The Age of Information
WORKING EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY in today's information world is imperative.

The multifaceted age that today's professionals and executives live in has lead to an upsurge of information in the work environment over the past few years - more paper and files, more emails, more interruptions and distractions than ever, and more meetings and crises.

Although most of us have been formally educated to work and pursue our own interests, a minority of white-collared workers have never been taught how to work efficiently and effectively. Some of us don't have any idea or how to organize and process our work, to manage interruptions or to deal with our inbox filled with unread emails and incomplete tasks. We have developed habits early in our career that remains unconscious and uninspected today, a conclusion made by Kerry Gleeson who has had over 20 years' experience observing and coaching senior executives in the workplace.

As a former marketing consultant, he found that executives were unable to make time to roll out marketing programs as well as to gauge administrative productivity. He learned that the reason behind the occurrence is the "inefficiencies of executives" on how they work. Kerry Gleeson said that how professionals process their work is one perfect example of a missing element in education. He saw the need for something to fill in this gap. The Personal Efficiency Program (PEP) is deemed to supply the missing link - providing the how-tos in gaining more control of workload, making one's job easier, saving time and energy, identifying and working towards the achievement of goals and dreams, and pursuing a much happier and stress-free life.

Through PEP, executives and professionals are able to evaluate their work habits and compare them with the "do it now approach"; organise their workplace by apply the PEP principles of workspace organisation; understand and apply the principles and tools which support their efforts to be more effective including the skills of planning and prioritising, and to explore options and strategies and to increase their effectiveness and achieve improved results in one-to-one and workgroup interactions. To ensure that the new habits are instilled and learning methodology is customised, a coaching session is conducted at their workplace - on top of several workshops that will be conducted.

PEP gives more focus on working smarter as opposed to working harder. It is a three-day program spread across six weeks.

Here are some concepts of PEP that may come in handy for busy professionals and executives :

First, the "Do It Routinely" habit - an effective way to manage your time; Do It Now! - Clean up backlogs so you're not dealing with their consequences; Do It "Right" Now - Handle things completely and correctly to reduce redo requests; Communicate It "Right" Now - Use communication methods that permit full messages and do not interrupt current work such as email and voice mail; and "Take a Stand" now - Deal with interruptions by stating your time constraints.

Second, "Doing It Right, now!" in order to succeed in balancing the quality and quantity of your work. - It isn't enough to do what you think is important. Check what the customer's expectations are and fulfil those needs' to improve the process of your group's work you should begin with the process of your personal work' to make dramatic improvement, you must abandon your old ways of processing your work and start using new methods to introduce more effective ways of working.

Third is the "Plan It Now!" habit, an effective way to manage your time and capitalise on it; Use IT Now! - Capitalise on your personal calendar, planner or organiser as it can help you to get organised, to plan things in advance and to keep track of work done; Do It Right! - Prioritise your work when you are planning your week. If it's important, it will be on your weekly plan. It isn't important, it won't be there. Decide on the task which needs to be done first and subsequently; and remember to allow sufficient time in your planning for the unplanned or unidentified work.

- Published on Oct '08 Mice Asia.net