Tag: Quality

10 Ways To Be More Productive Without Burning Out

by Bright Osadiaye, posted in Health & Well-Being, Improve Academy, Leadership, Management, Personal Development, Workplace Learning
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

If you want to enjoy your work, you must take charge of your work. Do not take more than you can do. Do not try to impress other people.

You are not working to impress anybody. You are working to learn how to work.

If you are not enjoying your work anymore, if you are feeling tired, ‘Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with the time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.’

‘Our brains work better when we’re not rushing.’

‘Focusing intensely on a small number of tasks, waiting to finish each before bringing on something new, is objectively a much better way to use our brains to produce valuable output.’

‘If you fall behind on a project, update your estimate and inform the person who originally sent you the work about the delay.’

‘Be clear about what’s going on, and deliver on your promises, even if these promises have to change. Never let a project just drop through the cracks and hope it will be forgotten.’

‘Don’t rush your must important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.’

‘Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term.’

‘If you want more control over your schedule, you need something to offer in return. More often than not, your best source of leverage will be your own abilities.’

‘Obsessing over quality isn’t just about being better at your job. It’s instead a secret weapon of sorts for those interested in a slower approach to productivity.’

‘Quality matters, but if it becomes everything, you may never finish.’

Source:

Cal Newport (2024). Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Robert G. Cooper On Creating Value Through Innovation

by Bright Osadiaye, posted in Improve Academy, Innovation Management, Leadership, Management, Workplace Learning

‘The best innovators have four times the sales from new products and more than double the success rate as the worst performers. But why the huge differences?’

‘A superior and differentiated product– one that delivers unique benefits and superior value to the customer- is the number one driver of success and new product profitability.’

‘Building in the voice of the customer is one of the strongest drivers of new-product profitability, and also of time efficiency. But the great majority of companies miss the mark here- with insufficient VoC and no fact-based customer insights.’

‘People don’t know what they’re looking for until they see it or experience it. So get something in front of the customer or user fast- and keep repeating these tests all the way through to formal product testing or field trials. Multiple iterations and product validations- spirals development- are essential when facing fluid markets with customers that are uncertain about their needs.’

‘Manage risk by breaking the process into increments. When the uncertainties and unknowns are high, keep the spending low.’

‘If you want speed to market, then focus– resource your projects properly.’

‘Of the five most important drivers of businesses’ new-product performance, idea management has the strongest impact.’

‘Customer visit teams are valuable for gaining real insights into the customer’s world: the ability to identify and focus on customer problems and unspoken needs, a vital source of product ideas.’

‘Innovative customers are quite likely to have the industry’s next new product, and this lead-user method is one way to uncover what it is.’

‘Your own employees are excellent potential sources of new-product ideas. Yet all too often, internally generated ideas are either mundane or not acted upon. But there are ways to change that.’

‘How does one design a system that integrates many activities and multifunctional inputs and fosters a cross-functional team approach?’

Source:

Robert G. Cooper (2017). Winning at New Products: Creating Value Through Innovation