Can your enterprise be organized if you aren't?
The answer seems obvious, and so any help executives can get to keep their business lives simplified is highly valued. Figuring that CEOs and those who report to them are likely to be highly organized (or hire people who are), time management consultant Stephanie Winston set out to interview leading managers to see how they stay on top of it all. She based her conclusions on a combination of interviews and discussions with over forty executives from a variety of business fields, as well as a review of published literature.
The result, Organized For Success: Top Executives and CEOs Reveal the Organizing Principles That Helped Them Reach the Top, uncovers important details about what it takes to stay organized, from the mundane aspects of how to keep a clean desk and master e-mail clutter, to how to organize your day and manage multiple priorities. (Hint: don't multitask. Focus.)
But even a to-do list-of-the-gods won't make you more efficient unless you have the mindset to go along with it, says Winston. Successful leaders all share what she calls an "effectiveness attitude."
Organization is a skill that is often taken for granted; Winston articulately brings to light strategies and advice that could be useful for professionals at any level.—Mallory Stark
Table of Contents:
- Ruthless paperwork: how executives get to a clean desk
- Conquering e-mail clutter
- The to-do list: a key time-management tool
- The art of the calendar/planner
- The "capture book" tool: an interesting hybrid
- Executive effectiveness through technology
- Working the phones: how senior executives make the telephone a powerful tool
- The organized executive's day
- Working smarter: a roundup of tips, timesavers, and productivity multipliers
- The multitasking myth: a senior executive perspective
- Managing multiple priorities
- Meetings that work: a prime senior executive tool
- The curious power of interruptions
- Using CEO strategies in your own domain