Fred Beringer » Productivity

Email Management: PIFEM is a clear winner !

Fred — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:28:56 +0000

Almost a year ago (wow, times really fly !) I’ve shared with you an email management system I was starting to use. During this year, I’ve shared this system with as many people as possible as I think it is really excellent. I don’t see myself today not using it as it did help me being 10 times more efficient when dealing with the pile of email I receive everyday. Some close colleague were as excited as I was and made a few improvement. In this quick post, I wanted to show you how I was configured and hopefully it will encourage you to start using it !

We all know that all email don’t have the same priority. In my opinion, if you can read and answer an email in less than 30 seconds, it might be useful to treat it on the spot. However, most of them need be treated differently based on their urgency or maybe some require more thoughts from you to answer. For me, priority goes from: I need to answer this email now, today, tomorrow, this week or it can wait next week. For some it can wait even longer. That’s the first important objective of PIFEM: Organize your mailbox so you know at any time during the day which email requires your attention. You don’t have to scan through your inbox to remind your brain what you need to take care of. PIFEM does it for you. I really don’t want my brain to be used for this hence the automation.

The whole system makes use of search folders in Outlook. Every new email will fall into the To Be Checked search folder you had created previously with the following settings:

Then you need to create search folders for email you need to take care of today, tomorrow, this week, next week or later. Below are the search folders settings I’m using for each:

Today

Tomorrow

This week

Next Week

Later

Whenever a new email arrive on your To be Checked search folders, decide what you want to do with it.

With PIFEM, there is no way you can forget to answer an email. That’s the beauty of it! The problem is that not everyone is using it and some people tend to forget you had asked an important question which require an answer. You can setup PIFEM to make sure you follow-up on people who are a bit disorganized.

You simply need to create 2 (or more, depending on how granular you want to be) new categories and the associated search folders.

New categories

Search folder for the answer expected this week.

Create another one for answers expected next week with the associated category.

When you write an email with some questions and really want to follow-up, go to your send items and set the appropriate category. The email will go directly to either Reply expected this week or reply expected next week. Then you can chase people for your answer !

Last advice, you can set your quick click to complete so that when you go through your email you can quickly set them to complete. You can also setup a keyboard shortcut to make it even more efficient ! (mouse is a waste of time sometime)

I’m sure this email management system can be optimized a bit more and adapted to your own need. If you have some suggestion, send them my way and I will definitely update this post.

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Time management: Who’s got the monkey ?

Fred — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:17:10 +0000

“Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey” is probably one of the most popular management article published by the Harvard Business Review. It’s been written by William Oncken and Donald Wass in 1974. It’s been reprinted several time since then and the message is still very true. This is a must read for everyone who has trouble delegating and ends up doing their subordinates or peers work.

If you can relate to the following situation, you should definitely read the article:

Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall and that he notices one of his subordinates, Jones, coming his way. When the two meet, Jones greets the manager with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see …. “As Jones continues, the manager recognizes in this problem the two characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates gratuitously bring to his attention. Namely, the manager knows (a) enough to get involved, but (b)not enough to make the on-the-spot decision expected of him. Eventually, the manager says, “So glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it, and I’ll let you know.” Then he and Jones part company.

You’ve just allowed the actual problem or “monkey” to leap from your employee back to yours.

Imagine taking too many monkeys and you won’t be able to handle your actual job ! The problem your employee might have is probably very important to solve, but it’s his own problem, not yours and you should as much as possible encourage your employee to take responsibilities for their own problem. Now, your goal as a manager at any given level, is to be able to develop your employee’s initiative and sense of ownership. For some people you might need some coaching to help them figure out their own problem, push them to ask themselves the right question, consider different options. The GROW coaching model is something I’ve been using for that purpose during my career for employee who were not able to manage their own problem or question. In a nutshell, it stands for Goal – Reality – Options – Will.

Goal

What do you want to achieve?
What is the desire end state?

Reality

What is the situation?
What are the facts?
What is the context?
Who is involved?

Options

What can you do?
What are your alternatives?
What else can you do?

Will

What will you do?
When will you do it?

The 4 steps and their related questions should help your employees get the full picture of their problems and allow them to take appropriate action. It’s rather simple yet effective. There is a reasonable entry in Wikipedia you might want to check out.

The monkey theory should not be seen as a way to get rid of problems but should be seen as a way to empower each and everyone to handle their own problem in order for anyone else to better manage their time.

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Get excited and make things !!

Fred — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:08:08 +0000

I’ve just ran across this short article on the Personal MBA blog which summarizes really well how I approach both my professional life and personal life. Project yourself into a situation where you’d do something (useful) and which would bring you excitement. It doesn’t matter how far you are from that situation as long as you understand clearly your goal. Then you can drill down and lay down intermediate stages which will help you reach the ultimate goal. These intermediate levels should really get you closer to where you want to go and have clear objectives themselves. You could make the parallel with Agile software development where you deliver regular pieces of functionality during iteration which bring you closer to your final product. Life and software development have a lot in common !

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Managing your workday: Quality over Quantity

Fred — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:00:16 +0000

As a QA director, I focus particularly on the quality of our products of course but it is also true on how I try to manage both my professional and personal life. I’m not particularly interested to do a lot at an average level but rather do maybe less but at an exceptional level. Optimally I’d like to do a lot at an exceptional level but if you want to reach an optimal work-life balance, you will need to compromise.

I ran across this article on lifehacker and got interested by this picture describing some best practices to manage your work day.

I’ve always liked the idea of controlling how often I check my email. Now that I’ve implemented PIFEM (read here), I find it much easier to leave email accumulate for a few hours during each days and manage the reading during time boxed period throughout the day. I’m currently down to 6, 3 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. I think I can go easily down to 3 ! I write what I need to write at anytime during the day as suggested by the board.

I still have a tendency to check email during evenings (thanks to my blackberry …) but rarely answer unless there is a hot customer situation. Same goes for week-end. I rarely use phone during emergencies as all my managers and key people have blackberry. I’m usually able to reach them if needed.

The focus on 1-3 activities max per day is a given. At all level of the organization, you should be able to identify your goals for the week and decompose these goals in tasks which can be completed during days of the week. I don’t necessarily log status of my activities every day. This is usually a weekly or bi-weekly activity. A way for me to manage my roadmap accordingly.

Chat is a double edges sword. If you don’t manage it properly, you can spend your whole day talking about the results of your favorite soccer team. However, it’s always a great way to get information which you will never get during meetings or status email. You won’t be able to get the temperature of your organization if you don’t get out of your office, make yourself visible and available.

Finally, trying to get out of the office at a fixed hour is a good principle in my mind. The actual time is not very important. What’s important is to have enough time during your day to do everything you need to do and to have enough time for your personal life. Depending on your situation, the balance may vary.

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Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM)

Fred — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:16:22 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had trouble managing properly the huge amount of email I receive everyday. I’ve tried creating dedicated folders with email to be processed, tried the flag functionality of outlook, colors, priority settings etc. I’ve always managed to be reasonably organized but there was always a part of me which was afraid to miss important email to process. Then I’ve ran across an article from Ian Palangio‘s who runs a blog on productivity. He describes his own system to manage email called PIFEM which make excellent use of favorite folders in Outlook 2007 to manage in a very efficient way emails. With this system, I have a clear view of what email I need to process in my incoming stack, today, tomorrow, next week etc. I’ve been using this system for the past 2 months and I’ve became way more productive with my emails and it really brought me confidence and clarity.

You can find clear direction about PIFEM here.

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