A study by Alexander Proudfoot found that productivity fell between 2007 and 2008 amongst the surveyed companies. In fact, unproductive time rose to 34.3%. Yes, 1/3 of the work week was wasted! One of the reported causes of this unproductivity was the poor quality of supervision. In fact, they found that supervisors spent only 10% of their time on a combination of active supervision and training. (18% of their time is available – time not currently allocated – so it’s not a case of not having time).

Increasing active supervision reduced the unproductive time of staff. Dare we suggest that one on ones, feedback, coaching and delegation would constitute active supervision and that if supervisors delegated more their staff would have less time to be unproductive?

Just 10% higher productivity would probably radically change the perception of your department and the profitability of your business. There is no reason to only review your department or your personal output once a year when the planning cycle comes round. It’s a new month next week. What are you going to do differently to reduce your unproductive time?

http://en-us.alexanderproudfoot.com/Publications/Productivity-Report.asp…

An article in the Wall Street Journal discusses the ‘Email Backlash’ and an apparently increasing trend for companies to impose ‘no email’ days and weeks. The idea is, apparently, ‘to encourage more face to face and phone contact between co-workers’. In most cases the problem does not need this kind of legislation. Each of us are quite capable of monitoring our own email use.

If we communicate by email 100% of the time, it’s too much – even if our co-workers are in a different time zone or otherwise difficult to communicate with. Making the effort to come in at a different time, to walk down to the shop floor or to wait in reception to speak to a busy receptionist will improve our relationships. It’s not only the additional quality of the conversation, but also that we made the effort, which improves our relationship.

If we never communicate by email, it’s too little. Email is great for asynchronous conversation, or for broadcast communication. The issue is not email. It’s choosing the appropriate communication medium for the conversation we’re having. With a little thought, and admittedly not turning to email as our first port of call every time, we can all choose the right medium.

http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2010/04/28/email-backlash-builds/

Every now and again, I notice that the penultimate result on the first page of a google search is “News from Iceland in English”. It seems to come up whatever I search for. I don’t know how the news from Iceland is relevant, but apparently Google believes it to be so. Like the day when you decide to buy a red car, and from then on you only see red cars on the road, every time I search on Google, I notice when this result appears.

I’m never going to crack the Google algorithm. But, it does pay to be looking out for odd results. Oftentimes, I’ve noticed a couple of candidates coming from a particular local company – maybe two in a month, where the norm is less – and later found out that company has announced layoffs. Those candidates had sensed the change, and got out early. A couple of duds coming off the line might be an indication that the machine is about to break, or at least needs maintenance. A drop in the sales growth rate of a quarter of one percent might be a blip, but it might be the beginning of a trend.

Jumping to action too fast is not advisable, but nor is waiting till one or two is a trend. Make a note of odd data, and make sure to look for it again next time the results come out. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s nothing you can do anything about (like Google results). Sometimes it’s a head start on your competition, the economy or notice to take preventative measures. A month headstart might be all you get, and taking it might be enough to keep you ahead. It’s not all bad either. If you can get a headstart on hiring as soon as you know your recovering is coming but before it really sets in across the economy, you could catch some of those great candidates on the market before they all disappear, or get a great deal on product before prices go back up, or catch the consumer and get them to change their habits before they go back to their old ‘good day’ habits.

What odd results have you seen and been able to capitalize on?

Web workers are creatures of habit. Those of us who are lucky enough to control all aspects of our work — schedule, location, process, and output — depend on such habits. We may schedule work hours for peak productivity, batch process our email, and even find a way to do household chores in between. But most of us also have destructive habits. These may include digital fiddling, spending too much time on social media, and working such long hours that our health pays the price.

How, then, do we then create and maintain our good habits while avoiding the bad ones?

1. Know your motivations well

The first step to changing one’s habits is to understand why you’re doing it. Since you’ll be going against your default behavior, you’ll need extra motivation to make the change.

