If you’re a leader, do you manage with the wellbeing of your knowledge workers’ brains in mind?
I talked about why this is essential during my recent interview with Andrea Simon for the On the Brink podcast. Andi is a principal and founder of Simon Associates Management Consultants and has over 20 years of experience as a senior executive in the financial services and healthcare industries. Through her work and her podcast, Andi helps people and organizations “see, feel and think” in new ways.
Take a half-hour to listen to this podcast and you’ll come away with lots of strategies you can put to use right away. The topics we covered include:
- Why it really is harder to keep up with everything now. (It’s not your imagination!)
- Why most companies have not responded adequately to the shift from industrial work to knowledge work.
- Ways that your environment is probably undermining your productivity.
- How we trick ourselves about the real impact of email and meetings on our productivity.
- Why managers must be honest about the work environments they create and the effect of those environments on knowledge workers.
- Why improving employees’ individual productivity often requires cultural change.
- The five crucial factors of productivity training — or any kind of training — that leads to lasting, meaningful change. (This information will help you maximize your return on the money your company invests in training.)
- Why the key productivity challenges for knowledge workers are the same whether they work remotely or in an office.
- The broad parameters of how my Empowered Productivity System gives knowledge workers the skill set to deal successfully with all manner of commitments, communication and information.
- Why you should think in terms of attention management, not time management.
If you’re interested in the ideas I discussed with Andi, I recommend my article “What Your Brain Needs to Be Productive” as a great way to follow up this podcast.
