As a productivity coach how can I best serve information workers.
December 9, 2009 11:14 AM Subscribe
As a productivity coach how can I best serve information workers.
I have discovered that after years of reading and implementing the systems and tools of Getting Things Done, Lifehacker.com and other productivity resources I have become a marketable professional resource to information workers. I have successfully coached for free 2 people in a high stress major software company in order to gain experience. I am now looking to understand their work environment better and hone my skills. I imagine there are many information workers on metafilter so I'm hoping you can help me out.
1. What are the specific difficulties that hinder you from being as successful at your work as you would like to be.
2. If you were going to work with a coach, what would be the best means to communicate in a manner that would not interfere with your work. My sole means of communicating so far has been email. But I am finding that my clients only fit me in, rather then having me be on their calendar. I've wondered about a 10-15 minute phone call twice a week with followup emails that review the conversation and contain action steps. What do you think?
3. What have been your most successful collaboration tools. One client's work email is and meetings are such high volume due to her involvement with multiple projects that she has little time to actually work. I suggested that groupware like a wiki, or backpackit.com or other 37signals webapps would significantly improve her team's productivity and slow down the flow of email. What similar tools have you used successfully. Can you recommend PC server-client software (I use a mac) for this purpose or webapps that are secure enough for a company that needs to protect its information.
4. If you would be willing to pay for such expertise, what would you or your company be willing to pay? What would be the return on investment that you would expect?
Thanks for any help you may provide.
I have discovered that after years of reading and implementing the systems and tools of Getting Things Done, Lifehacker.com and other productivity resources I have become a marketable professional resource to information workers. I have successfully coached for free 2 people in a high stress major software company in order to gain experience. I am now looking to understand their work environment better and hone my skills. I imagine there are many information workers on metafilter so I'm hoping you can help me out.
1. What are the specific difficulties that hinder you from being as successful at your work as you would like to be.
2. If you were going to work with a coach, what would be the best means to communicate in a manner that would not interfere with your work. My sole means of communicating so far has been email. But I am finding that my clients only fit me in, rather then having me be on their calendar. I've wondered about a 10-15 minute phone call twice a week with followup emails that review the conversation and contain action steps. What do you think?
3. What have been your most successful collaboration tools. One client's work email is and meetings are such high volume due to her involvement with multiple projects that she has little time to actually work. I suggested that groupware like a wiki, or backpackit.com or other 37signals webapps would significantly improve her team's productivity and slow down the flow of email. What similar tools have you used successfully. Can you recommend PC server-client software (I use a mac) for this purpose or webapps that are secure enough for a company that needs to protect its information.
4. If you would be willing to pay for such expertise, what would you or your company be willing to pay? What would be the return on investment that you would expect?
Thanks for any help you may provide.
I've worked with a professional coach as part of a leadership development program. We weren't working on productivity, but other professional development areas. We're a huge company and I think the personal coaching is offered to less than 100 people per year.
1. I think this is very user specific.
2. We had scheduled appointments for phone calls and I did some weekly updates between calls. The updates were mostly so I could think through my next action by writing the update. I would challenge your assumption that you shouldn't interrupt their work. It's okay to interrupt my work, if you're doing so at my request and providing value.
3. I do not want a coach doing this. We have a IT team who selects collaboration tools. You might suggest moving from email to a tool, but not specific tools.
4. My company paid. We identified goals in advance and did assessments on progress and completion. The program is evaluated every year to validate that the leadership program helps people reach the user specific goals. It was a very productive experience for me. If I run into some challenges, I'd hire a coach to help me plan a course of action.
posted by 26.2 at 10:16 PM on December 13, 2009
1. I think this is very user specific.
2. We had scheduled appointments for phone calls and I did some weekly updates between calls. The updates were mostly so I could think through my next action by writing the update. I would challenge your assumption that you shouldn't interrupt their work. It's okay to interrupt my work, if you're doing so at my request and providing value.
3. I do not want a coach doing this. We have a IT team who selects collaboration tools. You might suggest moving from email to a tool, but not specific tools.
4. My company paid. We identified goals in advance and did assessments on progress and completion. The program is evaluated every year to validate that the leadership program helps people reach the user specific goals. It was a very productive experience for me. If I run into some challenges, I'd hire a coach to help me plan a course of action.
posted by 26.2 at 10:16 PM on December 13, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
From the perspective of someone involved in developing software two things come to mind regarding your question 1.
A. Cultivation of concentration skills. This is not specific to IT workers but they live in a very 'noisy' environment. Finding a good mix of curiosity and focus is for me, and i believe others, a challenge.
B. Awareness of how good is good enough. The ability to judge how good something has to be is the difference between getting it done in four hours or taking sixteen. In some environments such decisions are not in the hands of individual developers but in many they are.
More generally I would suggest that your clients would have different needs dependent upon their employers.
Those that work for 'big enterprise inc' spend most of their time dealing with stuff that isn't much to do with developing software at all - finding a way through that clutter (or perhaps simply accepting that you will only do so to a limited degree) is what's key to them.
Those that work at 'small shop inc' need help with skills that might be broadly categorised as 'self-control' and which I've touched on above.
posted by southof40 at 1:12 PM on December 9, 2009 [1 favorite]