Lead From Here

Lead From Here

By Lead From HereBusinessManagement
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Lead From Here episodes

  • Collecting Data Manually VS Automatically | Lead From Here #110

    In previous videos we have talked about the importance of using data to Lead. Whether that is to make the case for more resources, for someone to get promoted/fired or to make a case for a pivot in strategy...Data is the key to unlocking the things you need.

    What I see happen a lot with Leaders, is they decide to start creating metrics or monitoring performance and the first thing they think of is a manual data entry process. You setup a google spreadsheet and ask everyone to fill it out with the information you need from them. Then you do your magic. While fast and easy, it comes with some major risks, like data entered inaccurately, incomplete data, missing data and worse, it can cause burnout in your teams.
    Finding a way to use the tools they already use on a daily basis, via an API or manual exports (on your part) is a much more stable, reliable and consistent manner. You know the system as is good as the source of truth AND your people don't have to waste their time doing data entry and can focus on the valuable skill you hired them for in the first place.
    If you have to use manual data entry, remember to keep the data concise, document steps thoroughly AND train people over and over.
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #dataentry #manualdata #automaticdata #leadwithdata #data

    8 min
  • Rest & Recovery Are Important Practices | Lead From Here #109

    Always remember to push yourself, but never forget to take care of yourself. The best way to do that is to make sure that you take time to rest and recover. These two things aren't talked about enough in today's culture (although it's getting better), they are an afterthought more often than not.


    I am here today to remind you, that you can't pour from an empty bucket. I heard that on the Diary of a CEO Podcast and I never forgot it. So take time to take care of yourself.


    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!

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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #rest #recovery #relaxation #relax #recover #randr

    2 min
  • Your Life, Career & Success Are Not a Straight Line | Lead From Here #108

    After 7 episodes in a row of Time Management and talking through all the ways to build the perfect plan and schedule, all while being super effective. The reality is, that these are all incredible things to strive for and I would highly recommend pushing yourself to embrace these things as often as possible...but you also have to be realistic with what you can handle in a given day or week.

    Too often I get emails from people telling me that they are frustrated by their lack of momentum, motivation and not being able to reach for their dreams. While all the tools we talked about over the last couple weeks are important and powerful, it's not the silver bullet to unlimited motivation, energy and productivity. It's one piece of the puzzle.
    It's important for you to understand your mind, your body and your environment. The same people complaining about their lack of motivation and ability to stick with it...also happen to mention that they are dealing with the loss of a loved one or their kid is in the hospital. Life isn't a straight line, there are hills and valleys, it's important for you to realize where you are in the moment and adjust expectations accordingly.
    The popular mantra "Give 110% every single day" is often repeated and more often misunderstood. You may wake up feeling 100% and strive for 110% on that day. But what about the days you wake up feeling 30%...110% of 30% is like 33%. You aren't going to find 80%, you focus on what you do have for that day. Consistency is more important than sporadic spurts of high throughput.
    Ultimately, you have to take care of yourself and understand what you need as an individual. If you are in a valley, don't beat yourself up, focus on what you can do to shorten your time in that valley. Workout, take time off, rest, go out in nature, anything! Whatever helps you and works to get your mind at ease and back to work in a healthy manner. Mine is manual labor, there is nothing that reminds me of how good I have it like manual labor.
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #110% #life #walkthepath #rollercoasteroflife #upsandowns

    6 min
  • How I Manage My Time as a Leader | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 7 | Lead From Here #107

    Now that we have covered the top 5 time management techniques, I wanted to wrap up this series by talking you through how I manage my own time on a daily basis. This will be as detailed as I can make it without giving away information I am not allowed to.

    As I worked my way through those 5 time management techniques, I found that there were bits and pieces of each that I thought were very useful. I enjoyed the quick hit sessions of focus from pomodoro for my daily tasks that were a bit more tedious or admin-ish. I liked the ability to block large chunks of time to do deeper work that came with Time Blocking. Those two systems come together to make my time management system tick.
    What about the other three techniques? Currently, my focus can be all over the map, I have a full time job a Director, Software Engineering, I am the Host of this Podcast, I help run a Memorial Tournament for my Brother every year, and I have a host of passion projects a various stages of the business lifecycle that I try to give focus to every week. Those come together to build my philosophy of organizing, planning and executing on my work across all of those worlds to avoid them colliding. The Time Management Matrix is used to filter all incoming tasks and prioritize them, while Parkinson's Law and the Pareto Principle come together to help me understand how to do balance and plan the urgent and important work across all my responsibilities.
    This all culminates in my calendar and task list, which I am still trying to find the right tool for. I was using Google Calendar and Todist for a very long time. Recently, I have been trying out Motion and Google Calendar, with which I have found some success.
    My system is far from finalized or perfect, but it's constantly evolving and I am trying to find efficiencies and ways to take the manual work out of planning. You are welcome to try my way of planning and organizing, but I challenge you to try and find what works for your workload and mindset.
    Let me know what works for you. I am excited to see what everyone else is doing as I am always trying to learn more in this space!
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #dayinthelife #timemanagement #timemanagementsystem #time #leadertime

    9 min
  • The Pareto Principle | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 6 | Lead From Here #106

    The last concept we are going to cover is the Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule). I don't remember when I first heard about it, but I do remember not quiet understanding the rule the first time I did. After listening to Ali Abdaal (https://www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal) and Jim Kwik (https://www.youtube.com/@JimKwik) talk about it more in-depth, I started to get a better understanding of it and how to put it into practice.