Recent research shows that when we go against the default choice, the part of the brain involved in decision-making (the prefrontal cortex) and the part that’s significant for motivation (subthalamic nucleus) showed increased activity. According to a post on Psychology Today, “These brain analyses suggest that going against the default in difficult decisions requires some kind of extra motivation or confidence.”

It might also help to dig deeper into your motivations. It’s probably not enough to say something like, “I need to stop compulsive email checking so I can focus on work.” Know why you need to focus. Is it to improve your work output? And why would you want to do that? Are you hoping for a promotion?

By getting to the root of why you want to create a new habit, you can see how it is related to the goals you want to accomplish. Once you make the connections or, even better, get them on paper, you’ll have something positive in mind during the most challenging days of habit formation.

2. Start small

How much self control do you have? That’s a tricky but necessary question. After all, your sense of control will allow you to negotiate how you’ll form your new habit — how much time you’ll spend, how often you’ll do it, etc. Then again, estimating control is tricky since we all suffer from restraint bias — our tendency to overestimate self-control. The more self-control you think you have, the more you expose yourself to temptations that will allow you to break it.

If your bad habit is impulse-based, such as digital fiddling or compulsive email checking, the more you have to be aware of your own restraint bias. The way out of this seems to be to underestimate your own self-control and start with baby steps.

For example, instead of promising yourself to avoid Facebook or video games until the end of your workday, why not set a smaller goal? Aim to completely focus on your work for 15 minutes. Then reward yourself with a short break and start another 15-minute set of focused work. Keep going until you’ve reached the bigger goal of separating work and leisure.

By starting with easier goals, the limitations we impose on ourselves will feel less threatening. This prevents us from falling off the wagon and undoing any progress we’ve made.

3. Do it daily

When habit formation is discussed, the “21-Day Rule” is often brought up, which says that you need to be able to do something daily for at least 21 days before it becomes a habit. That sounds easy, right?

Sorry to disappoint you, but the real number varies. Researchers from University College London found that the number lies between 18 to 254 days, with 66 days being the average (via PsyBlog). Though you have to work on the habit daily, it’s not worth it to worry about skipping a day or two as long as you get back on track. The goal here is to get to the point where a task or process feels automated — you no longer feel forced to exercise before your workday, wake up earlier, or work standing up. It just becomes part of you.

4. Use cues to your advantage

Even with your initial hard work, it’s easy to fall back on bad habits when something triggers them. Once that happens, you may have to start from scratch. According to research from MIT, some cues can be used to undermine newer habits in favor of older ones. Lead researcher Ann Graybiel says, “This situation is familiar to anyone who is trying to lose weight or to control a well ingrained habit. Just the sight of a piece of chocolate cake can reset all those good intentions.” For us web workers, this may mean disconnecting the Internet for a while to avoid digital fiddling, or hiding your laptop in a cabinet after working.

This idea is also applicable to creating new habits. You can use cues such as music, a closed door, or specific clothes to signal that it’s the start of your workday. Other cues can be in the form of a reward after successfully completing a task.

5. Track your progress

You’re likely to stay motivated when you see how far you’ve gone. Coupled with the motivations you’ve established in the first step, you’ll feel even more encouraged to keep going because you can see how your effort is paying off. After that, your bad habits, or even the simple laziness of maintaining the status quo, won’t seem attractive anymore.

What habits have you tried changing and creating? Which techniques worked for you?

Photo by flickr user liz_noise

Although mind maps can be very useful for sketching out ideas, visualizing problems and planning, a lot of the mind mapping tools we’ve covered here on WWD are quite complex, which can be intimidating for beginners. That’s where Think, a very simple and free mind mapping web app comes in.

You don’t even need to register to use Think, but if you want to save your mind maps (Think calls them “thoughts”) you’ll need to log in using an OpenID account (such as a Google or Yahoo account).

There’s a tutorial to show you how to use it, but it’s all pretty intuitive. Clicking on a node selects it, giving you the options of deleting it, creating a new node or joining it to another one. To edit the text on the node, you double-click it. You can reposition nodes by dragging and dropping them, and delete the connections between nodes by clicking on them. At the top right of the screen you’re given a choice to save the mind map, export it as an image or make it public (which means that anyone can then access it, so you can share your mind map with others — you can make it private again using the same menu option).

