Combining Deming and Lean Principles to Improve a Marketing System
Combining Deming and Lean Principles to Improve a Marketing System by Michael Hoffman Recently, our marketing system faced a challenge when one of our interns accidentally sent over a thousand emails to customers when he only intended to send one. This mistake could have resulted in significant damage to our company’s reputation and customer trust. However, […]
Mastering Productivity: How Prioritizing Important Emails Over Quantity Can Actually Boost Your Efficiency
Mastering Productivity: How Prioritizing Important Emails Over Quantity Can Actually Boost Your Efficiency by Michael Hoffman It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that being productive means getting a lot of email done. Many of us spend hours every day responding to emails, sorting through our inbox, and sending out quick replies just […]
You Have Been Suspended As Of Today’s Date
You Have Been Suspended As Of Today’s Date by Michael Hoffman Imagine receiving an email from the board of directors or from your boss, telling you that you have been suspended and that the suspension is likely to take weeks before the investigation (investigation!?) has been completed. This happened to a client of mine, who, […]
Sending The Snow
Sending the snow by Michael Hoffman I can imagine being on the other end of being asked to send in the “snow” – your empty inbox at the end of the day with 0 to prioritize, 0 to plan and 0 Today. On first glance, this request may seem a bit over the top. I get […]
Looks can be deceiving, so we stick to tried and true Pareto.
Looks Can Be Deceiving, So We Stick To Tried and True Pareto by Michael Hoffman My team (steeped in the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle) came to me with this; Trello’s (new?) way of adding priorities to cards – and I have to say it looks very cool. Unfortunately, this time Trello got it wrong. Looks can be deceiving. Ok Trello fans, before you […]
A Simple Rule to Run Effective Meetings
A Simple Rule to Run Effective Meetings by Michael Hoffman Ask your team to identify their biggest productivity killer and inevitably two issues will rise to the top of the list: managing their inboxes and their useless meeting schedules. I’ll tackle the former in a future post. For now, I’d like to focus on increasing the […]
Why Fix It If People Don’t Know Email Should Be Prioritized
Why Fix It If People Don’t Know Email Should Be Prioritized I just read an article by a very smart man, Nathan Zeldes, who believes that we need a benchmark for email classifier performance. In other words, some way of gaging how well auto-prioritization Maybe. Maybe not. It seems that most email apps these days […]