    Essentially, the 80/20 rule states that 20% of the work with produce 80% of the output and to get the remaining 20% of the output, it would take 80% more effort. Which is where I was initially confused, I consider myself very driven and so the idea of not going 100% didn't quiet add up for me. The reality is that the goal is not to minimize the amount of effort, but to focus your effort on a specific portion of work to create a bigger impact. You still have to put 100% of effort into that 20% of focus to achieve 80% of results.
    Since that confusion and new clarity, I have been able to find ways to utilize this in my daily life as a leader, helping myself and my teams communicate and strategically attack multiple priorities. The goal isn't to ignore the details of the last 20%, it's to prioritize them correctly to still get completed while also creating tremendous impact in other areas.
    This principle isn't an exact science, but it is incredibly useful to breakdown larger pieces of work or to problem solve big issues in your business. The point is to recognize that most things in life are not distributed evenly, so make decisions on allocating time, resources and efforts based on that.
    Let me know how you feel about the Pareto Principle and how it works out for you!
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #paretoprinciple #8020rule #pareto #8020 #timemanagement #time #leadertime

    6 min
  • Parkinson's Law | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 5 | Lead From Here #105

    I came across Parkinson's Law fairly recently as I was diving into how to manage my own time on bigger picture passion projects for myself. I was finding myself continually putting off things that I was super passionate about. As I was exploring what might be happening or how I might be unintentionally sabotaging myself, I came across Parkinson's Law from a video by Ali Abdaal his channel is (https://www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal) .

    The Core Philosophy of Parkinson's Law is that time will expand to fill the time allotted for it's completion. In other words, people's pace will adjust to the time they have given themselves or been given to complete it. Some of the ways to overcome Parkinson's Law are to plan your work strategically, set self-imposed deadlines, track your time or challenge yourself.
    The quote "People tend to overestimate what they can get done in a day, but drastically underestimate what they can get done in a year" was stuck in my head, so I really latched onto the "challenge yourself" method to overcoming. I think this is the best, lowest touch method of all of them, but that is just me. The downside to this is, I tend to be HIGHLY unrealistic or optimistic at times, which put me in situations where I was never going to win.
    In a healthy environment, that is ok most of the time, but in an unhealthy environment, like the one I had created for myself, it weighed me down instead of lifting me up and feeling like a challenge. It's tough to find the balance, but if you can, this method can be very beneficial and really test the beliefs you have about what can be accomplished.
    I still use this on a regular basis, but I use it more as a thought exercise about work I am doing and if I am being too cautious with timelines. I would love to hear how this works for you! Let me know!
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #parkinsonslaw #timemanagement #time #leadertime

    8 min
  • The Time Management Matrix | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 4 | Lead From Here #104

    The Time Management Matrix (AKA Eisenhower Matrix) is a time management method that uses a 4 quadrant matrix to help you understand the importance and urgency of a task. I remember reading about Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix for the first time and thinking to myself, this doesn't make any sense to me.

    The Time Management Matrix (TMM) states that all tasks can be categorized based on urgency and importance. Urgency refers to tasks that require immediate attention, while importance focuses on tasks that align with our goals and values.
    You do this by creating a 4 quadrant matrix with urgency across the top as an x-asis, urgent first, not urgent as the second quadrant up top. Then importance down the side as the y-axis, with important and not important being on the bottom quadrant. That creates a breakdown that looks like:
    - Urgent & Important tasks/projects to be completed immediately
    - Not Urgent & Important tasks/projects to be scheduled on your calendar
    - Urgent & Unimportant tasks/projects to be delegated to someone else
    - Not Urgent & Unimportant tasks/projects to be deleted
    Thankfully, when I started getting into the heat of leadership and balancing a lot of things, prioritization of my work, my teams work and my department/business needs, I was able to remember this system. TMM is very powerful for someone that has a lot of different things coming at them, I didn't see the strength of it as someone just writing code, but as a leader it was an easy repeatable way to stay on top of the things that were constantly evolving/changing/new.
    This by itself isn't enough for me, but it's is VERY powerful...if you can't tell, my end state will be a mixture of a few. :)
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    Chasing Pain as a Leader: https://youtu.be/namfrQ8bbNE
    Sign up for our newsletter: https://leadfromhere.co/lead-from-here-monthly-newsletter/
    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #timemanagementmatrix #eisenhowermatrix #tmm #timemanagement #time #leadertime

    6 min
  • Time Blocking | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 3 | Lead From Here #103

    Time Blocking is the next step in my Time Management/Productivity Journey and while I don't remember specifically where I first heard about it, it's hard not to find great content about it on YouTube.

