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On Sunday, 29 March 2009 the clocks sprang forward an hour. Now you can not only enjoy the British summer time’s longer, lighter evenings, but also use Ash Shaw’s time saving tips to win back this hour you lost when the clocks went forward.
- Password Corral is a useful tool for keeping all your passwords. How much time to you lose by looking for or resetting passwords? With more companies transferring data using secure sites, your list of passwords is probably growing exponentially. Furthermore, most people tend to file passwords in an ad hoc manner, which makes them difficult to find. Password Corral is a simple utility to save that hassle. It is simple to use, more secure and free. All you need to do is input ‘Password Corral’ in Google to find it. It takes less than 5 minutes to set it up.
- Do it, if the action takes less than 2 minutes
- Spring clean your draws and files – all draws and files should never be more than 75% full. Take time today to go through your draws and files and get rid of unused items
- The 3 rule – within 3 minutes decide: Dump, delegate, defer, or do; if it’s been on your desk for three weeks and you haven’t touched it – file it. If you haven’t used it in three months, get it out of your office.
The following article and offer was produced for us by Carol Riley of Still Waters Ltd (www.coachingbystillwaters.com) who is offering 2 x 30 minute ‘taster’ coaching consultations without charge for people who would like to:
- work through and resolve a personal or business change issue; or
- be challenged and enhance self-awareness; or
- experience business coaching first hand, without any commitment.
Carol Riley is an accredited coach with Myers Briggs, Belbin Team Types and SIMA.
Getting more of what you want
Stephen Covey’s simple 4 quadrant matrix (from ‘First Things First’) can be used to great effect for coaching individuals and teams who complain of being overworked and stressed. This matrix enables people to reflect on their potential addiction to urgency and the two primary factors that drive our time choices: ‘urgency’ and ‘importance’.
Individuals and teams should analyse where they actually spend most of their time in their ‘working day’ by categorising their activities into one of four boxes:
|
Urgent |
Not Urgent |
| Important |
Just making the 7 month Annual Report signing deadline! |
Getting investment manager statements |
| Not Important |
Dealing with a minor investment disclosure matter |
Discussion on immaterial low risk item with auditor |
With thanks to Covey Leadership Center
On reflection, people tend to spend the majority of their time on ‘urgent and important’ and ‘ urgent and not important’ tasks. Maybe, as suggested by Covey, this is because they are being driven by urgency, due to the adrenaline rush which handling crises can cause. This forms a dependency for the sense of excitement and energy it produces.
Two questions to ask yourself are:
- “What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your personal life?”; and
- “What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your professional or work life?”
The results to these questions tend to fall into ‘important and not urgent’ tasks and primarily fall under these seven key activities:
- Improving communication with people
- Better preparation
- Better planning and organising
- Taking better care of self
- Seizing new opportunities
- Personal self-development
- Empowerment
Covey suggests people do not do these because they’re not urgent and not pressing, and so they do not act on them.
By applying the learning from Covey’s model to the challenge of getting more important things done, we need to spend more time focusing on activities that are important rather than urgent. That means more time spent preparing, preventing, planning and empowering.
If you are interested in benefiting from the 2 x 30 minutes coaching offer from Still Waters Limited, please email Carol Riley or call her on 07971 990040.
Why not kick-start a discussion with your fellow pension team members about which type of time management reflects individuals in your team!
To help you think about the different type of approaches to time management, we have produced a simple summary from Appendix B of Covey’s book First things first. Covey acknowledges in this book that each approach has its value but also has flaws and explains his own approach to time management.
Review of Time Management Approaches
- Get organised (ORDER). Put in place systems to organise things, tasks and people.
- Warrior (SURVIVAL AND INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION). Protect personal time to focus and produce.
- Goal (ACHIEVEMENT). Know what you want and focus your effort to achieve it.
- abc (PRIORITISATION AND VALUES IDENTIFICATION). Know what you want and focus your effort to achieve it and concentrate your efforts on your most important tasks first.
- Magic tool (TECHNOLOGY). Use and apply the right tools i.e. calendar, planner, and computer program to give you planning power.
- Time management 101 (SKILLS). Learn and master the essential basics of using a planner, creating ‘to do’ lists, setting goals, delegating, organising, and prioritising
- Go with the flow (HARMONY AND NATURAL RHYTHMS). Avoid clockwatching and set up more natural pace of living more in harmony with natural rhythms.
- Recovery (SELF-AWARENESS). Identify the nature and source of dysfunctional time management habits that can arise from our upbringing.
Ash Shaw is honoured to be one of the five firms to be short-listed for the Professional Pensions Pension Scheme Accountants of the Year award together with Baker Tilly, Grant Thornton, Horwath Clark Whitehill and PricewaterhouseCoopers. All will be revealed at the gala dinner at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on 21 April.
For Ash Shaw it is a great privilege to be short-listed for the last three years in a row for this award. We thank you, our clients, for working with us to make continuous improvements and inspiring us to do better.
We are delighted to introduce the two newest members of our team, Carl Jebbitt and Lisa Smith who joined us in March. In between audits, Carl likes to follow his interest in tennis. He is passionate about the sport!
Lisa, a keen snow skiier, will help us with our business administration, and is looking forward to making audits simpler and smoother for you.
Thank you to all of you pension professionals who took a few moments out of your busy schedules to CLICK ON OUR LINK (Ash Shaw Red Nose 13 March special Email). We promised to pledge money for every click. As a result of all your support, Ash Shaw is donating £250.
Some people were not able to access the link due to their company web settings. For those who would like to know what dance Ash Shaw performed on Red Nose Day please copy and paste this link into your web browser: http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/Ceao1RAfusZCk6YI.
The first person to spot the Red Nose makeover on our People Page was John Simmonds of CEM Benchmarking. John decided to give to our chosen charity, Pump Aid, so we have given a Water Pump on John's behalf.
To help us help you more swiftly, please send us a brief description of your situation (or a copy of last year’s signed accounts if you are looking for new auditors) to Sally Tasker and let us know when would be a convenient time to call you.
If someone else has sent you this web link, why not make sure you get your own copy in future? Sign up to Ash Shaw's free monthly email newsletters and receive the latest information, news, ideas and advice. Focused on small- and medium sized pension schemes, these mailings tell exactly what you need to know, without wasting your valuable time. Sign up now. |
