Assessing Personal Organization: Tips for Increasing Yours and Improving Others

Have you ever had an employee who was always behind, struggled to manage their time, and couldn't prioritize if their life depended on it? What's worse is when you work for a leader who struggles with the same thing. I worked for and with people like this and it is maddening. When a person with a lack of time management and prioritization skills infiltrates a company it begins to erode trust, confidence, camaraderie, and leadership equity.

If you are a leader with this problem, it's time to get some help. This doesn't mean hire more people, instead this means to reach out to those who successfully handle competing priorities. Odds are you'll learn about their process and how they've built it to suit their personality, demands, etc. As with most things, you can't just assume that one day things will slow down or that you will have an epiphany regarding your personal organization. Humbly admit where you struggle and use your resources. If you don't, you will sacrifice effectiveness and it just isn't worth it.

If you are a leader with followers who struggle with time management and prioritization, good luck! Just kidding! I have made many mistakes over the years, but one of the more common ones in the beginning was not assessing and valuing this trait in the hiring process. Attitude, charisma, and work ethic all have value, but you have to throw personal organization into the mix. What I began to find was that I hired some great people with outstanding attitudes, but when it came down to tactical strength (prioritization, organization, and time management) those same people STRUGGLED. Once I identified this and saw the consequences, I began asking questions in interviews like, "How many emails are in your inbox right now? What do you do when you get an email? How do you organize your inbox?" It's funny how someone's email habits are a litmus test for their organizational skills.

What did I do with the people I had hired who were extremely weak in this area? My leaders and I tried teaching them how to establish methods in order improve. We showed them how to arrange their inboxes. We helped them set up systems to deal with clutter on their desks so that things weren't falling through the cracks. Sometimes it worked and other times it didn't because no matter how you slice it, strengths are strengths and most weaknesses will continue to be weaknesses (ala Marcus Buckingham). Therefore in the end, we released them into the world to be free and find something that better suited them.

So let's prioritize this and do something about it. Assess your own process (maybe you don't even have one) first and then look at your team. Set a due date for action and move. You can't just file this away for the future and forget about it. The time is now.

Thinking, Wanting & Calling – 3 Questions to Ask During Your Decision Making Process

I recently wrote about the book 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch and how her process for decision making helped me during a time of tough choices. One of the biggest challenges with difficult decisions is in acting with authenticity. You want to own your choices and feel like you're not making them to please someone else. How do you do this? You must find alignment in three areas in order to ensure your decisions are genuine and support your purpose.

The first is your mind – what do you think you should do? Of the three questions, this one is the easiest. We live in a culture that encourages us to voice our opinions, and it normally doesn't take much time to figure out what we think we or anyone else should do. If we are clear with ourselves first and understand what choice needs to be made, we will be clear with others.

The second is your will – what do you want to do? There is a difference between what we think we should do and what we want to do, but unfortunately they don't always align. What we think is typically almost a knee-jerk reaction, but what we want is a little more personal because it takes into account things like pride, ego, and selfishness. Sometimes we need to vent to someone else to fully understand what we want and hear another viewpoint. But in the end, we must own it. Without buying into your own wants you will never truly want your decision and commitment will be a bear to sustain.

The last area is probably the toughest to identify but also the most important to making and owning a decision as it provides objective clarity. It focuses on your heart –what are you called to do? Answering this question involves your purpose. We move through life every day making choices that don't necessarily involve our calling. It is when we're faced with a tough choice that we must understand our purpose and how it plays into the decision. When we made the choice to move to Florida it forced me to understand that my purpose is to be a husband and father, which is more important than running a business unit in my company. I thought we should move, over time I began to want to move, and finally I knew we were called to move.

The next time you're faced with a decision, whether it's life altering or not, see if your mind, will, and heart line up and if it's something you think, want, and are called to do. Answering the questions will promote clarity and ownership while helping to move the ball down the field.

Global Imperatives – A Call for Leadership

I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that we are in the middle of a global crisis. Things are broken. As we survey the landscape of the issues in front of us, three main themes emerge. The first is the need for social sustainability. Our society continues to deteriorate. The current divorce rate is an even 50%. This means that 50 out of 100 marriages are destined for disaster before they walk down the aisle and say, "I do." Domestic violence continues to grow. Every year 3 million women are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend. The worldwide suicide rate is now up to 10.07 per 100,000 people, which is a 65% increase in the last 25 years. Someone takes their own life every 40 seconds. This means that while you watch your favorite NFL team play on Sunday, 270 people choose to end their life. The Pentagon recently released statistics to the AP surrounding soldier suicides and it is now the highest it has ever been as one soldier is ending their life every day. My family has been touched by some of these issues, has yours? In order for our society to sustain, we need change. Marriages need greater guidance, and hurting people need hope and someone to come around them in a time of hopelessness.

The second theme is environmental sustainability. I am by no means an environmental activist, but it is easy to see that we continue to abuse our planet for the sake of progress and profit. President Teddy Roosevelt had incredible foresight by creating the national park service. He saw the human appetite for more, bigger, better, faster, cheaper. We have come a long way in the last twenty years as many communities and businesses have recycling programs. In today's manufacturing environment, the EPA is stricter than ever on emissions standards, but they are merely scratching the surface. It's not just our country though as others around the world would rather turn a blind eye as they dump bio-hazardous chemicals into the local water supplies because they won't spend the money to properly dispose of them. Each one of us are stewards of this planet and are called to take care of it. The innovators of today must continue to find cleaner alternatives that put less of a stress on the planet and reestablish our global sustainability.

The last four years our planet has wrestled with our economic sustainability. Greed, immediate gratification, and our appetite for more have replaced the American attitude of saving, budgeting, and financial discipline. I love what Dave Ramsey says, "Every time I read the story The Tortoise and the Hare, the tortoise always wins." Slow and steady has been our recipe for success, but somewhere along the line we lost our patience and became undisciplined. My generation and those behind me want now what took their parents years to financially accomplish. As we watch what is happening around the world, we realize that our global economy is all connected. Sure, the "BRIIC" nations (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China) continue to grow and develop, but the rest of the world is realizing that our best times are now behind us. Even China has struggled the last couple years with rapidly rising labor costs as their people are tired of getting paid peanuts to produce the world's commodities. Politicians love to discuss their thoughts on how to fix our issues, but they aren't economists or entrepreneurs and have never run a business. If we cannot right the ship and restore economic sustainability our children will pay a catastrophic price.

So what do we do? How do we get our arms around these issues? The word imperative means: an urgent priority; something that is absolutely necessary and must be done. In order to recapture sustainability, we have a global imperative to act. This action is found in recognizing the need for authentic leadership. Our "leaders" today dance around with their own personal agendas while trying to convince us that they are working with our best interests at heart. Authentic leadership is an identity and recognizes the need to serve, influence, and execute. It is the lens through which you view every interaction, issue, experience, and opportunity. Whether you are with your family, at your place of worship, in your community, or at your job, authentic leaders realize their calling is to lead first.

What would happen around the globe if we had leaders that acted in an authentic way? I would argue that socially, environmentally, and economically, we would be at a far different level. How do we impact these issues? It starts with you. The choice is yours to pursue a life of authentic leadership. To begin using your leadership lens every day at home, in your community, and at your job. We must elect officials that humbly reflect, believe, and act on these ideals. If we don't have any to elect, then we need the ones sitting in the background to courageously come forward. The world can't wait any longer for you to step up and lead. It's imperative!