Louise McGregor Business

The Tyranny of To Do Lists

To Do List

Does your To-Do list look like and endless scroll? Is it a table of incompleteness that makes you feel guilty?

There are some better ways to work. There are tools out there. But first: What if you stopped using a To Do list?

They Don’t Work

Or at least, they’re less use than you think, research quoted in the “Busy Person’s Guide to the Done List” by Bailey Adams says that.

  • 41% of to-do items were never completed.
  • 50% of completed to-do items are done within a day.
  • 18% of completed to-do items are done within an hour.
  • 10% of completed to-do items are done within a minute.
  • 15% of items added as to-do items were already completed.

So we’re not using them as a list of things to do, but as a way to make ourselves feel better about things we’ve already done.

A to-do list doesn’t rank your tasks. All tasks appear equally important, and there’s no distinction between what will take you the most time. They don’t help you structure your work.

They can also be a creativity killer – when we feel under pressure to complete a list of tasks we focus on that at the expense of doing creative work. We can also focus on the small stuff and lose track of the important stuff.

Caveat: Sometimes They Do Work

You don’t want to forget something you’re responsible for, and that’s the rationale for creating to do lists. But you can do it in a smart way.

In my current job I have a responsibility for managing content on an intranet site, the requests can arrive at any time, but usually there isn’t a precise publication deadline. I have a standing appointment in my agenda on a Friday to do this work, when a request comes in I add it to that appointment, usually just by adding the email request to the appointment. Effectively I’m constantly building my Friday to do list.

But here’s why it works:

  1. I know exactly what I need to do during that Friday appointment
  2. I don’t have to think about those tasks for the other days of the week
  3. The appointment is 2 hours, if I don’t need the two hours I get the time back, but I never spend more time on the to do list than I have scheduled.

Other methods aim to make you focus on the strategic goals, the important stuff. Or to limit the number of things on your to do list (for a start, don’t add tasks that you’ve already completed).

Methods and Tools

There are a slew of methods and tools out there to help people be more productive, try them, pick one that works for you.

Pomodoro Technique

Named after a tomato, in this technique you break your tasks into 25 minute periods, and take a five minute break at the end of each.

I find 25 minutes annoyingly short, but I do use the “plan task + break” concept, with the niceness of the break in proportion to the focus needed for the task.

Bullet Journal

A paper-based system that combines a to do list, a planner, and a diary. You use symbols to indicate what different items are, and you can add more description to any item, develop a habit tracker, colour-code your entries and instagram the whole thing. My inner stationery queen loves the idea, but being realistic I don’t have time to document in this detail or to decorate my to-do list at work.

ToDoist

Todoist is an elegant task list online and on app. I like this tool, particularly because it can be used across devices and across projects. I’ve only used the private version, although I included work tasks on the list, but there is a business version.

Microsoft Planner

If you work for a company that uses Microsoft then this is probably available. It lets you create tasks, add details, and assign them to other people, there are some options to sort and prioritise, but it doesn’t act as a true project management tool. As a colleague said “where’s my Gantt chart?”

Paper and pencil

My favourite tool, and I keep coming back to paper and pencil, it works for me. I write down things I need to do per week, and group them by project, plus a category for admin and one for personal tasks. I draw a box next to each task, and I check them off when done. If I haven’t done them I draw an arrow next to them as in “send to next week”. I tick off most things each week but I just move stuff if I need to; it’s a tool not a rule.

My half-baked theory is that “to do” lists work for things we need to remember to do, but destroy creative thinking, after years of trying all sorts of options I’ve come back to pencil and paper. I keep a list on paper for the week with the tasks grouped by “project”, “admin” and “personal”. I put down things I shouldn’t forget, tasks and follow ups I need to pick up adding a check box and a two letter code for the day it needs to be done. Creative tasks don’t get listed unless I need to send some output, instead I block a chunk of time on my calendar “PPT for team meeting” for example, giving me freedom to think in that time.

