SuperCompetent™
In this competitive economy, just being able to do your job is no longer enough. Competence is simply expected in today's workplaces. But you can't be simply competent; you have to be SuperCompetent™ to get an edge. Laura Stack's new book, SuperCompetent: the Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best (Wiley 2010), gives high potentials proven methods to reach peak performance and achieve breakthrough results.
You'll discover the six keys to unlocking your full potential: Activity, Availability, Attention, Accessibility, Accountability, and Attitude. The Productivity Pro, Laura Stack, gives you a clear and practical system for achieving Maximum Results in Minimum Time®. By contrasting SuperCompetent™ hero thinking with simply Competent zero thinking, you'll see that transforming your performance is not about mantras but mindsets.
SuperCompetent will be available in August 2010, just in time for your fall conference or leadership development program.
When the rubber hits the road, the difference between merely having ability and being exceptional may be the difference between losing your job and keeping it. The best workers possess a constant, expansive ability to be good at everything they do, no matter how general or specific. In this next series of 3 quarterly Sales KnowHow articles, I'll show you how to master the six universal Keys to workplace success.
SUPERCOMPETENT KEY #1:
ACTIVITY. Activity demonstrates value and reflects importance.
SuperCompetent people have an acute sense of direction, in which the nature of their activities reflects their relative priorities. They're particularly aware of one thing that escapes most of their colleagues: that being busy and being productive are two very different things.
You can be busy all day long, running from one brushfire to another, and not accomplish anything productive at all. True Activity involves knowing your goals intimately, keeping them constantly in mind, and working toward them in an efficient way that wastes a minimum of energy and time. SuperCompetent people aren't hidebound by the old ways of doing things, either; if there's a possibility of doing something more efficiently, they suggest or implement it. Here are a few ways to help you fine-tune your workday in the Key of Activity, keeping things humming along like a well-oiled productivity machine.
1. Know exactly why you work hard and what you're trying to achieve. You can't be very productive if you don't know what you're working for. Plan out your goals and dreams, and work toward achieving them. Learn what makes you tick, own your destiny, and keep focused on your mission.
2. Know what to do, when to do it, and why. Take initiative and do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Don't just work on projects in the order they come across your desk; learn to structure your time and processes effectively, or others will out-compete you.
3. Create systems to perform tasks more efficiently, so you can leave the office on time. Too often, we're gulled into working harder than we should by stuff that was supposed to make our lives easier. Step forward and create or suggest more efficient ways of doing things, so that you can take back your time.
4. Regularly rest and recharge your batteries, so that you can be productive and creative when you return to work. For heaven's sake, you're not a robot. Take a break when you need to! As long as you don't become a slacker, taking time off can be one of the healthiest, most productive things you can do.
5. Do the day's most profitable and valuable tasks first. Instead of taking care of piddling brushfire issues, learn to delegate. Put the most important tasks at the top of your list, and work through them first-then do all the rest, if you have time. It's not a sin to let unimportant tasks go.
At the end of the day, all that matters is results-and results are measured by productivity. That means you need to be very sure that your time is not only accounted for, but has real value.
Productivity, in its most meaningful sense, is all about reaching high-value goals in every area of your life, often in the shortest amount of time (but not always, such as spending time with loved ones). Nobody cares how many things you crossed off your list. Nobody cares how busy you were last week if key projects are falling through the cracks.
Only results matter, so strive to get the most value out of every day. Grab your dreams and get going!
SUPERCOMPETENT KEY #2:
AVAILABILITY. Availability is driven by Activity.
Just as setting valid priorities and goals is important, so is accepting your responsibility in carrying them out. You have to structure your schedule very carefully to ensure that things get done-because if you don't, other people will be perfectly happy to structure your schedule for you.
Think about it: how many times have you attended a meeting and asked yourself, "Why am I here?" Often, it's because someone decided you should be-without bothering to consider if that was best for you and your productivity goals.
