and explain any activity they can hear but can’t see.
• Don’t let the discussion drag on; gauge when you can move to the next topic by asking, “Do you have enough information to move the process forward, or do you need more time?” Enlist the attendees to help keep the meeting on track — it gets them to take ownership of meeting success. Ask, “Are we in the weeds? Can we take that offline (especially if it doesn’t involve the whole team)?”
• Recap at the end of the meeting. Make clear the next steps or due dates, and ensure people know what tasks they are responsible for.

4. After the Meeting

• Send out brief meeting notes and ask for corrections.
• Post the webinar online and send everyone the link.
• Follow up on the items people are responsible for.

Managing meetings isn’t easy and it’s not a science; you learn more every time you do it. One of the best ways is to watch a good facilitator perform. You can analyze what they do well, and copy their moves the next time you run a meeting.

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” — Thomas Sowell

Now It’s Your Turn

1. If you are a meeting participant, read and follow these Ten Ground Rules for being an Effective Virtual Meeting Participant.
2. Practice your facilitation skills by volunteering to run a small meeting, then asking for feedback.
3. Master your company’s virtual meeting software, such as ReadyTalk, Elluminate or WebEx. Try the online tutorials, then enlist a colleague to act as your audience and use the features so you can perform smoothly.
4. Read these previous posts on Envisioning Successful Outcomes and How Meetings Steal Your Productivity (and 6 Ways to Get it Back).

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

We’d like to share one easy tool for team participation and engagement. Whether you’re in a business, academic, or non-profit environment, you are facing a competitive environment where money and resources are scarce. This analysis tool can help you focus your attention on the specific success factors that are right for your team.

The tool is called a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Here’s what it means:

• Strengths are those positive internal attributes that strengthen your business or team. You can develop plans to capitalize on those strengths.
• Weaknesses are those negative internal attributes that are working against your success. You can shore up those weaknesses so they don’t stop your success.
• Opportunities are those external conditions that can have a positive effect on your goals. These opportunities can point you in the right direction.
• Threats are those external conditions that can have a negative effect on your goals. These threats will affect you less if you can identify and minimize them.

How long will it take? You can do a simple SWOT analysis easily in sixty minutes.

There are many different ways to conduct a SWOT analysis; a large corporation will do this very differently than a small non-profit. We’ve given you some valuable how-to information below in the Now It’s Your Turn section so you can choose your method.

A rigid technique is less important than a well-imagined result. The important outcome of a SWOT is your understanding of the particular strengths you can count on, the pitfalls you might be facing, and the outside forces that might seriously change the landscape going forward.

What Does a SWOT Analysis Look Like?

We thought it would be helpful to show you a sample SWOT analysis for a business you can easily visualize: a small independent bookstore in a university town. The store owner brought the team together to think about how the bookstore could survive during the continuing financial downturn. After an hour of brainstorming, this is the SWOT analysis they developed.

Who Benefits from a SWOT Analysis?

Everyone who participated got something valuable from the exercise. The owner got enough actionable information to guide his planning efforts over the next 2 years. Once he developed the strategic plan, he posted it on the back office wall so that everyone could see it. The team members understood for the first time the challenges the bookstore owner was facing. They felt more engaged in the store’s success, and started suggesting additional opportunities the owner might try to build his business.

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” — Alan Lakein

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Take a look at these websites to learn about SWOT analysis. We’ve provided general information as well as some examples of how it’s used in academia.

• How To Do a SWOT Analysis

• SWOT Analysis Resource Page from Idaho State University

• Strategic Planning Example from SUNY Plattsburgh

2. Try conducting a SWOT analysis. Don’t limit it to the workplace; you can just as easily provide valuable planning support to the board of your non-profit or to your child’s school. In fact, you can use it to plan your own career development!

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

In a recent post we looked at ways to keep a focus on what’s important today. In this post, we explain how to use these Key Performance Indicators to keep a focus on what’s important long term.

What are Key Performance Indicators?

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are a small number of agreed-upon measurements that reflect your organization’s critical goals for success — a numerical snapshot. They are measurable, objective, and actionable. You may have heard the term “metrics” and wondered if it’s the same thing. Think of it this way: you have dozens of metrics that let you know that things are running fine on a daily basis. With KPI’s, you elevate a few of your most important metrics to become strategic touchstones for your team or service — Key Performance Indicators.

