Why Organization is the New Black

Tips for a Stress-Free Work Life

Your personal organization can make a big difference to your own effectiveness as a leader as well as the levels of motivation or discretionary effort of those you work with. Get this right and the culture and climate within your team or organization will significantly improve.

Here are some of the key things we identified people find frustrating, such as leaders who:

·         don’t reply to a letter or e-mail within a day or two of it being sent

·         regularly turn up late to teach or to meetings because they have been dealing with ‘more important’ matters

·         leave colleagues out of the loop regarding a particular issue or event

·         forget to do things that they said they would do or even do something differently from that which had been previously agreed.

·         ask for feedback at the end of event and then fail to act upon it or even acknowledge the feedback the next time the event is organized

·         don’t meet deadlines that all staff are expected to meet

·         make (often poor) decisions ‘on the hoof’ because they have failed to plan ahead effectively.

Keeping Commitments
One of the most frustrating things for members of staff in any school is when someone senior doesn’t keep a promise they make. It is probably the quickest way that trust can be destroyed. Yet honouring commitments, especially when it is difficult to do so, is also one of the most effective ways you can build confidence and trust with staff, students and parents.

Leaders can often be tempted to wriggle out of commitments that they may have made. Often this will arise in situations where a promise is given before thinking through all its implications.

For example, a head that agrees, as a result of some special pleading, that a particular member of staff may have a reduced timetabled commitment. They may well find themselves in the position where other staff complain this is unfair. The temptation, of course, is to renege on the promise made. Yet it is probably wiser to honour the original agreement and openly apologize to the other colleague that an error had been made which would be rectified in future. The ability to say sorry and acknowledge the error is critical here. Trying to make excuses and blame changing circumstances can be tempting but reduces trust.

This example also serves to illustrates the importance of carefully thinking through commitments and promises before making them.

Don’t drop the ball
What systems do you have in place to make sure things you have decided, agreed or promised to do, actually get done? For some leaders, this is all about lists. Some of you will be naturally very organized and for you what follows may not be of interest or much use. But a surprising number of school leaders are not predisposed to being well organized. The great news is, there are a number of simple and effective ways you can keep organized. One way is to use your email to help. Many school leaders have found this technique helpful. Here’s how this system, which I still use to this day myself, actually works.

Stage One: A job arrives
A particular task may arrive through different routes. Some may arise, for example from a meeting, a conversation in the corridor or an email. Others may be things you decide for yourself you want to do. However your job arrive, what I find useful is having just one place where you store them.  

Stage two: creating one place for your job list
For those tasks that don’t arrive by email, one should ideally have one place (a notebook or diary) where jobs are written down. It may sound like a small point but bear with me because this next strategy really works! Next to your notes, where there is a task, draw a large circle. This serves to indicate that action is needed and will really stand out on the page.

When it comes to reviewing the empty circles – something you should ideally do at least once a day – you have two options: either do the job straight away and tick the circle, or send yourself an email with the task written in the email header.

 This means that you then have all your outstanding tasks in your email system. Given that many tasks actually arrive by email these days, this stage is often unnecessary, which is why this is as efficient as a methodology for managing jobs.

Stage three: managing your email
There is nothing worse for school leaders than an overflowing inbox. It adds to that sense of feeling overloaded and overwhelmed. My suggestion is this: create just three email folders labelled Now, Soon and Later. You can then place emails into the appropriate box, (not forgetting the option to press delete!) hence, keeping your inbox clear.

You may of course want to vary how many folders you have or what you call them. You also may want to create other folders to archive emails that you might want to find later, although I would actually suggest this isn’t a great use of time. Much better to just store any email you think you may need again in your system’s archive folder and use the search engine within your email account on the rare occasion you need to retrieve a particular email.

The advantage of this system is that all your jobs are now in one place. Re-prioritizing is easy, you just move emails between the folders. Schedule a short amount of time each day to review your Now and Soon boxes. You only need to review the Later box once a week to see if anything can be deleted (many can) or moved in Now or Soon because the time has come to action them.

This method has other benefits. When you are in a meeting or talking in a corridor and you have agreed to help out with something, why not just ask the other person to email you as a reminder. That serves two purposes: it means they have to make the effort to do this which means they really need your help, and you automatically have it in your tasks system, rather than having to transfer it from your notebook or that scrap of paper you wrote it on and lost. This of course assumes you wrote something down at all! Many heads I know think they are great at remembering to do things. They usually aren’t – there are just too many things on that mental ‘to do’ list.

Using this simple email-based prioritization system has transformed many leaders’ personal effectiveness and their ability to prioritize efficiently. You may not need something like this, but if you’re struggling with the sheer volume of tasks and worry that you may be dropping balls without even realizing it, why not give it a try!

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; general good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: for art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars – William Blake

Love and Light

DAO