It feels like a matter of weeks since I last posted and it’s really been months. Kind of the way life feels like these days. I’m forever committing to multiple projects. A great (and quick read) on the need to focus and on getting more done by doing less busywork is Graham Alexander’s Tales from the top. Some more good advice comes from a post from Dwayne Melacon’s Genuine Curiosity blog. Dwayne recommends a simple system. Taking the top few items that are critical to get done each day and putting them on an index card. Dwayne calls it his “Daily Watch” list and creates it from the multiple project lists he maintains (this follow’s David Allen’s Getting Things Done).
Good advice for Extension professionals caught in daily white water. If you can’t at least focus on your key commitments for at least some of each day they will slip away.
The American Agricultural Economics Association publishes a quarterly magazine called Choices that covers a number of topics that are relevant to Extension professionals. The current issue (4th Quarter, 2006) focuses on the following (from the Editor’s page):
In this issue of Choices, we offer two collections of papers. One theme covers the topic of setting the stage for the next farm bill, by updating the justification for farm programs, reviewing policy issues likely to affect the 2007 Farm Bill, projecting the effects of continuing the 2002 Farm Bill with less spending, and examining new program options based on land stewardship programs. The other theme addresses changes in fresh produce marketing and small farms’/firms’ response strategies in order to remain competitive, profitable, and economically viable in this changing market. This issue also contains articles on obesity lessons from Japan and on formula versus grant-based funding for agricultural research.
Click here see past and future content.
I’m always interested in trying to find neat things to read by looking at what others are reading. One person that I try to check in on is Tom Peters. Most people know Tom as a business writer and speaker. What most people don’t seem to know is that Tom reads widely in topics like fiction, history and biography. So I was really happy to find his 2006 list of “Notable Books from 2006” – meaning books he read in 2006 regardless of the publication date (a great distinction given the serendipitous way we find books). I’ve added some books to my list, and am glad to see some books that I’ve read as well (Wikinomics and The Future and It’s Enemies are great). A great list for Extension professionals looking for reading that is both interesting and practical.
Rosa Say is running an interesting set of invited postings about leadership at her blog. They all are interesting, but this post by Kevin Eikenberry about learning and leadership caught my eye. Most Extension Professionals place a high emphasis on life long learning – at least for our clientele. My first reading made me think about how we as Extension Professionals need to keep on learning to add to our leaderships skills. Glen Hiemstra points out that when we find ourselves simply reacting to things we are often still looking backwards at past structures and models (see Glen’s Preferred Futuring concept in his book).
Kevin addresses this very directly: “The status quo requires no leadership. Think about it. If everything in the current situation was great – if there was no need for change – how much leadership would be needed? Leadership is required because we want to move somewhere.” Other good tidbits include brief discussions on modeling learning and how being a better leader leads to becoming a better human.
It’s also a good post for Extension Professionals working with leadership and management groups. You might want to also check out the other posts on Rosa’s blog and take a look at what Kevin is saying on his blog.
I’m a somewhat unrepentant multi-tasker. It just comes naturally to me. I have no flow issues with jumping from one item, conversation, project to another, then another, then another and then maybe jumping back. I find that this really disturbs the people around me that are really focused on single tasks. There is also some evidence that multi-tasking can diffuse effectiveness.
Drucker really pushes this in the Effective Executive. While that book was ahead of its time, it’s really tough in today’s environment for busy Extension Professionals to have the luxury of “checking out” and devoting long blocks of time to specific projects.
So what is the answer? To middle ground options that I’ve been playing around with are “chunking” and “time boxing”. I think that both can be good tools for Extension Professionals to test. Here is a quick summary of each.
Time Boxing
I found time boxing through
Dwayne Melacon’s link to this post on Dave Cheong’s blog. Time boxing refers to setting a pre-determined time frame for each project or task. Dave’s post has a good overview of the process. I like the idea because I think we in Extension tend to suffer from Parkinson’s Law , which generally states that “work expands to fit the amount of time allotted to its completion” (see interpretations applied to other uses here). I really liked Dave’s connections to doing the most important things first and his discussion of “null time”.
Chunking
Related to time boxing is chunking. I found this via
Lisa Haneberg’s blog. Lisa talks about chunking your day into blocks of time as an alternative to multi-tasking. See her post here for her idea of chunking and a tool she uses.
Both of these tools are closely related and can benefit Extension Professionals by allowing more time for them to focus. If you’re an Outlook user, you might want to look at this post for a brief description on how to create 30 minute chunks of time in Outlook.
This past week I was able to spend parts of three days attending various meetings and workshops on developing high impact teams. Ohio State University Extension hosted Arlen Leholm and Ray Vlasin, authors of the book Increasing the Odds for High-Performance Teams, from Sunday evening through Tuesday. Arlen is the current Dean and Director of Cooperative Extension for the University of Wisconsin and the former Director of Michigan State University Extension. Ray is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus for Michigan State University Extension, the former Director of the Natural Resource Economics Division of USDA’s Economic Research Service, and a Staff Economist for the House Public Works Committee.