You might think KPI’s are only for managing a process or service, but you can measure anything your organization cares about: percentage of new ideas that are turned into innovations; number of software updates delivered on a timely basis; or revenue per patent.

Here are a few examples of KPI’s and some questions to show what we mean by actionable:

• Cost of service measures overall value: What is the cost of the service you are providing? A simple calculation is to total the cost of staffing and infrastructure, then divide that by the number of transactions. What is your cost per item, service or product? Does the cost match the value you are providing?
• Percentage of technical support tickets closed within a specific time measures timeliness: Are your new procedures allowing you to close tickets for your service more quickly than before? Will that reduce your cost of providing service?
• Percentage of satisfied users measures user satisfaction: Can you provide better FAQs to improve user satisfaction scores in the next quarter?

It’s important to make sure that your KPI’s are aligned with each other to avoid unintended consequences later. For instance, you may announce happily that your ticket closures are more efficient, so you are saving money on the service. Looking at the next quarter’s KPI’s, you then discover that you’ve angered your users by closing tickets without solving the real problem and therefore your satisfaction scores have plummeted.

7 Steps to Get Started with Key Performance Indicators

1. Ensure your team understands KPI’s. You’ll be an expert once you read the information linked below in “Now It’s Your Turn.”
2. Determine what indicators are important. What are those vital few indicators that tell you things are working as intended?
3. Assess which data elements can be collected easily. If it’s too difficult, you will lose interest and stop.
4. Express the KPI as a formula (e.g. cost/searches=cost per search) and make sure you calculate it the same way every time.
5. Create a simple “dashboard” — a place to track the data on your internal website or on a shared Excel document.
6. Discuss the results every month with your team and make changes to your KPI’s until you are satisfied they are correct.
7. Dig down to analyze the KPI’s for your planning efforts.

KPI’s are one measurement technique in your arsenal. They can be a quick and useful tool to let you diagnose strengths and weaknesses in your process, make strategic decisions, and ensure you are heading in the right direction. Don’t forget: the real value is in the discussion of results with your team, not the numbers themselves.

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” –
Albert Einstein

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Read these articles to learn more about KPIs:

• The basics of KPIs: Key Performance Indicators for Nonprofits: An Introduction (PDF)

• Advice on web KPI’s from Avinash Kaushik of the blog Occam’s Razor:

• Six Web Metrics/KPI’s to Die For

• Four Not Useful Web Analytics KPI Measurement Techniques

• Especially for Libraries: Library Key Performance Indicators from Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands)

2. Look at what other institutions are doing: check out the KPI Library website and sign up for their free newsletter.

3. Begin to develop KPI’s within your group or service.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

I have one too; it’s my “Master Task List” pinned to the wall. I do pretty well getting my work done, but at the end of a busy week I sometimes realize I haven’t done the work I told myself was important – whether it’s about my professional development, my personal development, or my team’s development. It’s so tempting to check off a bunch of things on my checklist, and too easy to think that it’s progress when it’s really not.

You can boil it down to the difference between what’s urgent and what’s important, and often they are not the same. It’s a concept often discussed in time management; you can find lots of time management books, magazines, blogs, and workshop sessions devoted to the topic. I’ll leave it to you to read a few and pick the time management system that works for you. Instead, I’ll share two pieces of advice I’ve learned: one is aimed at helping individuals and another provides a new way for a whole team to create a shared understanding of what’s really important.

5 Ways You Can Stay Focused on What’s Important

Blogger Jonathan Mead, in his wonderfully titled Pick the Brain blog, gives us five ways to focus on what really matters. I see my strengths and weaknesses in each one of these areas, and I think you will too:

1. Set Three “Most Important Tasks” (MITs) for the day. Ask yourself, “If I could only do three things today, what would I feel the most fulfilled in doing?”

2. Focus on providing value. Ask yourself, “How much value will this provide me, or someone else?”

3. Think long-term. Ask yourself, “Will this make a difference in a week, a month or a year from now? Five years?”

4. Tackle first things first. Finishing the most important tasks in the beginning of the day ensures that you can get to other work and still feel you have accomplished something strategic.