 

Image: Checklist via pixabay  |  CC0

 

Louise McGregor future of work, Leadership

Collaboration

Wikipedia gives a long winded definition of collaboration, Google’s dictionary comes up with something simple; the action of working with someone to produce something. Its use has grown in our lifetime.

That upward blip in the use of the word at the end of the 1940s is due to the second meaning of the word; traitorous cooperation with an enemy. Some of the recent growth is due to the rise of social media and the experiments in new ways of working.

What is the benefit of collaborating in a team?

Better solutions.

In the theory of the wisdom of the crowds, the more people contributing to an answer the more likely you are to get the right answer. In effective collaboration a team of diverse experts bring their perspectives to decision-making.

In every major project I’ve worked in the contributions of experts from different fields has been critical to the solution’s success. I will never know as much as the collective knowledge across the company; here are a few examples.

  • Implementing an enterprise social media platform; its use as a service channel by a business investment team became the best use case collaboration to provide a service. I was looking for use cases, but didn’t even know the team existed.
  • Developing social media guidelines; we had legal and risk experts in the room, they had the deep expertise we needed to get it right, but it was a new hire from a non-digital team who pushed us to simplify the guidelines and the language.
  • Social Media Publication Platform; we had experts from IT, business, legal, and digital involved in evaluating possible tools. It sounds a bit like that old trope of six blind men describing an elephant, but in fact we had good discussions and agreed on the solution to be chosen, while understanding the limits and compromises we were making.
  • Translation; we translated some internal messaging via the enterprise social network, with contributors all using their native language and delivering the translated versions back within 3 days.

Collaboration can also provide additional capacity, if you work collaboratively you can share resources and even provide coverage in the absence of a colleague. Non-profits have been finding ways to collaborate under cost cutting pressure for years, but it can work within organisations as well.

How can you make collaboration effective?

Collaboration isn’t easy, and there is a lot in current workplaces that goes against collaboration. A HBR study reports that when teams get above 20 members, have high levels of expertise, are highly diverse, virtual, or are addressing complex tasks, the chances of effective collaboration drop. Collaboration requires trust across a team and a willingness to share knowledge, it’s easy to see that virtual teams might struggle, but the high expertise seems counter-intuitive.

Here are some factors to consider when building a collaborative team.

  1. Executives model collaborative behaviour
    When executives a visible and demonstrating a particular behaviour they will be copied.
  2. Relationship focus in the company’s culture
    Company cultures often emphasise a task focus, but in companies that emphasise a relationship focus teams find it easier to collaborate along the lines created in the company’s human network.
  3. Clearly defined roles
    Collaborative teams work better with defined roles and responsibilities, usually the roles can be derived from the person’s expertise, but it pays to specify the responsibilities. You can use a form of a RACI to document responsibilities.
  4. Team results rewarded and celebrated
    When teams have a strong joint purpose and are rewarded for the results of the team’s work their motivation to collaborate rises, yet most companies focus on individual performance and results. If you can’t re-organise your company’s formal reward system look for other ways to reward and celebrate teams that have genuinely collaborated.
  5. Skills to collaborate
    We’re used to working as individuals, we need to learn new ways of working for the collaborative era. Two techniques that are worth checking are Work Out Loud (WOL) and appreciative enquiry.
  6. Tools to collaborate
    Whether you use a company enterprise social network, a project tool such as basecamp, or a SharePoint team site, you will need some way for a collaborating team to share their work. If the team is dispersed across locations the tools become vital.

I’ve discussed the benefits of collaboration to the company, there are also benefits for individual contributors. For many people working collaboratively is more engaging and more rewarding. It’s also an appealing way of working for tech-savvy employees and millennials. Two groups your company should be trying to attract and retain. It’s a win for everyone.

Image: Together |  geralt via pixaay |   CC0 1.0 

Louise McGregor Buzzword

Bullwhip Effect

bullwhip effect

It should have taken me 3 hours to get home. It took 5 1/2, and yet nothing major went wrong with my journey, there were no strikes, no severe weather conditions, no accidents. Just a tiny delay leaving Mechelen.

