Improving Productivity: Learn 3 Secrets About Effective Goal Setting

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Goal-setting is an essential skill for workplace leaders because goals motivate employees to be more productive.

Imagine this happening... Congratulations! Mary just bought a new house and wants everyone to come over and share her happiness. When asked for directions to her new home, she says, "Drive North."

I think it's safe to say that she isn't going to get any visitors. The same is true for goal setting - if your goal is as vague as your directions for your visitors, it's probably not going to happen.

Here are three ways that goal setting provides the path to success.

1. Written Goals Provide Motivation

Goals have to have to be written in detail in order to be effective. The saying that "goals are dreams on paper" holds true. If you do not have written workplace goals, your employees are likely to forget them or just have a vague idea of them.

Having your written goals posted where employees can easily see them will help to motivate them every time that they read the goals.

2. Achieving Goals Build Confidence

Progress in achieving goals builds self-confidence and confident employees are productive employees.

Imagine you decide to take on goal-setting for the first time:

After reaching your first goal, you feel a sense of accomplishment and pride.You then set another goal, with a little higher expectation of reaching it than the first goal.Once you have set and reached several goals, you will have developed a much higher level of confidence and expect to reasonably reach a good number of the goals that you set for yourself.

Because of their increased confidence, your employees work and attitude will improve when they set reasonable goals and follow through on them.

If Mary writes down exact directions to her new house, along with a description of her house and the date and time of her party, people will be able to find her house and enjoy the party.

Mary will have gained confidence from the simple act of inviting people to her new house. She will take that confidence with her when she teaches a coworker a new skill..

3. Goals Create a Structure and a Vision

Effective goal setting also creates a structure and a vision that makes employees feel secure in what they are trying to accomplish. Without goals, their work can seem arbitrary and without a clear purpose.

For all of the above reasons, goal-setting is a powerful leadership skill for supervisors and managers. Workplace leaders who are dedicated to goal setting will develop motivated employees who have a clear direction for making their company successful.

Visit http://www.confidencecenter.com/leadership to get instant access to our free Leadership Quiz.

Discover how effective are you as a supervisor or manager in the essential workplace leadership skills. The results - improved employee motivation, attitudes, skills, and productivity.

How happy are your employees?
Find out with our free Employee Morale Assessment. Get it at: http://www.confidencecenter.com/

Copyright: Written by Harriet Meyerson, president of The Confidence Center. You may print this article in your newsletter, magazine, or web site as long as you include the resource information.

Finish What Ya Started

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It's so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of your day because there's so much going on. It's too easy to get swept away by the rapids of the river of your day and forget your "current" commitments (sorry for the pun). Some commitments can be left behind on the river bank.

And never mind about e-mail and living from the Inbox, as one of my clients calls it. That's the biggest magnet pulling us away from the tasks we're trying to focus on - but only if we let it. I recommend you turn off those e-mail alerts so you're not constantly distracted by the fact that you have a new e-mail.

So... I was listening to an old song the other day from one of my record albums. Yes, a RECORD. Do you remember those? I was actually cleaning out all my old 33s and 45s. I know... shocking that I'm organizing something or cleaning things out.

Anyway, I found Van Halen's OU812 album and while I'm not really a fan of hard rock, having only this one album, one of my favorite songs is "Finish What Ya Started." When I found it I chuckled at the title since I'm a "broken record" when it comes to repeating this favorite phrase of mine to my clients.

And even though this song is about breaking up, I have to laugh at what springs to mind for me: I think about all those little post-it notes singing to you from all over your desk:

"Come on baby, finish what you started, I'm incomplete..."

So what are you doing with all those "incompletes?" Those lonely little tasks and projects are getting lost underneath the most recent influx of information you just received. Besides being buried, you're also getting pulled away by the never-ending call of your cell phone, e-mail, instant messaging and your office phone. And you're longing to look at what's on Facebook, You Tube or Twitter today. You're anxious to see what your friends are saying and what business opportunities may be waiting "out there."

But wait a minute. What about what's in here? In your office? What about what's right in front of you? Have you finished this, that and the other thing over there?

And a lot of this has to do with getting information where it belongs instead of leaving it on post-it notes, legal pad, in e-mails or in your voice mail. This is also about getting everything one step closer to done... or gone.

And let's just stop here for a second so I can remind you...
It's SO important to gather like information into one trusted system, which I would define as a single, consistent method for storing and processing information that's coming into your office. This is a system you'll use and rely on regularly.

For instance, all your to-dos, projects and reminders need to go into one trusted system. It's a single task list that allows you to refer to them easily and take action according to your target dates for action.

Same goes for your calendar and your contact system - one place where you can store and find like information.

I put together a list of 6 sources of to-dos that you can review and consolidate into a single, cohesive Task list, electronically of course. Close the door, turn off your cell, send callers to voice mail, don't look at e-mail and get off of the Internet.

Collect all the "stuff" on your desk into one pile and start building or continue building an electronic task list to capture all of the sources of your to-dos - ones that may be stalled, forgotten or potentially incomplete. And continue to build your calendar and contacts too. Then toss or file everything you can!