5. Have a clear vision. If you can’t envision it, then you can’t measure it; if you can’t measure it, then you can’t manage it. Think about whether or not the work you’re doing is moving you closer to your vision, or if it won’t make much of a difference tomorrow or next week.

A New Way for Your Team to Stay Focused on What’s Important

Lena and I keep coming back to an intriguing idea that was developed in Silicon Valley. In a New York Times  interview, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus talked (among other things) about his success in using a simple system called OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). It was developed at Intel and used at Google.

Pincus echoes Jonathan Mead’s idea of the three most important tasks, but he takes it to the next level. The whole company and every single individual has one objective and three measurable key results. It keeps everyone focused on the same understanding of what really matters.

• The process starts with a pared-down “road map” or plan. Pincus says that if your road map has ten priorities for you and your team, you probably don’t know which of the three matter, and probably none of the ten are right.

• At the start of the week, you write down your three priorities for the week, and on Friday you track how you did. Your list shows each item you were going to do, with both their predicted results and actual results. The results are displayed in red if you missed them, yellow if they’re close and green if you met them.

• If you miss your results consistently, you can see that there’s a problem, dig deeper to find it, and course-correct. It’s much better to do that sooner than later. You don’t want to reach the end of the year with a sinking feeling that your team didn’t accomplish what it set out to do.

This method gives you an objective yardstick. You then can ask for help, renegotiate with your manager, or work with the team to make the objectives more closely tied to reality.

How Do You Put OKRs into Action?

Lena and I are planning ways to put OKRs into action. Our team did several wonderful, thoughtful brainstorming sessions and developed a very ambitious two-year plan. It’s on our shared team wiki, and every month we update our progress. We all struggle to fulfill our daily obligations along with the strategic ones, and we never get as far as we wish.

Perhaps the reason is that we have too many objectives, and we move quickly from one to the other trying to move the ball forward each month. It’s time to make some changes in our process. We’re going to share this OKR technique with our team and see if we can get some traction. If it works, and even if it doesn’t, we’ll be sure to share it with you.

“Time is a fixed income and, as with any income, the real problem facing most of us is how to live successfully within our daily allotment.”  — Margaret B. Johnstone

Now It’s Your Turn

For Yourself

• Read Jonathan Mead’s post on five ways to focus on what really matters (linked above).
• Find a time management system that fits your needs.
• Commit to one change and reward yourself when you meet it. (If you try to change your whole life at once, you will get too discouraged.)

For Your Team or Organization

• Read the interview with Mark Pincus on OKRs (linked above).
• Bring the idea to your team and ask if they are willing to try it out. Be sure to explain the benefit to them — always remember that people will be more motivated if they understand the WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”).

We Want to Hear From You

Please share your ideas! How do you get things done that really matter as an individual, and what works for your organization?

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

Is there a better way? What’s the gentlest and most productive way to turn your Monday into an on-ramp to a successful week? We’ve collected some wisdom from the blogosphere. Some of this advice will resonate with you and some won’t; everyone has their own idea of what Monday means to them and how to make it better.

9 Tips for a Kinder, Gentler Monday

1. Do catch-up work quietly for the first half of the day – read email, newsletters, blogs, and articles. Recharge your imagination and then plan for the week.

2. Schedule Monday meetings after lunch, not before. You and everyone else will be sharper, crisper, and less crabby after easing into the morning.

3. Take control of your own priorities. Don’t react right away to every email and every perceived crisis. Do the work you planned to do, and check email when you come up for air. Many times, the crisis has dissipated.

4. Plan a midday walk with a co-worker to talk about your joint project. You can get as much done as if you were sitting down; you’ll build camaraderie; and the fresh air will do you good.

5. Schedule a workplace event you can look forward to, like lunch with one of your favorite co-workers or a potluck with your team.

6. Use Friday to plan for the next week. Prepare a to-do list with priorities assigned; clean up half-done work; and tie up loose ends. Organize your work space, your email folders, and your piles of paper.

7. Create comforting rituals, one before you leave home, one when you get to work, that signal a transition from one space to another.

8. Get ready on Sunday. Get up early on Sunday to reset your body clock. Finish chores, straighten the house, and pack your tote or briefcase. If you care about fashion, plan your wardrobe to wear your best “go-get’em” outfit.