That 7 minute delay meant the train I was on had to give way to Intercity trains that were running on time so we were slow leaving Antwerp, that meant that I missed the opportunity at Rotterdam to cross the platform to the highspeed train to Schiphol, that meant I was late arriving at Schiphol and missed a connection. All for 7 minutes.

This is an example of the bullwhip effect, where a small event at the beginning becomes magnified along a process until the impact is big. In this case 7 minutes became 2 1/2 hours. It gets its name from the increasing amplitude along a bullwhip.

In business it’s usually used to describe an effect in supply chain management.

Demand is unpredictable, so a retailer trying to predict how much stock is needed will include a buffer of safety stock, to avoid running out. Their wholesaler reads the demand to all their retailers and sees a greater potential variation when they predict demand, so in planning their stock also include a buffer. The manufacturer sees the variation in the wholesaler’s orders and builds up their stock, which the component suppliers see and and make their planning for stock including a buffer.

So at each step in the supply chain there is a buffer stock.

If demand drops then that stock becomes excess inventory and suddenly each step in the chain has to solve the issue of excess. The impact of a small change in demand goes up the supply chain with increasing impact, just like the cracking bullwhip.

 

 

Images; lost source for first one – sorry

bullwhip graphic is from wikipedia issued under creative comments. 

Louise McGregor HR

Behavioural Questions in Job Interviews

I’ve spent a fair bit of time interviewing people over my career, and last year I spent a lot of time being interviewed or preparing for interviews, including the behavioural interview. Behavioural interview questions are designed to help the interview understand how you work. They usually begin with;

  • How did you…
  • Describe a situation when…
  • Give me an example of…
  • What did you do when…

They can feel hard to answer and unpredictable, in fact they’re neither.

Answering Behavioural Questions

There is a way to answer the questions that is easy to prepare for, simple to remember, and relatively quick to deliver. It’s the STAR method.

Situation; Outline the situation that you were acting in
Task; The outcome you needed to achieve
Action; The action or actions you took
Result; The outcome, be clear on what your actions contributed to the outcome, don’t be afraid to take credit for your work. Also be prepared to answer that the result wasn’t as expected if that’s the truth, but then clarify why you didn’t achieve the result you expected.

Here’s how I developed a STAR response to a potential question

Question

Describe a decision you made that was unpopular and how you handled implementing it.
Situation

I was responsible for implementing a new tool to replace old personnel directory, the new tool was better in many ways but did not have all the same functionality. Two groups were unhappy about this decision.
Task 1: Secretaries wanted their contact information connected to their bosses’ profile
2: A group wanted to search by partial phone number, the last four digits
Action 1: We could assess this as valuable for bosses, secretaries and useful for all staff, we implemented this change as a priority
2: We looked at the data and found this was a rare search, we decided not to implement it and explained our decision
Result 1: Secretaries happy, this was a good change and a requirement we’d missed.
2: There were some complaints about our decision for about 10 days. No reaction beyond that.

Usually I only use one situation per response, but in this case I choose to use two as one shows that where other people raise good reasons to alter my view I will change, and the other shows that I can hold my ground when there are no good reasons to change.

Most of my responses were from work situations, but you can use your experience from volunteering organisations, University groups, schools, and your personal life.

Creating this response ahead of an interview means that you will be prepared when the question comes up during the interview, and it will be easy for you to recall the situation and retell the story to the interviewers.

Predicting Behavioural Questions

It might seem that there are an infinity of possible questions an interviewer might ask, but in reality the interviewer is looking for someone to match the job requirements so my first source of behavioural questions is the job vacancy notice. The examples below are all from current vacancy notices for various communications roles on LinkedIn.

