One of those weeks… (again!)

I wrote “One of those weeks….” several years ago. As usual, I had a lot of blog ideas that week but no time to write given how the week evolved in “CIO land”. I recently moved my blog writing and publishing schedule to the weekend but with this past weekend filled with getting a house ready to list, that just didn’t happen. When we first decided it was a good time to sell and downsize, I told my husband I couldn’t deal with it while I was still doing this interim CIO engagement and giving weeknight and weekend hours to my consulting firm, StarBridge Advisors. I was just too busy.

Once we started looking at places, we decided to jump in and not wait. So here we are, getting the house ready for pictures so we can list it (you know those pictures in the online listings that look like model homes and as though no one lives there). It’s still a hot seller’s market so hopefully it will sell fast. But we’ve been there before only to be disappointed by a longer than expected sales cycle.

Being super busy means being organized is not an option – it’s a necessity. Prioritizing, staying organized, timeboxing, and knowing when to get help are just some of the skills needed now. As I’ve admitted in the past, I am a work in process in all these areas. If you can relate, check out some of these past posts:

Struggling to get (or stay) organized? You are not alone

Managing priorities and maintaining balance

7 tips for managing in the fast lane

What does weeding have to do with work?

Operation Baby Blanket

Yes, despite the funky titles of the last two, even they are useful. Lot of good reminders and tips for me during this period. If you find yourself busier than you can handle, you might just find something useful here as well.

7 Tips for effective virtual meetings

If you have the kind of job where you can work from home, you have probably been on hundreds of virtual meetings in the past four months. And this will most likely continue for the foreseeable future as many companies have no set date for when they will have employees return to their offices. There are plenty of articles with overall tips for working from home. Here are my tips for effective virtual meetings:

Follow meeting norms – If your company had meeting guidelines and standard practices when you were all in person, continue to follow them. During my interim engagement at the University of Vermont Health Network, I became very familiar with the meeting norms in IT and shared them in a previous blog post – “We’re at meeting norms”. I consider them best practice. They included behaviors that contribute to productive, collaborative work. I can honestly say that the meetings there were some of the most productive, focused, and efficient meetings I have seen in all the organizations I’ve worked in. One of the most useful is having 25- or 50-minute meetings. When you are working in whatever home office setup you have, you do not have to move between meeting rooms. But you still need time between calls whether it’s a bio break, time to stand up and stretch, organize your follow-ups, or get ready for the next meeting.

Know how to use the tools – Get to know all the features of your preferred/default video conference tool and be comfortable navigating in it. But be flexible and quick to adapt to other tools as needed if the meeting host has a different default tool. Be patient when technical issues arise and work together to resolve quickly or find a workaround. People are more supportive and tolerant of issues now compared to when there was just one or two people remote with everyone else in a conference room together wondering why the remote people were having issues. Continue reading

Struggling to get (or stay) organized? You are not alone

When I wrote my “Value of podcasts for professional development” blog a few weeks ago, I asked readers for their favorites podcasts. One of my directors at UVMHN suggested the GTD podcast series. I’ve known since I met Greg Van Buren at the start of this interim CTO engagement back in May that he was a big fan and proponent of the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach from David Allen. I told Greg early on that I’d like to take some time to learn how he applies it in his work.

There are many personal productivity systems and methodologies out there. I’m familiar with GTD concepts but have never really gone deep with it. So why not learn from someone who has? After all, what’s not attractive about the idea of “stress free productivity”?

Greg is paperless from all appearances – how he shows up at meetings and in his office. He uses a mobile device to capture all his notes and to dos. If he does momentarily have paper with handwritten notes, he scans it and copies it into the appropriate note for future reference. And as I have more recently seen he appears to have mastered an organization system for all his notes and tasks within OneNote.

After listening to a few GTD podcasts, I realized again that none of this is rocket science. It’s basic organization of your ideas and work at all levels – from the macro long term goals, to the house and family tasks of today and everything in between. And I realize that I could make a lot of adjustments to improve how I work. That sounds better than saying I’ve realized I’m out of control! Continue reading

“We’re at meeting norms”

That’s a new phrase for me. One I’m still getting used to at my current interim engagement in IT at the University of Vermont Health Network. Said like that, it means it’s 10 minutes to the hour and time to wrap canstockphoto15517676 (1) meeting normsup the meeting. Time for people to shut down any video conferencing, clear the room, take a bio-break and get to their next meeting. And for others to come in and get set up for the next meeting to start right on time. And start on time they do.

This is a meeting discipline that makes a lot of sense and everyone seems to have adapted to it. As the new outsider, I’m still getting used to it and trying my best to conform. Get there on time and if chairing the meeting, wrap up by 10 minutes to the hour (5 minutes if it’s a 30-minute meeting).

Other meeting norms the IT department has established include all agendas and meeting materials available in advance as part of the meeting invite, not sent around separately as emails with attachments. I was told early on that if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, you’re free to not attend the meeting. While I’ve seen no specific guideline on this, I wouldn’t be surprised. Another way to ensure meetings have purpose and a plan for the time. Continue reading

Good email practices – lead by example

Have you ever gone through hundreds of email post vacation trying to catch up and found too many branches on one subject making it difficult to quickly get the full picture on that issue? canstockphoto17451721 (1) email

Have you ever read through a long email trail when you are in a new organization and many different people are weighing in – you don’t know who they are or what they do because there are no signatures, just a first name?

Have you ever had that sense that too much project management is happening via email?

Have you ever tried to find an email but there is no subject or useful subject to search on?

Have you ever lost the thread because the email trail is now on an entirely different topic but still carries the original unrelated subject line?

Have you ever looked at an email trail and wondered why someone doesn’t just pick up the phone or do a quick huddle with the right people to resolve the issue?

If the answer to any of these questions are “yes”, you may share some of my frustrations with managing email.

So, what do we do? Complain or lead by example? Continue reading

7 tips for managing in the fast lane

It’s generally a bad sign when the seat belt warning light for the passenger seat comes on but you are the only one in the car. You’ve got too much weight on that seat and the car thinks it’s a person who needs to fasten their seat belt.

This has happened for me a few times lately.  It’s when I have thrown my briefcase and stacks of work for the weekend or the evenings on the seat.  Or I’m out of my office at hospital meetings for several days in a row and need various files with me.  The passenger seat becomes my file cabinet until I’m back in my office.

If I’ve been out of town to visit family or on business, it gets even harder to manage the volume.

People say they don’t know how I do it….how do I keep on top of everything. I respond, typically, “I don’t do it that well.” I’m my own worst critic. But I try my best.

So how do you survive and be your best at times like this?

Triage skills – Review your email inbox and make sure that the time sensitive ones are answered. Look for emails from your direct reports, boss, peers and customers to handle. Continue reading