Were you born disorganized?

  If so, do you excuse yourself by saying, “That’s just the

way I am!  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!” ?

So many people seem unhappy in their professional lives. Very few connect that
dissatisfaction to being disorganized, which can make a good job seem unbearable.
The good news is that it's easy to correct!  Some of the most organized people I know
were not “born organized.”   That means there is hope!  You CAN teach an old dog
new tricks…but only if the dog is motivated to learn.  (Read my article titled Getting
Motivated to Get Organized.)

Many of my clients are effective decision-makers on a higher level, but they have
difficulty managing the hundreds of micro-decisions they must make daily, often in the
form of paper -- memos and letters to read, phone messages to return, mail to sort,
reports and proposals to review, and to-do lists a mile long.

Although some people come by organization more naturally than others, I have
worked with enough organizationally challenged individuals to realize that organization
is a learned skill – a skill that includes a set of methods and tools to help you arrange
your time, physical environment, communications, and thoughts to meet your goals.

As many as half of the people whose work involves management of people,

information and time are not good at organizing their work at the most basic level. 
Since organization is the cornerstone upon which everything else is built, it’s clear that
many individuals and companies face significant productivity challenges.

If you question how fundamentally important organization is in the work environment,

consider the cost of disorganization in these scenarios:

 Two attorneys (I’ll call them Jim and Tom) were under consideration for
partnership in their law firm.  Tom was capable and dependable.  Jim was
brilliant.  Some people thought that Jim was a shoe-in for becoming partner.
But this brilliant attorney was known for his disorganization.  One day a senior
partner received a phone call from an irate client.  Although the client felt that
Jim was very skilled at what he did, she reported that he had not returned her
phone calls.  After several failed attempts to communicate with him, her
company had decided to terminate their relationship with the firm. Jim’s
disorganization cost his firm a major client, and it cost him the promotion he’d
hoped for.  Ultimately, partnership was offered to Tom, who was not as skilled
as Jim but was more organized and responsive to clients’ needs.

NOTE: A large number of malpractice suits against lawyers result from failure
to file papers by required due dates.

 The owner of a small auto repair company (I’ll call him Gus) had a great
reputation for doing quality work.  He prided himself on quick turn-around time
so his customers would not be without their cars any longer than necessary. 
There was only one problem.  Gus hated doing paperwork…including
depositing customer checks and paying his bills.  Some of the checks in his
office were for large sums of money and were more than a year old.  Many of
the vendors who supplied car parts to Gus’ repair shop got tired of waiting to
be paid.  Eventually his largest vendor quit supplying the parts, and his work
came to a standstill.  Clients became angry when Gus could no longer have
their cars ready by the promised time, and his reputation in the community
became tarnished.  It wasn’t long before he was faced with the possibility of
closing his doors due to lack of business.

 Poor organization and communication in the U.S. Federal Bureau of

Investigation created some missteps in failing to act on key information
 available prior to the September 11 attacks last year.  In one memo, an FBI
agent in Phoenix recommended that his superiors look for al Qaeda members
training at U.S. flight schools. Elsewhere in the FBI was information about the
August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who sought flight lessons in Minnesota
and has since been charged with conspiring in the September 11 attacks. 
Had this information been organized in such a way that it could have been
more freely shared within the FBI, as well as with the CIA, the correlation
between this and other known information could have helped officials foresee
and prevent the attacks. After the attacks last year, FBI Director Robert
Mueller briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on a plan to restructure the
bureau so that such lack of communication would not occur again.

The Faces of Disorganization

The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year retrieving misplaced
information on desks or in files.  At a salary of $75,000 per year, this translates
to 12.3% of total earnings, or $9225…and that’s just for one person!

In the examples shared above, disorganization symbolizes a costly drain of resources

that has several faces – the corporate face, the personal (employee) face, and the
public (consumer) face. 

The corporate face of managerial disorganization is measured in lost productivity

dollars.  Take the example of the employee above who makes $75,000 per year
wastes one hour a day looking for lost and misplaced information (this is a
conservative estimate).  Now multiply that loss in productivity by 10, 50 or 100
managers who are organizationally challenged.  The numbers become alarming when
multiplying the loss. 

In addition, it’s difficult to measure the loss in terms of unfinished projects, sales calls
never made, or innovative ideas that were never pursued as a result of
disorganization.  Each manager’s personal inefficiency becomes an operating
inefficiency for the company.  Restoring individual performance is essential to getting
the highest productivity return from the investment in management.

The personal face of managerial disorganization is one you’re probably familiar with –
either because you have struggled with it yourself or because you have worked with a
disorganized colleague and have experienced the results of their disorder.  Basic skills
are consistently compromised by inability to organize one’s environment, schedule,
and thoughts.  The symptoms:  piles of paper, missed deadlines, constant
interruptions, forgetting to follow up or follow through, inability to find needed
information, running late, and the list goes on.  Personal organization is a key trait of
many successful people.
The public face of managerial disorganization is one we are all familiar with.  When
productivity goes down in any place of work, the cost of doing business goes up.  We
all end up paying for it – in the costs of delivered goods and services, or…in the case
of government waste…with our tax dollars.  Sometimes the cost goes far beyond
dollars and cents (September 11, for example). 

The Costs of Disorganization

Take this quick survey to identify your productivity strengths and challenges.  Place a
Y (YES) or N (NO) next to each question.