Job Vacancy Notice Behavioural Question
A track record of rapidly expanding the reach of social media accounts How did you grow the reach of one or more social media accounts?
Identify and act upon communications issues whilst keeping senior management informed How have you managed the communications around a crisis or a company issue?
Manage relations with external contacts and key stakeholders within the business Describe a situation where you managed the conflicting demands of different stakeholders.
Leading cross-functional project teams to design, deliver, test and successfully roll-out multi-channel projects. Give me an example of a project you led, that delivered across multiple channels.

Note that the question on the right doesn’t include all of what they have said they were looking for in the vacancy notice, but by analysing and planning your responses you’ll cover much more of what they are looking for.

For each item on the vacancy notice that points to activities in your new role design questions and STAR method responses.

I did this for all the vacancies I applied for, and I researched online for common behavioural questions and found multiple lists that cover more generic job requirements such as handling conflict, managing deadlines, learning new skills and motivating others. I made a list with all the questions I came up with and filled in my STAR method responses to create a tool that helped me in my job search.

I then practised telling those stories sometimes to myself (yes, I do talk to myself) and sometimes with a friend, until I could tell the stories in a natural way. I really do recommend practising with someone, it’s hugely helpful.

Tricky Questions

You can predict the behavioural questions and plan your answer, when you’ve practised your responses a few times you’ll be able to adapt your response for various ways interviewers pose the question. But there are a couple of ways you could still get tricky questions.

If you don’t have a situation that matches a behavioural question for the job, say what you would do, for example;

How have you managed the communications around a crisis or a company issue?

I have not had to do this in previous roles, based on my experience in customer care I would …

If you have used one situation to cover more than one Behavioural Question, and you get asked both, refer to your previous answer and take the opportunity to expand on it, for example

Give me an example of a project you led, that delivered across multiple channels.

As I mentioned regarding the Gemini Project, I lead a project that developed multiple forms of content for a range of audiences, let me explain further how we used those for different channels…

If the result wasn’t as good as expected, you can still use the example, but explain why the result was different. For example;

How did you grow the reach of one or more social media accounts?

Our Twitter account had few followers, and our goal was to build those numbers to half a million by year end. We began by building a strong content calendar, and increasing the rate of tweeting from once a day to 4-8 times per day, and repeating content for different timezones. We then ran a series of targeted paid campaigns aimed at increasing our follower numbers, with each sprint we analysed what had worked and adjusted the campaign. At the end of the year we made it to 417,000 which was a great result, but short of our goal. We severely underestimated the amount of paid advertising we would need to commit to, and it was only a late increase in spending that got us over the 400,000 mark.

Preparing well for interviews means you can present yourself in your best light, showing your expertise and demonstrating effective communication skills. That means doing the work; planning for your interview, thinking how you will respond, and practising those responses.

Here’s my list of Behavioural Interview Questions, feel free to download it and adapt it for your own job search. Fill in your own responses and find a friend to practice retelling your responses to. Let them go off script – after all your interviewer is working from their own script.

Good luck!

 

Image: Banner Question Mark  |  geralt  |  CC0 1.0

 

Louise McGregor Just Stop It

Dark Patterns


I go through Schiphol airport most working days, just as a commuter, don’t get excited. Happily there is free wifi at the airport until I head underground to the train platform. Here’s what the login screen looks like for wifi.


Very simple interface, with clear instructions. But wait! That little box neatly positioned between “accept & connect” and ” terms and conditions” looks like you need to check it, until you read the text next to it. The first time I used the free wifi I checked the box in error and was taken to a purchase screen for premium wifi. I had to turn off wifi and turn it on again to connect to the free access wifi. I wonder how many people pay without realising they didn’t need to.

This is what is known as a dark pattern, a part of user interface designed to trick the user into making a decision that benefits the business. Many cases involve tricking you into opting into subscriptions, or buying extra services.

Computer users scan rather than read content on websites, and we are all used to the standards that have emerged online, we expect to have to tick that we agree to terms and conditions for example. Designers rely on us behaving predictably and design sites using those patterns.

