How to help people

As I continue building my personal productivity practice, one of the biggest shifts in my thinking is around networking [1]. I've moved from the common "palm down" perspective [2] to the "palm up" variety, in which I work to learn what people care about, and think about afterwards how I can be of service, i.e., how I can help them. I'm reminded of this idea, from my self help formulary:

Life = The people you meet + What you create together

What's hit me recently is that I needed to make changes in the way I interact with people in order to better help them. The question is, how do we create an environment that fosters this kind of giving?

Here's a straightforward process that's helped me:

1. When meeting someone, come with an attitude of genuine curiosity.

Think of yourself as a detective. Your job is to listen and ask good questions about what she cares about, loves, is challenged by, and is excited about. Learning to do this may take some work (it did for me) because many of us want to talk about ourselves, show how smart we are, and feel like we're contributing to the conversation. Another risk is, giving unsolicited advice [3].

It helps to have rapport-establishing skills, and I've found Nicholas Boothman's How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less very helpful - see my review here. You might also enjoy Questions that Work.

This leads to a test:

After meeting someone, do you now know enough to spot ways to help him?

(Note: I recommend against the "Is there any way I can help you?" finish to a conversation. It sounds contrived to me, and might really be sending the message "Look how willing I am to help you." Often the answer is "hmmm." Much better to use my approach. Arguments to the contrary are welcome.)

Remember, when meeting with someone the only things you should be asking about are ones dedicated to providing value. Avoid the instinct to focus on the short-term and your benefit; it's about relationship-building and long term connections.

2. Maintain a steady, reliable, and valuable atom/bitstream

Now that you know what's potentially valuable to people in your network, you have to find corresponding artifacts. You'll want to select sources that provide this potential. These will be in the form of articles (HBR has some great ones), books (reading-related posts here), blogs (learn how to read them quickly here), and your experiences working, learning, and living.

Because these sources are often digital, you'll need an effective way of managing them. I like Mark Hurst's [4] concise little book Bit Literacy. Mark has a lot to say about the topic - highly recommended. For example, one idea is to create a media diet portfolio with two main components: The Lineup and Tryouts. The lineup contains the sources you are most likely to stick with. He breaks them down further into three types: stars (consistently valuable), scans (give some relevant information via a quick read), and targets (special-purpose sources). Tryouts are sources you're thinking of adding to your diet. Mark says to be discerning, intentional, and remember you have to limit the total.

This step's corresponding test:

Is my media diet consistently valuable to me and my network?

Ask this regularly, and prune/adjust as needed.

3. When you come across something of potential value, share it

This is self explanatory, but will depend on your having a free enough mind [5] to put together mentally the two parts.

That said, here are a few tips:

• Instead of emailing, print and send information with a note. It's personal, fun, and after all - who gets excited about receiving an email? "Oh boy - I got an email from Matt! What a unique and memorable way to communicate." :-)
• Point out why you thought she'd be interested.
• Provide contact information. After all, starting a conversation around the topics is golden.
• Send thick packages - it's more memorable. Plus, what fun to surprise and delight people. My favorites items Super Spy Night Pens and NASA stickers (it helps to have cool clients).
• Consider giving books. I am surprised and humbled when I receive a book from my network, and I now don't think twice about shipping one when I see the opportunity. (Side note: Joining Amazon Prime has helped with this.) You might want to check out Tim Sanders' post Prescribe a book to a bizmate.

Unsurprisingly (at least to you, maybe) I've found doing this whole process to very satisfying. I've never been good at giving, and these ideas have helped me a lot. (This also explains why I've had trouble buying gifts in the past - the most meaningful ones are based on knowing the giftee.) Interestingly, I now find myself feeling rather disappointed when I can't help someone.

Oops - there's the doorbell, so I need to go. It's our piano tuner. For the past two weeks my wife's been grousing about how out of tune her instrument is, and how frustrating a few sticky keys. Can't wait to see her face next time she plays!