PRODUCTIVITY SURVEY

PAPER / INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

___ Do you have difficulty retrieving information from your desktop, computer, or
filing system within one minute?
___   Do others have difficulty retrieving information from your desktop, computer, or
filing system within 5 minutes when requested to do so?
___ Do you struggle with managing paperwork -- incoming mail, filing, reviewing or
submitting reports, etc.?
___   Are there papers on your desktop -- other than reference materials -- that you
have not looked at in a week or more?
___   Do you have difficulty managing your e-mail -- finding messages you’ve kept,
responding to messages, etc.?
TIME MANAGEMENT
Do you wish you had a better system for planning, prioritizing, and achieving
___  
your goals?
At the beginning of each work day, are you uncertain about what your primary
___  
tasks are for the day?
___   Do you often find at the end of the day that you have not completed all of the
tasks you planned to accomplish?
___   During the last three months, are there any memos, letters, emails, or
messages that you failed to respond to because they got buried or forgotten
about?
___   Do you frequently receive emails, letters, or phone calls that start with, “I have
not heard back from you about…”?
___   During the last three months, have you forgotten any scheduled meetings or
appointments, or any special dates/anniversaries that you wanted to
acknowledge?
___   Do you take a loaded briefcase back and forth from work and home more than
 once a week?
___   Do you experience frequent interruptions (phone calls, pages, visitors, etc.) that
affect your ability to complete tasks requiring concentration?
___   Do you spend a good portion of your time in crisis mode -- dealing with urgent
tasks, putting out fires?
___   Do you have a huge backlog of reading  to do -- professional or trade journals
and publications you need to read?
MANAGING OTHERS
___   Do you often catch people on the run in order to communicate priorities and
share important information?
___   Is your staff uncertain about their assignments, including scope of task, range of
authority, deadline, and how the task fits into the overall purpose?
___   Once you’ve delegated a task, do you often forget to monitor progress and
ensure that the tasks are completed on time?
___   Do you often end up doing tasks that were delegated to your staff?
      
Add up the number of YES responses above.
If you scored:
Congratulations! Let's raise the bar a bit, and move it all the way to
0-5   
extraordinary!
6-8  You’re on the right track, and there’s some room for improvement.
  9-12 Disaster ahead if changes not made soon…
13-19 Get help immediately!

Now I know what you’re probably thinking…I don’t have time to get organized!  Am I
right?

Do you put "getting organized" on the back burner because of more pressing things
which need your attention? Until you consistently pay attention to non-urgent but
important tasks -- tasks such as getting organized, weekly planning, self-care,
and other preventive kinds of activities -- the urgent tasks will continue to
multiply, often to a critical state.

If you are organizationally challenged, here’s the fallacy in thinking that you don’t have
time to get organized.  The more you put it off, the more time and money your current
habits will cost you and your company.  Ask yourself these questions:

 If I don’t spend time addressing this now, how will it affect my life and my
work? 
 What will the consequences be of not getting organized?
 In order to say yes to getting organized, what will I have to say no to? 
Looking at the big picture, which will make me most productive and effective
in the long run?

TANGIBLE COSTS OF DISORGANIZATION:

 

 Late payment fees because you didn't make payments by the due date
 Overtime pay for support staff staying late to do a "rush" job you delegated
last-minute
 Cost of replacing and retraining burned out employees who quit
 Cost to reproduce or repurchase something that you already have but
 cannot find
 Fees to overnight express something that could have been sent regular mail
 Forgetting to invoice a client and not getting paid for the work
 Interest on uncollected fees due to invoices not being mailed out in a timely
manner
 Interest not accrued on cash and checks that sit around for a long time
before being deposited
 Other: ________________

HARDER-TO-MEASURE COSTS OF DISORGANIZATION

 Inability to expand your business or workload - you can barely handle what
you already have!
 Missed opportunities, lack of competitive edge, losing customers to
competitors who are
more organized
 Stress and burnout that lead to illness, missed work and reduced productivity
 Other: ________________

Getting organized is like going on a diet.  There’s no deadline by which you must start,
but the longer you put it off, the more detrimental the consequences will be, and the
harder it becomes to reverse the trend.

 
Time to Take Action!

As you wind down the year, how about scheduling time in your calendar to address
your organizational challenges?  Then you can ring in the New Year with a new set of
skills, methods, and tools to help you arrange your time, environment, and thoughts to
meet your goals with less effort and stress.  Here are three tools to help:

1. Sign up for one of my free teleclasses in to learn some powerful new

organizing skills.  You’ll learn a simple 3-step process to help you eliminate
paper pile-up forever.
2. The survey above will help you identify where you’ll need to focus to begin
addressing your productivity challenges.  If you need assistance assessing
your needs, creating an action plan, or learning new skills, methods, and tools
to increase your productivity, contact me for a complimentary consultation.
3. Check out The Paper Tiger – a remarkable tool that guarantees you’ll find
anything in 5 seconds or less – guaranteed.  View a PDF file for more
information.

 
 

Buried in Paper?  Learn a simple 3 step process to help you eliminate

paper pile-up forever.

Do you want to learn how to handle mail and other paper as it comes into
your home or office?  Would you like to have a system that helps you
remember important follow-up?

This class is designed for those who feel like you’ll never catch up…like
you’re on constant overwhelm -- and it manifests itself in the form of piles of
paper everywhere.  During this introductory teleclass you’ll learn a simple 3-
step process that will help you:

 Focus on what matters most.

 Remember important follow-up at the appropriate time.
 Efficiently handle mail, filing, and other repetitive tasks.
 Enjoy a less cluttered environment by eliminating paper pile-up
forever!

Come prepared to take away some tools that you can start using right away. 
This is an introduction to my four-week teleclass series on De-Cluttering Your
Life, beginning in January.

This free one-hour class will be taught at four different times and dates. 
Choose a date that is most convenient for your schedule:

Click here for more information.

Our Mission
I help individuals committed to moving their lives forward in powerful ways
by decluttering their schedules, spaces, and minds.

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