Here’s an interesting site for those of you living in small spaces. What’s not to love about a site named Loving. Living. Small?
Here’s an interesting site for those of you living in small spaces. What’s not to love about a site named Loving. Living. Small?
You recognize its time to increase organization in your business. You’ve been working diligently to increase your personal organization. As the paper clears and the dust settles, you realize your staff are also working in a cluttered, ineffective environment. It’s time to change the culture in the office from “No one really cares since these aren’t public offices” to “We are proud of the professional environment in which we work“. These strategies will help.
As head of the organization, directorate or department, your leadership sets the tone. If your office is a pile of disorganized papers, you give your staff the impression you don’t care what the place looks like. Why should they? I know, I know. You can find anything you want in the office right? Are you sure? How long will it take you? And if you don’t show up tomorrow is that the way you want your leadership role remembered? To increase organization in your business requires increased organization for yourself. Get help if you need it and struggle to manage the space, time or stuff.
Start talking about professional presentation and image at meetings. Add it to performance appraisals to make staff accountable. In order to increase organization in your business, you will have to set the standard across your business practices. The top of your desk is only one place. Staying on time for, during and at meetings speaks volumes about how your expect your staff to perform.
Ensure that every staff member has immediate access to a blue box for recycling; right beside their desk in place of a garbage can wouldn’t be tool close.
Ensure that every staff has the tools they need to be organized in their work space. Do they have reasonable access to appropriate filing space? Do they have a desk that works? Is there a book shelf or alternative for holding company policy manuals or obligatory preventative maintenance reports? If you aren’t sure what is missing or why an employee is so disorganized, consider having a professional organizer conduct an assessment of the work space in question. There may be more complex organizational issues that the employee is struggling with.
Schedule a semi-annual clear out day. The rules for the time are simple. Everyone participates in a clear out of their work space on this day. No other meetings or activities are booked. Order lunch for the gang. To increase organization in your business requires routine and practice.
Are you feeling hemmed in when sitting at your desk?
Take a quick inventory of what’s on it: computer CPU, printer, screen, keyboard, telephone, several “In” piles, three projects in process (at least that’s what you can see well enough to count).
Move all the hardware off your desk. Do a quick sort of your In piles into four file folders: read, call, write, decide. Put them into a vertical file holder on your desk, to the left if you are right handed, (vice versa) with the labels facing toward you. Make sure the three projects are in some form of file holder and add them to the vertical file holder.
Take a quick inventory of what’s under it at your feet: computer CPU, printer, several pairs of shoes, gym bag, handbag, assorted brief cases or other business cases, recycling box.
Move the CPU and printer. Put the shoes, gym bag and any other clothes in the closet or in a bag hanging behing the door. Put the business cases in the closet. Use the recycling box for the sorting in the second paragraph above.
Enjoy your space.
Focus – with a camera? A noun or a verb? And what makes me think it has anything to do with business anyway? Ever try creating something without it?
Probably the single biggest reason employees fail to reach their goals and business fail to succeed is lack of focus. Do you have a mission? Do you know where you are going? Do you know what it will look like when you get there? Do you have a road map? Have you shared the map with anyone else? Have you shared it with everyone else?
If you or your employees are not focused on the goals of the company, they are messing around with what I call corporate clutter; All the stuff that gets in the way of your business, project, division, board of directors or _____________ succeeding (you fill in the blank). It is no different than in your home where clutter takes time, energy and money to manage, and manage around. If your day is cluttered with unnessary and unfocused activity, you are messing with clutter and wasting energy that would otherwise help your business succeed.
Focus: think about it.