References

• [1] You can find my networking-related posts here.
• [2] See Networking Tips from the White House, which is an interview with Christine Comaford-Lynch, author of Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality. (NB: I haven't read it yet.)
• [3] I've heard (but found no sources) that people giving advice feel better afterwards, but those receiving it feel worse. Any citations?
• [4] Interview forthcoming.
• [5] If this is hard, considering hiring someone to help ;-)

A conversation with Marilyn Paul, author of "It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys"

Another treat in my interview series (kickoff post, all posts), I'm very pleased to share highlights from an hour with Dr. Marilyn Paul, author of the best-selling It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys (The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized) (personal and consulting sites). Not only is her book one of the top 10 in Amazon's self-help/time management category, it's also the first time management book recommended to me when starting my practice (the world repository of all knowledge says I read it read on 2005-10-01).

Like her book, our conversation covered a lot of topics, and I came away highly impressed. I hope you enjoy it! (If you'd like to hear more from Marilyn, check out this NPR interview from a while back: Overcoming E-Mail Overload at Work. I've pulled out her tips below [1].)

Getting started, and the book's origins

Like many of the leaders I've met in my field, Marilyn's story is rather non-traditional [2]. She has a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the School of Management at Yale University, and got started in the work of time management, organizing, and productivity because she struggled with these issues and realized she needed help. Having read a ton of organizing books and finding they didn't work, she decided to apply the principles of organizational Change Management - her speciality [3] - to herself. This came about after she sought out existing information and advice, but didn't get the help she needed.

As she evolved a new process and started sharing it via local workshops around the Boston area. In a lovely example of wild success, those workshops were overflowing (requiring her to turn people away), and she was inundated with requests for more events, and for the material. She kept doing the work, teaching and applying it to herself (in areas like clearing up the clutter and learning more about running on time), and over time collected lots of material. Then a friend looked at her workbook (fifty pages at the time) workbook and workshop, and said "This is a book." In a great example of Synchronicity, the next week after she bumped into three people were literary agents, one of them said she would work with her, and one thing went to another. Neat!

I asked Marilyn the total time from start to finish for this process, which she figured ("good question") to be about ten years.

Definition of productivity

Paul said she had worked with people on issues of productivity, but had not been considering it to be her issue. However, she pointed out that productivity is not really her focus either. She elaborated that she thinks of productivity as part of the "equation of living a good life," along with other important factors such as creating sanity in your home, having good relationships and connections, etc.

Paul said she's not sure the word "productivity" applies to life as a whole - it's part of the question how do we make work meaningful and valuable, and how do we do what we care about - Ready, Aim, Fire, rather than Ready, Fire, Aim [4]. As she puts it, it is not productivity so much that drives her as how do we live the best life that we can, given how different we each are. For GTD practitioners, this will seem a bit controversial - Allen's work is intentionally bottom-up (first get your life together, which makes room for uncovering what your life should be about). More on this below.

(An aside: I asked Marilyn the differences between "Organizing," "Productivity," and "Time management." I like her answer: Basically we don't need to make them distinct because there's lots of overlap. This makes my marketing a bit more challenging though!)

Influences

When asked about her influences, Paul said that, in terms of how she thinks of her work - organizational change - one great influence was Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (see this FastCompany article for more on his work). This launched a field called Systems Thinking, based on what he called five disciplines for change. They include Team Learning, Shared Visioning, Personal Mastery, and Mental Models. And it's Mental Models that has to deal with how we use our minds (my favorite topic).

Other influences include Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices (Collection on Technology and Work) and The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity.

Goals

On the importance of goals (think top-down), Marilyn said having clarity about them is crucial. While some people are very aware of their goals, many of us aren't (I wasn't), which means we're probably working from outdated ones (e.g., those from high school or college). This is especially relevant in the face of big changes like setting up life with a partner or having children. For example, these can kick off the need for work in emotional or spiritual areas.

She said it has to do with inspiration and aspiration, which inform everything else and which her work helps connect up. The goal is for us to live an inspired life, rather than the more typical "dragging ourselves through the day." Otherwise, we are too tired and don't have time to rest, relax, and connect.

