I Didn't Have The Time So I Wrote You A Long Answer

Can you recommend any time management techniques?

There are lots of time management courses out there with their particular philosophy. When I was starting out there always seemed to be inserts in Marketing Week heralding the latest ones with other business courses with titles like – and I don’t think I am making this up – “How to Organise Your Handbag”.

Colleagues use a myriad of techniques including certain software like Microsoft OneNote, the email flagging method, a different ink system for their daily actions in the notebook, etc. I seem to use lots of post-it notes. I think you have to explore and use what works for you. However this can make you just focus on some very short term actions which will make you feel good for fulfilling them.

In terms of client services your best steer should be a combination of your account plan – which should give you clear direction on how to develop the long term relationship – and the campaign or project plan relating to things which will drive the day to day development of the work. What often happens though is the day to day to work takes over and you may end up having delivered a project on time and on budget yet you may not have moved the longer term relationship/business on with the client.

In projects, sometimes it is a matter of experience to foresee problems coming up and act accordingly. If a client is keen to use a customer testimonial route in a set of ads which need to run in a quick turnaround campaign and they have not identified the customers already, someone with more experience will know to steer the client away from that route - saving everybody a lot of time and money.

More difficult to explain is the experience and ensuing confidence that when unforeseen events happen which would make a more junior person spend a lot of time planning for the new scenario. A senior person however may anticipate that nothing needs to be done as things will revert to originally planned. For example, we had just sent out “save the date” emails for our client Christmas party – we love the logistics of client hospitality don’t we! This was after checking with all senior clients that they were available. Then somebody comes back to tell me that our main client – though knowing about our party – was organising a day’s internal conference with a social element afterwards for most of our invites. You could say I stuck my head firmly in the sand but I let it ride out without doing anything because I thought it highly unlikely he could organise something with so many people’s diaries in December. Maybe it was less related to saving time and it was a game of Blink I was playing with myself. Anyway I heard yesterday everything is going ahead as originally planned. So my advice relating to the last two points is have someone as your sounding board – if you are an account manager, then the account director is your obvious port of call. But if you are a group account director then don’t feel you should not share the burden of such problem solving with those more detached from the issue.

In a previous post I talked about Stephen Covey’s view on time management and relationships. He also cites a study of highly successful Harvard graduates who had similar success traits. One was their ability to tackle the things which some of us would shy away from – those things on our to do list that just seem to remain there but we guiltily know that they would actually change the game with the client – and the reason why they remain there is that they are not easy actions – they require difficult work.

In my days when I was meaning to sit down at my laptop trying to write a book but actually spending a lot of time exploring the contents of my fridge, I should have watched this portrayal of procrastination by Lev Yilmaz. It is spot on:

Putting Your Foot Down

I am in charge of a client team - a bunch of intelligent people - but I get hacked off with the way our processes (and those at our client's) get in the way of delivering really innovative thinking. We often use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut - people are not thinking creatively enough. And clients add to the slowness and inertia. What am I doing wrong?

I know what you mean. Sometimes you can get frustrated that things are just too slow on a project or with a client dynamic. That tired old linear thinking is driving the dynosauric pace of change. You want to move fast and take people, whether your team or clients, along with you. You want people to get it and not just say they get it.

My only real advice is to dramatise what they are missing out on and what a fast moving marketplace you are operating in. What you personally need to do is physically demonstrate to those people how innovative thinking can get you to a different space. Or what the downside of staying in the slow lane will mean.

When Amelia Torode quotes the Life Moves Pretty Fast line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, she is not wrong. What you need to give your clients for a test drive is your equivalent of the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. Then they may get your urgency for speed or different thinking.

That's why I like Gary Hayes' social media, mobile phone and games counters below. They really bring to life the pace of global "media" change; they make me realise we need to keep adapting ourselves or we will meet a dynosauric demise.