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The Phrase That Will Completely Change the Way You Lead

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It sounded crazy. But the only way to know for sure was to try.

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Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, Says Run the Experiment ... and Make Mistakes Faster

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The power of vulnerability | Brené Brown | TED

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DR. PAUL WHITE, PhD, is a psychologist, speaker, consultant and author whose passion is "making work relationships work."
For over 20 years, he has assisted businesses, government agencies, schools and non-profit agencies:

improve staff morale and create positive work environments

learn how to communicate individualized authentic appreciation among team members

reduce the sarcasm, cynicism and negativity associated with toxic work environments, and

build positive work cultures by discovering how to overcome the most common obstacles faced.

Additionally, Dr. White is a high-energy, humorous speaker who provides practical daily life tips for improving work-based relationships. In addition to speaking across North America, he has spoken in Europe, Central Asia, the Caribbean, China, and South America. For more information, please contact us at admin@appreciationatwork.com or visit his website, www.drpaulwhite.com.

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5 Languages of Appreciation | Motivation in the Workplace

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DR. PAUL WHITE, PhD, is a psychologist, speaker, consultant and author whose passion is "making work relationships work."For over 20 years, he has assisted businesses, government agencies, schools and non-profit agencies: improve staff morale and create positive work environments learn how to communicate individualized authentic appreciation among team members reduce the sarcasm, cynicism and negativity associated with toxic work environments, and build positive work cultures by discovering how to overcome the most common obstacles faced.

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As we get ready to start the new year, most of us are uncomfortably wrestling with the very same questions that have plagued us at this time every prior year: How can I get more done? How can I feel less swamped? How can I make sure I'm not dropping important balls or constantly running up against deadlines?

I'm a fan of simple, powerful, and useful frameworks and often refer my clients to ideas and tools like "Big Rocks," Triaging, and Time-Boxing. I have found that one of the best frameworks for helping get things done is the classic "urgent vs. important" two-by-two matrix. This tool has been popularized by business writers like Stephen Covey but its invention is most often attributed to President Dwight Eisenhower who, while serving as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II, certainly needed to get a lot done! (See footnote 1)

The Eisenhower Matrix is especially useful because, in requiring you to prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, it helps you figure out what you can delegate (or even not do at all) so that you can instead focus on the things that truly deserve your time and effort. Remember, every time you decide to do X, it means you are not doing Y or Z. High-performing people often struggle because they try to do too much. As a friend of mine likes to say, "In order to do great things you have to not do some good things."

The Eisenhower Matrix is quite easy to use. Just draw a two-by-two matrix where the X-axis represents "importance" and the Y-axis represents "urgency." (See illustration below from my book What Happens Now?. Note: Chapter 7, "Hamster on a Wheel," is all about personal productivity.)

Eisenhower Matrix
From the book What Happens Now? by John Hillen and Mark Nevins

The upper right-hand quadrant will then stand for "most urgent and most important." The lower left-hand quadrant is "least urgent and least important." The upper left is "most urgent and least important," and the lower right is "least urgent and most important."

If you consider all the things you do in a day or week, from meetings to project work to phone calls and emails, where does each of your tasks or investments of time belong? Assign each to one of the quadrants.

Do you find the quadrant that gets most of your time and energy is the upper-right one, designated "most urgent and most important"? This quadrant should include major deadline-driven projects and deliverables such as business reviews, key hiring interviews, a strategic company offsite, or the materials for the second-quarter board meeting. It might also include crises, both business and personal: a client emergency, family health troubles, or pressure from a maneuvering competitor or an angry board member. This urgent/important quadrant should typically feature the central things in your life-the ones that most demand focused attention and the ones you simply must deal with immediately.

How about the bottom-left quadrant, "least urgent and least important"? In the crudest terms, this is the quadrant for junk mail and any time-sucking, low-payoff activities. Scrolling social media, mindlessly watching TV, organizing your e-mail rather than answering it. In other words, things you should be spending little or no energy on at all. Consider reducing or even omitting these things. To optimize the matrix, be honest with yourself in this quadrant: what are you doing that's kind of a waste of time?

