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Begin With the Least Urgent Task

February 22, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t wait until something becomes urgent to do it. Most of your urgent tasks—the ones that have the menacing power to distract you now—were non-urgent once.

Begin With the Least Urgent Task Becoming more alert to time and staying aware of what genuinely deserves your attention at the moment is the key to time-effectiveness.

Idea for Impact: Complete your tasks before they become urgent. You’re thus putting yourself, not the incoming flow of attention demands, in the driving seat.

This discipline of getting things done early won’t help you eliminate real emergencies. Still, on the whole, your self-inflicted crises might drop significantly, and the stress that comes with them. Your efficiency will increase, and so will your predictability and reliability.

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Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Discipline, Efficiency, Getting Things Done, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management

How to Minute a Meeting

September 28, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Minute a Meeting If you’re the unlucky minute-taker tasked with recording a discussion for the benefit of posterity, remember that minutes are expected to contain essentially a reliable record of what transpired at the meeting, key decisions taken, and action items.

In principle, meetings exist for people to inform and decide, but, in reality, lots of what people say in meetings will be trivial, pointless, and unhelpful. Unless specifically required by the forum, you don’t have to scribble down each and every pearl of wisdom that ensues. Per Wikipedia, the term “minutes” derives from the Latin minuta scriptura (“small writing,”) meaning “rough notes.”

The BBC political satire Yes, Prime Minister (1986–88; prequel Yes Minister, 1980–84,) that masterly class on politics, manipulation, and being manipulated, has particularly handy advice on meeting minutes. From the ‘Man Overboard’ (clip) and ‘Official Secrets’ (clip) episodes,

  • A minute is a note for the records and a statement of action, if any, that was agreed upon.
  • It is characteristic of all discussions and decisions that every meeting member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials … if a decision had been officially reached, it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials.
  • The purpose of minutes is not to record events, it is to protect people.
  • People frequently change their minds during a meeting. Therefore, what is said at a meeting merely constitutes the choice of ingredients for the minutes. The minute-taker’s task is to choose, from a jumble of ill-digested ideas, a version that represents the [powerful person’s] views as he would, on reflection, have liked them to emerge.
  • Minutes do not record everything that was said at a meeting. Minutes are constructive—they are to improve what is said, to be tactful, to put in better order.
  • Minutes, by virtue of the selection process, can never be a true and complete record. Minutes don’t constitute a true record.

You’ll have to maintain a Zen-like focus on why everybody disagrees with somebody and how nobody agrees to do what anybody could have done. But you don’t have to work hard to keep yourself awake either.

As soon as you’ve circulated those minutes and got them approved, you can file them away. Nobody may ever actually read them in the future.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. Ghosting is Rude
  4. Stop asking, “What do you do for a living?”
  5. Here’s How to Improve Your Conversational Skills

Filed Under: Effective Communication Tagged With: Conversations, Efficiency, Etiquette, Humor, Meetings

Don’t Let the Latecomers Ruin Your Meeting

June 29, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Latecomers not only demoralize and disrespect those who turn up on time and have to wait around but also hurt the meeting’s productivity—especially if you have a tight and structured schedule.

  • Always start and end your meeting at the appointed time. Are your attendees tardy because they know that you don’t start the meeting promptly? Do you tend to wander off-topic?
  • Confirm that there’re enough chairs in the meeting room. A latecomer can disrupt a discussion by dragging chairs over from other meeting rooms.
  • Don't Let the Latecomers Ruin Your Meeting Don’t reprimand or embarrass a latecomer during the meeting. Speak to her later. Does she understand that she has a clearly defined role in this meeting? (People are often late to events because they’re not entirely convinced about whether they really want—or need—to be there.)
  • Don’t go over an agenda item to help a latecomer catch up. Recapitulate the key points only if the latecomer’s inputs are necessary to what’s left on the agenda.
  • If you have a chronic latecomer, check if he has a schedule-conflict. Confirm that his participation is still relevant. If he doesn’t want to—or need not—attend the entire meeting, pull him to the top of the agenda. Let him contribute and leave.
  • Try to corral the chronic latecomers by stopping by their desks en route to the meeting.
  • Could you make the meeting more beneficial for all your attendees? Invite suggestions for mutual gain so that everyone feels more productive.