1. Papers and files
Look for an opportunity to file papers and files and note any action steps on your to do list. Toss the papers that were merely reminders if they don't hold any needed information. If papers and files cannot be filed away or tossed because you need them when you work on the task, use a vertical sorter on your desk to keep them organized all in one place.

2. Post it notes
These are often little treasures of contact or calendar information, but can also represent to-dos or ideas. Start using the electronic Contacts and Calendar components of your e-mail system so you can quickly enter this information into a single trusted system. Enter any to-dos into your Task list, including pertinent details, and toss the post-it notes!

3. Meeting notes
Meeting notes can be a variety of great information. Or... they can be nothing at all. Remember that notes from meetings are sometimes taken when you're bored or you're merely trying to remember what you're hearing, but aren't needed following the meeting. At other times, these notes are necessary to keep, but not co-mingled with action steps. So break it down. Get your to-dos on your Task list, file the necessary notes in the appropriate file and toss the rest.

4. Legal pads and spiral notebooks
These are so popular for day to day information including notes from calls, meeting notes, ideas and to do lists. The major pitfall here is that there's too much information all mixed up in one place and it all belongs somewhere else. Really.

Unfortunately, too many professionals want to keep this "diary" of sorts in order to refer back to later. But there are a couple of problems with this:

a.) There's no Index or Table of Contents for your notes so you can easily find what you're looking for.

b.) Sometimes there's no "later" if you think you'll get back to these later. Sure, you'll probably flip back through if you're looking for a name or phone number, but are you really going to go back and look at the rest of those notes?

c.) Often you have to look in two places to check if you put the information in your note pad or in another system like Calendar, Contacts, your Task list, or in a file. You may not trust where you put it, so you have to check all possible places and what a waste of time that is.

So review your pads of notes as soon as possible. Tear off all pages that have writing on them. Transfer action steps to your task list. Funnel reference information into your computer and file anything that should be filed. Keep your pad of paper empty with a blank page on top so you're ready for the next call, meeting or idea with a clean slate!

5. E-mail & Voice mail
Don't forget to review these hidden havens for to-dos and other information. It's best to keep all Inboxes like these empty so you know that you've taken care of everything and it's on to the next step. This doesn't mean you've completed everything from these sources, just that you've gotten them OUT of the Inbox and one step closer to "done."

6. Your feeble memory
Well, maybe only mine is feeble, but I can tell you that you need to get "incompletes" out of your head as soon as possible or risk losing that great idea or the follow up you need to do for that new client. It's not worth the risk! Get your to-dos out of your head and into your trusted Task list so you can plan, prioritize and be proactive.

Productivity Expert, Leslie Shreve has been teaching business owners, executives and entrepreneurs how to unleash the power of their most productive work day for more than 7 years. Leslie is the creator of Taskology?, which focuses on teaching simple, logical and easy-to-use strategies for managing tasks, time, e-mail, paper and more, plus how you can maximize Outlook to support your success. Get started today by getting your FREE Productive Day Success Starter Kit: http://www.productiveday.com/

Why Electronic Document Management Could Be The Best Business Decision You Make This Year

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Electronic document management has become the go to choice for companies big, small and everything in between to improve their efficiency as well as countless other benefits. The benefits that come with an electronic document management system are there for all to see and, depending on your company, some benefits will be considerably more beneficial than others. Either way, all benefits relate to each and every company that are in need of a system like this.

Though electronic document management has been around in one form or another for many years now, it is currently at its peak in terms of ease of use and flexibility. EDMS will continue to improve like most things in life do as they evolve, but right now is a good time to contemplate going forward with one as currently they are relatively low cost and extremely useable, even by those who have very little IT or computer experience.

Of course this can all depend on the electronic document management system that you adopt; they each have their quirks, their downsides and their upsides, so it's always best to look around to see what's best for you and your company. Some software has a wide plethora of features but you may not need some of those and find that there are lower cost options out there with the features that you need and less of those that you don't. There's also those types of software that is customisable to your needs. Some EDMS will have the option to turn on and off certain features for an upgrade or downgrade in price if you find they are non-essential.

Whatever type of electronic document management system you're looking for, they should ideally provide you with some essential ingredients. These include:

- Efficiency. One of the major reasons so many companies adopt electronic document management systems is to boost their efficiency and the way they work. Without this element an EDMS is pretty much worthless, unless you're adopting it purely to save space and access files as and when.

- Space saving. This is usually a plus for those who are wasting valuable office space by storing documents in bulky filing cabinets and other storage items.

- Cost cutting. Cost cutting with an electronic document management system tends to be related to the above two points; you get more work done and you save money, but a lot of companies, particularly law firms, end up storing documents in document storage facilities which ends up being quite a costly process. This cost can essentially be eliminated straight away by going digital using an EDMS.

- Less lost / misplaced files. With a lot of EDMS's, you can lock the folder in which the files are stored, thus meaning that the files can be accessed but not edited. In contrast to a bunch of filing cabinets in which documents can be removed, misplaced, damaged or even lost, this can be a true life saver.

There are more advantages depending on your company type, but those are some of the major items to consider when researching a good quality electronic document management system.

Our company offers a piece of software which might be worth considering which we call Halogen Electronic Document Management. It's lightweight, easy to use and quick to access and offers all of the above advantages and more. Good luck in finding the right document management system for you and your company!