Business | Justin Levy

Are We Addicted to Interruptions?

July 18, 2010 By Justin Levy 6 Comments

An issue in many offices is that the real work gets done outside of the office, either early in the morning, at nights or on the weekends because team members are in meeting after meeting during regular work hours. Those meetings typically only add more to the to-do list and also soak up time that could otherwise be spent being productive working on projects. When not in a meeting, the remainder of the day is filled with interruptions, emergencies that usually aren’t true emergencies, and just simply trying to get settled in to actually get into a flow.

Right about this point you’re probably nodding your head up and down admitting that you’re experiencing this same issue. It’s not surprising because the modern workplace has become addicted to meetings and other forms of interruptions.

This is a consistent issue for me even though my team tries to run as lean as possible and reduce the number of meetings and miscellaneous interruptions we have. However, when I’m not traveling, a normal week will have 40-60 meetings appear on my calendar. One of the reasons for this is because we’re a fast-growing company with big ambitions and a lot of moving projects that require our attention while the other part is that we have weekly status calls with each of our clients and I lead the majority of these calls.

As more meetings and interruptions have continued to find their way into my work day, I’ve learned to block out time on my calendar that is marked “DO NOT SCHEDULE!” This allows me to schedule blocks of time to get work done instead of only small windows of time.

With how often I travel, I’ve also learned how to be productive from anywhere and how to leverage any time available even if it is only 15 minutes. This has lead me to become very good at getting work done with short pockets of time in between meetings and at home. Even if I have a day without a lot of meetings, I have found that I am more productive on projects when I’m workshifting because I find that I can focus more because it’s just me, my laptop and some great music.

Just as I was thinking about this while sitting on my couch doing work on a Sunday afternoon, I came across an interview with Jason Fried,co-author of Rework (affiliate link) and Founder of 37Signals where he addresses exactly this issue. Jason describes some of the tactics that his team uses at the 37Signals office and offers some tactical advice that you could implement into your office.

Have you broken your company of their addiction to meetings and other interruptions? If so, what were the tactics you used?

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Filed Under: Business, Communications, Productivity, Videos Tagged With: Business, Communications, meetings, Productivity, Videos

The Importance of Feedback

July 2, 2010 By Justin Levy 5 Comments

I recently posted an article over on the New Marketing Labs blog regarding asking for feedback and the importance of having a feedback loop. I thought it might interest you and I also wanted to get your opinion on it.

Do you ask for feedback on a regular basis? No, not whether or not you look good in stripes but feedback from your customers, clients, vendors, partners, employees and managers.

Some of us are scared of asking for feedback because we’re worried what the response will be. It’s ok, it’s a natural feeling. However, asking for feedback from those folks that we spend all day interacting with is important in ensuring that you’re always delivering consistent value. If you’ve never asked if what you’re doing is valuable, how can you ensure it is? Simple: you can’t.

At New Marketing Labs we just launched a quarterly feedback form that we’re asking all of our clients and partners to fill out. It’s quick, it’s simple but it gives us a pulse on how we’re doing. This is in addition to the many other forms of communication, feedback and reporting that we have in place with all of our clients. When we were developing this report we knew it needed to be fast or else no one would ever fill it out thoroughly. We decided that we would ask to be given a letter grade in 5 areas with an overall grade and then a simple question at the end. Here’s what we asked for feedback on:

Communications professionalism, effectiveness, & enjoyment
Reporting effectiveness, usefulness, format & aesthetic
On time, as promised deliverables
Overall value added
Meeting your expectations
How can we improve to be a better partner and add more value (not a grade, but telling us how to be better partners!)?

Nice and simple but hits on all of the key areas that we care about to ensure we’re being helpful in a timely, appropriate and needed way.

In addition to asking for feedback from our clients, I ask my team members to provide weekly feedback on their wins (successes), opportunities (where they can do better) and to tell me how I can be more helpful to them in the coming week(s). Just like with our clients, this is not the only communications that we have over the course of a week to ensure there is an open loop of feedback happening.

While feedback isn’t always fun especially if it is critical of the work you’re doing, it is necessary. Burying your head in the sand and telling yourself that everything is going great even though it isn’t will lead down very dark, lonely and broke paths. Also, remember, that not all feedback is negative. Positive feedback can be energizing and help to boost morale. But, if you receive positive feedback, don’t take that as a sign that since everything is good you can sit back and put it on auto-pilot. Use it as an opportunity to go deeper, provide more value and try to be even more helpful.

Do you have feedback processes in place?

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Photo Credit: Padday

Filed Under: Business, Communications, Customer Service Tagged With: Business, clients, Communications, Customers, feedback

Not Responding to Alarms

May 12, 2010 By Justin Levy 21 Comments

Early yesterday morning while walking my dog, Sasha, I noticed a vehicle in my parking lot had been vandalized. The car was sitting on two slowly buckling milk crates and it was missing all four of its wheels. As I walked past that vehicle I realized that another vehicle beside it had one of its windows smashed. I called out management offices as I was heading into the office to alert them and get the police en route.

