Module 1

Begin by knowing yourself – how your personality affects your performance

“Getting things done in any organisation” is the subtitle of “This Stuff Really Works”. The first key to this is knowing yourself. The things you need to do to become more effective could be very different from the things someone else needs to do.

That’s because we all have different personalities, which means we all have different strengths. And sadly therefore, different areas where we could develop. It’s just the way it is.

For example, maybe you think strategically, like to be involved in conversations, find decision-taking to be a highly logical process, and love a sense of order and control. Great!

Maybe, on the other hand, you like to get into the detail and assess risk, to work on your own, to weigh the human factor in decision-taking, and like to leave things open and flexible.

Also great!

Or you could be some combination of these.

Whatever your combination, you will have some strengths, and some development areas. Knowing these, and equally importantly, having some sense of what your colleagues’ preferences are, can help you be more effective in working with them. And also give you some pointers for personal growth.

This module introduces you to a simple model for thinking about all of this and provides a foundation for the other modules in this programme.

Module 2

Work-life balance and time management

Knowing who we are is the foundation, but if we can’t organise ourselves and our priorities, then it can all be for nothing.

Again, depending on your personality, you might find this easy. But very many do not. And for pretty much everybody, there are times when this all goes awry, and we need to check back and rethink how we spend our time.

Where, for example, do holidays, family, leisure, and friends feature in your diary. First? Or last?

Is there any room for “me time”?

And in the workplace, what criteria do you use for deciding how to allocate your precious time? And in reality how much control do you have over this, and how much are all your decisions around time allocation being taken by someone else? Or worse, are you in effect abdicating control to those around you?

Or maybe your desire for control, or to serve, means that you are the one who ends up doing everything? Is that really for the greater good, or even your good?

This module introduces some simple tools for bringing some order to all of this, and for regaining (or finding for the first time) a sense of “My time is a precious resource, and I am confident I am using it as well as I can”. Four thousand weeks is apparently an average life span – let’s not waste them!

Module 3

Boundaries - being clear on who is doing what

So by now you know who you are, and perhaps have a better sense of who your colleagues are and how best to work with them.

And you’ve got your life organised, and your work diary under control, with time being allocated to the key areas both personally and professionally.

Everything would be fine, except for the nuisance of having to work with others to get things done. Which brings us to the problem of getting organised. And here we introduce a key rule.

“80% of the time, if you have a behavioural problem in an organisation, it’s because you have either poor processes or poor structures. Or both”.

It’s hard to overstate this rule, and how often it goes unrecognised.

It just seems so much easier to blame other people for our collective inefficiency. We point fingers, say “He/she is impossible to work with”, wander into each other’s areas of responsibility (consciously or unconsciously) and generally get into fights and arguments. Not usually physically, but just occasionally…

This module introduces a very simple model for avoiding all of this.

For getting our boundaries clear with each other. For clarifying who is responsible for what, and what our different roles are in different areas of our work together.

It offers the possibility of not only defusing all of that irritation and worse, but also for actually being collectively more productive.

Module 4

Influence – the subtle arts of persuasion

There comes a point in organisational life when we need to persuade people outside our control to do something. And the more senior we become, the more this matters, until it becomes a major part of our roles.

There are two basic approaches. Logic. And charm!

Logic works up to a point, but without interpersonal skills (also known as charm) it won’t work at more senior levels.

Likewise with charm. Very helpful at more junior levels, but not likely to win over those hard-nosed individuals on the Board.

This module introduces a three-part model for being an effective influencer, right up to the most senior levels. The great influencers know how to use all three elements, and also know where they tend to be strong and where they need to be attentive to their potential pitfalls.

It also covers topics such as Power (like it or not, a fact of life in organisations, and everyone has some form of it) and Conflict (is the conflict really about what it appears to be about, or is something else going on?).

This module shares the keys to having greater influence in our workplaces. And if you truly want to make a difference, then this is a key module for you.

Module 5

The Culture of an Organisation – how things work around here

Not all organisation cultures are the same. That much is obvious.

But even within an organisation, the culture is rarely the same throughout. In international organisations, this again is obvious.

But how about sales, marketing, product development, finance, HR, IT? All the same? Probably not.

Once again, understanding this is key to getting things done. To being influential. To making a difference.

Some cultures are very structured, very autocratic. Some are very centred around one individual. Others are almost structure-free (think academia). And some are essentially collaborative.

This module introduces a simple model for understanding the culture of the organisation (or part of the organisation) that you’re in, and for thinking about the culture of the department, client, supplier or partner that you are trying to work with.

Another key module therefore in helping you to adapt your approach to getting things done, not just to the personalities that you’re working with, but also to the cultures you’re working with.

Module 6

Are you clear what you are trying to do?

So having come this far, you will understand more of who you are, how best to use your time, how to pull together clear structures and processes, and how to be influential in multiple settings.

So far so good. But what if you’re not clear on what it is you are actually trying to do?

This last module is a very brief guide to business strategy.

Many books have been written on this, and many business schools run great programmes on the subject. But here we are trying to cover business strategy in a 20 minutes module and a short chapter in a book.

Can it be done? Well yes, because the essence of business strategy is to be clear on three key questions, which this module examines.

Getting clarity on these three questions, of course, is no guarantor of success. Great execution and appropriate flexibility will still be essential.

But failure to have clarity on these three questions, and to keep asking them as you go along, is pretty much a guarantor of failure.

If you’ve taken the learning from the first five modules, you have a very good chance of hitting any target you set yourself. Probably a good idea then, before getting too far down the track, to be sure that the target is the right one!

That’s what this final module is about.

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