Most people are familiar with the cliché “out of sight, out of mind”.  One way to interpret this cliché is that if we don’t have some way of remembering things (“out of sight”), then they effectively do not exist for us – they are, for all practical purposes, gone.  You may not have noticed before now, but you can’t work on things that are “out of mind” because they don’t exist – they simply aren’t there to be worked on.

When I say it doesn’t exist, I don’t just mean you can’t remember it.  I mean you don’t even know that there is any thing to be remembered. Rather, it is gone without a trace as if it never existed in the first place.

Unfortunately, too many people rely on their memory for keeping track of things.  I say unfortunately because our short terms memories are a very poor place for storing information and once something is forgotten, we may never be able to recall it.  And, if it can’t be recalled, it can’t be used or accomplished, thereby limiting our effectiveness.  At the time it is happening, however, it is difficult to imagine (even if we allowed ourselves to) that we could possibly forget what we saw or heard.

The above policy (1) acknowledges that we can, do, and will forget things, and (2) that there is a way to keep things around so that when they do go “out of mind”, they can reliably be found again.  Writing things down keeps them in existence independent of our memory and reduces the likelihood we will fail to perform because of something we “forgot”.

Adopting this policy will require the development of three new habits.  One is reliably writing things down, even those things you are sure you won’t forget.  One reason people feel stressed is because they don’t know if they forgot something they shouldn’t have.  A second habit is reliably writing things down in the same place, like a journal or inventory of some kind.  It does little good to write things down all over the place (e.g., napkins, scrap pieces of paper, etc.) if you then can’t easily find them when you need them.  The third habit is regularly reviewing what you have recorded.  Again, a comprehensive list is of little value if you don’t look at it.

A display is a visual exhibit: posters are displays, so are pictures, drawings, and models.  One familiar display is a calendar, which displays days, dates, and in some cases, times of day.  City maps are displays of streets, buildings, and other sites.

Displays allow us to “see” the status of something, or to know where things stand in relation to something that matters to us. One familiar display of this type is the “thermometer” that is used by the United Way and other fund raising organizations. It is highly visible, easy to understand, and somebody updates it every day or two so it stays accurate.

Displays become the scoreboards or scorecards by which we can instantly determine both status and progress of a project or performance measure.  Putting the display in a place where everyone involved can see it allows them to know if things are “on track”, “ahead”, or “behind”.  And, when displays are public no one can hide from what is happening (or not happening, as the case may be).

Consider the example of Tim, President of a gas piping repair company who reports the following results from using displays:

“I run a small natural gas piping repair company – 19 employees – and we were giving customer satisfaction rewards to our service employees when their customers phoned or wrote to compliment us on the service they received. We called the reward a “Gold Wrench”. The program was fairly well received, but our service guys still were not tremendously motivated to make the extra effort to get a Gold Wrench. They viewed the relationship with customers as somewhat adversarial, and tried to get in and get their work done without much focus on customer satisfaction. They saw it as “us against them” in the job of repairing the gas pipes.

Then in our MBA class you said that a system like ours should be publicly displayed with a prominently visible measurement system leading to a high goal. In 2001 we worked a record number of jobs, and our servicemen received 75 Gold Wrenches, which we assumed was due to the large amount of business we did. Then there was a staggering downturn in service at the end of the year that was projected to continue into next year. Even so, I decided to set a seemingly unattainable goal of 100 Gold Wrenches for this year. I made a display in a “thermometer” format, posted it for everyone to see, and updated it regularly.

To get everyone interested, we also told all the employees that when we hit our goal of 100, everyone at the company, not just the service personnel, but everyone at every level, would receive a financial reward. Still, it took a while for the project to really catch on, but by the second half of the year, the servicemen were using the display to figure out how many Gold Wrenches we needed to meet our goal. The display helped keep them talking and figuring and thinking about the project to improve customer satisfaction.  Yesterday we hit our goal…and we are still going strong even with an unavoidably slow year for service!”

If there is something you really want to accomplish, create a display that shows the result to be realized and progress toward its fulfillment. Then post it for all to see and take the two actions that get the display operating in the unique culture of your workplace: (a) update it regularly so people can reliably tell what is happening, and (b) talk about it how to accomplish the intended results.

