Pushing Button, a free image at Office.comA co-worker, Steven Thomas (no relation, honest), recently shared his thoughts after taking a workshop here at Microsoft on keeping projects moving forward. With his permission, I wanted to pass along the “good parts” of the workshop that expand on some ideas in John Kotter's book A Sense of Urgency. Take it away, Steven:

Strategies

Bring the outside in: Too much internal focus leads to stagnation and complacency – to make things happen, you sometimes need an external perspective.

Behave with urgency every day: Urgency doesn’t have to mean scurrying around in a panic – it can also mean streamlining what you do and respecting people’s time, so folks can focus on results and success.

Tactics

Bring the outside In

· Appeal to emotions, not just logic – use stories to convince, data to justify. Think about a good brown-bag talk – what gets you engaged with a project?

· Get the stories from customers that challenge business as usual – front-line folks have access to a gold mine. Customer comments and community sites are all part of our job, and they all have stories to tell.

· Get the data from competitive reviews and industry metrics that show our vulnerabilities – scare people but don’t make them feel doomed. Looking at our website page metrics and trends is good – but there’s even more value to be had by comparing our data to our competitors’ data.

Behave with urgency every day

· Identify and purge non-productive activities – stop going to those meetings where you regularly don’t have action items, and get them off your calendar.

· Make short-term goals – what can I do by next week?

· Delegate to optimize resources – is someone else better set up to accomplish this?

· Ask for short-term actions from collaborators – what can you do by next week? Make sure your meetings aren’t non-productive for others. 

Thanks, Steven. Do you have a great tactic to make the day productive? Comment away.

--Doug Thomas