It was time well spent. Given the fact that most Extension work is done via teams (and committees) we really need to focus on ways of improving our teams’ performances. As an institution that touts science-based research for decision making, we do a terrible job of actually looking at the literature for teams and applying it to our own work. Leholm and Vlasin do just that in Chapter 2 of their book. This chapter has a very good and very succinct overview of the literature about teams. It is so succinct that it is easy to miss the density of detail it contains. The book also has several case study chapters, including one discussing two Extension High Performance Teams (one at Michigan and the other in Ohio).
The book will be especially valuable for those interested in developing longer term, self-directed teams. Much time was spent discussing the differences between self-directed teams and single-leader teams. And the organizational architecture required to have true self-directed teams. And the time frame – maybe two or more years - to really get the team humming.
So without giving the book’s contents away, here are some key concepts. It is possible for organizations to “increase the odds” of developing high performance teams. But they need to truly empower them, build trust and commitment among team members, and help provide the context to develop clarified and realistic team expectations, rules and team purpose. To be truly self-directed, teams must have an infrastructure to keep them focused on performance. And that infrastructure is their own formalized (read written) purpose and operational statements.
To get a better understanding see this 2004 presentation by Arlen and Ray to. For twenty bucks, the book is a cheap investment for Extension professionals.
Long time readers know that I simply love Manager Tools podcasts (see
here, here and here for some examples). Manager Tools has also evolved a really neat blog and comment feature into their site. Mark Horstman (50% of the Manager Tools partnership) has posted this neat feature on reading. Mark is reading about 200 books a year despite a busy life as a consultant. He explains his formula for reaching that number. I really like the post although I’m not quite on board with his reluctance to use audio books. Mark feels that commuting time should be better spent on the phone building relationships. I certainly cannot disagree with that concept, but I regularly listen to book and podcasts on my iPod while working out, cooking, etc. Plus some commuting time is often outside of normal business hours. I’m usually on the road between 5-6am, then again after 6pm. I do make several calls during these time periods (often very productive ones to people’s voicemails that saves email and other time), but I also find it a good time to get some listening done with audio books. I’ve reached the point where I read limited numbers of fiction books, but listen to a few every month just to relax and get away. Mark does make a valid point that we read faster than we can listen to books. iPod users can overcome some of this by selecting the faster reading option on their iPod. This increases the reading time to 125%. Conversely, people with listening difficulties can reduce the time to 75%. Unfortunately, this only seems to work with audio books and not podcasts.
For Extension professionals that are on the go, Mark’s article will be really useful and inspirational. There is never enough time, so pick wisely. See also my book notes on Steve Leveen’s The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. And do what else Mark suggests - turn of the TV. Or at least use a DVR to record shows and time-shift your viewing to a better time for you.
Rajesh Setty has a neat (and free) little e-book called When You Can’t Earn an MBA….Thoughts on Getting Ahead Without an MBA. It’s well worth the brief amount of time that you will put into reading it. I just read Setty’s recent book Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps. Beyond Code is targeted towards IT folks but is really applicable to anyone. His major thrust is to develop strategies and traits that help knowledge workers to “de-commoditize” themselves – to become distinct and more valuable. When You Can’t Earn an MBA is related and has the same philosophical touch, but I would really recommend both. Especially to beginning and mid-career Extension Professionals. Setty starts Beyond Code by having his readers consider the return on investment of reading and using the information from his book. Use this formula and reading the e-book is a no-brainer. The price of Beyond Code makes it a no-brainer too. Rajesh’s blog for Beyond Code can be found here. Here is his post about the e-book.
After a very busy week I’ve been plowing through my aggregator and catching up on some reading. I was surprised to find this list of recommended business books at Manager Tools. I’ve posted earlier about the high quality of the Manager Tool podcasts (here, here and here). So I’m scanning the list and finding some titles I’ve read, and others that I’m adding to my list. If you are at all interested in improving your business and management skills, scan the blog and start on the podcasts. They have the most immediately useable stuff I’ve found so far.
OK, another podcast review. I’m into my third bi-weekly edition of the podcast The Future and You, and I really like it. It is a somewhat eclectic mixture of futurism via unique interviews and book readings. Hosted by the science fiction writer Stephen Euin Cobb, the podcast resembles a radio talk show with various interviews on topics pertaining to the future. See the site for listings. The first three episodes have covered cryongenics, space, sci-fi film star interviews, biotechnology, genetically modified crops and chapter readings of Stephen’s book Bones Burnt Black. If you’re looking for information to apply immediately, you probably will not find it here. If you’re looking for a podcast that will help to broaden and challenge your view of tomorrow, this is it. It’s currently the podcast I look most forward to getting. Available via iTunes or via other podcasters.