9. Practice gratefulness. Consider the many people out of work who would love to be in your shoes. Walk through the door of your office with a smile and recognize the wonderful opportunities you have waiting for you this week.

What do you do to make your Mondays calm and productive? Please share your comments below!

Maybe this quote will cheer you up:

I always give 100% at work:
13% Monday
22% Tuesday
26% Wednesday
35% Thursday
4% Friday
– author unknown

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Read these blog posts to find ideas that resonate with you:

• Five Tips for Improving Monday Mornings
• How to Get Rid of Monday Morning Blues
• Getting Over Mondays at Work
• How to… get through Monday

2. Plan one thing you’ll do differently to ease into Monday.

3. Do it! See how you feel.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

So why does it fail much of the time? And what can we do to make it work? To get some new perspective, I turned to the web for answers – and I’m happy to share what I learned, because it gave me a path forward as a project manager and member of a group. Much of it hinges on whether you are currently a work group or a team, and if you should become something else.

What’s the Definition of a Team?

This definition of a team comes from a heavily-quoted book on team-building, The Wisdom of Teams (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993): “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, a set of performance goals, and a common approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

What does that really mean? Consultant Sharon Feltham breaks it down this way:

6 Success Factors that Define a Team

1. Small number of people: There are fewer than 12 members (sometimes much fewer)
2. Complementary skills: The team identifies and uses the different perspectives, knowledge, skills and strengths of each member.
3. Performance goals: The team has clearly defined objectives for which members are individually and collectively accountable.
4. Common approach: There is a sense of shared purpose, with a clear understanding of the team’s mission and vision.
5. Mutually accountable: The results come from a collective effort rather than just the sum of individual efforts. People are accountable not only for their own efforts but those of others.
6. Leadership: Instead of having a strong solo leader, the team rotates leadership.

What’s the Definition of a Work Group?

Consultant Marie J. Kane [PDF article] notes that in a work group, there is “no significant incremental performance need or opportunity that would require it to become a team.” So the members may come together to share ideas or help each other make decisions in their own areas of responsibility, but mutual accountability is lacking — there is no common objective.

Deborah Mackin, an author of several team-building books, points to a fundamental difference: “a small group of people with complementary skills and abilities who are committed to a leader’s goal and approach and are willing to be held accountable to the leader.” In other words, the group accepts the goals they are given, the members report to the leader, and individual performance is generally evaluated by that leader.

Should a Group Always Try to Become a Team?

Look around your organization. There are probably few genuine teams, and you can spot them immediately because their work is stellar. Everyone talks about them and admires their efforts. These teams perform well for two key reasons: the six success factors noted above are all present; and the members have put a tremendous amount of time, effort, and emotional capital into forming a high-performance team.

4 Questions to Determine if You Need a Team

1. Is there a genuine need for change?
2. Will there be a return on investment?
3. Is there support from senior management?
4. Is there enough potential for better performance from the individuals in the group?

What’s The Path Forward?

I said at the beginning of this post that I saw the way forward, so here it is: my group is genuinely a work group and should remain so. We are large. We don’t all do the same work — in fact some of us have never worked together on a project or service. But that’s not to say we’ve given up on the idea of teams.

Instead, we’ve started focusing on building small high-performance teams within our group –- even two people can constitute a high performance team. Being on a high performance team makes me feel like I’m really making a difference, and it gives me a chance to stretch my wings and improve my skills. In time we hope to see more small teams working together to create change.

And of course Lena and I hope our readers see us as a team — we have worked hard to fulfill all the criteria of a genuine team and it’s made our work together very satisfying.

What’s happening in your area? Should you be a team or a group? Maybe it’s time to make a conscious choice!

Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.
– Henry Ford

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Learn more about the differences between teams and work groups by reading the articles linked above.

2. Talk to your work group about whether change is needed and whether they can make a commitment to changing the way they work.

3. Before you move forward, be sure to read The Wisdom of Teams (Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, 1993). It’s a wealth of information, advice, and practical steps that will help your team to achieve its goals.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.

