I've been working on putting the time management principles in Getting Things Done (author David Allen) to work, just using very simple folders in Lotus Notes. What I've concluded is that investing in a tool might make a few things easier, but it won't automate the hardest part of implementing Getting Things Done. The hardest part is having the discipline to keep all work items in a trusted place, and to review them regularly!
I created a number of folders, such as the -phone and -online folders David Allen suggested. After a couple of months I find there are really only three that I use: -action, -toread, -waiting.
Five things have been hard for me:
1) remembering to make sure everything I need to work on is in -action. No more yellow stickee notes, or random pieces of paper. If I need to do it, I need to email myself a reminder. On emails where I need to take a next action, I flag the email with a follow up flag, with text on what the next action is, with appropriate priority.. Sometimes I set a timed follow up on the emails in -action. I should use the timed reminders more often than I do. .
2) Anything that goes into -waiting should have a follow up timer on it. I only have about a 50% hit rate on this so far.
3) Moving to-do items out of my inbox, and into -action. In the rush of a busy day, this often falls by the wayside. Just like keeping my kitchen island uncluttered, I find that I have to take the time to clean out my inbox.
4) Remembering to take time to review and plan! I had been attempting to do these every Friday afternoon. I'm concluding I need a little more energy and brainpower than I typically have by the time Friday afternoon rolls around. Plus, meetings inevitably arise to conflict with my scheduled review time. My next tweak is to move my review and plan time to Monday mornings, see if that goes better.
5) My action folder only has about a screen full in it, but that's big enough that I'm having trouble picking out which items are associated with which projects. I'm going to try a variation on this one: I've created subfolders in -action for my 4 major projects, plus one misc folder. Everything must move into one of the subfolders. That way when I decide it's time to focus on my Transformation project, I have one place to look to see what the next action should be on Transformation.
Remarkably, I have NO trouble looking at items that have aged in my -action folder, and deciding I don't need to do them after all. I know that's often a sticking point for people.
In short, the experiment is working well enough that I'm going to keep it running longer.
Beth Benoit | 15 January 2010 05:14:17 PM ET | | Comments (3) | Permanent Link
This has been an exciting week for IBM Lotus Technical Support. First, the new Enterprise Support Portal has gone live for Lotus, giving our customers a customizable Support experience, focused on the products they care about. (Try it out: www.ibm.com/software/support Select Lotus, and then pick your favorite product. )
Second, and more personally exciting to me, is that IBM Support Technical Chat went Live on Tuesday! Lotus Connections, Quickr-Domino, and Sametime customers in North America and Europe now have the capability to use texting as a way to exchange information with IBM Support, in addition to phone and email. We plan to roll this out for most Lotus products in most geographies over the next couple of months. The Lotus Customer Support Engineers are extremely excited about this, as it's often difficult to reach customers by phone, introducing delays in solving problems. And we all know about inbox overload, so email isn't a great alternative. Technical Chat is another method, besides the phone, to collaborate in real time.
Technical Chat is built on the new AJAX proxy capabilities of Sametime 8.5, straight out of the box, using the Sametime SDK. The Sametime web client is zero footprint, with no pre-download required. Customers securely login to the IBM Technical support community using their IBM.com identity; IBM Support Technicians can then communicate with them via text as open issues are worked to completion. Privacy is fully protected, as IBM used the Sametime SDK to customize the web client so it does not show anyone else logged into the community.
For those who are hopeful that this will give them an edge with IBM Technical Support, I regret to inform you that Chat isn't a method to jump the queue. A request for a chat is placed in the same queue as telephone requests for call back. Requests are handled in the order they are received.
You can read more about Technical Support Chat here:
Customer Article for Lotus Technical Support Chat: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/chat/
Beth Benoit | 8 January 2010 02:54:55 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
This week there was a two hour internal "Lotus Knows" event over in Littleton, where Lotus product teams gave a short 15 minute presentation highlighting features to work faster/better/smarter.
One I thought was really cool was the new trick in Quickr Domino....if you're running Quickr Domino in the Notes client sidebar, and you try to send a file over a certain size, it will ask you if you really want to send it, and give you the opportunity to put it into a Quickr Place instead and just send a link to the file.
Unlike many of the legacy Lotus employees, my Notes email lives on a corporate server, and I have a file space limit. When people start doing reply to all on some detail about the headcount spreadsheet and keep the attachment, it doesn't take long before the disk space police send me a warning about how close I am to having my email privileges turned off. And there goes the next 20 minutes of my day, as I extract my attachments and save them off into another database, and archive.
