Today, we have a new President in office. I have struggled with the words to describe my emotions as I watched, but I think Mike Huckabee said it well in a post he put out shortly after the inauguration:
Here is a great article that I read today on Problem solving. As leaders, we will face problems. The question is, How will we respond to those problems?
Be a problem solver, not a problem finder!
I read this book on a suggestion from a friend as it was first published in 2002. I found the book to be an easy read. I appreciated the way in which Tim outlined three ways to win business through: Knowledge, Network, and Compassion.
Our tasks as business people is to gain more business, especially in today’s economy. But, not just to get business – but KEEP business over the long term. Tim does a nice job defining these things. For example, to keep customers long term, you must add value to them. He defines added value as: “The value with you inside a situation is greater than the value without you”. He also defines the people who do this “love business” (the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with biz partners) as ‘Lovecats’. Don’t know that I want to be called a lovecat, but he gets his point across.
Some key takeways from me in this book:
Knowledge is important, but you can’t add value if you don’t SHARE it!
Your network’s value is equivalent to the square of the number of people in it. Again, though, it must be SHARED
Compassion is the glue that holds the Knowledge and the Network together. It is the way we will win hearts and influence people in today’s world.
I really enjoyed this book and intend to share it with others. If you would like to have a copy, let me know. I’ll send one to the first person who responds to this post!
In my last review, I shared my rating system as ‘dogears’. How many pages did I dogear to go back and search the key action points available? Love is the Killer App gets a 9 dogears rating (out of 10), so I highly suggest this read.
My coach asked me to draft up a new ‘ideal’ work week for 2009. What a challenging exercise! I have only been trying this time block thing for about 5 years now, and there is always room for improvement. I even tried this with the kids and post-it notes, and that was somewhat successful.
One of the biggest differences in my real estate career thus far, compared to manufacturing has been the lack of structure. I have worked hard trying to force the structure and have had to make adjustments in many ways. But, there are still things that need to happen every day and every week and every month to achieve my goals. So, I have added a daily productivity review and weekly productivity review.
Daily @ 10:00 p.m.:
Email inbox to zero (yes, it is possible)
Review Google/reader (blogs I follow)
Review voice mail
Blog
Read book
Prayer
Weekly on Monday mornings @ 9:00:
Team weekly task
Review supraekey data (showings of our listings)
Load in open house contacts
Care cards (2 minimum)
Clean out Read, Answer, File emails
Sync blackberry
Add in new phone numbers
Review coaching journal, notebook, post-its for activities needed added to task list or completed.
Review Top Producer(contact and listing plan manager) tasks for any past due items on calendar
Of course, there are many other items in the list (family time, exercise, meetings, etc.), but these seem to be the items I need to get done on a very regular basis to stay ahead and continue to grow.
A lot of folks would refer to this as too ‘structured’, but this seems to be how I am wired and most productive. Certainly, I am not naive enough to believe that these things will happen 100% of the time at the same day and time, but it is my shot at an ideally productive week.
How do you organize your time? What am I missing?
