photo credit: ario_

Most e-mail articles tell you to sit down and go through your e-mail several times a day. But, not every five minutes. That little pop-up message, though, telling you that another e-mail has come in (begging you to read it) is too often too tempting to ignore. Especially ignore for a while. Like anything more than five minutes.

Outside of getting rid of the notification (recommended), what is the big problem with all that advice to “just go through your e-mail at set times during the day”?

The problem is most of those articles don’t tell you that what you should do is “process your mail” and not “do what is in your e-mail.”

Processing e-mail is deciding what needs doing with the e-mail

If the only thing e-mail was good for was reading, handling e-mail would be easy. Read it, delete it, done.

But e-mail isn’t like that. At all.

For most of us, e-mails have all sorts of bombs hidden inside them. Work to do. Tasks to complete. Reference material for our projects. Or information to know. Or…something. Maybe.

E-mail, if you haven’t noticed, doesn’t arrive in nice, pre-designed buckets. No. E-mail comes at you from all different ways in many different styles and multiple writing levels.

E-mail, in other words, needs interpretation.

Your goal with each e-mail, then, is deciding what doable items need to get placed into your to-do list as a result of the e-mail to get the e-mail out of your inbox.

That’s what processing is: decide what actions need to be taken because of the e-mail and record them in your to-do list.

People don’t process their e-mails, though. They work them. Each e-mail they read, respond to, research on or write back with clarifying questions. Three hours later, people look up from their work, not realizing the time that went by, and then get ticked because the very most important thing for the day never got done.

Never happens to me, of course. I never fall into that trap. No, I fall into that other trap.

Scanning for emergency e-mails

You come into work, turn on your computer, then impatiently wait until your (Windows) machine takes fifteen minutes to boot up. All the while, waiting to click on that e-mail icon, and wondering what emergency du jour awaits you. What devilish event happened while you were sleeping that will totally change your day? What new crazy idea does your boss want to know about when writing at 10:00 PM the night before? Or during Sunday morning when your manager was diligently going through e-mail while you were diligently sleeping?

So we quickly scan all the e-mails. Open each one, take a quick look, decide if it is an emergency or not, then move on to the next one. Oh, here’s an easy one to answer — so you do. And here’s another one that only requires a minute to research…that really takes fifteen minutes down a rabbit hole. That quick scan? An hour. Yeah, that’s the trap I go after every single time.

Processing is processing. Label it that way.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology talks about processing versus doing. And e-mail is mostly processing: analyzing the e-mail, determining what needs doing from the e-mail, and recording what needs doing into your task management system. Then going to your to do lists and work from them, not from the e-mail.

One of the best pieces of advice one of his coaches gave to me (and the world) was to label what you are doing. You have to tell yourself you are “emergency scanning” and not processing or doing. Or you are “processing” your e-mail to get it into the right to-do buckets — but not doing the tasks inside the e-mails.

Sticking with these labels helps keep you from running down rabbit holes of wasted time and energy.

E-mail is an input, not a work flow

The reason e-mail is such a horrible method of communication is because we don’t process e-mails the right way: determining what needs doing from them and then fitting that into our work flow system. Instead, e-mail IS our work flow system. When e-mail is our work flow system, we then work according to the 150 different ways people use e-mail to communicate with us. Instead of using e-mail as an input into the best way we do our work.

There’s a world of productive difference between those two approaches.

Related posts:

1. What is Your E-mail Response Time?
2. Cubicle Warrior E-mail Tip: Process E-Mail
3. Cubicle Warrior E-mail Tip: Schedule your e-mail reading
4. Cubicle Warrior E-mail Tip: Stop Managing by E-mail
5. 30 Career Management Tips — Manage E-mail

Relentless reminders — about our calendar, appointments, tasks — will overwhelm our productivity. Not just in our jobs but in our life.

I have a great dentist. I’m going pay him and his firm a lot of money for work that really needs doing. But I have this issue about his service: he has relentless reminders. With an appointment, I get a text message 3 days before to confirm the appointment. I get an e-mail that does the same. If I don’t respond to the e-mail or the text message, I get a phone call reminding me of the appointment. Three reminders for something already on my calendar. And I’ve never missed an appointment.

It’s not just the dentist. It is where I have my hair cut. Where I have my doctor’s appointments. Where I have my personal calendar with events posted. It is with Outlook at my consulting gig. I can get a pop up for every time I have a new e-mail (W00T! — one hundred reminders a day just from e-mail!!!). I can get dinged when I have a text message – not just from people, but from reminders about storm warnings, snow plowing and, if I wanted, breaking news. And don’t even talk to me about Twitter or some other social media outlet.

