Swinging for the Fence to Slow Productivity

We swung for the fences and came up short…Yeah, you win some, you lose some, it ain’t always home runsAnd that’s just the way life plays…Morgan Wallen A few years ago, I was facilitating a DiSC training session with one of my colleagues. We use a motivation checklist tied to the DiSC Personality Model to emphasize that different things motivate different people. We always encourage people to ask a peer what they think motivates them. Based on the behaviors you observe in another person, “What do you think makes them tick?” is the question we ask. I asked my colleague

Autonomy and Productivity… Better Together!

Tuesdays from 4:00- 5:00 pm.  In the car. While our middle child is in gymnastics, I have found that this hour of concentrated time in a concentrated space leads to some productive homework time with my oldest.  While his newborn brother snoozes in his car seat, we tackle third-grade homework. And there is a lot of it.  Take our list for Tuesday of this past week:  -A math worksheet due Wednesday -At least 10 minutes of multiplication facts practice that has to be signed off on each day by a parent for a grade -Practice for a vocabulary test on

Productivity from Patience

Note: This is the first of a two-part post on the value of abiding in patience in order to achieve the best kind of learning. The value is described here, whereas how to do it is contained in the second post here.  Patience is not one of my virtues. And oftentimes, the world reinforces what seems to be the need for it not to be. Get it done and get it done fast so you can get more done is often the mantra whether we consciously or unconsciously preach this to ourselves or hear it from others.  And we are

The Office Design that Promotes Productivity, Collaboration, and Cost Savings

Much has been said about the open office floor plan.  The concept arose out of Silicon Valley and became a popular way to supposedly create “collaborative” work environments where innovation happens.  Oh, and as an added bonus, companies saved a lot of money designing office spaces as open.  I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg- the realization that money could be saved this way, or that “collaboration” and therefore innovation would thrive in this type of design.   But in many studies, including this one: The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration, it was found

Do Meetings Negatively Impact Productivity?

Last week, during a meeting with a client’s leadership team, we got on the topic of just how much time they spend each week in meetings. One of the managers told me that meetings take up about five to six hours of his day, every day! That only leaves him two hours to get his work accomplished. When I asked him to tell me about his meetings, his list went something like this: 8 AM- Meeting with team 1 to discuss issues 9 AMM- Meeting with team 2 to determine what issues from 8 AM meeting are critical 10 AM-