Finding Your Focus: Tools for Getting the Most Out of Your Workday

As a manager, time is one of your most precious resources, and it can be a challenge to allocate it effectively and efficiently. In my presentation, I will be focusing on simple tools to help you focus and plan your day. We will start by breaking down the major job functions of a manager and then explore detailed examples of strategies to resolve competing priorities. You will learn resources that work for me personally as a manager. I will also discuss the inevitable question, “Am I spending too much time on this one thing”. We will also go a bit deeper to discuss tools for supporting yourself as a leader. By the end of our discussion, I hope that you will have the tools to be able to quickly judge where your attention is most needed at any given time and how to find strength and resilience as a leader.

Transcript

1. Cynthia Maxwell Finding Your Focus: 
 Tools for getting the most out of your workday
2. Focus Is Important, 
 Especially for a Leader
3. Being a leader is overwhelming There is a lot of information coming at you and even more you need, but don’t have yet.
4. You need to have answers now It’s a lot of information to keep in your head. 
 More gets added as you move up.
5. Communication is super important You need to be precise and appropriate. 
 Even how you communicate with your body language.
6. What you feed will grow These are the areas that you will get better at. 
 These are the areas that your organization will see as important.
7. You are deciding for others too What you choose to focus on today determines what 5 people do today, 10 people do tomorrow, 20 people do this week, and 100 people do this month.
8. Changing course is costly It can take a long time to propagate the changes. People don’t like change.
9. What are the contenders for your focus? *See Calibrate 2018 presentation
10. Team
 Building
11. Delivering Results
12. Crafting Your Vision
13. Team
 Building Delivering Results Crafting Your Vision
14. Team
 Building
15. Coaching
16. Coaching Building Relationships
17. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships
18. Delivering Results
19. Coordinating
20. Coordinating Controlling Risk
21. Using Your Expertise Controlling Risk Coordinating
22. Crafting Your Vision
23. Roadmapping
24. Roadmapping Learning
25. Exploring Learning Roadmapping
26. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Exploring Learning Using Your Expertise Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating
27. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating Self Care
28. Your goal is to choose where to focus Define and measure your KPIs.
29. Building Relationships Coaching Recruiting Controlling Risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Priority High Low
30. • Coaching - Measure flow states • Relationship Building - Listen for feeling keywords when having conversations • Recruiting - Look at funnel vs. hiring targets • Coordinating - Use your favorite task management system • Controlling Risk - Look at KPIs of project performance and product quality • Using Your Expertise - Look at KPIs for project performance and product quality • Roadmapping - Are you within 3/6 months of the end of your roadmap? • Learning - Do you feel equipped to lead your team technically and organizationally? • Exploring - Are there any areas of risk to your product that could use creative thinking? *See Calibrate 2018 presentation
31. When and How Do I Actually Prioritize?
32. Why Start with Yourself? Maybe you shouldn’t have that conversation today.
 Maybe you shouldn’t even be in the office. 
 Powering through it can be dangerous/destructive.
33. What Am I Looking Forward to Today? What Am I Worried About Today? Am I Able to Be My Best Self Today?
34. You Can’t Do it All Choose three things to focus on even though your will probably only do one. 
 Do the most important thing first.
35. Coaching Building Relationships Controlling Risk Recruiting Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Priority High Low
37. Making the Decision
38. The Eisenhower Matrix
39. Do first: 
 Tasks that should be done today. Schedule: 
 Tasks that are important but can be scheduled to another day. Delegate: 
 Tasks that should be done today, but by someone else. Don’t do: 
 Tasks that don’t anyone’s need attention. Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* *Not important isn’t the right word here.
40. Only a few things should be here Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* *Not important isn’t the right word here. Do first: 
 Tasks that should be done today. Schedule: 
 Tasks that are important but can be scheduled to another day. Delegate: 
 Tasks that should be done today, but by someone else. Don’t do: 
 Tasks that don’t anyone’s need attention.
41. Do first: 
 Conflict resolution, Corrective action, Pass-down tasks
 Schedule: 
 Project planning,
 Prototyping,
 Relationship building Delegate: 
 Status reports,
 Cross-functional status meetings,
 Technical specs,
 Code reviews Don’t do: 
 As much as you can! Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* *Not important isn’t the right word here.
42. Be Skeptical of Repetition
43. Kicking the Can Add conditions on when is the latests date you can put this off.
 Is this something that’s going to later come back as urgent?
 Are you sure you can not delegate this?
44. What if I Keep Doing the Same Things Every Day? Why is this always urgent? 
 Is something else broken?
45. Be Aware of Your Biases We tend to put more energy into things we are good at. 
 We tend to favor things we’ve already invested time and energy in. 
 We tend to favor things that will give us immediate results.
46. Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* Reactive Intentional
47. Constant Struggle Between Being Reactive and Intentional The goal is to create enough stability that you don’t have to be reactive.
48. Do first: 
 Conflict resolution, Corrective action, Pass-down tasks
 Schedule: 
 Project planning,
 Prototyping,
 Relationship building Delegate: 
 Status reports,
 Cross-functional status meetings,
 Technical specs,
 Code reviews Don’t do: 
 As much as you can! Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* *Not important isn’t the right word here.
49. Urgent Not Urgent Important Not Important* *Not important isn’t the right word here. Do first: 
 Conflict resolution, Corrective action, Pass-down tasks,
 Overdue scheduled tasks Schedule: 
 Project planning,
 Prototyping,
 Relationship building Delegate: 
 Status reports,
 Cross-functional status meetings,
 Technical specs,
 Code reviews Don’t do: 
 As much as you can!
50. How Do I Decide What is Urgent?
51. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating Self Care
52. Self Care
53. Coaching
54. Building Relationships
55. Recruiting
56. Coordinating
57. Controlling Risk
58. Using Your Expertise
59. Roadmapping
60. Learning
61. Exploring
62. But How Do I Decide What’s Important?
63. Values Driven Approach
64. What You Prioritize is a Statement of Values You will be known as the type of leader that does x,y,z really well. 
 Or the person who in their time at the company did x,y,z.
65. A Hail Mary
67. What You Prioritize is an Expression of Values
 Start with you, then get the other data
 Be protective of what’s urgent
 Resist biasing the outcome
 Say “no” to as much as you can
68. Thank you! FIND ME ON TWITTER @UICYNTHIA