Seriously — count how many times you get a reminder message in a day. Ten? Forty? A hundred? The truth, now — no fudging. How many are you getting?

It’s the distraction

Here’s where every blog post on the Internet will tell you that all these distractions are taking you away from being productive. And they will give you fifty suggestions for reducing the number of distractions — everything from taking that pop-up window off in Outlook for every time you get an e-mail message (done…) to taking two hours of uninterrupted time to work solely on your tasks (and Facebook).

All of that is true.

It’s the distractions — but it is not

Sure, you should get rid of all the distractions that default in the time management systems of your life. But getting rid of the distractions is really not the problem.

The problem is that we fail in our commitments so often that businesses and systems have to build in reminders — because they lose too much revenue from our poor commitment habit.

I’ll give you a perfect example: a person needed to deliver a commitment to me last week on Thursday — it was a promise made in e-mail. Failed on Thursday. Failed on Friday. I reminded on Monday with an answer of delivery on Tuesday. On Tuesday, too much going on, so a delivery on Wednesday — Wednesday the person is on vacation. Hey, it’s just a week late — but if I didn’t have a system in place to remind me of these commitments, I never would have gotten it by Wednesday (assuming that I get it on Wednesday…).

Think about it: I have to have a system set up so that I track the commitments made to me (a “waiting for” category in GTD), review them consistently to make sure they happen or remind me to remind them when they don’t, all because I can’t trust people to deliver what they say they will deliver when they say they will deliver it.

Sure, get rid of all those reminders because they are distractions. They really are distractions. But when you are getting all those reminder distractions, think about what your delivery to your commitments is compared to what you promised. Did you really deliver them so you should get rid of the reminder distractions?

Or do you really need all those reminders so that the most urgent thing on the planet drives you to deliver what you promised so you can get rid of all those damn distracting reminders?

Do you deliver on your commitments (and I have issues as well…), or do you really need the 5,000 reminders to get your work done?

No related posts.

photo credit: Rob Warde

Task management tools are one of the great bunny trails on the Internet. The volume of information about task management tools is staggering. And all of it, while interesting, misses the point: the tool you use to track your tasks doesn’t make you do the stuff on the list. Only you can do that, not the tool.

While the tools are interesting, I’m more concerned about the habits we use to work our to do list to actually get things done. While I subscribe to the Getting Things Done methodology and use OmniFocus as the tool for doing so, developing these five habits will help you get more work done regardless of the tool you use to track your work. Plus, you won’t drive yourself crazy in the quest for getting more work done…

1. View e-mail as an inbox that needs processing

E-mail and meetings are the two biggest time-wasters on the planet. People span the spectrum of checking their e-mail every time a new one pops up on their computer screen (get rid of those pop up reminders; they are a total distraction…) to reading e-mails and not doing anything about them.

The habit you want to develop is to open your e-mail box and process all the new e-mails in there. By process, I mean to do something with each one as appropriate — respond to it, delete it, file it, or add the tasks associated with it to your to do lists. What you don’t want to do is to open it, read it, have two minutes to go to a meeting and then close the e-mail without doing something with it. All that does is help you redo all the work all over again and add hundreds of e-mails to your inbox.

If you open your e-mail, commit to processing it and then get it out of your inbox.

2. Define precisely what physical action needs doing on the to-do list

Defining the “next action” is a Getting Things Done term, but it applies to all to-do lists. You can’t do a list, you can only do some physical action on a list. There is a big difference between putting “create the team meeting PowerPoint” on a to-do list and putting “create three slides that covers current expenses, current budget, and next month’s outlook for team meeting on 9/27″ on the list.

When you don’t define down to a physical action on the to-do list, you end up rethinking what you need to do for every item on the list instead of just doing it. (This happens to me all the time; it is one of the biggest areas of improvement for me…).

Think of writing this post: if I just had the idea for the post and put that on my “Cube Rules” list – write on task management habits — I still have to create, again, the habits that will help. If I include the five habits right with the to-do, I can just sit down and write. This requires you to think about what precisely needs doing before it goes on your list — but you only have to think about it once, not every single time you look at your list when you are trying to decide what to do next.

3. Look at your to-do list regularly

Regularly means “after you complete a task.” When you always look at your list for what’s next, you will tend to place more emphasis on working the physical actions on the list, putting everything that needs doing on the list, and being more precise on what, exactly, needs doing. This is a great habit to develop in our attention disorder work world; this habit provides stability to what needs doing.

4. Develop a key list of two things to do today

There are days (or weeks if you have the right manager…) when the whole work world is one kaleidoscope of tasks coming at you that had nothing to do with what you planned for the day. Keeping up with the fire hose is challenging, no doubt. One of the ways you can still move forward is to put a note up that gives you two things to complete that day, no matter what. Getting into this habit will help you continually move forward in what is important to you for that day, for the job or not.

