Maintaining Inbox Zero: No Emails in Your Inbox

"Inbox Zero" was a dream that began to look realistic when I decided to separate my emails into tiers: Chatter notifications, Basecamp notifications and everything else. When Chatter notifications were all that I was seeing in my inbox, it was easy to empty my inbox on a daily basis. But the illusion of having responded to everything faded very quickly as the number of unread emails piled up in a separate folder lurking just beneath my inbox.

Finally, to dispel the illusion and to actually respond to all incoming email, I took control of my inbox by making one simple decision. That decision is simply to check my email just twice a day, once in the morning and again in the evening. And now I am able to consistently meet a 24-hour response time to emails during weekdays.

Implementing the decision required just a few major behavior changes:

• Schedule 90 mins per session to handle email. Time not used in a session can be reallocated to other activities.
• Spend no more than 6 mins responding to an email. If more time is required, flag the email for follow-up. As a courtesy, after flagging an email for follow-up, I generally reply to the sender to let him or her know that I have received the email and need more time to craft a full response.
• Once read or flagged, either move the email into another folder or delete it.

The point of this change was to increase productivity by reducing stress, anxiety and workplace distractions from two things: constantly switching into and out of Outlook, and worrying about unread emails.

If you try this or are already doing something similar, have you been able to maintain inbox zero? Or does your job demand a different way to handle email? While I am far from completing all of my tasks on a day-to-day basis, I take comfort in knowing that I can at least respond to all emails that come my way. After all, communication is a key component of everyone's work.

Tip: To follow through with eliminating email distractions, turn off email notifications in Outlook, on your tablet and on your smartphone.

Tip: The articles below may provide additional perspectives on handling email:

• Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
• Empty your Inbox: Process and organize your email more efficiently
• Managing Email Effectively
• SXSW Killed My Inbox Zero: Email Lessons From The Front Lines Of Tech(sas)

I Share, Therefore I Work

One of my staff made an off-hand remark to me, "No one knows what you've been doing lately." After I got over the initial shock of the message, I immediately suppressed my inner voice that was saying, I don't know what you've been doing either. I've heard that part of leadership is putting a good filter on that inner voice.

But more importantly, I started to explore this troubling statement more deeply as a symptom of a more fundamental, pervasive problem.

From the situation, I deduced the following:

1. My staff member doesn't know what I'm doing. (This is a euphemism, because another way to say this is that my staff member doesn't think I'm working.)
2. This is likely because my staff member has not seen or heard of any productive activity that can be attributed to me.
3. Obviously (or perhaps not so obviously), I have been working.
4. So, why doesn't my staff member know that I've been working? Simple: I haven't updated him.

You may jump to the easy and reasonable question, "So, why haven't you updated him?" My excuses would be equally easy and reasonable:

• I manage 10 staff, including 4 direct reports, overseeing quality control of our products and support of personal and enterprise technology in the workplace
• I manage a CRM implementation project with 10 team members having a May 13 deadline
• I manage an online admissions application project with 7 team members having an April 30 deadline
• I manage a customer and partner single sign-on project with 2 team members, institutional partners and outside consultants having a June 30 deadline
• I manage countless unmet needs and high expectations coming from all departments, including my own
• I am trying to hire additional staff on a tight budget to take on vast responsibilities
• Blah, blah, blah...
• In short: I have no time.

Well, now... How very self-centered of me, to say that "I have no time." Do others have more time? Probably not. What's so special about me that makes my lack of time so significant? Nothing. And if I am already time strapped, what the hell am I doing writing a blog post complaining about not having any time? Because I'm supposed to be a leader who solves departmental and organizational problems, and right now I believe we have a big problem that I am partially addressing with this post.

And that problem is inefficiency. How much time do my staff waste complaining among themselves that I'm not doing anything? How much time do my staff waste by going down one path only to find out later that I am heading in a different direction? How much productivity is lost because my staff feel lost and suffer from low morale? I don't know the magnitude, but my gut says I'd probably pop a vein if I saw the numbers.

I believe that great work comes from happy staff, and if their happiness and productivity depend on knowing what I'm doing, where I'm going and why, then I must prioritize the communication about my work, even above completion of the work itself.

Communication leads to coordination. Coordination leads to responsiveness. Responsiveness leads to adaptability. Adaptability leads to a competitive advantage that will help us not only to operate but to grow, transform and even persevere in a challenging economy and an unsettled industry.

And in a modern Web 2.0 environment that demands efficiency in all processes, including communication, meeting synchronously with each staff member or even with all my direct reports at once is simply not sustainable. The channel is too narrow, time consuming and logistically difficult to setup due to its synchronicity. But thankfully, we have an alternative channel that has completely opposite characteristics: Salesforce Chatter.