Towards the end of the day I ended up running into the property manager and inquired as to what he suspected happened and whether or not there had been other problems reported on the property. He told that me that it appeared to be targeted to the main vehicle because it had expensive tires and rims. I was surprised that my wife or I hadn’t woken up during the night when the vehicle’s alarm, presumably, went off while the car was being jacked up and the tires were being stolen. The property manager explained that the resident reported hearing his alarm go off but had just silenced it from his apartment figuring that it had been accidentally tripped by weather or an animal. Had he actually looked to see why the alarm was going off, it is possible that he could’ve interrupted the crime.

Besides ensuring that there was nothing left in my vehicles that could attract criminals, I began thinking about how oblivious we are to car alarms nowadays. We have become so accustomed to hearing alarms buzzing that many times we won’t even glance in the direction of the alarm while walking through a parking lot. Have you ever done that? I know I sure have. Now, related that to your marketing program. Are you ignoring the alarms going off all around you? Do you even realize that alarms may be sounding crying for your attention?

Identifying the Alarms

Being able to identify the alarm and knowing what you need to be listening for is the first step. What types of alarms should you be aware of? They can come in a variety of formats but some of them may include:

Declining responses to a marketing campaign
An increase in spam complaints
Continued lack of engagement from your community
A decline in RSS or email subscribers to your blog
A lack of growth in followers, fans, or subscribers

These are just a few of the many alarms that could be sounding that you continue to hit the silence button on. Your alarms may be different than those that I have listed. Exactly what the alarms are really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you identify them so that you can properly respond to them before it’s too late.

Responding to the Alarms

So, you’ve identified the alarm, now what? You should develop both a strategic and tactical plan to address the issue and respond to it. The level of the response will be dictated on what the alarm actually is and based on how long you might’ve ignored it. Much like a progressive disease, the longer it goes untreated, the harder it may be to correct. What are some ways you can respond to the alarm(s)?

Switch up the day and time you send your email marketing
Review your site analytics over a period of time. Identify where the decline began or where it started to level off. What were you doing (or not doing) during that time?
Did you recently update your blog and forget to add the “Subscribe” button back? Yep, I’ve done that before.
Have you ever analyzed what type of content you produce? Is it one-way push? Are you promoting others? Do you only retweet others work?

What’s Next

The next steps are to continue monitoring the changes you have implemented and track whether or not they’ve been successful. Always monitor, evaluate, experiment and adapt. This will ensure that you’re staying alerted to alarms before it becomes too late. Much like the resident who lost all four of their tires, when you realize that you shouldn’t have hit the silence button, it may be too late. Worse case scenario is that you’re so blind to the alarms that you slowly bleed your entire community or customers and have nothing left. Just a hint: try to avoid that from happening. It’s usually not healthy for your business.

Do you silence the alarms going on around you?

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Photo Credit: wallyg

Filed Under: Business, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy Tagged With: Business, Marketing, Social Media

Derailed [Book Review]

January 23, 2010 By Justin Levy 14 Comments

Most of the business books that are published focus on teaching you what you can do to improve your sales, marketing, customer retention, productivity or a number of other business-related goals. The case studies in these books typically highlight role models of the concepts being described and then have actionable tips that you can follow to achieve similar results.

Well, Derailed (affiliate link) by Tim Irwin takes the exact opposite perspective but that’s what makes the book so great. Derailed reviews the decisions, personalities and eventual derailments of six high-profile leaders. Irwin finds that:

deficits in authenticity, humility, self-management, and courage become more dangerous as we take on more leadership, and can cause us to ignore glaring signals that might otherwise save us from catastrophic demise

It is from these derailments that Irwin puts together a list of five lessons can we can all implement into our lives to avoid current or future failures in leadership if we’re currently in an executive position or seek to obtain a position in the future.

Catch more of my review in this quick video review. If you can’t see the video, you can grab it over on YouTube.

Note: Apparently there was some background noise from my washing machine, or who knows what. Sorry for the little annoying hum.

Have you read the book? What were your thoughts on it?

Disclosure: This book was provided as a review copy.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Business, Reviews, Videos Tagged With: Book Reviews, Business, Reviews, Videos

It’s Not the Tools, It’s What You Do With Them

October 14, 2009 By Justin Levy 21 Comments

One of the most inspiring and captivating presentations of the Inbound Marketing Summit was the keynote that Chris Brogan delivered. Yes, I work with him at New Marketing Labs. No, that is not why I feel the need to pimp the hell out of this presentation. I have the distinct opportunity to hear Chris speak often where I see him develop concepts that he then takes on to other cities. He usually shares his thoughts on where these tools are taking us and how it’s changing the way we work, think and interact. Usually a few concepts spark conversations and get retweeted and shared around. But, at the Inbound Marketing Summit, on that day, Chris was in a different zone.

I highly encourage you to take the 20 minutes to watch/listen to the entire presentation.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

I’m curious to know your thoughts. What did you think of this presentation? Did it get you thinking of how you could do your business a little differently? How are you using these tools that we call social media?

Note: This a post as part of the series of presentations from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009. You can check out all videos on the Inbound Marketing Summit Blip.tv channel. Content from all over the interwebs are being aggregated over on Delicious. All posts on this blog will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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