I’ve found that I rarely can get two things done on this kind of a day; one completed still gives you a sense of moving forward.

5. Work in batches

If you have five phone calls to make, do all five. Then move on to another batch of work. Our brain gets into a groove for whatever you work on; we should make use of it. Instead of phone call, e-mail, PowerPoint, Word document, phone call, PowerPoint, e-mail…just do all or as many of one thing as you have time to do right now. It provides a bigger sense of completion and keeps you knocking stuff out.

Distractions kill productivity

You knew this already, though, right? While getting rid of distractions is important, more important is getting back on track and recovering your focus so you can complete your work without going crazy. Developing these habits will help you stay focused and keep you in control while chaos reigns around you.

Ooops…I have a new e-mail. Excuse me while I go check it…

Related posts:

1. Task management tools I use
2. Use task management to get job credentials
3. Task management principles for the Cubicle Warrior
4. 5 Task management treats from changing GTD tools
5. 30 Career Management Tips — Understand your task requirements

So how do you make your manager love your work? Own your results.

Sounds simple. It’s not. Here are five ways to help own your results.

Define the success criteria for the task or project

This is the most underrated step for getting the job right. If your manager can’t tell you what success looks like, you won’t either. And if you don’t understand what success looks like, but your manager does but does not tell you, there is an immediate disconnect with your results.

You have to ask, especially early in the relationship with a manager, what work would make this task completion a success. It feels dumb to do it. But without asking, you won’t know, your manager will assume and so will your coworkers and everyone will have a definition different from yours in their head. Cubicle Warriors can’t win without understanding the expectations.

Think of never asking what success looks like on your repetitive tasks. By never asking, you end up doing the task consistently, repetitively, wrong. If you did ask what success looks like the first five or so times on a repetitive task, you’d get closer and closer to the ideal. And you would do the task consistently, repetitively, right.

Which would you rather have on your performance review?

You need to prototype your work

Here’s the secret: even when your manager tells you the success criteria for the task or project, they often don’t understand that what they are asking for isn’t what they want.

Take you preparing a presentation, for example. The manager wants a presentation that shows how the department is meeting their goals. You know the goals; no problem. You get a week to do the work and at the end of the week you proudly walk into your manager’s office with your slick, bullet-point PowerPoint thinking you’ve nailed it. Then your manager tells you it’s all wrong.

You see, your manager didn’t really want it done in PowerPoint. It should have been in Word. And even though bullet points are nice, your manager wanted charts to show goal attainment. And not those ugly charts, but those new, slick 3-D bar charts because your manager knows his or her manager likes that kind of stuff.

So you failed. Even though you thought you succeeded.

Much better to have walked into your manager’s office one day after getting the task and show your manager your bullet-pointed PowerPoint with no charts for showing attainment on one complete goal – a prototype of the completed work. You graciously ask if this is really what the manager was looking for because it fit the “success” criteria. Now your manager sees something tangible and adds in all these other criteria for success, criteria in the manager’s head — or not — but not communicated to you.

And you have the time to change it while collaboratively working with your manager. Cubicle Warriors prototype their work so they don’t have a crisis that needs fixing when delivering critical work.

You need the maximum control over your work

It is tough to own your results when you don’t have control over your work. Is the work you deliver dependent on someone completing something for you before you can start? You need to ensure that the work happens on time for you to do your deliverable.

Rarely does anyone have 100% control over their work. But focusing on maximizing your control over your deliverable will give you a better chance of doing the work well.

You need to provide bad news early

If you don’t think you can complete the work on time, you need to tell your manager why. It could be priorities that conflict, the work being a bigger project than either you or your manager thought, or it could be that you are not getting the cooperation you need to do your part.

Good managers want to hear bad news early — because there is still time to turn the bad news into good news. Telling your manager you think you need three more days to get done with something allows you and the manager to collaboratively go over the work and see if tasks or resources can be rearranged if needed. But telling your manager you didn’t get done with your work the day it is due is just asking for trouble.

Now, there are some bad managers out there who just don’t want to hear your problems about getting stuff done; they just want you to do it no matter what. That kind of passive-aggressive behavior is out there and giving bad news early isn’t necessarily a good thing with those types of managers (yes, I’ve had managers just like this…). But then, they wouldn’t be managers that love your work no matter what you do, so these tips wouldn’t apply anyway.

You need good reporting systems to show progress

Cubicle Warriors know that the big difference between their performance and everyone else are their accomplishments. Accomplishments are shown through numbers and results. So reporting systems that show these numbers and results are critical to set up and use during the work process.

