Try thinking about this from the point of view as either a manager or a supervisor and you want to increase the productivity of your team. Before you even try this, learn a bit about why people do things the way they do. After all, if you increase productivity there has to be a change. Managing and leading change is not always easy. However, the more you understand about why people have difficulty changing, the better you are able to lead the change.

Look at yourself, you go to the same shops, you go to the same gas station, watch the same TV programs and probably get dressed in the same order every day. It’s almost like we need this pattern of behavior to give us a routine, some sort of stability, a way of doing things which does not require any thought.

When we translate that behavior to the workplace, or we run into problems because some people do things that we don’t want them to do. This is where we need to use techniques that involve influence and persuasion. Then we are faced with another problem. People will agree that they need to do things differently but find great difficulty in changing themselves.

The difficulty is caused by the way our brains operate. All our previous behavior creates behavioral patterns and our brain is wired to do exactly what we have done in the past. So much so, that if we know the way a person has behaved in the past we can almost guarantee that we can predict future behavior. It is that strong.

The latest research indicates that it takes around about five days to form a new habit provided it is repeated daily. These studies have considerable implications in the workplace. It means there is a possibility that workplace behavior can be changed through coaching and repetition in a short time. Originally, it was thought that the new habit takes 21 days to change.

Creating a new habit does not mean that the old habit has been cancelled. What it means that this choice is part of your everyday decision-making and it is tempting to shift back to old ways. Our old, strong, neural pathways are a powerful magnet for us to return to our old behavior.

To overcome the attraction of the old neural pathways we must consciously and intentionally repeat new behavior time after time and day after day until it can compete. This is why coaching on-the-job is so successful. For a manager or a supervisor, the key to successful change is the ability to coach your team daily to reinforce new habits of behavior.

To make a change in behavior requires an enormous initial effort because first of all we have to create new neural pathways in the brain and then fight off the temptation to return to old patterns of behavior. Once we have created the new neural pathways we have to strengthen them through regular usage and continual reinforcement.

To increase productivity requires change. It is strongly advised that you plan the change before you try and install it and develop your coaching skills.

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There are three (3) ways to increase the productivity:

(1) improved skills,

(2) increased leverage of others, and

(3) better use of the hours you’re working.

The first and second come with experience.  The third will immediately produce results in hours gained.  For discussion purposes, let’s break this down and look at this in “tenths of an hour”.

0.1 (hours) x 5 (days/week) x 45 (workweeks/year) = 24 extra productive hours

In other words, if you can improve your productivity by six minutes per day, you will do 24 more hours of work per year.  That’s three full days!

Here are ways to gain more productive hours in the day, six minutes at a time.

Managing E-mail

Email is a terrific tool & killer application that was ushered in with the Internet era, but this can be a huge time sink.  To gain valuable minutes throughout the day, fine-tune your use of e-mail by taking the following steps.

1.  Turn off new message notifications.

These notifications are a huge distraction because they create internal noise:   What am I missing?  Oh, not another thing to do!  Or worse, you instantly stop to look at the new message and lose focus on whatever else you’re doing.  E-mail is an one-way communication tool.  You do not need to know every time a message hits your inbox.  It isn’t going anywhere!  Simply triage your e-mail regularly (twice an hour or so) to stay abreast of what’s happening.

2.  Remove your work address from personal lists.

Keep your inbox tidy and uncluttered to reduce the time wasted culling through it. Get rid of automatic feeds about the local weather report, the special of the day at your favorite online retailer, and the scores in the day’s sports events.

3.  Get off unnecessary professional and interoffice lists.

These also represent a distraction from your work.  Draft a polite, professional      e-mail to the list manager asking to be removed if it’s not imperative that you receive certain e-mails.  Likewise, unsubscribe from e-publications you don’t read. Most professional purveyors provide a simple Unsubscribe mechanism for this.  Take advantage of it.  You can always re-subscribe later if you find it necessary.

4.  Spot review your inbox from home.

Yes, you’re working away from the office after hours, but this is the new professional landscape.  If you can quickly reply to simple requests and handle just a few small items in the evening, then in the morning, they’ll be on someone else’s desk and not yours.

Sequestering

It’s not just for juries, you know.  The idea is to find a place or process that provides you with uninterrupted time to get top-priority work done.  This doesn’t mean holing up all day, or leaving the country.  You’re looking for a defined period each day or week – say one to two hours – when you are able to focus on the tasks of highest concern.  Here are some specifics.

1.  Privatize your office.

Close your door and put your phone on “Do Not Disturb”.  If people continue to interrupt you, put a DND sign on your door.  You can make it light-hearted, such as “Great Mind at Work, Please Don’t Knock” or “Out to Work, Back at X:XX Clock”, but make it clear.

2.  Establish a secondary workplace.  If your company has an unoccupied or unassigned office, go there.  If the company or office building has a small conference or caucus room, go there.  Any empty office space will do.  Take only the things you’re going to work on, and sit down and do them.

3.  Try some one-hour telecommuting.

Consider coming in late or going home early to gain quiet work time one day a week.  But remember, if you’re going to do this, you must genuinely commit to getting the work done.  Any temptation to dally will undermine your objective of increasing performance, so be very careful.

4.  Learn how to say, No.

Inevitably, you will still be hunted down or interrupted on many occasions.  This is when it is imperative that you politely but unmistakably explain that you’re not currently available and you’ll get back to the person posthaste when you are. It’s an opportunity to retrain those you work with or those you are enlisting help from to increase your productivity.

Upgrade Your Work Space

There are a number of things you can do to improve the productivity of your physical work space.  Most are very simple to implement, but each will pay a large productivity dividend.

1.  Do not face the door.

Reposition your desk so you are not facing the open door.  The problem with facing the door is that you tend to look up whenever someone passes by.  That’s becomes a constant mini-interruption and it’s completely unnecessary.  Worse, the person walking by may catch you eye and stop to chat!

2.  Identify a designated work area.

Pick one area on your desktop – your computer table or desk return as your designated work area.  This area should be devoid of ALL other working materials. Each file and pile in the vicinity of your designated work area is another distraction. This way, you’ll keep yourself from thinking – Oh, I’ve got to do that, and Oh, I’ve got to do that too!  Keep the designated work area free of those self-inflicted distractions.

3.  Create a filing system for open projects.

Most people use the stacks and piles model for keeping track of what needs to be done.  These seemingly innocuous papers are either neatly or not-so-neatly scattered about the office.  A well organized filing system is easy to maintain and a much more efficient workflow method.  Every minute spent digging around in the piles is a lost minute of productivity.

Implementing some or all of these suggestions will definitely increase your productivity.  Better productivity will improve your effectiveness and sense of accomplishment.  In turn, your increased accomplishment will produce greater career satisfaction.

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