Marilyn describes this goal discovery process as on-going. She says that in today's world many people have a lot of choice [5], and we don't really know how to work with them to even identify what our skills and abilities are. To illustrate she gives this quote from Nietzsche: "The greatest folly of mankind is that we forget what we are trying to do."

On the lack of self-management training

We talked a good bit about one of my favorite realizations in starting this work: that very few of us have been taught the essential skills and tools to manage ourselves. In workshops I point out that this is true regardless of background or education. The irony is that my clients (and readers) are very smart, and decide (often at a subconscious level) that self-management shouldn't be that hard. I continue to discover there are many reasons why that's not the case - information overload, the difficulty of changing habits (more next), procrastination, and perfectionism to name a few.

Marilyn took this further to say it's a curriculum that should be standard in high schools and colleges. By the end of high school, students should know how to use their talent via to do lists and other basics. Beyond that, she says we should also know personal traits like when our "prime time" is (e.g., being a morning person), how we are going to work with our biological givens, and then, if we procrastinate, why? What are my issues, what am dealing with, etc. See her book for much more on this.

Habits

An important topic I continue to explore is why is this work so difficult to adopt, which percolates down to changing habits. Paul acknowledges it's very hard to change habits, and is a major motivator in writing her book. She says you have to start with an strong desire to change (which, she pointed out, is what happened with me and kicked off my whole process), and that is probably what happens with people who really are able to make a change.

She frames this as the first stage of the work, and involves assessing what is at stake. Examples include not finding the stuff in your office, piles on your desk, or being a nice guy but having apologize a lot. Each of these has costs, and once people are aware of them (say in checking email vs. working on goals) they're more motivated to change. (My Alexander Technique [6] teacher calls this "making meaning," a phrase I like.)

This goes to addressing the top-down vs. bottom-up issue. Paul argues that people who make a change (e.g., adopting new self-management tools - a bottom-up process) have already realized they can't go on with the old behaviors because something important's at stake. However, the process is iterative: Feel some pain, get some initial help (e.g., read a book or get a tool), try it out, experience some improvement, and repeat. (In fact, this is why I cheated when asked the my ultimate productivity tip. There is no single tip - it's a process, and starting people on the road is what I do.)

For more on building a new habit, I have an excerpt from her book below [7].

Getting clients

I asked Marilyn how she built her practice. Interestingly, she is not out on the circuit, and is only teaching on the East Coast. The people who come to her are capable and competent people in many, many ways, who have tried other work, but the ways they organize themselves and manage their time are getting in their way. They are also dealing with health issues (e.g., issues around weight, chronic fatigue, and family issues, marital issues), which Paul deals with as part of addressing their whole life, not just isolated aspects.

Much of her work is word of mouth - personal referral - with some clients learning about her through through her website, workshops, and her book, which is becoming a huge contributor to her practice.

Work awareness, courage

Marilyn is developing a concept she calls Phantom Workload. I'll let her explain it:

By Phantom workload we mean the extra, redundant, unnecessary work that is created through procrastination (e.g., now I have to run to the PO to FedEx my mortgage payment instead of putting it in the mail or paying on line), through avoidance (e.g., now I have to have a long two hour conversation with my failing employee because I avoided giving good helpful feedback in a timely way because I didn't know what to say), or using quick fixes (e.g., we'll promise the customer what he or she wants - a common quick fix - only now we have a product that they want, but it is full of bugs and they are really disappointed in us, we are losing our credibility with them - very time consuming and expensive).

As part of this, Paul points out it takes courage to change these kinds of behaviors, and we want to be in a workplace where people are rewarded and respected for this. We want to be working with people who are addressing that quality in themselves, so that when you speak up and say something unpopular, someone else will support you rather than shoot you down. This means that when her team works with organizations, they target those issues because, as she puts it, courage is a big part of time management.

Here's a scenario: You are in your office, someone walks in the door, knock, knock, knock, can I come in? You stand up, walk over to the door, and say," How can I help you?" In that little moment of standing up, walking to the door right next to them, and saying that, you are signaling some important points about the conversation - how long you can talk, that your time is important, etc. This can be personally challenging to do, but is very different from saying, "Sure, I can help. Come in and sit down." Good stuff!