Think is very basic indeed; it doesn’t have anything like the range of functionality found in tools like MindManager or MindView, for example — but for quickly sketching out a mind map, or just getting to grips with the concept of mind mapping, it works well.

It’s worth pointing out that although Think looks a bit like a Flash site, it actually doesn’t use Flash at all. It’s built using using HTML5′s Canvas element, which means that it works best in Safari or Chrome (it doesn’t work properly on Mobile Safari, though — it was buggy when I tested it on my iPhone). It doesn’t support IE, and the developer says that there are some bugs when using it with Firefox, although I have to say that I didn’t encounter any when I was playing with it.

What mind mapping tools do you use?

(via Download Squad)

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

Child support agency in Oklahoma says cuts would backfire – NewsOK.com – “We understand state law requires the state to have a balanced budget,” said Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for Oklahoma Child Support Services, a division within … – – and more » – -

COMANCHE COUNTY, Okla. – Anyone who has ever had a problem getting child support can get help from the Comanche Nation Child Support Program (CNCSP) and you do not have to be a member of the Comanche Nation to get it.  

The program is open to everyone. It is such a new program, many tribal and non-tribal members do not know about it.  Wednesday, the tribe is having a meeting to answer people’s questions.

CNCSP has only been open for a year and a half, but caseworkers already are busy helping people such as Jerome Howlingwater.  After trying to get child support that was due him for years, he finally turned to the tribe.  Howlingwater has battled getting court-ordered child support from his ex-wife for more than seven years.

“You know it was hard to actually collect while she didn’t live here in Oklahoma,” said Howlingwater.

MORE INFORMATION>>>http://www.kswo.com/Global/story.asp?S=12304971

Single moms all have different stories.

Some are divorced, some got pregnant out of wedlock, while others lost their husbands at war. But no matter how they became single mothers, they face the same struggles.

Oklahoma Congresswoman Mary Fallin knows personally about those struggles. She raised her children on her own for years, all while pursuing a fast-paced career in politics as her state’s first female lieutenant governor and a member of the House of Representatives.

“My mother used to always tell me, ‘You’re not the first woman who’s ever had this happen to you so get up and get going and we don’t have to go under the mountain, we can go over the mountain. We don’t have to have a pity party, we can rise above all that,’” Fallin recalled.

It was advice that stuck. Now, helping women rise above their circumstance has become one of Fallin’s passions. She especially wants to stop what she calls the “generational curse” that is passed down from grandmother to mother to grandchild.

“I really think one of the ways we can better our states is by empowering our citizens and letting them know that they’re not alone and helping them find a better path to life,” Fallin said.

MORE INFORMATION>>>http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2010/April/Ministry-Helps-Single-Moms-Survive-N-Thrive/

Pauls Valley — A bunch in Garvin County is bringing in the bacon, literally, for more kids in this county when it comes establishing more child support cases.

Doing it for the kids takes on whole new meaning for a group in the county’s child support office in Pauls Valley that recently got a sign their work is making a difference.

Working through the district attorney’s office here, the group received a couple of big honors when it comes to making child support payments happen.

One was a top honor in the entire state during the recently passed three-month period ending in March, according to Garvin County Assistant District Attorney George Burnett.

“This office had the greatest increase in paternity establishment in the state,” Burnett said.

“We’re number one for this last quarter.”

The honor is related to the kind of cases investigated by the five full-time and one part-time workers in the office that result in getting support payments going from a child’s father.

A second honor came in the overall area of child support payments.

“It was also one of the top three counties in the state in the collection of current support payments,” Burnett said.

Put simply — it registered one of the three largest increases in the payment of child support.

More information>> http://paulsvalleydailydemocrat.com/local/x563629520/Bringing-in-the-bacon-for-kids

Bringing in the bacon for kids – Pauls Valley Daily Democrat – However, it’s not done that way everywhere as some larger counties like Oklahoma and Tulsa work the child support cases through the state Department of …