After vis­it­ing some com­pa­nies with cool cul­ture I decided to write an arti­cle on the sub­ject. Cash­ing in on Cul­ture is an arti­cle about why com­pa­nies should make cul­ture a pri­or­ity and how to improve it. Here is a list of com­pa­nies with great (cool) company culture:

• Zap­pos
• The Lampo Group
• Emma
• Method
• Apple

What com­pany do you know of that has great cul­ture? Does yours? What needs to change?

This morn­ing I left the house early to get fuel for a road trip. Within a few yards of the mail box I noticed a tur­tle and a rab­bit on the road (really, I did). The cot­ton tailed bunny quickly hopped out of the way while the lit­tle snap­ping tur­tle pic­tured above inched towards the side of the road. I had to swerve to miss him. But what if I hadn’t?

I know the hare gets a bad rap for not pac­ing him­self while the wise ol’ tor­toise plods along to win in the end. But here’s the thing, when a 5000 pound SUV is bear­ing down on you who do you want to be? I’m vot­ing to be a bunny.

Change, com­pe­ti­tion, eco­nomic chaos, reg­u­la­tions and more are bear­ing down on busi­nesses every day. These are all 5000 pounds of threat to be responded to. How do busi­nesses choose the way of the wab­bit (sorry, I couldn’t resist)? Through agility. But how do these attrib­utes man­i­fest them­selves? Here are a few indi­ca­tors of an agile business.

Process ori­ented
Cus­tomer focused
Exter­nally aware
Cul­tur­ally pro­gres­sive
Orga­ni­za­tion­aly flexible

None of these come for free or are easy to fos­ter but when change is loom­ing you’ll be glad you invested the time and effort to become agile.

Time is our most pre­cious resource and it is our most squan­dered asset.

Only a frac­tion of our time is avail­able to pro­duce the results that jus­tify our pay­check. The rest of our time is spent respond­ing or react­ing to oth­ers. Within that real­ity we must sav­agely guard our time. This can even mean guard our time from our own bad habits. To stop ask­ing the ques­tion: Where did my day go attack the prob­lem from two angles. Yes it’s a pin­cer movement!

Angle #1 Stop wast­ing time Angle #2 Start mak­ing bet­ter use of time

Here’s how.

The Dirty Dozen Time wasters (in no par­tic­u­lar order):

1. Stop using auto noti­fiers. Email and voice­mail were cre­ated for you not the reverse.
2. Stop start­ing your day by check­ing email. It allows oth­ers to set your pri­or­i­ties for you.
3. Stop answer­ing calls from unknown num­bers. They can leave a message.
4. Stop answer­ing calls from blocked num­bers. See #3
5. Stop attempt­ing to mul­ti­task. It’s a myth. Con­text switch­ing kills productivity.
6. Stop going into your day with no plan. If you don’t plan your day some­one else will.
7. Stop pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. You’re delay­ing because you’re scared. Fig­ure out why and deal with it.
8. Stop wast­ing time on social media. Get your mes­sage out (even if it is per­sonal) and get off.
9. Stop going to meet­ings unpre­pared. Demand to know the objec­tive of a meet­ing and prep for it.
10. Stop meet­ing with­out a pre­scribed and worth­while outcome.
11. Stop nat­ter­ing. Get to the point ASAP.
12. Stop wast­ing time on pro­duc­tiv­ity sys­tems. Get orga­nized but don’t be anal.

The twelve step time “recov­ery program”

1. Start track­ing your time. Your mem­ory will fail you. Write it down, for one month
2. Start your day with goals to achieve.
3. Start the day by killing the snakes. The sooner you do the stuff you don’t like the better.
4. Start your day by work­ing for two hours on your stuff. Then check email and voicemail.
5. Start batch­ing wrought actions. Once you start respond­ing to emails get them all done.
6. Start­ing using macros and tem­plates. You can write the tem­plates, talk to IT about the macros.
7. Start using email for what it’s good at. Spread­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion (not a fwd of a fwd).
8. Start meet­ing only when you have stated objec­tives for the meeting
9. Start send­ing out agen­das before you meet. Let peo­ple know what’s coming.
10. Start requir­ing pre-work. Research done before meet­ing will opti­mize your time together.
11. Start sum­ma­riz­ing your inter­ac­tion imme­di­ately after you have them you’ll remem­ber more.
12. Start unplug­ging one day a week. They call it a “Crack-berry” for a reason.