If the work is set up through success criteria, you need to use some measure as to meeting the success criteria as you go along doing the work or you won’t determine your progress. If you are working on goals, you need a method to determine your progress meeting your goals so you can tell if you are on track to meet them or if you should have a “bad news early” discussion with your manager.

Without good reporting systems, whether personal or corporate, to report progress on your work, you won’t know if you are on track or not.

Owning results takes work

Many people hear “owning your results” and think it is just stepping up and saying to themselves that “I did the work, so I own the results.”

You can do that — but it abdicates your role in affecting the results. Cubicle Warriors implement these five steps in their work to maximize their chance of producing the best results for their manager — and career.

How well do you own your results?

Related posts:

1. The single best phrase to hear from your manager in your performance review
2. The single biggest interview preparation research mistake you can make
3. 3 things to make your manager worship you
4. How to make work-life balance work
5. Your work is all about your manager

By learning and using Cubicle Warrior skills on the job:

Cubicle Warriors get better performance review ratings

The people you work with, for the most part, know how to do their jobs. But doing the job well and being smart about how you approach the job are two different things.

Cubicle Warriors understand that their SMART goals need to be negotiated to protect their interests. They know that having a task management system that organizes their work will give them the right work to do at the right time. They know how to track their goal attainment and their accomplishments. Then, when the annual performance review comes around, they know how to write their performance review in a way that realistically shows their accomplishments and gives their manager ammunition to defend their rating.

You get higher ratings and better pay and bonuses if you execute these skills well.

Better job opportunities through business networking

Cubicle Warriors spend time building their business networks and help others in their business network first. By connecting regularly with their network, they understand how business is changing and where there are possible opportunities for work.

When you build a business network and then totally disregard it once you have found a job, you fail. All jobs have endings and when you see the ending to your job coming up, you have no prospects because your network is gone.

Cubicle Warriors operate from a position of strength

When you work for corporations, corporations have all the advantages: they pay your salary and benefits, can move you to any job position in the company, can request that you transfer to a different city and can lay you off in one heartless minute.

Essentially, corporations want your job skills and work to achieve the corporation’s goals. And that’s OK.

Most people, however, abdicate any position to their manager and the corporation. Cubicle Warriors don’t. While corporations still have all the advantages, Cubicle Warriors have already thought through what work they like doing and what they don’t. They already know where they are willing to live and the parameters around which they would move their family. They have a year’s worth of take-home pay in the bank so if they get laid off, their Castle is not threatened.

In short, the corporation can have the advantages, but it doesn’t own your soul.

Invest the time for your career

One thinks that all this career stuff takes a huge amount of time. And, initially, it does. But the time is more about understanding yourself and your family’s needs, your skills, building a plan for saving, and knowing how you can work your plan.

After that, it is consciously making the effort to maintain and build your business network, judging how long your position will last and having the systems in place to track your work.

Most people won’t take even this little time to do the work. Cubicle Warriors will.

Give yourself an unfair advantage.

Related posts:

1. Cubicle Warrior – Networking
2. Cubicle Warrior — job performance
3. Working with Management: Five characteristics of a Cubicle Warrior
4. Cubicle Warrior – Conclusions
5. Are you a Free Agent Cubicle Warrior?

What has our attention is what gets done — and if what has your attention is surfing the Internet, that is what gets done. Not the goals you have set for yourself.

The trick with time management

The trick with time management isn’t that you will get off track. It isn’t to eliminate all those distractions, though that helps. But you can’t eliminate your manager or your family or all those significant others that can demand your time.

No, the trick with time management is that when you lose focus on your goals, you can quickly get back on the wagon and keep on going.

Piece of cake, right? Not so much.

No, getting back on track is not easy as much as we would like to trust the theory. Once “in the weeds” of something, it’s very hard to get back out.

One of the most powerful ways to get back on track is to use rituals to get focused again on our goals. Ritual, or habit, is the key to taking time management to the next level.

I’ve seen some great rituals play into making your time more focused:

• Accomplish the “goal of the day.” I had a manager who made it a ritual to accomplish the “goal of the day.” Despite all of the other non-starters that may have happened for the day, if the one goal of the day was completed, no matter how small, it was a successful day. Accomplishing one goal a day means accomplishing 365 things a year that you want to get done, no small feat.
• Work the “50-minute hour.” Here, the idea is to take something off your list and work solely on that one item for 50-minutes. After 50-minutes, you take a 10-minute break to get some perspective and then start another 50-minute hour. This works even better if you have a clock that is counting down the minutes of the 50-minute hour as it provides surprising incentive to yourself to get whatever done in the 50-minutes.
• The 18-minute plan for managing your day. This method, offered by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Publishing tells us to start off with 5-minutes at the beginning of the day to determine our goal for the day, take one minute at the end of every hour to refocus, and take five minutes at the end of the day and review what was successful and what could improve.

