WIZE TIME MANAGEMENT

The epitome of poor time management is demonstrated by the BP tragedy that keeps on giving !

The aim of any corporation is profit – and that’s a good thing for shareholders and employees alike – as long as there are profits, shareholders will continue to invest and employees will continue to have jobs.  Customers will continue to have access to the product too.  That’s planning - assuring cotinued health of the corporation.  And what are plans based on?  Mission and values of the company?

Okay – so far so good – and what is consumed during the planning process – time!  Good planning means taking the time  to assure that all aspects of achieving the company’s goals are taken into account – and that includes planning ahead to solve foreseeable problems.

How does that translate to good time management?  If you think and plan ahead for any issue which may come about, it means that, in the long run, you save time.  Why?  Because you can move into action immediately preventing, likely, the problem getting worse and consuming even more time by more people for a longer period of time.

Is the situation in the Gulf of Mexico getting worse?  You betcha!  We haven’t seen anything yet!

And you can bet that there are a lot of people at BP “spinning their wheels” trying to figure out what to do now. 

If BP executives had taken the time to plan for the worse possible scenario, oil cleaning equipment with the latest technology would have been on the scene quickly.  Are they?  No.  Because no one was prepared, not even government.  Would the well have been capped within hours?  Yes but it wasn’t.  Would the damaged parts of the rig have been repaired before they caused problems?  Yes.  Were they?  No.  Why not?  Why wouldn’t any executive in the oil business not be able to foresee these possible problems and assure that plans were in place to deal with this kind of situation quickly and effectively?  After all, if you’re an expert in an industry, surely, you know the possibilities.

Now, of course, we’re all paying the price.

People died.  Wildlife is dying.  Ocean pleasures as we once knew them in that region are being destroyed.  Our food supply is being wiped out.  Livelihoods in that region are becoming extinct.   Why?  Because BP executives placed no value on the very resource on which they operated – they didn’t care enough to take the time to plan for the worse possible scenario and take action to assure that everything was in place should it ever happen.  To me, that’s poor planning – a poor use of time.

Say, another scenario had taken place.  In this scenario, the BP would have spent time during their planning stages to reach their goal of drilling from the ocean floor by assuring safety, maintenance and disaster procedures.  In this case, the disaster may have never happened because the broken parts of the rig would have been repaired immediately.  And if something did happen, BP was ready to cap the well immediately, deploy the latest in oil clean up technology quickly,  and execute a procedure to assure minimum impact on lives and the environment.  Would it have taken so much more time to plan this way?  Of course, not.

But, now, all over the world, we will all lose.  

Now we will all pay – we will all pay at the pumps, for the clean up, reduction in food supply and water-related activities and for what has been lost which can never be recovered - the health of our oceans.  And all the children and grand-children will pay – even those of the BP executives!

And there’s another one just waiting to happen in greater proportions!  Did you watch 60 Minutes last Sunday?  If you didn’t, try to find a rebroadcast somewhere – you’ll be astonished.  It was said on 60 Minutes that BP was ignoring that problem too!

With poor planning, there is no allowance for worse case scenarios and the negative impact on time is substantial.  Good time management practices assure that the time taken today to plan saves time, energy and resources in the future.  If BP executives had taken the time to properly plan for all eventualities which could have been foreseen, hundreds of thousands of hours could have been saved by BP employees, oil clean up crews, governments trying to deal with the disaster, volunteers trying to save wildlife and clean up the beaches, and it could have saved lives!

Lorraine Arams
New goal achieving system at
http://www.wizetime.com

Is it time to change fundamentally?  How do you know when that might be?  Should you effect change now or not?  Why are you changing?  What will the costs in time, money and energy?

When life goes sideways, we think we need to make a change.  Often, we have no idea what change we should make or how to go about making that change but we think fundamental change is the answer.  How do we know?

Solution?  Clarify and Understand. 

What’s the problem exactly?  Once the problem is clearly stated, preferably on “paper”, it is time to search.  Clarity leads to focus.  And hopefully, it also leads to open minds using eyes and ears to support an open mind.  And here’s a trick to clarify:

in 60 words or less describe the problem – not more than 60 words – if you can explain an issue in 60 words or less, you understand it and it will be crystal clear what the issue is

Does anything fundamental need to change or is it just a matter of finding a new approach?  Answers don’t always mean change; sometimes, it just means applying what you know in a different way but that’s not the same as change. For example, if you look at sports.  The game is the same.  The rules are the same.  But a new technique of accomplishing the same thing – one hand basketball shot as opposed to a two-handed approach to score – does not fundamentally change the game of basketball – it just adds another method by which a player scores.  The goal is to score and win.

Here is an example of change.  Coca Cola wanted to solve a problem.  What was the problem in the first place – did they know? 

They chose change.  So they brought in a new coke.  It bombed.  Coke lovers around the world wanted their “Classic Coke”, not the “New Coke”.  Obviously, the coke formula was not the problem – they still had plenty of people who drank Coke in the first place.

A fundamental change was not necessary.  

What were they trying to achieve?  Greater market share?  Adding to their line of products?  Retiring old products?  There were many other ways Coke could have achieved what they wanted without changing the fundamental formula of their product – more creative promotional ideas, maybe a new way of  communicating with the marketplace or hundreds of other “answers” as opposed to “change”.  It cost Coke plenty in so many ways to make an unnecessary change.

Fundamental change, therefore, is often unnecessary.  Stats and strategic planning and analysis and . . . . . all the other paraphernalia taught in high-priced universities and colleges cannot replace the ability to achieve clarity based on experience,  imagination and teamwork (education is a place to start, not a set pattern of making the right decisions).

There was someone in the Coca Cola company who was saying it was a bad idea to change fundamentally (there always is), but none of the decision-makers chose to listen to any argument against their “idea” - often that is the case. 

So, when there is a problem to solve:

•  clarify the problem – know exactly what is to be resolved - it’ll save you a lot of money, energy and time in the long run
• listen to all ideas - you never know who will be offering the best one
• make the atmosphere safe to present contradicting opinions and consider every person’s opinion at all levels of the organization as a valid point of view – the one opinion disliked the most could be the key to resolving the issue – there is wisdom in every corner of an organization 
• keep asking the most important questions of all:  Is fundamental change really necessary or is there something else we should be thinking about?

Lorraine Arams
http://www.wizetime.com