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Welcome to Epicenter Development Group's newsletter EPICentral. The purpose of this newsletter is to highlight fundamental ideas that have helped organizations develop and maintain great manufacturing and service operations. We hope that you find our EPICentral newsletter helpful and would welcome your comments on its content.
Supercharged Time Management – Part I
It doesn’t matter where you live, what you do, or how much money you have -- every person on this planet gets exactly 1,440 minutes per day to spend in their own, personal time bank account. How you spend this time can mean the difference between a life of stress and poverty and a life of personal fulfillment and wealth. This article is the first in a series of two that addresses the question of how to thrive in a world of deadlines, multitasking and speed.
Intentions – The Compass
Intentions are your conscious or un-conscious reasons for everything that you do. It’s the “why” when you go back to graduate school, start a business, spend time with your children, or accept a challenging assignment at work. Tied to every intention is also a vision of either where you want to go or just expect to go in your business, career or life.
Intention Considerations:
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The more a person or company is conscious of their intentions, the easier it is to act and make decisions consistent with their intentions (or change their intentions if so desired). This is why strategic planning exercises are aimed at creating a shared vision for an organization and why career planning within an organization is critical.
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Intentions are a lens for planning and executing activities throughout the year. For this reason, it is good to have documented intentions and review them on a regular basis. At a minimum, it is a good idea to review intentions on quarterly and annual basis.
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It is my belief that the creation of an inspiring personal or organizational intention/vision is the single most important factor in setting and achieving BIG goals.
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Example – One Epicenter intention is to create a Learning Organization where associates actively learn through every project/client experience. By holding this intention in the foreground, we automatically incorporate a habit of not just finishing projects in a satisfactory and timely manner, but also of taking the time during and after projects to reflect on our learning which can then benefit future clients, the organization, as well as the employee.
Planning – The Blueprint
Planning involves the creation of goals and activities aimed at moving towards the intention/vision. Depending upon the size of your organization, this could be broken up into several levels from a corporate strategic plan to department goals to specific individual/professional goals.
Planning Considerations:
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"How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” One key to effective planning is to break big goals up into manageable chunks.
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Consider a regular structure/rhythm for planning:
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Annual – Overall corporate/personal goals based upon a one-year intention/vision. (Available resource: “Best Year Yet” by Jinny Ditzler)
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Quarterly – “Course corrections” and setting of sub goals to achieve an annual goal.
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Weekly – Weekly plan for completing tasks during the week. Identify the most important tasks and fit them into your schedule first. (Available Resource: “First Things First” by Steven Covey)
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Daily – Development of a “Top Seven” list of things to accomplish each day. (Available Resource: “Getting Things Done” by David Allen)
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When you “start with the end in mind” ("Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven Covey), your intentions can work as a guideline to help you set up annual, quarterly, weekly, and daily goals moving backward from the goal to the present moment.
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It often helps to work backward from the end goal to the present date to set milestone goals. If, for example, you need to start a new product line in January, then you might work backward to determine when the equipment would need to be installed to have time for debugging and the product ramp-up.
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Consider the use of SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (“The Practice of Management” by Peter Drucker)
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Example – To achieve the intention of being a learning organization, Epicenter has set a quarterly goal of initiating a communal SharePoint Server with a corporate knowledge base.
Next month’s newsletter will continue the focus on time management by looking at how plans are effectively executed on a daily basis and how to complete the time management cycle through learning.
News Flash – Epicenter’s Bill Proctor will be speaking at the IIE International Conference and Expo in Vancouver, Canada on May 17 – 21, 2008. If you would like more information about the conference or the presentation, please visit http://www.iienet2.org/annual2/ or send an e-mail inquiry to rmilicia@epicentergroup.com.
News Flash – Epicenter is happy to welcome two new associates: Chad Ronyetz and Steven Marcuz who will be expanding our Industrial Engineering and Modeling expertise/capabilities.
NEXT STEPS
If you are interested in learning more about time management and how Epicenter can help your organization to be more effective, please do not hesitate to email us at rmilicia@epicentergroup.com or call Robin Milicia at (216) 534-7581.
ABOUT EPICENTER DEVELOPMENT GROUP
Epicenter Development Group is an independently-owned engineering consulting firm located in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
 Epicenter Development Group is a unique consulting firm that seamlessly integrates the disciplines of Systems Engineering and Organizational Analysis & Development to create practical design solutions to your toughest challenges.
It is on the cutting edge of problem-solving solutions and the creator of a unique process called GreenRoom Engineering. This process adds greater value and cost savings for clients as compared to traditional engineering methods.
William Proctor, Epicenter's founder and president, has provided services around the country to more than 100 companies consisting of a variety of organizations; and Epicenter continues to grow as a resource for firms of all sizes.
To learn more about Epicenter Development Group, visit our homepage at www.epicentergroup.com.
NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION
EPICentral is a no-cost newsletter that is delivered to our clients and friends on a monthly basis.
   
Privacy Policy: All distribution information (names, email addresses, company names) is kept in strict confidence and only used for the distribution of this newsletter.
This newsletter is developed and published by:
Epicenter Development Group, LLC
12111 Chippewa Road
Brecksville, OH 44141
216.702.0952
www.epicentergroup.com
wproctor@epicentergroup.com
Copyright 2007, Epicenter Development Group
All rights reserved.
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