Making it through the downdraft, Part 2: Collaborate more efficiently |

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02/17
2009

Making it through the downdraft, Part 2: Collaborate more efficiently

Yesterday I read a post by Web Informant blogger David Strom, echoing what I’d just said the other day: To survive and prosper in this economy, people are going to need to learn a new level of efficiency. He writes:

I want to see opportunity where others see looming disaster. And I think one way we can try to make things better is become more productive and do a better job collaborating with each other.

He’s right, and this became easier to see when I reduced it from concepts to the concrete.

See, when I hear about the economy as a whole – a million jobs here, $700B there – it seems abstract, all too much, too big for us to solve. But when I bring it down to human scale the truth becomes visible:

It’s personal, not abstract. Those are real people losing those jobs, and those are real dollars they’ll no longer spend. To paraphrase Tip O’Neill, all economics is local.
There are things I can do all around me to “nip and tuck,” making things a little more efficient. That efficiency amounts to money I’ve saved, for myself or my company. And that can save jobs.

This is the opportunity Strom points to.

Look, nobody likes to talk about it, but everyone I know is aware of layoffs around them. Six people in my family or my chorus have lost their jobs this year. (Oops, seven since I first drafted this.) But we as Americans and we as global citizens are far from being out of ingenuity. We will manage our way through it, proactively or reactively.

My advice: be proactive about efficiency. Find better ways to collaborate, find ways to nip and tuck. Most of all, as Strom says, notice when you’re wasting time, and knock it off!

Related content: for a real-life example of how our TimeDriver personal scheduler improves efficiency for a realty coach, read TimeDriver eliminates tedious scheduling time for driven real estate coach. She says it saves three days a month of back and forth making appointments!

Posted by cterry

Filed under: appointment scheduler, scheduling software

Tagged: collaboration, downturn, economy, efficiency