Apparently, too much sleep can make you tired.
Archives for October 30, 2009
Get Back in the Box
Chip and Dan Heath have a good article on how sometimes you don’t need to “think outside of the box.” Instead, you might just need a different box because constraints can free your team’s thinking.
Drawing Results
Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing! I’ve drawn the winners and will be emailing them today.
Thanks again, and thanks for reading!
The Essence of Time Management in One Paragraph
Stephen Covey pulls together the essence of time management into four sentences:
The essence of time management is to set priorities and then to organize and execute around them. Setting priorities requires us to think carefully and clearly about values, about ultimate concerns. These then have to be translated into long- and short- term goals and plans translated once more into schedules or time slots. Then, unless something more important — not something more urgent — comes along, we must discipline ourselves to do as we planned. (From Principle Centered Leadership, p 138.)
Managing in a Downturn: Don't Overreact
Post 4 in the series: Managing in a Downturn.
We’ve seen that recessions are opportunities for those who refuse to obsess on the constraints of the external environment (post 2) and that one corollary of this is that you shouldn’t retreat (post 3).
Another corollary is that you shouldn’t overreact. Baveja, Ellis, and Rigby’s article continues:
Companies that fared poorly during the last recession exhibited a common response: they overreacted, then “stayed the course” even when rougher seas lay ahead.
The lesson? If your strategy isn’t showing results, reevaluate it. don’t expect it to start paying dividends just because the economy is recovering. Winning firms react to trouble early, scrapping ideas that aren’t working and turbocharging those that are. Firms that hunker down can miss opportunities and create even bigger problems down the road.
So don’t overreact, but if you do, make sure to course correct in a timely manner.
Perhaps the primary and most important example of over-reacting is excessive cost-cutting. That will be the subject of the next post.
Posts in This Series
- Managing in a Downturn: An Introduction
- Managing in a Downturn: The Good News
- Managing in a Downturn: Don’t Retreat
- Managing in a Downturn: Don’t Overreact
- Managing in a Downturn: Be Careful of Cost-Cutting Campaigns
- Managing in a Downturn: Keep Making Meaning
- Managing in a Downturn: It’s Time to Hire