Long time fans of The Marketing Technology Blog know that Douglas Karr loves using technology to save time. If you can work faster, you can reach clients faster, provide customer service more quickly, and outrun the competition. But how can you pull ahead?
The secret to productivity is a combination of the right tools and the right perspective. Next Monday, March 30, the full-day Indianapolis Productivity Summit will provide a series of comprehensive seminars for professionals who want to improve their methodologies. Keep reading for an exclusive offer for this event!
Not surprisingly, most of the tools are software systems. Email is one of the most fundamental mediums in the modern workplace, but so many of us are slaves to our inbox. There are dozens of tools and techniques for battling email, but the most powerful of all is changing our approach to email to get away from messaging and to focus on routing. If we learn think about email as processing rather than as reading and writing, our inboxes will dwindle to zero and our days will be freed up to do real work.
The problem with email is a larger problem with technology: our mental model for how the system works is not aligned with how it actually operates on the inside. This is why we end up with Excel spreadsheets pretending to be databases and email attachments used for document control systems. We need to know just a little more about the way a technology actually works, so we can work with it rather than against it.
From here, there are countless tools for workplace productivity. Everything from browser plugins to desktop applications to third-party web 2.0 sites that can save unimaginable amounts of time. Even social media provides a way to have real conversations faster and more precisely than ever before.
If that?s how productivity happens at our desks, how does it happen in the corner office? Six Sigma, Lean, TQM, TCO, Kaizen, 5S?these approaches all have strengths, weaknesses and lessons for every employee. Understanding the basics of continuous improvement will make you more knowledgeable about putting productivity into action.
A few lucky readers will have the opportunity to win free passes to this event—normally $35 per session or $100 for the full day! Just fill out the contact form at Slaughter Development for a chance to win.
See you at the Indianapolis Productivity Summit!
