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Hi!

I'm looking to put together a training and coaching plan for some staff in my organization surrounding Time Management, Productivity and Prioritizing and am looking for resource suggestions.

With a fairly significant restructuring of our sales department, this will become more of a challenge as we coach staff into new roles and onboard new employees. And personally, as I move into a new role, i'm looking to improve my own skills in these areas as well.

I've already started working on Getting Things Done, and I'm looking for any kind of helpful resource - podcasts, books, blogs, personal tips and tricks, whatever you've got! 

Thanks in advance! 

AM

GlennR's picture

For a variety of reasons I feel strongly about this topic. I spent five years heading up the Learning and Development Department for my division and I have gone through the same thing you are now going through.

It's fine to create a reading list around setting priorities--I would contribute Drucker's, "The Effective Executive."

However, I'm betting that the majority of your "customers" will not read books for self-improvement. So, put together reading lists of books, articles, etc. but know that only a segment of your potential audience will find value in it.

A better ROI is to identify those people in your organization who are effective at these topics and have the bottom lines to prove it. These subject matter experts should be brought together and their procedures distilled into a presentation that ideally, would be given by them. Interview them for your own internal podcasts, articles, etc.

Time after time I have seen change management issues adopted by front-line staff who first resisted the ideas/training, etc from upper management, but who quickly adopted it when one of their peers stood up in front of them and told them how well it worked.

This peer-led instruction will be more effective than any reading list you put together.

If you know anything about curriculum building then you know that the usual method is to interview them, then build a course of some sort around their knowledge. But I'd go further and have them present what they do if they are half-way effective presenters. There's something about hearing it from the horse's mouth that quadruples the impact.

Also, instruction customized for your own organization by your own organization can be so much more relevant than off-the-shelf materials.

Good luck!

 

JustHere's picture

 I was about to recommend GTD as well

orioniv's picture
Training Badge

Hi

I've been working with training in time management for some years before moving into a managerial role. My recommendation is to keep it simple and let your personal system grow and change over time to fit your needs as they may change in different jobs and roles.

Besides Peter F. Drucker and David Allen's GTD, both of which I like very much, I would also suggest the old Stephen R. Covey book "First Things First" with the time matrix (aka the Eisenhower matrix - urgent vs important) as well as Julie Morgenstern's "Time Management from the inside out" with time boxing.

The FranklinCovey course "Focus" is also interesting - can be found as a 3 CD course on Amazon. You might also want to consider their new time management course "The 5 choices" replacing "Focus", e.g. on-site for your team members or online. I have no idea if it is good or not, but personally having been certified to teach the Focus course inside the company I work for with average long-term time savings per week of about 2 hours as the result, my guess is that it will be worthwhile. FranklinCovey has, in my experience, a unique capability to take something complex and boil it down to something very simple and actionable to do - sort of the Pareto principle of finding the 20% you need to do to get most of the results you seek.

Cheers,

Lars Axelsen, Denmark

DiSC 6621

celing's picture

You might also want to look into Mark Forster's books "Get Everything Done" and "Do It Tomorrow":

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/markforstthet-21/275-0495608-7494945?_encoding=UTF8&node=1

mfculbert's picture

Peter Drucker (Start with Effective Executive)

David Allen (Getting Things Done & reread every quarter - if you THINK you have it mastered then read his other books) 

thooversql's picture

Charles Hobbs "Time Power" is the best that I ever read.  He wrote about Time Management, Productivity and Prioritizing based on both Company and Personal goals and priorities.  He stresses developing your own Unifying Principles and living your life in balance with those principles.  His book was published back in 1987.  Most of the TM books I have ready lately teach a subset of the principles that Hobbes championed.  If you can find the book it is worth the money and time.

mfculbert's picture

I have two primary texts. Peter Drucker's "Effective Executive" and David Allen's "Getting Things Done." 

Not only do you need to read them. You need to review them 3 or 4 times every year. Every time I reread one of these I get new information or important reminders.