Do you deserve your own aisle?

When you walk into a typical supermarket, you'll notice signs at the end of each aisle that give you an idea what's on the aisle. Obviously, it's not practical to include everything the aisle contains on these signs, so they narrow it down to the most popular or in-demand items.

In other words, these signs represent the most sought after categories of items in the supermarket. These tend to be the "staples of life" that are frequently listed on most people's grocery shopping lists. In fact, many of these items (such as bread, milk, eggs and, in my case, coffee) are important enough that you may go to the supermarket solely to get one of these important items.

Take inventory

With that in mind, think about your skills - the "things you're known for." How many of your best skills are important enough that people regularly seek you out to leverage those abilities?

If one of the skills you're good at is a "staple skill" you are lucky because you will probably be sought out frequently. For example, people may seek you out for your planning & organizing skills. You may even become the "go to" person for that skill in your organization - in essence, you'll have a place on the sign at the beginning of the aisle.

But if your best skills are very specialized, you may not show up on people's shopping lists very often - or they may not know you "sell" that particular skill. Consequently, they will walk past your aisle in the skills supermarket without ever realizing you were there.

Drive demand

To continue the supermarket analogy, there are a lots of ways to drive the kind of awareness that will result in people seeking you out. Here are some examples, along with some things to think about in each area:

• Advertising / Promotion - How can you let people know (inside your organization or beyond) what you have to offer?
  
  • You can get the word out through blogging, advertising, contributed articles, and things like that.
  • Try to think about who would be a receptive "customer" audience for your skills and strategize about the best way to reach that audience.
  • Remember that the key to successful advertising is consistent impressions over time- be clear, concise, and persistent.
• Word of mouth (satisfied customers)
  
  • This is perhaps the most powerful way to drive brand awareness. People look to others' experiences and recommendations when making decisions and trying to solve a problem. Your goal is to get people to recommend you when someone they know is looking for something you're good at.
  • The problem is that you can't get word of mouth until people have experienced the value you provide - which brings us to...
• Free samples
  
• If you're just getting started in promoting your personal brand, you might consider offering your services to others for no cost - in exchange for a testimonial, recommendation, or referral. If you create a few enthusiastic, satisfied customers who will provide a reference for you, all the rest of your brand building will get easier.

OK, so I might be stretching the metaphor just a bit with this post, but my point is this:

You may have tons of value to offer to others, but if people don't know about your abilities or don't know where to find you, your contributions will be limited.

It's up to you to get the word out and drive demand for your skills. Keep at it, and you just may end up with your own sign at the end of the aisle.

Picture credit: "Tea, only barely" by Yusuke Toyoda

[Review] The Myth of Multitasking

About 20 years ago, I read my first "management fable" style of book. It was the classic Ken Blanchard book, "The One Minute Manager." I wasn't 'wowed' by the book, but I really liked the fable-style presentation. Since then, I've really enjoyed the fable style of business books, and quite a few management fables have made a lasting impression on me (you can see some of them in the "Related items" listing at the end of this review)."Remember this rule: the more responsibility you have, the more hats you wear, the more likely you are to become inefficient."

I'm happy to say that I've just read another book that's going to be a lasting part of my memory: it's Dave Crenshaw's, "The Myth of Multitasking (How 'Doing It All' Gets Nothing Done)".

You're fooling yourself

The core principle of this book really resonated with me: you're fooling yourself when you try to "multitask" activities that require your focus and attention, as this approach introduces inefficiencies that cost you more (both in terms of time and quality) than you realize.

Crenshaw presents a tale of Helen Whitman, a chaotic, frustrated business leader who is working very hard but getting burned out because her business's results are flatlining. Helen's frenetic work style has rubbed off on the rest of the business, creating lots of activity but yielding very little in terms of results.

The coach quickly determines that Helen's problem is her work style (which she thinks of as multitasking) is preventing her from giving adequate attention to important tasks, her family, and her team. The coach explains that multitasking is a myth -- a 'damned lie' to be precise -- and she isn't doing multiple things at once. What she is actually doing is rapidly shifting from one task to another. In the book, this approach is called "switchtasking," and there is a great exercise in the book to show the inefficiency of switchtasking.

What about the times when you feel you can successfully do two things at once? The coach makes a distinction between switchtasking and "background tasking" such as driving while talking on the phone, but he asserts that even with background tasking there is a cost.

What's it costing you?

Using some simple but illuminating exercises, the coach illustrates just how inefficient switchtasking really is and then takes Helen through a process to illustrate just how much this inefficiency is costing in terms of productivity. Through these activities, Helen realizes her sense of time is very distorted and she also becomes painfully aware that her efforts to give people and multiple tasks her attention all at once is creating some extreme dysfunction in her relationships with her family and employees.

Worse, Helen realizes that her bad habits are rubbing off on her team, and trickling down to impact their relationships with customers. Not good. But, as the saying goes, the first step is to admit you have a problem and ask for help -- and Helen does just that.

The rest of the book takes us through the changes (small and large) that Helen makes in her working style which help her defend her time, and strengthen others' trust in her by demonstrating that she is worthy of their trust.

Don't worry - you, too, can have a happy ending

OK, you're probably not surprised that the book has a happy ending, but you may be pleasantly surprised at some of the practical methods it includes to help you gain control of your time, improve your results and achieve a better quality of life.

To augment the story, Crenshaw includes a meaty set of worksheets and exercises in the appendix to help you replicate the same kind of personal discovery and analysis that Helen goes through in the book. It's up to you to apply what you learn, but I found it very helpful to have the tools at hand along with the instructions for how to use them.

This book is a quick and easy read -- the fable portion is about 100 pages long -- but it packs a lot of learning in a short space. I recommend it for anyone who wants to be more productive, but I particularly recommend it for anyone who believes they are a good multitasker. Is that you? If so - remember, it's not called "The Myth of Multitasking" for nothing...

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Related items

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
  
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
  
• The Offsite
  
• The Goal: A Process of Continuous Improvement

Amazon Prime is awesome

I mention Amazon Prime in my posts from time to time, and was a very early member of this special program from Amazon. I got a question about it this week: "So just what is Amazon Prime, and why do you like it so much?"

Free Two-Day shipping (and cheap Overnight shipping when you really need it)

Amazon Prime is a program that allows you to pay an annual membership fee to get unlimited free Two-Day Shipping on millions of eligible items. It's easy to tell which items are elegible by looking for the recognizable "Prime" logo, which you can see in the search results example here which I just grabbed as I watch the Olympics this fine Saturday evening:

I order things this way all the time, and you don't have to worry about the normal rules of "Super Saver Shipping" - you get things in 2 business days automatically. When I'm in a particular hurry (sometimes I need to get things asap so I can receive them before a trip, for example) I can pay an extra $3.99 to upgrade to Overnight Shipping - that is way cool.

By the way - with the high price of gas, I have found myself buying more things through Amazon Prime than ever - it saves driving all over the place looking for what I want. And I know I'll get what I ordered a couple of days, which is usually fast enough.

Pass it around

There are a couple of ways you can share this special shipping benefit with other people:

1. Anything "Prime" item qualifies - whether you ship it to yourself or someone else. I have used this to great benefit during the last two Christmas seasons. It gives me quite a few extra shopping days with no extra fees for expedited shipping.
   
2. You can share your benefits with up to 4 other people living in your household.

It's a great value - and you can try it for free

Amazon Prime costs $79 per year (averaging to a bit more than 6 bucks a month), and I know it saves me much more than that every year. Not sure if it's for you? Give it a try - they'll let you take a test drive for 30 days - just click here if you want to take an Amazon Prime free trial.