But no matter what your method of focus, you need a ritual to keep getting back on track with time management. Without the ritual, it’s too easy to get off track. Or entirely off course.

How do you get focus back when you get off track?

Related posts:

1. Time management and conflicting career advice

—————–

Hello, all of you Cubicle Warriors!  We’re honored to have been asked by Scot to write for you.  We hemmed and hawed about what to write about, and finally landed on something that will hopefully shed some light on your life in the cube.

We’re all familiar with the term “absenteeism”, and some of you may have heard of the term “presenteeism”.  Essentially, it’s the physical presence of your body in the office, but the absence of your mind.  Presenteeism at work can take the form of online shopping, online games, daydreaming during an unproductice meeting, or striking up a conversation with a cube neighbor because you’re bored.  When people enter the office environment (become “present”), they begin counting their time for the day.

For example, if someone arrives in the office at 8:00 a.m. and leave at 6:00 p.m., they’ll say they worked 10 hours.  If this goes on for 5 days in a row, you’ll hear that same person in the elevator on Friday bemoaning their 50 hours they put in that week.  When we conduct sessions to move people from a traditional work environment to a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), we hear this all the time.  But let’s examine it more closely…

We’d like you to try something: For the next week, see if you can keep track of the number of hours you work.  You’re only allowed to count the time when you’re actually being productive.  You can’t count time on your personal e-mail, going to the restroom, talking about things that aren’t work-related, etc.  You must also subtract the time spent in any meeting that you feel is unproductive or a waste of your time.

When you have your number of hours at the end of the week, submit it as a Comment and tell us how you felt about doing this exercise.

In the end, doing this exercise bolsters the argument for focusing on results vs. time in the work environment.  At the end of a week, wouldn’t it be nice to rattle off the list of results we achieved and get praise for that instead of having to put a number of hours out there when someone says “How many hours did you work this week?”

With the work culture the way it is, you could have worked 20 hours and achieved greatness in terms of your results, but the “20 hours” elicits judgment.  And so the cycle continues and we carry on with counting the number of hours we’re in the work environment as the number of hours we’re actually working.

If nothing else, we hope this exercise helps you see how ludicrous it is to focus on time…and prompts you to join the fight for a work environment focused solely on RESULTS!

Get your paper and pencil ready…and start counting…

About the authors: Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are the creators of the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE™.  A Results-Only Work Environment is one where employees show up energized, disciplined, fluid, flexible, and focused – always ready to deliver the results necessary to drive the business. It is a bold, cultural transformation that permeates the attitudes and operating style of an entire workplace, leveling the playing field and giving people the ability to do whatever they want whenever they want as long as the work gets done.

They are also the founders of CultureRx, which offers customized consulting services and products tailored to the needs of their clients – companies and organizations committed to challenging the status quo for the benefit of a healthy workforce and ultimately, a healthy bottom line.

Their book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, was published by Portfolio, a Penguin Imprint, in June 2008.

Related posts:

1. Screw long hours — management needs to optimize resources
2. SMART Goals does not equal Smart Management
3. Time management and conflicting career advice
4. Working with Management: Delivery

But the article in Management 101 on MSNBC titled Ten keys to keeping yourself off the layoff list takes the cake for the worst advice I’ve seen in a long time. Let’s go through all ten and give you some perspective:

1. Remember: It’s not about you right now

Force yourself to focus with laser accuracy on your company’s success, not your own. In challenging times, the last thing your employer wants is to cater to you and your fears. They want you to be a selfless, highly collaborative team player who meets and exceeds your commitments. Your presence can’t be an energy drain or create work.

So management wants you to be 100% selfless and collaborative without being an energy drain or create work. That’s great — to do that starts with management providing clear and concise instructions on the work done. And no one is “catering” to you and your fears; the fact that companies are laying off hundreds of thousands every month means you have no self-interest in your future so you have no fear. Good luck with that.

And I’m not so sure “it’s not about you right now” is just right now. Show me a large corporation that ever thinks “it’s about you.”

2. Become a black belt at change

The most important skill to develop right now is finesse at navigating change. That means flexibility and open-mindedness. Accept whatever management throws your way. If they change direction (again), shuffle the product mix, add new goals, or refine strategy on the fly, say yes to all of it. Resisting change only makes life more difficult for management and for everyone.