And how about the upper-left quadrant, the "most urgent and least important" one? This quadrant is tricky and seductive. Attending to it offers immediate gratification, and when you're immersed in these activities you probably feel productive. You tell yourself, "I dealt with those three unexpected employee requests, answered sixty-three emails, and even managed to post an update on our new product on LinkedIn! Now I'll go to lunch, and when I get back, I can start working on the truly important stuff on my to-do list." How about asking yourself if you should deprioritize some of the things in this quadrant-or, better, delegate them to others. Another good habit is to save these activities until the end of the day when your energy is lower rather than wasting your early-day productive hours here.

That brings us to the lower-right quadrant, "least urgent and most important." This one is challenging. Work in this quadrant offers big payoffs but none of the tasks here vibrates with urgency. Here we find innovation ("Where do I want this organization to be in three years, and how can we get it there?"), strategy ("How can we better differentiate ourselves from our competitors?"), professional development ("How can I deepen my capabilities as well as those of the people I'm responsible for"), vocation and career management ("What's the right next step for me, and how can I develop and position myself to get there?"), and personal matters such as exercise, health, leisure, and family.

Check yourself to see if you fall into the tragedy of the lower-right quadrant. Do you leave many of the items there simmering on the back burner? Do you let promising windows of opportunity close while you delay action? Maybe you could have launched that project before your competitors did. Or maybe you could have gotten your team working together effectively, but now you're dealing with attrition. Or maybe you could have discussed that issue with a key board member, but because you didn't, that relationship soured. Or maybe you could have taken the family on that dream vacation, but now your eldest child is off on her career.
The people who are most effective at getting great things done plan and devote meaningful time to activities in this fourth quadrant-the important but not urgent quadrant.
Most of us spend too much of our time in the wrong quadrants. We need to be more judicious about how we prioritize and we should find ways to delegate the things that don't need to be done today and/or by us.

Have an honest conversation with yourself: Which quadrant do you live in most of the time? If it's not the upper right with mindful attention to the lower right-and deciding deliberately when and how you should shift things from the lower right to the upper right to make sure they get the attention they deserve-you are risking a stall in your life and career. (See footnote 2)

I will admit that when I first learned about it I found The Eisenhower Matrix a bit too ... simplistic. Then the first time I was coaching a CEO, about 20 years ago, I quickly realized he was simply buried trying to do too much: he'd just been promoted and was in the middle of a highly complex reorganization including selling off portions of the business. He was so busy he was having trouble even sorting out what to attack next. Tentatively I shared the Eisenhower Matrix with him: I drew it on the whiteboard in his office and proposed how to sort some of the things on his immediate to-do list, with a heavy emphasis on what could be delegated. I assumed he'd simply disregard the tool, finding it (as I did) "too simplistic." Imagine my surprise when I came back a week later to find that the Eisenhower Matrix now covered the totality of his whiteboard; was filled out in great detail; and was helping him drive his new executive team's execution plan. (Key takeaway: It really does work!)

I'd love to hear your experiences with The Eisenhower Matrix, or other tools you find useful to facilitate productivity. Shoot me an e-mail: mark@nevinsconsulting.com

Footnote 1: Not to mention during his time as President, when among other things Eisenhower ushered Alaska and Hawai'i into the USA; sponsored and signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1957; sponsored and signed the Federal Aid Highway Act which gave birth to the Interstate Highway System; established NASA; ended the Korean War; kept America at peace during the height of the Cold War; and balanced the budget three times. Boy could we use a President like him today....

Footnote 2: A parenthetical comment for those who find the urgent/important matrix concept a bit too basic. An especially brilliant client of mine, a highly successful founder of several global companies, argues that you should actually seek to keep the upper-right quadrant empty. He refers to the high urgency/high importance quadrant as "avoid." In other words, if you do a good job of clearing the unimportant half of the matrix, you can focus on the low urgency/high importance quadrant and keep the items there from moving into the upper right, and doing so will make you even more productive when it comes to the truly important matters.

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How To Get Stuff Done: The Eisenhower Matrix (a.k.a. The Urgent Vs The Important)

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I have found that one of the best frameworks for helping get things done is the classic "urgent vs. important" two-by-two matrix.