The meta question

In answer to my "meta" question ("What haven't I asked you that you have a good answer to?") Paul said one of the big questions that people have around productivity is creating a frame of mind. How do we create a productive frame of mind, decide what that is, and how do we shift from an action-oriented productive frame of mind to a different kind of focus, e.g., where we can say "It is a beautiful day." She thinks those require some changes in our brain so that we can move back and forth and selectively choose different states of mind. I think this is huge.

Thanks, Marilyn!

References

• [1] Her tips for managing your email:
  1. Meet as a team to review e-mail use. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. Create a trial period for improvement: Meet to discuss after a week.
     
  2. Use subject-line protocols to speed communication: a.) No reply needed - NRN; b.) Thank you - TY; c.) Need response by date and time - NRB 10/30 3:00 pm; d.) Use subject line for whole message: Meet 10:00 10/30 Okay? END
     
  3. Determine who needs to be copied on what, what needs to be read, and what needs to be filed.
     
  4. Keep e-mails short. Most should be no more than 1-10 sentences. Communicate your main point in the first sentence or two. Don't make readers work because you don't have time to focus.
     
  5. Don't deliver bad news in an e-mail message. If it's urgent, pick up the phone. Use tone of voice to indicate concern, but not anger.
     
  6. After two rounds of problem-solving on e-mail, pick up the phone.
     
  7. Don't hide behind e-mail. Any sensitive communications should be done in person.
     
  8. If you can't answer a request immediately, let the other party know when you can respond, or if you can't.
     
  9. NO EMOTIONAL E-MAILS: To resolve a conflict, schedule a meeting or use the phone. E-mail arguments tend to be huge time-wasters. Never send a hasty, irritated response to an annoying e-mail -- jobs have been lost that way.
• [2] I don't mean to slight other professions. By traditional I mean a more structured path to work, such as through college, training, or apprenticiships. Believe me, I make no judments about how someone comes to do wokrk they love. And because there are as many routes as there are people, there are lots of good stories to share!
  
• [3] Change Manager is definitely a cool job title - see Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are *you* built to do?
  
• [4] This is a really interesting point, and you can make arguments both ways. RAF has value in being more principled - moving from goals/purpose to action. However, smart people (my consulting market, essentially) often suffer from "analysis paralysis" (AKA "too smart to start"), so some action before direction can help get unstuck. Also, we often over-plan (esp. small-to-medium sized projects), and RFA helps move us along the action-discovery-reflect cycle (which I just made up). Steve Pavlina calls thisfailing your way forward.
  
• [5] For example see The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
  
• [6] See Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity.
  
• [7] On building a new habit:
  1. Pick one small habit that you'd really like to change.
     
  2. Estimate what it costs you to keep this habit.
     
  3. Become aware of your thoughts that accompany this habit.
     
  4. Check your deeply held beliefs for validity.
     
  5. Create a picture of a new, better habit. Actually act it out.
     
  6. Remind yourself of how your new habit will nurture your vision and purpose.
     
  7. Interrupt the old habit with a shout, music, or a "No!"
     
  8. Reinforce your new behavior with new thoughts.
     
  9. Reward yourself for the new behavior.
     
  10. Get lots of support; ask for help from all your support sources.
  
  

Happy end-of-year, and a short collection of ideas, both serious and trivial

(A relatively short post, as I'm in recovery.)


Five things that are easier with crutches

I broke a leg bone in half a week ago[1], so I have some tips for you should you need crutches.

• Palm calluses useful for chandelier-swinging.
  
• Improved ability to re-slip on ice. Advantage: Already have crutches.
  
• Like some kinds of work (e.g., writing), slow and steady is often more productive than fast and reckless.
  
• Can use to point and press buttons.
  
• Hyper-developed right leg more impressive than pre-accident, and draws attention away from shrunken chicken-stick broken leg.
  
• Increases pan handling donations, esp. when combined with weary slouch.
  