Do you ever wonder what would happen if you refused to deal with all those meetings, emails, and random interruptions? Do you ever dream that if you could just block off a few days to get organized, to really think without interruption, you could do something innovative? And do you also secretly wonder if, after years of running frantically, you even know how to innovate any longer?

My inspiration for this post is a video interview of Jason Fried titled “Why You Can’t Work at Work”. Fried is the co-founder of 37signals, a maker of software tools for project tracking, collaboration and information sharing. (Many of us have used their project tracking software, Basecamp.) Yet with all those great tools to foster communication and innovation, he still gets frustrated with interruptions, especially those created by meetings:

The modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions — and interruptions are the enemy of work. They are the enemy of productivity, they are the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s what the modern workplace is all about, it’s interruptions. Everyone’s calling meetings all the time…you don’t work at work any more.

Easy to Say, Hard to Do

Jason Fried’s solutions are striking. While I admire them, I’m not sure how to introduce some of them to our organization and gain acceptance. But they are certainly better than all those tired remedies I read about all the time.

In contrast to Fried’s innovative solutions, those great-in-theory remedies don’t work for our organization:

• No, I can’t check my e-mail only twice a day, because we’re an e-mail culture and you’re expected to respond quickly.
• No, I can’t opt-out of meetings, because we are a culture that highly values consensus.
• And no, if I make myself unavailable by closing the door then I can’t provide one of the vital services of a project manager: serving as the “glue” that pulls together everyone’s news, ideas, and concerns. Besides, talking to people and learning new things — either one-on-one or in a group — is one of the great pleasures of the workplace.

But our team has made some changes about the way we hold meetings; the result is more opportunities for reflection and innovation during the day. These ideas might help you too.

6 Ways Our Team Reduced Meeting Madness

1. Eliminate redundant meetings. We had two weekly one-hour meetings with about 90% overlap in attendees (different projects, same players). We spent most of our time trying to remember who knew what (or getting bored because we’d repeated everything at least twice). We consolidated two meetings into one, saving countless hours and untangling our communications in the process.

2. Share information in a shorter time span. We took the newly consolidated meeting and made it a dual-purpose event. The first segment of the meeting is an operations review for our entire team of fifteen people. We each give a one-minute update on our projects and ask for help or advice as needed; we finish in thirty minutes or less.

That meeting we consolidated in #1 above — it now takes place in the remaining thirty-minute segment. People who aren’t part of those two particular projects are free to leave; the rest of us only need thirty minutes since we shared broadly in the first part of the meeting.

3. Stop taking elaborate meeting notes and sending them to everyone via email (or worse, as a document attachment to e-mail). Instead, use a collaborative space like a wiki or Google Docs to record agreements and commitments. It reduces e-mail traffic; saves space in each person’s email client; and eliminates storage of the document on the organization’s shared drive (a place where documents get stored in mysterious folders never to be found again). It puts information where everyone can easily access it, making it a snap for people who missed the meeting to learn what happened.

4. Hold meetings that really matter. Recognize when an email thread is spinning out of control; people don’t know what steps to take; or there is tension in the team that needs to be resolved face-to-face. That’s the right time to call a meeting. Specify a start and end time. Set an agenda showing desired outcomes. Designate one person as facilitator to help people reach those outcomes. Make sure each task has an owner, a due date, and a clearly defined work-product. (Get more tips in our post Envisioning Successful Outcomes.)

5. Delegate work to small, nimble teams. Last year we held extensive planning sessions to create three-year goals and objectives. Recently we were asked to propose five related goals for this fiscal year. Since we already had a shared understanding, we trusted a small team to draft the additional goals. We posted it on our wiki, collected feedback, and then gained consensus in a quick thirty-minute meeting.

6. Declare one day a week as a meeting-free zone. Even though we never talked about it formally, we don’t hold meetings on Fridays unless it’s absolutely necessary. It gives us a solid block of time to catch-up, think, and plan for the next week.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”  — Annie Dillard

Now It’s Your Turn

1. Listen to Jason Fried’s interview, “Why You Can’t Work at Work”. Share it with your work team and see if you can find better ways to work together. (Lena and I want to get bolder and adapt more of his ideas.)

2. With the time you’ll gain in productivity, try completing a small innovation project that gets you energized. Read our post on How to Embrace Innovation for some motivation.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.