Also, be alert to power trippers who get a small thrill in keeping others waiting, and then requiring you to start over or recapitulate when they arrive.

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  1. A Great Email Time-Saver
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  4. How to Minute a Meeting
  5. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Discipline, Efficiency, Etiquette, Meetings, Time Management

How to Stop “Standing” Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time

December 19, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Monthly staff conferences, progress updates, weekly sales calls, and other regularly scheduled “standing” meetings, essential though they may be, tend to be wasteful, especially so when they’re convened per tradition and attended out of an obligation.

How to Stop 'Standing' Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time The beginning of the year is a great time to examine all the standing meetings that you’re invited to. Review your calendar and consider the RoI of each standing meeting. Make each one of those meetings defend the use of your time—and your employees’ time.

Ask how else you could accomplish the goals of each meeting efficiently. If you must hold a meeting, remind all its participants of the reasons for gathering, and check if the meeting—and the frequency—still serves that purpose. Rewrite the charter of these meetings if necessary. Look at ways to complete the meetings more efficiently—perhaps in half the time, half as frequently, or with half the people.

For instance, a design team may convene for twice-a-week status reports at the project launch while there may be many decisions to make. Once the early frenzy subsides, only a monthly meeting may be justified, complemented by frequent status updates shared via email.

Idea for Impact: Don’t keep going to every meeting just because you’re invited, or because you think you have to.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Micro-Meetings Can Be Very Effective
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  4. How Can a Manager Get Important Things Done?
  5. Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence?

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Leading Teams, Managing People Tagged With: Conversations, Delegation, Efficiency, Getting Things Done, Great Manager, Meetings, Time Management, Winning on the Job

Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

July 29, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Here’s a précis of psychologist Ron Friedman’s HBR article on how to spend the first ten minutes of your day:

Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?

This exercise is usually effective at helping people distinguish between tasks that simply feel urgent from those that are truly important. Use it to determine the activities you want to focus your energy on.

Then—and this is important—create a plan of attack by breaking down complex tasks into specific actions. Studies show that when it comes to goals, the more specific you are about what you’re trying to achieve, the better your chances of success.

Idea for Impact: Organize Yourself Good Concentration

Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus Starting your day by mulling over proactively on “what should I have achieved” is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind headed in the right direction.

Planning is easier when your energy levels are highest, which, for most people, is first thing in the morning.

Knowing what your goals are before you launch your day can help you focus the mind and hold it steadily to one thing at a time and in the right order.

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Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Decision-Making, Discipline, Efficiency, Getting Things Done, Mindfulness, Motivation, Procrastination, Questioning, Tardiness, Targets, Task Management, Time Management, Winning on the Job

3G Capital and the Fringes of Cost Management // Summary of Bob Fifer’s ‘How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less’

April 24, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

3G Capital’s Playbook: Look at EVERYTHING—There are No Sacred Cows in Cost-Cutting

Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital's Playbook for Cost-Cutting: Zero-based Budgeting During the past decade, the achievements of the Brazil-based private equity group 3G Capital have drawn attention to the aggressive cost cutting methods outlined in management consultant Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less (1995.)

3G has raised the profitability of its acquired businesses by sacking thousands of workers, shutting down factories, simplifying operations—even using cheaper ingredients. In Israel, the 3G-controlled Heinz was forced to rebrand its iconic ketchup as “tomato seasoning” after a cost cutting-inspired shift to GMO-derived constituents. 3G’s playbook, however, encourages increasing budgets for strategically important business functions—for instance, Kraft Heinz has increasingly expanded spending on advertising and product improvement.