Chatter is broad, allowing me to potentially reach everyone with every post and comment. Chatter is fast because I'm typing and my audience is reading, compared to me speaking and them listening. And Chatter is easy because I can share my thoughts immediately, asynchronously without having to pull people together to gather at a specific location at a specific time.

So, I need to communicate broadly and frequently to keep my staff happy, coordinated and productive, then I believe I need to share, post and comment more on Chatter. This activity is no longer optional; it's a matter of the organization's strength and long-term survival.

You've probably heard, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" How about: If a man operates in an office and no one knows about it, did he actually work? What was the real, net value of what the man did? And who gives a Mars bar about it?

Impertio Ergo Operor. I share, therefore I work.

How to Lose Weight and Change the World

"Happy New Year!" Between saying it and hearing it said, the phrase must've popped into my life over a hundred times in the past 24 hours. Yes, it's a new year. But while I sincerely wish my family, friends and colleagues the best possible start to the next 365 days, at the same time a question starts forming in the back of my mind: What will it take for me to have a "happy" 2013?

Perhaps the answer starts with identifying what left me less than happy in 2012. A pretty simple task, considering 2012 was by and large a very positive year. So, what left me wishing for different outcomes?

Off the top of my head, I think of two tangentially related challenges: Mastering all the responsibilities in a new job position, and weight management. Without going into all of the details, the gist of the matters are that I still have personal skill gaps to bridge in my new position, and I now have many more pounds of excess flesh to shed in order to return to a healthy weight.

Without anything obvious between them, I'd like to offer two connections shared by the two items above: First, both are roadblocks in my personal mission to build a more harmonious world. Second, and perhaps more significantly, both challenges are rooted in habits that could use revisions.

I look at the challenges I face at work and the weigh control challenge I face at home, and it seems to me that one thing is clear: If I want to tackle and overcome more complex problems at work and in the world where I don't have direct control, I should start by proving that I can completely own a process over which I should have full control: maintaining a healthy weight.

In contemplating the weight problem (and by extension the larger problems), I think back to one of the books I added to my favorites list in 2012 was The Philosopher's Diet by Richard Watson. Watson offers a simple idea: Losing weight and keeping it off is one of the most difficult projects a human being can undertake. And if one can achieve consistent weight control, one can achieve anything. So, if I want to succeed at work, one way I can seal that deal is to succeed at reaching my target weight and staying there.

Another book I'm reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, suggests that habits can be generalized into having three components: a cue, a routine and a reward. In this sense, I know there are at least a few habits that are hurting me continuously. Thankfully, Duhigg seems to be empowering me by asserting that everyone has the power to change components of those habits to produce completely different results, ones that are desirable and exceptional. Duhigg believes in the power of self, and that's a comforting reminder to people who feel that much of their lives are outside of their direct influence.

And finally, hearing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" on the radio gave me added conviction to tackle everything systematically in the new year, following this chain of thought: improve my physical self, then raise my work performance, then advance my larger mission. Each success lays the foundation for the next success. "I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. ... If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change."

So, at the moment I find myself and everyone else in a new year filled with many new challenges to come. And with the new challenges I believe there are at least as many new opportunities to match. Then, to welcome the new year, I'd like to make a toast to stronger economies and communities in 2013, starting with a focus on improving what we ought to hold in complete control: ourselves, and specifically our weights. Cheers!

Five-star education and the end of college rankings

How many colleges out there wish they had the #1 spot on U.S. News' Best Colleges rankings? Or at least a higher spot within their respective tier or category? I don't have a scientific answer to this question, but I suspect that the answer is "a vast majority". Ultimately, for me, the more critical question is: Why do those in higher education look to these rankings as a validation for the work that they do? Or as support for their marketing narratives?

At a quick glance (I'm trusting you on this one, Wikipedia), U.S. News published its first rankings in a 1983 report titled, "America's Best Colleges". Back then, people were still living in the age of the printing press where information was disseminated through official bodies without a broad social medium for validation. The public Internet was still under development, and Web 2.0 wasn't even on anyone's roadmap, much less Facebook, Twitter or Yelp. So the best that consumers could manage was to put their faith into a reputable organization that could help them sift through the myriad choices for higher education in order to find the best fit given various constraints.

But does what seemed like a great tool nearly 30 years ago still hold significant meaning in the Social Age? Maybe. Maybe not. But if the Best Colleges rankings are used as a way to establish an institution's reputation, I believe there is a better way in today's world: the five-star rating system.

