Data Management and the Rent v Buy Model

Ownership and possession was once the goal.  This was at the time that possessions were hard to come buy and very hard earned.  As the 'wealth' of the average person increased the goal of possession became easier to attain.

However with the ownership of items came the relative devaluation of those items and in fact a negative aspect; clutter, disruption (potential loss) and lack of focus.  More items mean more work to manage them. (There are some noticeable exceptions to this such as home ownership in the UK where ownership fulfils a deeper security and stability need).

More and more people are now rejecting this model in favour of renting an item or service.  You only need to look at services such as Spotify for music or Netflix for movies.  Why own an item when, for a relatively low monthly charge, you can have access to whatever you need whenever you need it.  And most importantly, no storage, clutter and disruption for the other 364 days of the year that you don't.

In addition, the delivery of this information is through the web which arguably is available from almost anywhere rather than wherever the physical item is stored.

Is there an equivalent of this in the workplace?  I think there is and it centres around documents, data & information.  Working in an HR department, I have and need access to a whole host of information.  That used to mean cupboards and cabinets full of folders of information all neatly filed and stored for years to come.  It meant purchasing market data in books chocked full of raw data to be used once (if at all) for one off jobs.

Ownership meant management and potential distraction.  What I really want at work is an answer to my question, whatever question it happens to be at the time.  That answer will come from the information at hand.  I want it:

Unrestricted - Whatever data I need, is available, not just some of it
At point of application - wherever I happen to be at the time
In a timely manner - Accessible (& searchable) quickly enough to efficiently find what I want

(Some readers might find parallels in the above to the mantra, Right People, Right Place, Right Time)

This idea has the airs of "Paperless Office" but is more to do with "Online Document Management".  Although I don't think it will work in the corporate environment just yet, Evernote is a service I use in my home life which is accessible online, on a programme on my computer (for offline use) and on my mobile devices through an app.

This convenience is about unburdening yourself and therefore acting quicker and getting things done.

Have a think about it, do you really need to possess everything? Is a little bit of freedom and loss of burden in fact what you need right now?  What might you active instead!

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.

(Photo by spykster via flickr used under a creative Commons Licence)

Checklists (People still aren't realising their value)

I wrote a post a little while ago in a blog entitled Managing the Standard Work about the power of checklists and I recommended reading of a book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Whilst scanning the news online this week, I saw an interesting question on this very subject by the BBC writer, Michael Blastland entitled Go Figure: Tick box v check-list.

You can read the whole article but to summarise it, you've got to get past the idea of a checklist being a way to have to stop thinking.  You're probably sick of me saying this but Begin with the Outcome in Mind.  Answer this first, what is the purpose of using a checklist; what is its value?

The purpose of a checklist is to compliment and aid the thinking process, not replace it.

Until this is understood and bought into a don't think people will ever get past the idea of 'tick box'.  Tick box suggests doing following the list simply in order to satisfy its own purpose.  A checklist however has a measure of value in it.  It is a check.  That check is the value add.

Be really honest with yourself and ask how many simple mistakes you or for team made this week.  How many? 1, 2, 10?

I used a checklist today and stopped 4 mistakes becoming issues which would have come back to bite in about 2 weeks time.  15 minutes to save about a days potential non value added work to fix the issues (let alone the grief and loss of reputation)?

Do yourself a favour and think seriously about how (with the right focus) checklists can help you and avoid becoming another tick box activity in your life.

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.

(Photo by AlanCleaver via flickr used under a creative Commons Licence)

Organising your work & OmniFocus

A few posts ago, I talked about the idea of organising your work in order to have clarity over what you need to do.  One such way is the simple paper and pen.  To be honest, I still revert back to that when I need to be free of distraction and get an idea, sketch, text or mind map out of my head and recorded somewhere.  Give me a yellow legal pad and pen and I'm happy.

On a side note, people always ask my why I use the more expensive yellow pads rather than cheaper white; its so that I can find my written notes amongst printed materials (which are practically always on white paper) when I'm working with hard copies. Call it a simple visual management system.

However when you need to organise this material, things get a little more complex and I really need a system to help me control it all. An online system gives one simple benefit; it's ability to edit the data within it and always show a 'clean' version. This is the downside of pen and paper, when you edit something, you can't clean up with original. A piece of paper fast becomes a clutter of ideas, scored out notes and modified sketches.

This clean data is what you want to see when you are in a position to act and do your work.

I use the excellent software programme OmniFocus (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus) across my Mac, iPhone and iPad.  It allows you to filter it all down into your next actions organised into categories that are relevant to you, giving you the prompts to act in the right place at the right time.

And the other advantage of it being on the computer, it is transferrable between all of your devices.  If you are like me, the phone never leaves your side so you'll always have the data to hand.

So do yourself a favour, have a system and most importantly, use it.

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.