• And finally, children just love to play with them!

Three things you didn't know about me

• One of my teeth is rotated 90 degrees from normal
  
• I was raised by a family of wild cats. While they treated me with love and like one of their own, I have some residual bad habits like using my tongue to clean myself, and an aversion to toilets - I prefer a litter box. Thank god for my portable litter box!
  
• Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, is my great-great uncle. Sadly, family scholarships were dropped before I graduated high school. (This one's actually true.)

How to actually take time off during your holiday

In Holiday Hacks: 12 Radical (and Slightly Naughty) Ways to Stay Productive the author suggests ways to work during time off. Here's what I said:

The real question is how you want to use your time "off" from work. Without a recharge, it's arguable that you've squandered an important opportunity to make your brain work better.

I recommend treating it like a vacation: Don't work! Like taking a vacation, prepare before it starts by getting caught up, verifying projects are in a happy state, and dealing with anything that you know will come up during the break, e.g., bills, party planning, buying gifts, etc.

Also, I want to acknowledge the people who have to work while many of us take breaks, e.g., people who work in hospitals and provide health care, fire and police workers, 24/7 customer support reps, etc. (Please add yourself in the comments - I know I'm skipping lots of other important work.)

You might also enjoy A few thoughts on vacations & GTD, used time management books, a few productivity tips, and heroes - both super *and* real.

(BTW, I've been on a superhero kick, and enjoyed reading Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel and Hero. Guilty pleasure, but while laid up I've not been up to reading one book, each day, one hour each.)


Places where our cat throws up (with solutions)

While I am concerned about genetically modified foods (apparently tomatoes are common), there's one creature I'd be perfectly happy seeing modified: felis domesticus. Why? Because the thing's digestive system ain't there yet. I love our 15 year old animal, but it pukes on everything. Examples:

• The floor - most common. Best choice: Wood floors. Worst choice: Carpet. Disadvantage: Usually found when stepped on in bare feet. Solution: Daily hosing-down of all walking surfaces with bleach/fluorohydric acid mixture.
  
• Beds - also common. Best choice: None. Advantage: Usually caught in the act, allowing prompt action. Solution: Sleep on floor.
  
• And finally, a new one: The vacuum cleaner! A twisty, somewhat self-referential target that gave me a chuckle. Left in place for holiday humor.

Finally, even if you don't celebrate the arbitrary point in our planet's orbit around the sun, I'd like to wish you a good new year. Thanks to you all for reading - I'm humbled and grateful.


References

• [1] Prognosis: 6-8 weeks to start walking on it, 3-4 months before it's healed and I'm mountain biking again. Thank goodness I have tele-coaching and local consulting during the next month or so! I'd be very unhappy leading one of my workshops sitting down. (I move around a lot, have many activities, and generally we have a lot of fun.)
  

Bloke redux, the 15 minute emergency office, and a short automation experiment

A little grab-bag post today.

First, yesterday in Western MA, USA, we had a beautiful, exciting, and hazardous ice storm. The latter I experienced first hand (first foot, actually) when I slipped on a near-frictionless driveway and broke my leg (fibular fracture). This is three months on the heels of a broken thumb, so I feel a bit like warmed-over poo. And yes, there's some self-judgment involved as well.

So this week some short, but hopefully high-value mini entries [1].

Moving offices

Because my office is upstairs, I needed to set up one on our first floor. (What - Matt stop working!?) With my dear wife's help, we got it done in 15 minutes. I think this is remarkable. All it took was moving down:

• Action system (already portable; and remember, it's only a calendar and three lists - Projects, Actions, and Waiting For)
  
• Laptop computer and headset
  
• Portable phone
  
• Stacking shelves (inbox, action support, working project folders [2])
  
• Desktop supplies (many in one place - my spinning organizer)
  
• Mail-related items (envelopes, stamps, and thank you cards)
  
• Printer
  
• Legal pad (supports my collection habit)

(For how much such a system simplifies moving the entire office, see Another GTD Plus - Moving offices made much easier.)

