Work Approaches: Rude Or Effective?

Another week just flew by and once again I had several issues that I did not get to attend. One particularly nagging example is the lack of my responses to the many great comments given on my blog last week.

Unfortunately, trips to Las Vegas and New York took away the time needed for this and suddenly I am facing a dilemma. Should I focus on the past and spend quite some time on the many comments on my blog and on LinkedIn? Or should I focus on the new ideas that springs up and hopefully are capable of inspiring others and starting some discussions in the innovation community?

Of course, the right answer is to strike a proper balance. This is most likely also what you need to find when you find yourself flooded by requests to pursue new interesting opportunities while having to just get things done.

Perhaps we can help each other by sharing our insights on how we try to get the most out of our time and efforts? Let me start out by sharing some of my work approaches:

• Know what really makes a difference. In my previous blog post, URGENT: The Box We Live In And Why This Is So, I argued that that 20 % of our efforts create 80 % of our outcomes. Having this in mind, I try to focus on what really matters in terms of reaching my short, mid and long-term goals. For example, thinking about innovation and sharing my insights helps build my “personal brand” and it helps develop my business as a network facilitator and occasionally as a consultant. Furthermore, I really enjoy this work so it also provides a great personal satisfaction. Thus, I spend most of my time on this. Can you indentify what really matters to you?

• Know when to respond and when to ignore. This might come off a bit cynical to some of you, but I hope I can get you to understand the reason behind this. Many of us live in a world where we get so many different kinds of requests that we could spend a significant part of our work week just replying to those. Not good as we also need to get things done. A great example is the many friend requests from LinkedIn and Facebook.

As mentioned in this earlier post, Why Should I Connect With You On LinkedIn?,  I have decided only to use LinkedIn and not Facebook as I do not have the time to manage two active profiles. LinkedIn is much more business-minded so Facebook had to go. On LinkedIn, I have also decided only to connect with people with whom I already have had a certain level of interaction with. If someone I do not know asks whether to connect, I look at the message. Is it just the standard message or does this person express a reason for us to connect? I always ignore the standard messages just as I really try to get back to the others with a reason why I do not want to connect right now.

• Test whether people are serious, relevant and persistent. I initially ignore business proposals that might look interesting at first hand, but do not have a direct match with my current priorities. Why? Simply to test whether the other person is serious about their proposal and shows enough persistence to follow-up.

I have been on the other end many times and I often had to initiate contact three or four times before I got a reply. I learned that many “influential” people often ignore requests simply because they are too busy; not because it might not be of interest to them. In such cases, the “influentials” take a wait-and-see approach trying the judge the person sending the message. Persistence is seen as a good character trait here and it carries you far if you also have a relevant message.

You should understand that in a networked world we almost always reach upwards to someone who can help out on our issues. Unfortunately for us, the people we try to reach up to have their own agendas making them reach higher as well. As time is limited, we often have to ignore those requests from below unless this really fits into our own agenda.

• Prioritize your ways of communicating with others. My prioritized way of communicating with others is 1) email 2) phone 3) meetings. It has surprised some that I did not want to meet with them as I believed—and as it turned out—the task could be done by email or phone. It is not to be rude. It just saves time for all involved and it works fine. Just think of the many meetings you have attended in the last six months. How many of those were to some extent a waste of time? I think this proves my point.

Well, this became a bit personal, but I hope you see my approaches as a way to be effective rather than being rude. As a sort of defensive argument for my chosen approaches, perhaps I should also mention that I am actually a very introvert person.

This might seem strange and counter-intuitive to my work as a network facilitator and speaker, but hopefully it also serves as an example that you do not have to be an extrovert to connect with others. Even introverts can do well on this once we set our goals, apply the proper techniques and understand how social media tools work. More on this in a later post…