But this predictability can be exploited by designers to generate dark patterns to trick us into buying something we don’t want, or sharing or email address, or preventing us from unsubscribing. In one great example cited on the Dark Patterns site the text explaining how to unsubscribe was in white, on a white background. Sometimes it’s a deceptive check box as in the Schiphol wifi example, so far 11 types of Dark Patterns have been identified.

Many companies are guilty of exploiting dark patterns on their e-commerce sites in deliberate and dodgy attempts to up-sell. Some of the most egregious examples of bait and switch cross into the territory of illegality. Most of the practices aren’t illegal – yet.

As a consumer it’s a good reminder to read carefully, as professionals in the digital world it’s a reminder to treat our customers fairly – the way we’d like to be treated in fact.

Image:  Texture |  Engin Akyurt via pixabay  |  CC0 1.0

Louise McGregor Digital

Welcome to 2018

One sure prediction is that the new year will bring a slew of predictions, some glowingly optimistic and some confidently pessimistic. I’ve sifted through the predictions in the digital world, and here’s my summary, plus a New Year’s gift.

Artificial Intelligence

As the use of big data, algorithms and the digital technology has evolved artificial intelligence has moved from the esoteric into real world.

It turns up in marketing, with a series of caveats. It’s behind an app to identifying snakes, with caveats about what that does for our relationship with nature. It’s contributing to how we brew beer and AI is what makes chatbots smart enough to be helpful.

The Webby Awards Trend report notes that we still trust humans over AI, but I suspect we’re not always aware of where AI impacts our lives. We will see more practical adaptations of AI in 2018.

Virtual Reality

I like the idea of virtual reality, but my experience so far has been that it doesn’t add enough to my experience to compensate for the awfulness of the headset. Frankly I’d rather read a book and imagine the worlds. So the story-telling in VR needs to improve, and the devices need to get better.

So far the biggest use seems to be in gaming but even there users are underwhelmed, the Economist reported in December that VR has failed to live up to it’s hype, and added that there is a “distinct whiff of urgency in the air” as VR struggles with poor equipment and unsatisfactory content.

The devices are starting to get lighter and prettier, however they’re still relatively expensive.


Will 2018 be the year that the devices and the experiences improve?

Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, it has other uses in making digital information exchange more trustworthy.

We’ll see these tests scale more widely along with more novel uses, I’m sure there are smart people out there looking at how blockchain could be used more broadly to securing our online identity.

Bots

Bots get a lot of bad press, they were exploited in the 2016 election and throughout 2017 to deliver false information to a screen near you, eroding reasonable debate and internet freedom according to Freedom House reports.

However due to advances in AI bots are starting to get better at customer service than humans. Will 2018 be the year we pass the Turing Test on a help-desk call?

Cybersecurity

This remained a big issue for business last year with major breaches in a range of industries from food retail, email, healthcare and governments.

Companies spend increasing proportions of their IT budget on cybersecurity and introduce restrictive measure to protect their data (USB sticks are frequently banned for example), 2018 will be the year of innovation in cybersecurity as companies struggle to reassure customers that their data is safe.

Social Media

Social media will become even more commercialised, expect more of those ads on Instagram, and more promoted posts – and more ways to promote content – on all platforms as the pressure increases for the platforms to be profitable and for company use of social media to demonstrate a return on investment. This won’t be pretty.

On the plus side we’ll see more tweaks on the platforms to encourage engagement; expect more platforms to adapt the Facebook emoticon model, and more uses of video and live-streaming.

My New Year’s Gift

In an attempt to be more consistent with my blog posting I developed a content calendar, I’ve added the various “International Day Of…” dates that might be useful along with a few significant birthdays and events. I’ve added a few content ideas, and I’m sharing the framework so far in case anyone else finds it useful.

2017

As we say farewell to 2017, here’s a reminder of what the world thought was worth searching for – it’s a two minute film from Google based on search data. It’s like a time capsule of the year.

 

Image: New Year’s Day  |  geralt on Pixabay  |  CC0 1.0