Sure, we need to deal with change. That’s a Cubicle Warrior trait. But “accept whatever management throws your way” and “say yes to all of it?” I’m sorry, Cubicle Warriors have brains and can actually contribute to helping with the change. Blindly accepting anything management says eliminates a huge pool of resources that can help implement the change. Management want us to be robots? I hope not.

3. Everything is your job

Demonstrate your commitment to the overall success of your team and your company by taking on tasks that fall outside your job responsibilities. Pitch in on packing up the trade-show booth. Manage your own schedule/address book/travel plans. Offer to take notes and follow up after every meeting.

Nothing is beneath you. The little things you do above and beyond your job description will serve you well when it’s performance appraisal and/or downsizing time. Forget your fancy title, your impressive resume – and your ego.

This is pure crap. If everything is everyone’s job, there is no accountability and nothing gets done. Taking on tasks that are outside of your job responsibilities diminishes your ability to do your job responsibilities. And if you don’t do your job responsibilities because you are so busy doing everyone elses, you’ll be out the door for not performing. Show me anyone saved from a layoff because they consistently took notes at meetings. Please.

4. Walk away from the water cooler

When straits are dire and headlines scary, the last thing your company needs is negative, gossipy employees who polarize colleagues into an us-vs.-them dynamic. Employers value passionate overachievers whose uplifting attitude contributes to a more energizing team culture. Whatever it takes, keep the negative mindset out of the office. This is your mantra: No complaining, no blaming! Dwell on what can be rather than what can’t.

Yup, no one likes negative mindsets. But what’s a negative mindset, anyway? People can’t speak up and tell their manager they think an approach is incorrect and needs to be changed? People can’t criticize an action taken that didn’t work out by figuring out why it went south? And if you don’t want polarization, you can start by getting rid of all the Corporate Speak that comes out of management and have plain talk. It’s a concept.

You-will-agree-with-everything-management-says. Or else it’s negative. I don’t think so.

5. “Unwritten Rules” are now engraved in stone

Show up early, stay late. Everyone notices people who leave on the dot of 5 (or before) or take very long lunches or excessive coffee/smoking breaks. Don’t get a reputation for being one of those people who takes forever to respond to an e-mail, voicemail, or a simple question. Vigilantly follow up on all assigned action items. Management is increasingly scrutinizing your every move.

This one is most offensive. You see, your results don’t matter, just how long your butt sits in a cubicle. So, to get ahead, I really need to keep my butt in the chair longer and longer and longer. Fourteen hour days and seven days a week means I’m indispensable. Oh, I have to produce something too?

And I don’t think management is scrutinizing your every move — they don’t have time. They need to produce work as well with fewer managers and more to do. So good managers are looking to NOT scrutinize every move but, instead, work with people who produce results with little supervision. If a manager is taking time to scrutinize every employee’s every move, they’ll be out the door.

6. Step up – and wear very big shoes

Don’t wait for someone else to solve your problems. Your manager needs to hear how the organization can trim costs, manage the supply chain better, find a new client, improve processes, motivate the workforce, and deliver the next big thing. Observe what your competitors are trying and testing, read everything relentlessly, and ask people how you can improve what you do.

Your goal here is to make sure there’d be a gaping hole if you were no longer around. Make the choice every day to do work that really matters to the success of the team and the company. Put yourself in a position that is crucial to the success of a new initiative, or dig in to solve a vexing, long-neglected problem. Maintain a bias for action in every meeting.

It’s contradictory to say we are supposed to “take everything management throws at us” and “say yes to all of it” and then suddenly develop a brain and use it to improve the business. Either management wants people who can help the business or they want robots going along with whatever is said. You either need to engage the workforce and deal or don’t engage the workforce and direct the teams. I personally think you get better results when you engage your employees (oh, results are not important, only time in the cubicle. I forgot.)

And while the second paragraph makes sense, doing those things will not prevent you from being laid off if a site closes down or a department is eliminated. If a site shuts down, you’re gone no matter how wonderful management thinks you are. Doing those actions, however, give you an important career need: accomplishments you can show your next employer.

7. Transparency is your new trump card

You must be totally transparent as to what you’re working on and how it fits with management objectives. There can be no hiding, and no withholding information. If you don’t have enough on your plate, say it. Ask to take on more-or better yet, suggest projects you can spearhead that have killer ROI.

The more honest your superiors believe you are, the more likely they are to trust you and keep you close. Being authentic builds relationships, even more than just hard work. Stop hoping no one finds out who you are or what you really do all day. Let people in … or they’ll be showing you the door. Employers are likely to keep you around if they see you as a vital associate.