The Quickr Domino people even check that everybody you plan to send the file to has access to the teamroom before the email goes out. VERY smooth.
Beth Benoit | 13 November 2009 05:20:11 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
IBM is bringing all our Software Group personnel in Massachusetts together under one roof in Littleton, MA. When we're all in there (about 3500 of us), we'll be the largest IBM Software Lab worldwide I'm told. It's a beautiful site. IBM had the two buildings gutted, and completely re-designed. I used to work there, and can testify that it's NOTHING like the boxy drab building where I worked over a decade ago. It's light and airy, modern, with lots of small public spaces for people to congregate. The cubes are small, but the public spaces are absolutely lovely and welcoming.
There are over 800 people in the building so far, and now that the cafeteria and fitness center are open the place has a happy buzz to it. The people who were grumbling the most about giving up their office with a door, having to login and out of their phone every day, and having to follow IBM's clean desk policy are really happy about their new digs. There's a new sense of being part of something bigger than their team. You can watch the cross-pollination beginning to happen.
Because of various organizational twists, I won't get to move until sometime in early 2010. My office is finished and waiting for me, but without a phone or network ports. Yesterday I camped there for the afternoon, doing my meetings using SUT over my wireless connection to the IBM intranet. And it was fine. Still better sound quality than my office phone. Even when my CPU usage creeps up (which it sometimes does when I'm doing something I shouldn't like playing Farmville on Facebook) it's crystal clear. I've heard people worry about SUT dying when Notes replicates...I run Notes local and replicate every 5 minutes. Never a problem and I live on SUT for hours a day.
I just wore out my second USB headset. Good thing those keep getting cheaper!
Beth Benoit | 30 October 2009 03:59:39 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I was in a Lotus Operations meeting today, and heard some good news that I'll pass on.
There are over 3000 people in IBM using Sametime Unified Telephony now, in 54 countries. Over half of them are in the IBM sales community, getting first hand experience of the advantages of using SUT so that they can talk about the value they experience, first hand.
Recently IBM's CIO office did a survey of the SUT users on their satisfaction with the pilot. The result was overwhelmingly positive, and was a much higher satisfaction rating than the CIO office sees on IT pilots.
I usually spend 3-4 hours a day on SUT these days. My biggest annoyance? That most of my co-workers AREN'T on SUT, and don't work from their official office at the phone number that's kept in the corporate directory. When I hit the big green button to call them I have to disconnect because I get their voicemail.
When they actually ARE in their office, click to call reaches them before they can type and send me their phone number by Sametime. I've surprised more than one person that way.
Beth Benoit | 9 October 2009 06:02:32 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
This week I went out to lunch with a former co-worker. We've worked together at two different companies, and it was fun to catch up.
It got me thinking; one thing that is very unsatisfying about a widely distributed team is that we miss the chance to gather to celebrate our successes...and commiserate over the failures. There's no going out to the local Chinese luncheon buffet when you're 4 time zones apart. You can't run out for ice cream, or to play hookey at the local mini golf, or gather for a beer after work. My co-located teams didn't do those things very often; the rarity made the "revolt" from cubeville that much more of a bonding experience.
I don't remember anything about the dozens of 1 p.m. meetings I was in when I was located in Littleton MA. I remember keenly the day we said to heck with it, and went off to a local ice cream stand; an unsuspecting co-worker ordered a Kimball's special...and got handed a Sundae she had to hold with two hands.
How to make up for the lack of the the informal social glue?
There's lots of warnings out there about friending our co-workers and bosses on Facebook....but maybe we should do it anyway! I find Facebook fun, and a good way to get a glimpse into the lives of people I see rarely (and in some cases haven't seen for decades). It still wouldn't be the same as going out to lunch, and it doesn't encourage the confidences and sharing that comes from a face to face private chat. Still, if we we work in a virtual workspace, maybe that's where we need to do work socializing too.
Guess after this, I have no excuse not to go Friend my boss.
Beth Benoit | 25 September 2009 04:17:34 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I turned 50 this week, and that got me thinking about how much has changed in the workplace over the last 31 years, since I took my first summer job at Oak Ridge National Labs.
Technical work was tied to a physical place. It had to be. The computers were big, the networks were poor, and the access points were few and far between. Oak Ridge National Lab had the height of technology available at the time. I used the TECO editor to create my Fortran programs and JCL statements on a stand-up terminal connected to a DEC minicomputer. From the DEC mini-computer I could queue up my batch jobs to compile my programs and if they compiled successfully, to run them. The IBM computer that actually ran my JCL job was at Sandia National Lab.