You have to be willing to protect your time from everyone who wants a piece of it. Among other things, you must learn to say no when appropriate, to delegate, to cancel unnecessary meetings, to let some tasks go, and to eliminate bottlenecks-whatever's necessary to take back your time and use it the way you need to.
More importantly, you must learn how to leverage technological productivity tools that can lighten your scheduling load. Webinars, teleconferencing, and services like Jott or GoToMeeting can accelerate productivity and streamline your schedule. So can the effective use of organizers and other paper-based methods. The trick is finding which one works best for you, and that takes some experimentation.
Try these tips to hone your Availability toward SuperCompetence:
1. Refuse requests when appropriate. Learn how to say no graciously. Because you're good at what you do, you'll always be fielding requests for help and input. It's human nature to want to please others, but you can't do it all. There's no need to be rude, but there are polite ways to avoid being overworked.
2. Set appropriate boundaries. Learn how to protect your time from others. You're always going to face what I call the six D's of Interruptions: Deadlines, Disruptions, Dependencies, Discrepancies, Distractions, and Drop-Ins. You can't let others use any of these to slow down your productivity.
3. Push a task down to the lowest level of responsibility. Trust others to do their jobs; "delegation" is a popular business buzzword for a reason. Don't waste your time and productivity on tasks other people can do more cheaply. Hand them off to someone else, and let them do their jobs without micromanagement.
4. Schedule your day realistically according to your key activities. While it's normal to make an effort to accommodate other people's needs, your own should come first. Learn to manage your time properly, and take control of your own schedule. Don't let other people do it for you.
5. Weigh the results of attending any meeting against the results you could produce instead. Meetings can take up your entire day if you let them. Instead of dropping everything to attend a meeting, see if you can send a proxy, attend by phone, or just cancel it altogether.
Availability is a loaded word, at least in business terms. It means so much more than just being there-any decent worker can and should be there for their employers, subordinates, and co-workers when they're needed. SuperCompetent people need to be keenly aware of time management. After all, time isn't like money, office supplies, or Brussels sprouts: we've each got a very limited amount of it, and we're not going to get any more.
If you say yes to everything someone asks you to do, you're going to be so overburdened that you won't be available to people when they need you, except on those rare occasions when you manage to clear a task off your schedule. You require some flexibility, which means that you not only have to learn how to say no to some requests (or creatively negotiate them somewhat), but you also need to learn how to effectively deal with distractions and diversions-from people demanding your time to "helpful" technology that seems to command all your time.
And stop trying to be such a perfectionist! You don't have to do everything; the idea is to be SuperCompetent, not SuperHuman. Superman's a fantasy-and even if he wasn't, you have to remember that he's supposed to be an alien from another planet, not a human being. Knowing how to delegate and/or outsource tasks whenever you can, and having the wisdom to do so, is a must.
You'll also need to learn effective scheduling techniques to make life easier for both you and everyone else, and hone them to maximum effectiveness so things don't get out of hand. The same is true when it comes to meetings. As I've said elsewhere, a task will expand to fill the amount of time available; that's something called Parkinson's Law (after naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, if you were wondering). Meetings are a prime example of the tendency for that to happen.
You don't have to let time-stealers eat into your productivity! Stand up, step up, and take back your time!
Make it a productive day! ™
© Copyright 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.
© 2010 Laura Stack. Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker who helps busy workers Leave the Office Earlier® with Maximum Results in Minimum Time®. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., a time management training firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in today's workplaces. She is the bestselling author of three works published by Broadway Books: The Exhaustion Cure (2008), Find More Time (2006) and Leave the Office Earlier (2004). Laura is a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, and Day-Timers®, Inc and has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, and the New York Times. Her clients include Cisco Systems, Sunoco, KPMG, Nationwide, and 3M. To have Laura speak at your next event, call 303-471-7401. Visit
www.TheProductivityPro.com to sign up for her free monthly productivity newsletter.