What is a “sufficient period of time”? It is the amount of time it takes to get something done given (a) the nature of the work required and (b) the productivity of the person (people) doing the work.  In general, the more complex and involved the work, the longer it will take to get done compared to work that is less complex or involved.  Similarly, the more productive the person (people) doing the work, the less time it will take than someone who is less productive.

Example

One of the jobs I perform several times each University quarter is grading exams.  How long it takes me to grade an exam depends first on the nature of the work required. Are there 50 exams to grade, or 150? Just as important, what type of exam is it? An exam that has all objective questions – multiple choice and true-false questions – is much faster to grade than an all essay question exam.

And in addition to the nature of the work, what are the factors that influence my productivity?  One is my reading speed, which is influenced by the writing quality of the student answers on essay questions. A second is my writing speed, for making comments that will give students feedback on both types of exam. And a third is my sitting tolerance – how long I can stay focused on the grading task. I find my tolerance is higher when student writing is good, and lower when it’s not.

A sufficient period of time for me to grade exams, therefore, depends on what type of exam I give and my productivity while grading. The only two ways I can reduce the time it takes to grade an exam is by (1) changing the design of the exam (more objective, less essay) and/or (2) improving my productivity.

As an example, if it takes 1.5 hours to grade one question in a short-answer essay exam for a graduate class of 25 people.  If there are four questions on the exam, I will need a total of 6 hours in order to grade the entire exam for the whole class. I can choose to break it up into four segments of 1.5 hours, or two segments of 3 hours, etc. But if I schedule less time than that, I will not complete grading the exam.

Like the Law of Gravity, we must account for the First Law of Accomplishment.  In order to accomplish something, you must have a sufficient period of time in which to get it done.  If you don’t allocate the time, it won’t get done. Of course, you can get something done in less time if you do a sloppy job. Doing incomplete work, however, damages people’s credibility and reputation.

Steps to Obeying the First Law of Accomplishment

There are four things that will help you obey the First Law of Accomplishment.

1.       Record Your Promises.  You can’t accomplish what you can’t find or can’t remember.  Keep a record of everything you have agreed to do. Write your promises and commitments down somewhere – preferably in one place, like a promise log – and then refer to it regularly until the promises are completed.

Ideally you record (a) What is due to someone, (b) Who it is to be delivered to, and (c) When it is due – plus enough particulars about the “deliverable” so you can determine how much work will be involved. Be sure to consider the different types of work that may be involved – the desk and computer work, phone and email work, research, writing, getting approvals, etc.

2.       Determine the time periods needed to complete the accomplishment.  Given the nature of the work to be done and your level of productivity, determine how much time will be required to complete the assignment.  Bear in mind that most people are overly optimistic about how long something takes to get done, and as a result they often grossly underestimate the amount of time they will need.  If something takes six hours, don’t assume you can get it done in five.

I have learned that most people do not know how long it takes to do the many jobs they have, even the ones they do on a recurring basis.  It took me several University quarters to determine how long it takes to grade different types of assignments.  And grading is only one part of my work!

Determine whether your promise for a particular “deliverable” (a promised product, service, or other result) will take four hours, or fourteen hours. And decide if it would be best to do it all at once, broken up into two or three – or more – steps, i.e., the number and size of specific “periods of time” you will require to accomplish the promised result.

3.       Determine the time available in your schedule to do the work. If you are like most people, you have far less time in which to do the work you have promised than you realize.  The reason for this is because of meetings, appointments, recurring events (including lunch and breaks), and interruptions.  When you are engaged in any of these things, you are not available for working on the other things you have promised – the “accomplishment work” that will fulfill your commitments.

In order to determine when you can work on the things you have promised, start with a blank schedule, then put in all the appointments and meetings you plan to attend, the recurring events like meals and coffee breaks, and an estimate of when you are most likely to be interrupted (and for how long). NOTE: Most of us have more control over interruptions than we think we do, and we know something about our typical patterns of timing and duration of interruptions too.

So what’s left? The time that remains after all these things are accounted for is your unscheduled time.  That is the time you have available for working on everything else – including your “accomplishment work”.  Pause a moment here to allow yourself to be shocked at how much time you are giving to appointments, meetings, recurring events, and interruptions, and how little you are giving to your “accomplishment work”.

4.       Schedule your work, then follow your schedule. Now that you know how many time periods are needed to complete the work you have promised (#2 above) and how much time you have available for doing that work (#3 above), you can schedule the work.  Put the periods of time necessary to accomplish your promises into your calendar.