At every 3G-run company—Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller, Heinz, Kraft Foods, Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes,—the “zero-based budgeting” accounting tool forces managers to justify all claims on their organizations’ financial resources. As I noted in a previous article, this method forces managers to justify every line item on a team’s budget as if it were new a claim for an entirely new project, instead of merely being carried over from the prior year:

Zero-base budgeting advocates say that it detects inflated budgets and unearths cost savings by focusing on priorities rather than simply relying on the precedent. Managers secure a tighter focus on operations by justifying each line-item in their budgets, thereby reducing the money they allocate to the lowest level possible. Managers can also contrast competing claims on their ever-scarce financial resources and therefore shift funds to more impactful projects.

How to Double Your Profits has become a must-read for all managers affected by any 3G deal. This obscure book, purportedly written in just 15 hours, was also a favorite of such business luminaries as Sanford Weill (of Citigroup,) Bob Lipp (Travelers Insurance,) and Jack Welch (General Electric.)

3G’s methods have upended an entire industry known for characteristically lower profit margins. The specter of being acquired by 3G has forced Unilever, General Mills, J.M. Smucker, Nestle, Pilgrim’s Pride, Phillip Morris, and other consumer staples companies to implement sweeping cost cutting programs.

Every Expense is Evaluated to Be Cutback Unless It Contributes Directly to the Bottom Line

'Double your profits' by Robert M Fifer (ISBN 0963688804) How to Double Your Profits obsesses about cutting costs by any and all means possible. Every corporate resource is a cost-center that must be pared down to the bone—unless it’s a strategic function. When it comes to marketing, for example, the author recommends outspending the competition in both good and bad times.

Seventy-eight brief chapters (“steps”) deal with every possible drain on time, money, and people in the modern corporation: reducing layers of management, cutting the amount of time managers spend in meetings, shrinking corporate expense accounts, eliminating first-class air tickets, getting rid of pointless reports, and so on.

  • Focus on profits. “We’re here to make a profit. In fact, we’re here to make as much profit as we possibly can. Profit is the most accurate, most all-encompassing measure of whether we truly are the best. … Profits benefit all of us … when the profits slow down, we all suffer.”
  • Run a true meritocracy. Set expectations about how performance will be measured and what rewards will accrue to what levels of performance. “Within any level or group of employees, there must be wide disparities in salary, tied to demonstrable differences in performance and contribution to the bottom line.”
  • Avoid paralysis by analysis, make decisions faster. “Superb managers are instinctual, making the right decision most of the time based on limited data. The quantification that less-skilled managers insist upon is in fact illusory: They wind up making decisions based upon that which can be quantified rather than that which is important. Most of the critical variables in any business decision can only be judged and evaluated based on experience and instinct, not quantified.”

Much of the advice is effective, if predictable, but some suggestions are clearly crooked:

  • Step 24 / Declare Freezes and Cuts: “Send a letter declaring an across-the board 3% reduction to suppliers. Make sure the letter is from someone high up and intimidating….(after getting the bill) deduct 3% from the bill and say, ‘Didn’t you read my CEO’s letter? Are you trying to get me fired? “
  • Step 37 / Accounts Payable: “Never pay a bill until the supplier asks for it at least twice. You’ll be surprised: A few suppliers will take as much as two years before they finally get around to asking for their money.”

But Then Again, There is only so Much Fat to Cut out: The Crisis at Kraft Heinz

When discharged without due forethought, elements of Fifer’s cost-cutting mindset could lead to corporate myopia and an utter disregard for such intangible assets as human capital, brand value, and corporate philanthropy.

Certainly, in businesses with substantial cost inefficiencies and bloat, cost-cutting can produce considerable gains in profits, but even with these firms, gains will be time-limited, because there is only so much fat to cut out.

Cost Cutting and The Crisis at Kraft Heinz Aggressive cost-cutting has been blamed for the recent travails at Kraft Heinz. Over the last three years, Kraft Heinz’s fading return on invested capital and decreasing sales point toward a leadership team that has been giving precedence to near-term cash flows to the detriment of its long-term competitive position (“moat.”)