This one is vexing, to say the least. Not all managers want transparency — especially if it is in making suggestions about improvements and the manager didn’t think of the improvement. Yes, “not invented here” is still a big problem.

And from a practical view, what projects can an employee suggest that has a “killer ROI?”

The second paragraph makes some assumptions that are stunning: “the more honest your superiors believe you are…” So it’s OK to be dishonest, just as long as your superiors believe you are honest. Sure.

And “stop hoping no one finds out who you are or what you really do all day” is laughable — unless you aren’t producing anything. If you aren’t producing results, of course you’re going to hope no one finds out what you’re doing. To be fair, it really doesn’t matter if people find out what you do during the day as long as you are producing results to the department.

8. Make friends in new places

Human resources and finance are two departments that can have a significant impact on your career whether you realize it or not. They know a lot about you that can influence how you’re perceived. Respect those folks, socialize with them, ask for their advice, and make sure you carefully do a little self-promotion. When cuts need to be made, you won’t be an unknown quantity to them.

I agree you need to make friends in new places — everyone needs a broad business network to help each other. But new friends in HR and finance? Seriously?

First, in large corporations, HR is there to protect the company from employee lawsuits from unfair treatment in a layoff or performance review. That’s why they are there in all those types of discussions. Sure, HR wants the person to succeed and contribute, but in a layoff situation, they are there to make sure the law is followed and protect the company interests. Not yours.

Second, HR and finance have absolutely no say in a layoff decision about you. Your manager does. That’s it. If your manager decides you are the one to go and your manager has followed all the legal procedures, you are done. If HR came into the department I was managing and told me who to layoff, I’d tell them to take a hike — HR isn’t there to help me achieve my goals, my employees are and I’ll make those management decisions.

9. Start Tweeting or start packing

Look at the Millennials and see how they work, how they make decisions, and what technology and tools they use. No time for “I don’t do Twitter or Facebook.” Acquaint yourself with social networks, mobile applications, and commerce platforms to remain relevant. Let them intimidate you and you give your boss reasons to replace you with someone younger and more in the game. Ask a family member to help, take a course, read a book … and dive in.

Twitter or die? OK, I’m on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, but that has zero effect on my employability or protection in a layoff. And if you spend your entire day on social networks, you are not producing results (so let’s not be transparent…) and you are spending fourteen hours a day in your cubicle to get anything done (oh, wait, that’s a good thing. I forgot.)

The key is this: everyone needs to understand how the technology tools work in the company and their job. If you don’t understand how your application you use on your job works, you won’t be as effective as others. In other words, you have to embrace the technology tools you need for effectiveness in your job.

And if you have all sorts of time to Twitter your time away on the job, it means you don’t have enough to do. Which means you’ll be gone anyway unless you start producing results.

10. Fit club

Healthy people tend to have better outlooks and are easier to be around. They take good care of themselves, which in turn earns them the respect of others (…) So get your sleep, eat well, exercise, stay hydrated, and avoid excessive caffeine and alcohol. This is an investment that will pay dividends for you and your employer. And yes, your employer does notice.

I agree people need to be physically fit. And, yes, there are extensive reasons why a healthy workforce is better than one that’s not. But I don’t work out to help out my employer. I do it to help me out. To be able to handle the stress from work!

But what really cracks me up about this one is that we’re supposed to take everything management throws at us, come in early, stay late, take on more work, do work that is outside our job description, solve all our own problems, have time to take a course on Twitter(!) and then have time to be with our partner and children, engage in our hobby, worship in our religion of choice and then still have time to “sleep, eat well, exercise, stay hydrated, and avoid excessive caffeine and alcohol.”

With all the hours you’d be working (and in Seattle!), avoiding excessive caffeine would be impossible. And you’d be so screwed up from working and not paying attention to your family, alcohol would look like a good alternative.

I don’t know what world this advice comes from, but, trust me, none of it will keep you off a layoff list. Follow it and watch yourself ruin your cherished relationships while you burn yourself out from the job.

I’ll pass.

Related posts:

1. The 3 worst pundit methods to make your job layoff-resistant

Even smart managers blow it

My Senior Vice President at the time was making a pitch to a major customer and our group’s job was to create the presentation to use at the customer site. We worked on it for two full weeks (you want to impress the Senior Vice President, don’t you know…) and two days before the presentation, we proudly showed our handiwork to the Senior Vice President. And failed. Changes to every slide were needed. Plus, he wasn’t happy because we didn’t get it.

We worked most of the night, then showed the presentation again the next day. Then there were more changes and we worked half the night on those changes as well. I can’t tell you how much fun and engaging re-work is…especially with a tight deadline that did not need to be there in the first place.

The executive was not clueless, nor doing some sort of power play just to show off.

