Time is Money, Time is Life

Focus. It’s the core of productivity and effectiveness. It’s the reason I meditate every morning and it’s the reason “good” meetings are supposed to have a stated purpose and defined agenda. But you can have these and lose focus – and you can focus without them.

Last week I taught a simple technique to maintain focus in meetings to a management team in Hartford CT (can you guess the industry?). Five minutes of work on my part after which one of the participants said “Wow, that would save us thousands of dollars.”

I thought “no way!” until I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation and determined that a meeting of 8-10 moderately well paid people could easily cost $500-$800 per hour. Not to mention the opportunity cost. What else could those people be doing that would actually add to the bottom line (and their own morale) rather than detracting from it?

Are you ready for the tip? It’s truly revolutionary. Add this to your meetings and I promise you more focus, more fun and more productivity – instantly.

Step One: Talk to the team about focus and why focus is important and ask for their help in maintaining it. Be humble, give them respect and most importantly give them power. This is never a difficult sales job.

Step Two: Mention that the two most common ways to lose focus is either to talk about something that is irrelevant to the purpose of the current meeting (a Tangent) or to continue talking after agreement has been reached.

Step Three: Hand out post-its or 3×5 cards and sharpies and ask each person to make small flag (I think I should make an iPhone app). On one side they write Tangent and the other side they write Sold. Ask them to hold up the flag whenever they think it appropriate.

Step Four: Continue the meeting and watch as the participants (hopefully) get drunk on new power.

This will save money for sure but more importantly it can save life. Our time is our life. And work is where we spend the bulk of it. If we make our meetings more productive (and fun) we lessen frustration, build positive culture and show that we respect our people.

And people are what your company is made of.

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