With the expansion of cut-price private-label brands, consumers are no longer remaining devoted to brands like they once did. Kraft Heinz’s roster of products is less appealing to customers than it used to be, and cost cutting hasn’t helped—Kraft Heinz has invested just 2%–3% of its sales on brand spending, as against 7%–9% at comparable consumer goods companies.

Recommendation: Fast Read ‘How to Double Your Profits’

Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less, even if out-of-date and brash in style, could help drive systematic cost-consciousness in large firms that have bloated cost structures in the hypercompetitive business environments.

Entrepreneurs, managers, and employees will find in How to Double Your Profits many ideas for establishing a culture where every employee feels liable for adding value to the organization’s bottom line. The key takeaway lessons are:

  • Determine which costs are strategic (costs that bring in business and improve the bottom line) and over-invest in those processes as long as they are effective, i.e. producing better results. “Place the burden of proof on justifying costs, not on eliminating them.”
  • Avoid over-quantifying and over-analyzing processes and results, particularly when the extra precision will not have any bearing on business decision-making.
  • Consider business processes as a means to an end—a focus on business results should trump a focus on business processes. In other words, focus single-mindedly on business results.

Complement with Francisco Souza Homem de Mello’s The 3G Way (2014) and Cristiane Correa’s Dream Big (2014)—informative books on 3G written by Brazilian business journalists who’ve covered 3G and its founders over the years. Warren Buffett, who regularly teams up with 3G Capital, recommends these books.

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  5. How to Buy a Small Business // Book Summary of Richard Ruback’s HBR Guide

Filed Under: Leading Teams, Managing Business Functions, Managing People, MBA in a Nutshell, Mental Models Tagged With: Budgeting, Discipline, Efficiency, Entrepreneurs, Leadership Lessons

The Three Dreadful Stumbling Blocks to Time Management

September 25, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The Three Dreadful Stumbling Blocks to Time Management Ineffective time management is characterized by folks having too many things they need to do (and just a few they must do,) but not enough time for everything they want to do. The key to time management, therefore, is to identify your needs and wants in terms of their importance and match them with the time and resources available.

If your time-management efforts are not getting you the results you envision, you need to pay attention to three hurdles that can get you derailed easily.

  1. The foremost obstacle to time management is a lack of practical awareness of your job duties, as well as the extent of your authority and responsibility. Your efficiency could be acutely hindered by doing the wrong tasks—those that are relatively unimportant or not even part of your job description. You could also not be using the skills or time of others, perhaps not recognizing that you have the authority to do so.
  2. An associated obstacle to effective time management is your failure to prioritize tasks. You may not be able to prioritize because either you’re unaware of your job duties, or you don’t know how to set priorities. As stated by the Pareto Principle, you could be spending 80% of your time on tasks that account for a mere 20% of the total job results. As a result, you could be working on the trivial and the routine, but not the important. In other words, you could be working on the “can do” and not the “must do.”
  3. Equally important, your time management-plans often go off the rails because of “time thieves”—meetings, impromptu visitors, avoidable reports, telephone calls, delays, canceled engagements, redundant rules and regulations, and other claptrap.

Idea for Impact: Develop a high level of awareness in the areas discussed above. Use my three-part technique (time logging, time analyzing, and time budgeting) to control time, conserve time, and make time. Additionally, learn to farm more work out—delegating not only frees up precious time, but also helps develop your employees’ abilities, as well as your own. Try not to say ‘yes’ to too many things and avoid taking on too much.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus
  2. How to Stop “Standing” Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time
  3. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  4. How to Embrace Multitasking
  5. Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence?