Instead, the executive didn’t use the easy way to boost job performance.

Prototyping boosts your job performance

The easy way to boost your job performance is to prototype your work. Let’s use our example of helping put together a presentation for our fearless executive.

The initial session, of course, lays out what needs doing. Here is the purpose of the presentation. Here are the points I want covered. Here is the product we’re going to pitch. Go forth and deliver a presentation; you have one week. After all, it’s a management technique to “provide the goal” but don’t worry about the methods to get to the goal. Let the employee figure it out. Right…

Usually, we diligently work through the week and create the presentation. Then, on the due date, we proudly show off our work. Then we get our heads chopped off for not getting the presentation right. Then, because the work is due tomorrow, we now have an “emergency du joir” where we work half the night getting the presentation “right.” Or, the way our manager wants it. And when the performance review comes along, here is yet another example of where the manager had to “step in” and help you do your work. Yuck.

By prototyping, we build a portion of the work and then, with only 20% of the work done or 20% of the time elapsed to the due date, we show our work to our manager. We show the work and then ask questions. Is this the work you are looking for? Is it at the right level of detail? Is it enough content? Is it done in the right format? Is the language right for your audience?

The work is never done right

And you know what? None of the work is done right. Because what your manager thought were the right instructions was interpreted as something different by you. It’s always different.

But, the big difference here is that only 20% of the time and/or 20% of the work has been done. Now, with something tangible to look at, the manager can clarify what was really needed because half the time the manager honestly doesn’t know what was really needed. Get the right detail level. Decide to change the format of the presentation.

No emergency. No scrambling. No blowing up quality to get the work done on time. And a manager who doesn’t see a blown assignment by you when it comes time to the performance review.

Prototyping gets easier

The deal is, when you prototype with your manager (or team), expectations about the work are fixed so there is no emergency. The more you prototype with your manager or team, the more likely you will continue to get the work “right” in terms of what your manager wants done. If you prototype consistently, soon your manager says to “just do it like we did the blah-blah project” and you immediately know the output needed.

All because you prototyped.

If you want the easiest way to boost your job performance — and get some time management back into your work life — then start to prototype your work. Build a bit of the final work product and ask for feedback early.

Have you ever prototyped your work?

No related posts.

Arrive early and stay late

The clock, after all, is what counts, isn’t it? Who needs a manager when we all know that butt-time in the chair is where it’s at?

Time spent on the job tells no one about your accomplishments nor does it guarantee success to the department or company. Instead, working longer hours begets working even longer hours to look better than everyone else. Pretty soon, we’ll all be sitting in the cube 20-hours a day just so we can look good.

Look, it’s management’s job to optimize resources to meet the goals of the company or department. That doesn’t get done by counting hours in the chair. Instead, it’s managing to the goal attainment in the department.

If you have a manager that simply measures time in the office, you don’t have a manager.

Look busy even if there is nothing to do

This one cracks me up every time. Really…nothing to do? If that is reality where you work, here is the one step to overcome this: ask your manager for something to do that contributes to the department goals. Doing so will get you working on something that contributes to the success of the department and the team. That is what will make your job layoff-resistant, not “looking busy.”

And if you get nothing to do from your manager that contributes to the goals, then — instead of looking busy — you need to get busy and start looking for another job. Companies are not employing people who are not contributing to the business — they are laying them off.

Looking busy will catch up with you and bite you in the you know where.

Have work-life balance

Most every pundit I know offers up having work-life balance. This is built on a false premise — that there is only “work” and “life.” And because there are only two of these things to choose from, you need to “balance” them.

Hogwash. The truth of the matter is there is only “life.” In our life we make choices about what we do with that life. Indeed, in most of our lives there is work and partners and professional development and children and personal development and hobbies and finances and retirement planning and visiting with neighbors and seeing our family across the country and having dinner with our friends and going to worship and looking for a new job. Plus so much more.

See? It’s a life. It’s not work-life balance.

Instead, here’s what counts

Results. Seriously, that should be it. Just results. Unfortunately, you go down the lists of most of the punditry and you never see this little gem. Contributions matter. Meeting department goals matters. Helping customers matters. Continuous improvement matters.

Some executive somewhere is focused on the results produced. And if your manager isn’t focused on your results, you are at risk no matter what. If you aren’t accomplishing your tasks and goals, you are totally at risk of a layoff.

Worse — without accomplishments, you aren’t that attractive for hiring in a different company either because you can’t show how your work contributed to your department’s success.

So focus on getting to accomplishment, OK?

What’s the worst advice you’ve received on how to keep your job?

Related posts:

1. 10 worst keys to keep you off the layoff list