04/ 23/ 2007
by Charles R. McConnell
Every manager attracts information. The typical manager is constantly on the receiving end of information in various forms, including letters, memos, reports, publications, advertisements, telephone messages and e-mail messages. You name it, the manager receives it. The volume of information flowing to some managers borders on ridiculous, and the manager who tries to carefully go through everything may find there's little time left for anything else. An understandable reaction to information overload is often the determination to sort things out and address only that which is important, but the problem is often trying to determine what's going to become truly important.
Regardless of the form in which most information arrives, the biggest mistake one can make is allowing it to accumulate. A fast-growing accumulation raises two questions: Will I ever get through all this? Is there anything really important buried in the pile? The best way to address these questions is to prevent information from accumulating.
Wading through paper
In spite of present-day references to the "electronic age," much information still arrives as paper. The in-basket can readily go out of control. We've all heard the age-old advice about handling any piece of paper only once, practicing the "3D" process: Do, Delegate or Discard. This technique works fine--up to a point. There will be some items you can take care of the instant you lay hands on them, but some of the "do" items will require research or investigation before you can dispose of them.
Regardless, what you can do at once should be done at once, and items you need to look into should take their place among short-term priorities. Documents in the "delegate" and "discard" categories need be handled just once. If there's something you hesitate to discard, ask yourself: What's the worst that can happen if I don't keep this?Your answer will usually allow you to pitch the item with a clear conscience.
Some in-basket items get set aside in a reading file (or stack). Most of these never get read; they simply accumulate. Be ruthless about what you retain to read, and what you choose to ignore. Screen potential reading material for relevant topics and toss everything that's not pertinent. A reaction like "I might like to read this so I'll keep it until I have time" is an invitation to increase the accumulated clutter.
Answer memos by writing your response directly on them rather than writing new memos of your own. If you can resolve something by telephone or e-mail, do so rather than create more paperwork.
Concerning incoming information in any written or printed form, put every item to this test: Is this likely to help me get my job done?
Getting through calls
Some of the greatest efficiency gains in telephone use can be achieved by simply keeping each conversation focused on business. There's nothing wrong with some pleasant chatter to get a conversation under way, but don't allow yourself or another to waste time with irrelevancies.
Be fully prepared before placing a call. Have any documents you might refer to ready, have note taking-materials ready and, depending on the nature of the call, have some pertinent questions ready.
When you return to your desk to find several phone message slips, it's not the most efficient practice to return these calls immediately. Except for those clearly marked urgent, save your return calling for one or two time periods per day, perhaps the hour before or after lunch or the final hour of the day. Also, use this time period to clean out your voice mail.
Shifting through e-mail
Attend to your e-mail on a daily basis, treating incoming messages in the same manner as paperwork. Immediately take care of those items you can resolve, save those few that require additional work, forward those that you can delegate to others and purge the e-mail in-box of all non-essentials.
When passing an item along to another person for resolution, make sure what you're delegating is pertinent. In other words, pre-sort before delegating. As manager you should be deciding whether a given item is relevant before sending it to someone else. Passing the buck to an employee to make that decision isn't true delegation--it's dumping.
On a final note, be especially ruthless concerning what you decide to file. Two rough rules to follow in deciding whether to retain any given items stem from these questions: Is it likely to be of future value? Might it be useful as a reference? Notice we say likely to be of future value, not might be. Might be allows us to save everything and leads to the all-too-common situation in which we find that more than three-fourths of the contents of the most file cabinets are never touched after filing.