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Delegation, Efficiency, Getting Things Done, Mindfulness, Time Management, Winning on the Job

Use Zero-Base Budgeting to Build a Culture of Cost Management

May 17, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Zero-Base Budgeting

Traditional Incremental Budgeting

As part of the traditional budgeting process, managers tend to roll their budget over from one year to the next. In addition to accounting for any strategic initiatives or headcount changes, they simply add to every line-item in the previous year’s budget a certain percentage “and then some” to account for cost inflation. They assume that the ‘baseline’ is automatically approved, so they justify just the variances versus prior years.

The drawback of this budgeting process is that nobody questions the underlying ‘baseline’ costs. Further, these cost increases are carried from year to year.

Zero-Base Budgeting

'Zero-base Budgeting' by Peter A Pyhrr (ISBN 047170234X) In the 1970s, Peter Pyhrr, a Texas Instruments accountant, formally developed zero-base budgeting. In his influential Harvard Business Review article and a book titled Zero-base Budgeting, Pyhrr advocated that a prior year’s budget should not be used as a benchmark for the next year’s budgeted costs.

With zero-base budgeting, managers prepare a fresh budget every year without reference to the past. Consequently, they start every line-item in the budget from a zero-base even if the amount didn’t increase from the previous year. They are thus forced to justify all claims on their organization’s financial resources as if they were entirely new claims for entirely new projects.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Zero-Base Budgeting

Zero-base budgeting advocates say that it detects inflated budgets and unearths cost savings by focusing on priorities rather than simply relying on the precedent. Managers secure a tighter focus on operations by justifying each line-item in their budgets, thereby reducing the money they allocate to the lowest level possible. Managers can also contrast competing claims on their ever-scarce financial resources and therefore shift funds to more impactful projects.

Zero-base budgeting critics call attention to the many practical difficulties of implementing this time-consuming tool. More importantly, since zero-base involves give-and-take, the budgeting process is susceptible to favoritism, cronyism, and political influence.

3G Capital’s Success with Zero-Base Budgeting

'The 3G Way: An introduction to the management style of the trio' by Francisco S. Homem de Mello (ISBN B00MKKWZME) Zero-base budgeting has garnered much attention in the last few years as the centerpiece of an aggressive cost-cutting recipe used by 3G Capital, a thriving Brazilian buyout firm that’s renowned for its parsimonious operations. 3G’s predominant investment strategy is to acquire and then squeeze value out of companies, particularly in the food and restaurant industries.

At Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Tim Hortons, Burger King, Heinz, Kraft, and other acquired companies, 3G’s hard-nosed managers have used zero-base budgeting to initiate sweeping cost cuts. They’ve shut down factories, laid off thousands of factory workers, eliminated hundreds of management jobs, sold off corporate jets, forced executives to fly coach, restricted employees’ office supplies to $15 a month, and even asked employees to seek permission to take color printouts.

'Dream Big' by Cristiane Correa (ISBN 8543100836) Inspired by 3G, many other companies have adapted zero-base budgeting to root out bloat. Some have even gotten carried away—for example, Pilgrim’s Pride (an American meat-processing company) used zero-base budgeting to measure how much soap employees use to wash their hands and how much Gatorade hourly employees consume during breaks.

Idea for Impact: Zero-Base Budgeting Is an Effective Cost-Management Tool

Cutting operating costs is an ever-bigger priority at many organizations. For each line-item in your budget, ask “Should this be done at all?” and “Is this the most efficient and effective use of our resources?”

Consider zero-base budgeting to rigorously find cost-effective ways to improve your operations. It can bring about cost discipline, force your operations to become lean, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

Suggested Reading

  • For more on zero-base budgeting, read Peter Pyhrr’s Zero-base Budgeting.
  • For more on 3G Capital and their management principles, read Cristiane Correa’s Dream Big and Francisco de Mello’s The 3G Way. These books are recommended by Warren Buffett, who likes to partner with 3G.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. 3G Capital and the Fringes of Cost Management // Summary of Bob Fifer’s ‘How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less’
  2. How to Stop “Standing” Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time
  3. How to Get Your Budget Through

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leading Teams, MBA in a Nutshell, Personal Finance Tagged With: Budgeting, Efficiency

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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