    After experimenting with Pomodoro, I knew I wanted to create very specific windows of time to do focused work. I just didn't know how I could do this effectively. At this point, I was a full time developer for a marketing agency and had multiple side clients across the country. I was an absolute unorganized mess.
    Time Blocking involves dividing your day into blocks of time. With each block being dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks, and you can't deviate beyond your scheduled block. Instead of a to-do list with a start and no end, you create a very defined schedule of everything you plan to get done that day.
    This method of time management works very well for me, but it's not enough by itself. It DOES create windows of focused time to perform a very specific task, which worked fantastically when I just had a list of development tasks I had to do...but it is WAY too concrete for a day once I became a leader. The volatility in a day seemed to mess up my plans every time.
    Once I became a leader, I tried messing around with it and I got it close to workable by make sure that I created more "optional time". So I would schedule about 55%-65% of my day and leave enough whitespace to pivot things around when needed. This got me closer to where I was trying to go, but not all the way.
    Again, don't let my experience sway you, try it for yourself and let me know what you think!
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #timeblocking #timemanagement #time #leadertime

    7 min
  • Pomodoro Technique | Essential Time Management Toolkit - Part 2 | Lead From Here #102

    The Pomodoro Technique was my first foray into the Time Management/Productivity space. I remember watching it on Thomas Frank's Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Thomasfrank) many, many years ago.

    The concept seemed so simple, I knew it had to be effective and as someone who was struggling to get momentum built up in my career, it felt like a potential quick win. With that, I dove head first into it and converted my to-do list and schedule to pomodoros.
    A pomodoro is a tomato. Wait, what does that have to do with time management. Nothing really, but Francesco Cirillo who developed this technique named it after the little tomato style kitchen timer he used for a 25 minute timer. In the pure pomodoro technique as Francesco designed it, a Pomodoro is a 25 minute time of hyper focus on a specific task, followed by a 5 minute break. After you had done 4 pomodoro, then you take a 15-30 minute break.
    For the first couple of weeks, I loved it. I was getting things done, it wasn't difficult to manage and overall, I was very happy. However towards the end of the 3rd week, I started knocking out all the mundane stuff and started getting into deeper, more complex work. At that point, I began to get frustrated when I would start to get into a flow of a complex bit of code and have to take a 5 minute break.
    Over the next few weeks, I tried to tweak the timing and the breaks to see if I could make it work. It was better, but I was still struggling to get into the "flow state". Overall, it's powerful for non-deep work, but the concept fell apart for me outside of that.
    Don't let me sway your opinion. Give it a shot! Everyones brain's work different, so what doesn't work for me, might work for you. Let me know how it goes!
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #pomodoro #pomodorotechnique #timemanagement #time #leadertime

    6 min
  • Essential Time Management Toolkit for Leaders - Part 1 | Lead From Here #101

    Time Management is a core fundamental of being an effective person, employee and most especially a leader. Leaders have a unique position in the company where they have to balance a lot of different things from their people to the business all the way to the customers. Effectively managing your time around that is the difference between a good leader and a great leader.

    Time management is an interesting topic, because people will swear for and against certain techniques. There is a ton of data about time management, but the three stats that impact me the most are as follows. The first is the typical employee is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes per workday and the second ties very directly into the other 5 hours (if you are talking an 8 hour workday) and that is 90% of employees check business messaging tools like Slack or Teams for up to 5 hours daily. That is a lot of time distracted by messaging apps. The last one is around multitasking, which says multitasking costs a person 6 hours of productivity each week. That is 3 business days per month!
    If you aren't paying attention to your impact on your people, you could exacerbate one or all of those stats in a single decision/email/message. That is why it's important to become intimately familiar with time management.
    This is the first video in a 6 part series that will dive deeper in the the following time management techniques:
    - The Pomodoro Technique
    - Time Blocking
    - The Time Management Matrix (AKA The Eisenhower Matrix)
    - Parkinson's Law
    - Pareto Principle (AKA The 80/20 Rule)
    We will go through these techniques in the way I learned about them and started exploring Time Management in my own journey. You may find one that fits perfectly with you as an individual or you may find that mixing together a few concepts helps you more than single one could.
    As you go through this series, think about how you could use these to get control of your own time, but also to build profiles of how your people and teams work from a timeline perspective. This will give you power to not only make good decisions but challenge deadlines when necessary.
    I hope this was helpful! Thanks for being here! Take care!
    -------------------------------------------------
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    #leadership #leadercommunity #leadfromherepodcast #leadfromhere #time #timemanagement #manageyourtime #leadertime

    10 min

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