I'm sure you've seen this. For years, whether it's on Yelp, Redbox, Amazon.com, the five-star rating system has helped people with needs and means to make purchasing decisions. means "Excellent, I highly recommend this!" means "Terrible! Don't touch it with a 100-foot pole." Have those reviews and stars influenced your purchasing decisions, at work or at home? They certainly have for me.

But how can such a simple scale measure such a complex service like education? Well... why not? The idea itself is not novel. Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been around the block and back, employed now by many industries including higher education. NPS uses a scale from 0 to 10. The star rating system uses a range from 1 to 5. So, the net difference is effectively just the number of notches on the line, which is why I think of the star rating system as "NPS lite".

But the real reason why a star rating system like that embedded in many social media outlets is important to higher education is that the scale helps an institution measure the perceived value from all of its constituents. And those constituents are going to be the most effective promoters or detractors of the organization. Yes, there are numerous, intricately linked and complex factors that influence any given rating. And yes, NPS and the star rating system omit other metrics that can help pin-point specific problem areas. But all of the good and the bad, both in and out of the classroom must roll up into something in the minds of students, parents and everyone else. And I believe the what is captured neatly in the number of stars every individual has the power to give to an organization.

Simply translated for higher education:

• , "I had a great experience! If you're looking for a graduate program, I highly recommend this college!"
• , "What the hell? What do you mean I spent 4 years and $100k just to end up with no job and a ticking clock on my student loans? Don't come here if you're serious about your education needs."

The five-star rating system. Simple. Measurable. Scalable. Inevitable.

In the future, I imagine people will stop caring about a "top 100" list published by a major corporation. Instead, they will head over to their favorite social media site and look for 5-star colleges as rated by parents, students, alumni, staff, partners and beyond.

And when the time comes, that will be the end of today's college rankings.

idea, noun: a proposed solution to an identified problem

What is an idea in the context of selecting projects to execute within a business? The closest definition given by Merriam-Webster is "a plan for action". But perhaps a better applied definition for leaders in an organization is "a proposed solution to an identified problem" where the problem identification comes first.

At a Technology staff retreat I held this past Tuesday, subtly charged conversation in the room revolved around the sequencing and meanings of a few simple words: problem, solution and idea. The backdrop to the conversation was a topic from project portfolio management: how a proposed initiative becomes part of a portfolio. Ultimately, the goal of portfolio management is to ensure that the organization is "doing the right work."

I had originally started the dialogue by stating the first step in the process is that an idea is conceived. A colleague then added that a problem should also be identified. This sounded reasonable. So, I agreed and proceeded to add this step below the idea conceived step on the flip chart. I was feeling good about how this addition tightened the gap between the first step and the goal step of project selected for execution. Off to a good start, I thought.

"The order is wrong. You can't conceive an idea or solution before identifying a problem." This comment gave me pause, as I looked at the large sheet of paper on which I left too little room at the top to switch the order of the first two steps.

"Is the order of those steps really significant," I began in an impatient reply, "if the person performing each one is the same?" In my mind, I was thinking about how we don't want barely baked ideas to bounce around the office, eating up staff's valuable work time. What's the big deal about the order, I thought, if the same person considers both the problem and the solution before sharing the idea with someone else? Isn't the result the same?  After a few more stubborn (on my part) exchanges back and forth with no changes in opinion or on the chart, my colleague gave a final comment, "I feel extremely concerned about the order being wrong, and this is the last time I'm going to raise this concern."

Worried about the negative direction the conversation was taking, I abandoned the page on which I was drawing and redrew the chart, starting with problem identified at the top then leading to idea conceived (with a solution). I verbally acknowledged that the new sequence would be better than the previous one, and I got a brief nod from the concerned colleague as a result. But mostly, I was just relieved to be moving on to talking about the criteria for weighing and comparing different ideas.

Reflecting on this experience a few days later, it clicked for me why my colleague was so concerned about the order of first identifying a problem and then devising a solution. The way I first drew the chart showed a shallow focus on what was "cool", "novel" or "trendy" about a product or service, whereas the rearranged chart demonstrated a clear focus on understanding and considering real business needs which need to be addressed.

What should leaders be concerned about? Should we put our attention on what's shiny and new that everyone else is pursuing and trying to find a way to apply them to our business? Or should we focus on learning our business needs first and then look for a solution, shiny or not? The answer I think is obvious, and I personally learned a valuable lesson about what lens to wear when surveying the work environment.

It's funny how blind we are to our own hypocrisy sometimes. When I first heard about "manufactured demand" in industries like big pharma, where products are created without an identified need, I wagged my finger and condemned the practice. It seems that I have fallen into the same rut as those I've criticized, and it's time to start pulling myself out and into better company.