I got the results back, if I was lucky, a half day later. A young man with a cart came around and delivered the job printout rolled up and secured with rubber bands. I created a HUGE rubber band ball over the summer. I've been using rubber bands off it for the last 31 years. It's still bigger than my fist.
Because Oak Ridge is a nuclear facility, we had security guards with guns, and our picture badge contained a radiation dosimeter. You never forgot to wear your badge.
During my college years technology advanced at a rapid rate. We stopped using punch cards, and started using mini-computers. Instead of short lines for short stints at keypunch machines, we had long lines for long stints at terminals. I started writing my programs after I got in line.
When I started working full time for Data General, I got permission to bring home a bulky terminal and a modem where I literally plugged the handset into a rubber cradle. This enabled me to work from home on occasion. If the mini-computer needed a reboot, I still had to drive into the office to enter the reboot instructions in octal via switches on the front panel.
A few years later I was working for DEC, and got my first workstation in my cubicle. This was the height of the Xwindows explosion, and it introduced a mouse alongside my keyboard. A few years later we got our first personal computer at home. This enabled me to use a "green screen" communications program, and a much smaller and faster modem, to dial into work remotely. Everyone went into the office every day, I didn't work much with people beyond my office, and when I did, it was by email. I vividly remember talking with a sales rep in Australia by phone; I sent him some reference materials by email while we were talking, and I heard the "beep" as he received it. We both marveled at how fast our corporate network was that day. Usually it took a couple of hours for email to get delivered.
Now, I can work anyplace where I can get my laptop to connect to the internet. I go into the office when I have a face to face meeting (rare) or it's too noisy at home. I work with people all over the world, and across many different time zones. I use instant messaging almost more than I use email, and online awareness is popping up in almost every application. I have a teleconference number with international calling attached to it, and I automatically plug those numbers into every meeting invitation I send. I have Sametime Unyte for a meeting white board and presentations. I use Sametime Unified Telephony to call into meetings. I use a IBM Research telephony application that reads my calendar and dials teleconference numbers for me, so I don't even have to look up the phone numbers for meetings. My kids have laptops just as highly powered as my work laptop. I haven't used a modem in years.
Where will technology go by the time I retire? My guess: email will be mostly dead as a medium for workplace communication, probably replaced by messages left in online social networking spaces. Calendars will still be critically important because more of our work will be collaborative, and verbal. I'll log into Second Life to start my workday. My cell phone will transcribe and read instant messages through my blue tooth headset. My car will be connected to the internet.
And finally, I'm sure my kids will tell me constantly I'm hopelessly behind the times. I'll lament consumer technology companies changing things for no good reason. And IBM will still be in the forefront, bringing new technologies to the workplace to make businesses more productive and efficient.
Beth Benoit | 18 September 2009 11:32:45 AM ET | | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
Since I started my new job, I've been trying to apply "Getting things Done" by David Allen to my daily work habits. I've heard about this from a number of IBMers, and finally made the time to read it all the way through.
It's a pretty simple concept he has, really. Put together a simple organization system so you can find/work on the things you need to later, make sure you can trust it, and get the cruft out of your brain. Use your calendar to tell you where you need to be, and to plan.
It's too soon to say it's given me lots of new energy and productivity. It still feels pretty awkward.
What is working is that it's helping me win the inbox war.
My inbox used to be totally crazy. I could scroll down for pages, with unread messages even lurking near the bottom, which I hoped I could safely ignore based on the title. (Always a dangerous practice, but I play the lottery too.) There were LOTS of followup flags on email in my inbox as well, but usually they were just flags, and I had to re-read the whole email to remember what I wanted to do. There was lots stuff I hoped to read or take action on. Maybe. Once a year, usually December 28th, I fought my inbox down to a page or less. Never to zero.
Now, I've got a few simple folders.
-action
-toread
-online
-waiting
-phone
-athome
I also have a page worth of various reference material folders. Though only 3-4 of those really get used regularly. I should prune.
When I sit down for a half hour with my inbox in the morning (assuming I don't have meetings first thing), I quickly look for the stuff to move into "-toread". The overnight news feeds, dilbert cartoon, online shopping offers, facebook updates. The usual. Select and Move. if I have time to breathe later, THEN I'll look at those.
