Applying GTD to manage your team and/or dept.

K

kewms

Registered
Honestly? I think attempting to have your staff use GTD concepts is a really dumb idea and a waste of managerial time and effort.

Yes, you believe that GTD is the best productivity system out there. I actually agree, but many of your staff may not. If their system works, why shouldn't they use it?

Now yes, you absolutely can, and should, set expectations around deadlines, responsiveness to help requests, and other productivity/organizational metrics. Yes you can point to GTD as a key to your own productivity and responsiveness, fund training and tools for people who want it, etc. But as long as your expectations are being met, don't worry about exactly what system your employees are using. They'll only resent your interference, and you've got more important things to worry about anyway.

Katherine
 
M

mochant

Guest
Dumb idea? Not in my experience

I've got to disagree with Katherine to a degree. My experience is that it's hardly a "dumb idea" to have your staff use GTD methods. At my company, we offer all of the tools and a trip to a GTD seminar (when they're available) to any employee who wishes to attend. Every employee has a copy of the book and we have GTD Fast CDs in our library.

I've led lunch time training topics on how to configure Outlook for GTD (both with the add-in and without) and my group recently did a group reading of Sally McGhee's Take Back Your Life which has a lot of common material to DA's texts.

There's nothing proscriptive in our approach - we don't "force" GTD on anyone. But it has become a part of our company culture and we've seen great dividends from the investment.

I think the key is to make it voluntary and to encourage adequate time and resources to support the initiative. For example, the first two weeks of each year, we offer a Purge Day where employees can block an entire day in our shared calendar for doing a purge of their work area and PC and do a mind sweep to get a fresh start on the year. It's a fun couple of days and nearly everyone who takes advantage of this option reports a significant improvement in their readiness to take on the new year.
 
A

amelei

Registered
Katherine,

Thank you. Point well taken. I would not ever force them to use my system. When organization assistance is needed I do make suggestions on how they can improve. I am really looking at a team and project management approach so that the department can become more efficient and meet its deadlines. I have a small, but very busy IT department.
 
A

amelei

Registered
Applying GTD to manage your team and/or dept

I recently attended one of David's seminars. The one item that was helpful in implementing GTD on the dept. level, is to incorporate it in your staff mtgs. For instance begin the collection phase, by asking the question: "What needs our attention?" and open it up for discussion. I am going to to implement this as part of my mtgs. to see how it goes. Once we get a good list from the collection question, my staff and I can determine the appropriate next actions and projects.

Anthony
 
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