“That looked painful” commented my colleague from the university library. We were chatting after the meeting I’d just been holding with my IT managers and although he’d not actually been part of it, he’d seen the strange behaviour of one of my team through the...
In my thirties I was an amateur triathlete. I wasn’t good at it, but I showed up for the training and finished a few events per year. At the same time, I was also a 5-a-day smoker of cigars. Big ones. In this, I excelled. Even at the time, I was aware that training my...
Collaborative software (a.k.a. ‘groupware’) is on the rise as companies grapple with demands for greater team productivity. This article follows on from a previous guide to understanding how the various elements of your company’s groupware solution...
How do you delegate? Delegation isn’t always what you might consider as traditional ‘downward’ delegating – you can delegate to anyone. Here’s an insight into how to master the art of delegating.
“Hell is other people.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Have you ever wished ‘they’ would get GTD®? Ever thought that it would all be so much easier if your colleagues would finally pull up their socks and start being a bit more like your very fine and virtuous self? If so,...
In five weeks’ time, 1500 of the worlds most interested – and interesting – GTDers will congregate in Amsterdam for the GTD® Summit. I was privileged to be in the room at the last one 10 years ago in San Francisco, and am thrilled to be moderating a panel on GTD’s...
Andrew Ward, Director of Optimum Advisory, is a business and HR leader, organisation development consultant, and amateur GTD® evangelist. He has worked in and for organisations large and small, multinational and domestic, in the UK and US and in industries including...
In the second blog in this series, we looked at how you might get a sense of what the current reality around working standards is in your team or organisation. If that exercise – of uncovering current standards – highlighted the need for change, what to do...
Regular readers will know that in my blogs I usually focus on ways to be more effective and efficient, to realise the benefits of stress-free productivity. It occurred to me earlier this week though that I’ve been neglecting an audience that could use some help. What...
Karly Edwards is a Senior Secretary at KPMG, and discovered GTD as part of an internal initiative for partners at the firm. She soon adopted GTD herself and has never looked back. I have worked at KPMG for 10 years as Senior Secretary, and for nine of those years I...
In my last blog, I opened a conversation about the possibility – and the value – of raising acceptable working standards in an organisation. If you liked the sound of that – or simply can no longer bear the waste you currently see in your place of work – this blog...
Imagine for a moment you work in an organisation where people no longer respond to their e-mail. One where it has become ‘normal’ to have to send messages two or three times – then pick up a phone and call people – to get a response on some issue you are working on....
In many organisations these days, wellness is ‘the new black’, a hot topic from board room to break room. In a recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, “The Wellness Effect – The Impact of Workplace Programmes”, the report’s authors found...
Last month my colleague Todd Brown blogged about Aristotle and GTD, and the topic must have jiggled loose some errant neural connections in my brain because later that day I found myself remembering a classic Monty Python sketch called the ‘International Philosophy...
In our increasingly always-on, too-much-to-do, pay-attention-to-me-now world, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that stress in the workplace is on the up, but in a recent study we have some hard data to ponder. Stress was at the top of the list of health and...
For the past seven years we’ve been out doing this GTD thing for clients large and small, and we’ve been getting consistently great feedback on how it is positively impacting the lives of those who use it. As people who have made it our job to spread these...
On Wednesday this week Next Action Associates turned seven years old. We’re quite proud of that. We live in a world where many start-ups don’t make it past the toddler stage, and the majority fail before they begin primary school; yet here we are confidently making...
I recently got a message from a client who was all excited that a consultancy that works with her organization had announced that from 2013 the consultancy would no longer be using e-mail for internal communications. There was a hopeful implicit subtext that...