Then I start at the top and move down my inbox doing the fast skim. For each, the question is
What's the next action? If I can do it in the next two minutes, do it now. If I can't, flag it with a followup flag with specifics on what the next action is, and move it to -action. If the next action is to read it thoroughly and it will take longer than 2 minutes, I might move it to -toread if the time I read it doesn't matter, or -action if I think I need to read it soon.
Before I know it, the new items in my inbox are moved elsewhere, and I can choose what project to start working on. Usually a glance at -action makes that an easy determination.
For those odd "...I have to remember to...." thoughts that come up in the middle of some other activity I shoot myself a quick email on what I just remembered I have to do. I taught my email filter to file those into -action for me.
I know that people have written Notes Templates and Sametime applications to implement GTD. Since I have to drink beta champagne of both products on a regular basis, those won't work for me. Simple file folders I can count on though.
We'll see if this system stands up to a full load over the next four months. Maybe I won't lose the email video game after all!
Beth Benoit | 4 September 2009 04:22:51 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I've recently changed jobs within Lotus, leaving Sametime and joining the Support team.
This week I shadowed a Notes Support Engineer during his call shift, and listened in as he and a customer debugged a Notes upgrade problem. He had told me that almost all customers are willing to let IBM support tunnel in to see what's going wrong in real time.
I hadn't thought much about exactly how we do that, but I shouldn't have been surprised when the support engineer started up a Lotus Sametime Unyte session. Within moments, the two of them were deep into administrative tools, looking at settings, staring at error messages, and brainstorming.
When the call ended, I asked what we used to use before Unyte. I was told we used to have a custom application, but our customers like Unyte much better.
I also sat in a daylong Unyte session just today during an operations review, and was struck by how much the product has improved since it first came into IBM. I now longer have to pull out my glasses to read the busy slides. (Operations reviews inevitably generate lots of busy slides!) Since my eyesight continues to get worse, that means the resolution is much better. I consider that a HUGE improvement, as I had forgotten to bring my reading classes to the meeting. Good work Unyte team!
Beth Benoit | 7 August 2009 05:07:36 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html One of my social networking friends recommended a thoughtful article this week: "Maker's schedule, Manager's Schedule" The premise is that there are two kinds of jobs: those where the work can be scheduled on an hourly basis, and those where work is best tackled in big chunks such as days or half days. It's a wonderful description of a reality I've observed for years. http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
The people I know who create for a living...the writers, the software developers, the designers....they're the Makers. They need big chunks of time to get into the creative flow, to get the full context in their head, and then do the magic only they can do. Two meetings in a day can be a terrible imposition for a Maker, especially if they're not back to back.
Then there are folks like me, who live by their calendar. I often joke I go where my calendar sends me, but it's true. Every hour (or half hour or fifteen minutes) brings a new task. Right now I'm late for my weekly plan/review meeting with myself.
So, how does this relate to Sametime? Makers hate instant messaging. Even worse then they hate meetings. Meetings can be anticipated and planned for. Instant messages are random. Like tornados.
Managers love instant messaging. They can "see" who's working (this is an illusion, but that's another discussion). They can ask a question without having to leave their desk or pick up the phone. Instant messaging is also how a leader on a global team builds relationships over time. Instant messaging becomes the virtual water cooler.
How to reconcile these two work styles? By recognizing the value in both and accommodating both. I know one team which declares a "meeting free" day every week. Other teams take advantage of their distributed nature; Dublin gets the early mornings to be "offline", Boston gets the late afternoon.
If it's not possible to set aside big blocks of time on a team wide basis, then a team can make it a norm that it's legitimate to drop off the net to get concentration time for critical work. Makers should turn their Sametime status to "Do Not Disturb" (DND) on a regular basis, their team leaders should encourage this and lead by example! Another option instead of DND is to use the Sametime Privacy filters (File -> Preferences -> Privacy) to appear offline or DND except to the few people whose ping must be accepted, no matter what.
Of course, if you use DND, you also have to make a point of coming up for air periodically, at times that are convenient for your teammates worldwide to contact you. Business IS a team sport, and instant messaging is an important part of enabling rapid team problem solving.
If you're one of the many people who longs for the days when an email reply before the end of day was a speedy response, I encourage you to discover "Do Not Disturb". If you're worried, socialize it first, and explain what you'll be doing in that time. Send people this link for discussion. Maybe you can set a new team norm, one that works better for everyone.
Beth Benoit | 31 July 2009 03:41:35 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