Windows text automation tools experiment

Over the last month I've been trying a few tools to automate my computer workflow on Windows [3]. In the productivity blogosphere, reviewing and using tools like text expansion and auto-completion is common, so I thought I'd give some a whirl. I looked at two categories: Text auto-completion (in which the program figures out the word/phrase you're typing and types it for you), and text expansion (in which you tell the program which word/phrase it should type). In other words, programs where it decides vs. when you decide. (Note: This separation is fuzzy - there's crossover between the two.)

The verdict: The latter class is much more useful and flexible, and

For auto-completion I tried these programs: LetMeType, IntelliComplete Professional, As-U-Type, and AutoTyping. My conclusion: Increasing typing speed would provide more benefit, due to completion not being 100% (which is probably impossible). Put another way, it was slower cycling through completions searching for the correct one. That said, of the ones I tried, LetMeType was the most usable.

(Side note: Interestingly, I had trouble finding one that was under active development. Makes me think either a) it's a dead end, or b) no one's created a great tool yet. Opportunity?)


For text expansion I looked researched a bunch of them [4], and ended up trying AutoHotkey first. It is free, powerful, under active development, and has a supportive user community. My conclusion: It's pretty darn neat, passed the "I'll keep using it" test, and was good enough to not try any others. And its scripting library can do about anything. I haven't integrated it deeply with Firefox yet, but I hope it will replace CoScripter (I like tool consolidation if possible). It supports UI macros as well (click here, etc.) There's a nice introduction at lifehacker: Hack Attack: Knock down repetitive email with AutoHotKey.

Note that I used the geeky edit-a-text-file approach, and did find the syntax to be a bit confusing at first. I believe there's a graphical front end, though. If you want a friendlier UI, definitely check out ActiveWords - it is pretty, but still has a large scripting library.


Mac users may want to check out this Spell Catcher vs. TextExpander vs. Typinator vs. TypeIt4Me, etc..


So tell me: What's your experience around this been? Got a favorite you can't live with? Do tell!


Resources

• [1] Yes, I realize that most blogs are only entries like this. I look at it a competitive advantage - more depth, but fewer posts.
  
• [2] I am very careful about recommending this to clients. Before working with me, most people have tried some kind of system for managing working files - either stacked on surfaces or sitting upright in step folder stands. The main problem with these is using them as action reminders. Why? Because when they have 10 minutes, it takes far to long to find the next action. Just determining the action from one folder could take 10 minutes! Instead, the best practice is to have a centralized action list from all projects. This frees up folders to do what they're meant to: hold project-related materials. This changes the nature of having folders on desks from action reminders to support - it's merely a convenience to save a few seconds looking through their (A-Z!) filing drawers.
  
• [3] I would *love* to switch to a Mac - Windows' instability and inefficiency (and this is on XP, not Vista) drives me nuts. What's holding me back? One-button laptops, and PowerPoint and Quicken compatibility. I realize the latter can be solved by virtualizing Windows, but that seems like missing the point. I'm open to convincing, though...
  
• [4] The top candidates seemed to be ActiveWords, AutoHotkey, and Texter, but there are many other worthies as well.
  

A nice surprise: A short email interview with UK productivity expert Nicholas Bate

One of the great things about my series of interviews with top productivity consultants [1] (along with lots of new ideas) is discovering thinkers I've not previously heard of. I'm pleased to share a short email interview with Nicholas Bate (site, blog), who came to my attention when I received a surprise box of books and playing cards [2] from London, including Being the Best: The A-Z of Personal Success, JfDI! Just Do It: The Definitive Guide to Realising Your Dreams, and Get a Life: Setting your 'Life Compass' for Success.