One trick here is not to schedule yourself too tightly (i.e., back-to-back with no space in between), so that when unexpected events occur, you have some flexibility to deal with them.  Another trick is to use your schedule when people ask you to do things: when someone wants you to do something, pull out your calendar and look to see when you will be able to do the work required.

Remember, the First Law of Accomplishment says, “The accomplishment of anything requires a sufficient period of time in which to accomplish it.”  When your schedule is full, you will be unable to make new promises without modifying or revoking existing promises. Use your schedule as a guide to when you can say yes, and what conditions you must apply to the agreements you make.

This will put your all of your communication skills to work. You can make requests for resources and support, decline to take on something you know you cannot deliver, and make requests to change agreements on due dates for promises you have made with other people.

Conclusion

The biggest challenge to our personal performance is finding ourselves overcommitted because we have (1) failed to keep a good record of everything we have promised, (2) underestimated the amount of time a job will take, and/or (3) overestimated the amount of time available.  When we say yes to more things than we have time in which to do them, we are in an argument with the First Law of Accomplishment. This argument is stressful and unwinnable.  The integrity of your scheduling process is what produces your calendar, establishes the validity of your promises, and provides the foundation for your personal effectiveness. It’s best to make friends with the First Law of Accomplishment.

[This article is reprinted from The Great Managing Newsletter, Vol. 9, Issue 22, November 30, 2010 by permission of Jeffrey and Laurie Ford. For additional information, visit www.laurieford.com or www.professorford.com]

What do I mean by infrastructure?  All the tools, equipment, facilities, practices, and routines we use to accomplish anything.  Stuff like pens, pencils, computers, desks, computer programs, meetings, agendas, and standard operating procedures are all part of our infrastructure.  Much of our infrastructure is transparent to us, so much so that we can operate without even thinking about it.  We know where to find the coffee cups for our morning coffee, where the shampoo is in the shower, and we drive our cars without consciously considering gas pedal, brake, steering wheel, mirror, etc.  As Nike says, we just do it.

About the only time it seems that we notice much of our infrastructure is when it doesn’t work.  It is at those times that it comes out of the background of transparency and into the foreground of a problem or breakdown.  And when our infrastructure doesn’t work, IT becomes the things we focus on, and our productivity drops.  Just recall the last time your word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation software didn’t work if you want to see the impact of an infrastructure breakdown.  No matter how motivated or committed you are, or how inspired you are by leaders, if the infrastructure doesn’t work, your productivity dives until the infrastructure is repaired.

I believe our infrastructure establishes the limits of our productivity.  For the past several years, I have been focused heavily on publishing academic articles dealing primarily with change management and resistance to change.  My book shelves, both at home and work, my computer files, and the classes I taught were all organized around academic publications in the area of change management.  My infrastructure supported change management, so when I looked around to see what I could work on, all the things in my infrastructure pointed to and called for “change management”.

Recently I was promoted to full professor.  As a result, the “publish or perish” pressure is off and I no longer “have to” publish.  I am really free to work on whatever I want.  Although I have always worked on what I was interested in, the big difference now is that there is no “have to” in the background nagging me to do another article or book.  So, what will I work on with all this new found freedom?

Well initially I found that I continued doing what I had done before.  How could I do much else when all my infrastructure was organized to support someone who was working on becoming a full professor, not someone who was a full professor?  If I wanted to do something different, I would have to build a new infrastructure.  The one thing I knew I wanted to do was play more golf, so I joined the OSU Golf Course.  A new piece of infrastructure that requires I develop new habits and ways of working.  I also just completed taking an inventory of the books in my home office to see what no longer speaks to me.  Interestingly, a number of books I have had for years are now gone.  Next are the computer files.

The leadership literature tells us you need a vision in order to know what infrastructure is required to fulfill it.  But how do you clear the space so that you can see what vision to create?  As I eliminate more of the infrastructure I have depended on for years, I have an experience of less constraint and more freedom to pursue other things.  But I also notice that I have less certainty about what to do.  Our existing infrastructures support who we know ourselves to be.  When we start taking them apart, it can create some uncertainty.

So, I am in the midst of dismantling one infrastructure and building a new one.  I suspect that this will take sometime.