For a taste of his thinking, check out his free ebooks (I found the first, Boost Your Productivity, stimulating):

• Boost Your Productivity
  
• Life Balance
  
• Rainmaker
  
• The Rules of Life

Two things about Nicholas: First, his knowledge seems both deep and wide, something I admire. Second, his blog is in the category of brief, frequent, and high-value, something I also admire. (I'm regularly tempted to switch to that approach to free up time for other projects. Not yet, though.) His post How to Think Like Albert Einstein is one of the funniest and shortest ones I've come across in a while, with You were there: invention of the light bulb, 125 years ago.. running a close second. :-)

Here's another characteristic post, this one on productivity: 6 Ways to be More on Top of Things:

1. Have a definitive list of what 'things' are: the master list.
   
2. Review that list once per day. (Re-) prioritise.
   
3. Prioritise by pay-off. Not who's shouting, what's easy nor what's urgent.
   
4. Say no to low value tasks otherwise you say no to high value stuff (such as your Life).
   
5. Take time out every day to think. It's the unique distinction of humans.
   
6. Regularly scan the diary for what is coming up.

I'm continuing to line up interviews, including some big names you'll definitely know. Now on to Nicholas's interview.

How did you get your start?

I just started. I had no guaranteed clients, but I did know this was something I really wanted to do. If you have a strong passion within you to do something, I encourage you to do it. It may not be easy, but it will work out eventually. Passion leads to ability. Ability leads to competence. And people want and will pay for competence.

What were the biggest factors in your success?

Becoming special. Identify a few things you are really, really good at and then become awesome at those. Don’t try and do everything. Don’t be too concerned about your competitors and be careful about responding to the customer; lead the customer!

How did you build your clientele?

I really believe there is only one way: word of mouth. You can accelerate that of course in many ways, but essentially you must have a product which people tell others about with sufficient enthusiasm that they wish to buy it.

How do you to ensure (as much as possible) that clients "get it," i.e., that it sticks?

Two main approaches: on seminars and in my books I do a lot of "pattern-breaking." Secondly I help maintain momentum through my blog.

What's your market focus/niche?

Business/commercial. Work/life balance. Productivity.

How do you summarize your method, and how did you develop it?

A concept called "personal compass." The metaphor being of course to decide your direction, etc. Most productivity methods I believe are too tactical; without a big enough why, people cannot keep their motivation. I encourage people to discover and set their compass; that then keeps them motivated.

How do you stay on top of the field (reading, tools, assistants, outsourcing)?

I read books and increasingly blogs. I used to go on workshops, and have attended those of the many thought leaders I respect.

How did your books come about? What's your muse?

The desire to capture my teachings and ideas so that students who wished could study them in more detail.

What were your biggest influences in developing your method?

Practicing managers who were effective: I noticed what they actual did, a process known as modeling excellence [3].

Who were your mentors?

None really. I simply read anything and attended anything of those I admired/respected.

What products and services do you sell?

Workshops and keynotes.

How do you apply the 80/20 principle to your practice?

I attempt to do a very few things astonishingly well.

How did you decide pricing? Is it fixed, or more like Value-Based Fees?

Value-based. This is important as you cannot double the time you have but you can double the value you offer.

What role did networking play, and how do you stay on top?

A small part for me.

What strategic partnerships did you form?

None so far.

How do you delight and surprise your clients?

I work at a higher standard than they ever expect!

Who are your competitors/peers?

Everybody yet nobody!



Update: For Pascal - here's a little blurb from Nicholas:

After a career in sales and marketing in the IT industry, culminating in leading sector marketing for Research Machines, Oxford, UK Nicholas launched Strategic Edge. His clients include Avanade, Barclays, BBC, BG Group, Lilly, Marks & Spencer, Microsoft, MSN amongst others.

Nicholas carried out research in the field of Molecular Biophysics at Magdalen College, Oxford University and is an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI (levels 1 and 2) accredited and a qualified (PGCE) teacher. As well as instigating the Strategic Edge research programme, he has spent time studying with many of the recognised practitioners in the fields of business and personal development.


References

• [1] Previous interviewees (tagged interviews) include Sally McGhee, Chris Crouch, Laura Stack and Mark Forster.
  
• [2]How can I resist someone who uses playing cards for promotion and education? I'm actively working on a set of Personal Productivity Playing Cards, starting with a recent LinkedIn question (How do I go about producing custom educational playing cards?).
  
• [3] Modeling Excellence