ネクストソリューションズ　代表取締役　久保 和之　社長ブログ

January 9, 2008 02:36 PM | Category: BUSINESS, CUSTOMER, DIARY, HOLIDAY, LIFE STYLE, MIND, RECOMMEND

There is a very famous story about a bucket, sand, and stone.
Well, I don't remember the details though...
I think that point was:
When you put stone and sand into a bucket, if you put sand first, then big stones cannot be put into it.
Therefore, you should put stones (bigger purpose) first, then put sand (smaller purpose) into the bucket.
And I totally agree with this.

The most important thing of scheduling management is what the "stone" is and not eliminate the "sand".

In my case, the "stone" is a board meeting, regular international meeting, a monthly meeting with the customer, etc.

But the actual stone (the real purpose) is not "having meetings".

If so, what is the most important thing? The most important thing is what to decide in the meeting.
Time to prepare, collect information, and discuss before the meeting.

Set priorities to what you need to do and follow it. That is very important.
And pack the "sand" into empty space.
Sand might be "small purposes" but might be urgent or important. So, do not eliminate small plans.

Here is what I think about schedule.

1. Make appointments by phone
When you email "I am available on XX day" to schedule just one hour meeting, you have to make the whole day open until you receive email back. Or you planed 5 or 6 meetings by email and waited for the response for one week...wasting time.
Scheduling must be real-time and easily changeable, use phone to make an appointment.
If you want to use email to make an appointment, write at least three options available, and if you do not get response soon, phone and confirm.
This is a very basic business manner, I think.

2. Disclose the schedule
The google calendar above is my real schedule.
When you see my December schedule, you can see that I was pretty busy. But as you can see, my February schedule is still quite open.
For outside of company, my schedule is displayed as "not available", however, employees of Next Solutions can see everything from the contents of appointment to my memo, even my private schedules.

For a president or management level employees, scheduling is very important.
Disclose all the schedule and "don't do anything that cannot be shown to employees".

3. Analyze the past
A very great matter about google calendar is the searching function.
Regularity is very important for scheduling.
For example, you enter "Mtg: A company with president B".
When you search with "A company", you can quickly find how many times you have had meetings with A company.
When you search with "president B", you can also find how many times you have met with president B.
And when you search with "mtg", you can find how many times a month you usually have meetings.
Do not forget to enter the meeting title and notes in the memo column.

I currently manage meetings in five categories.
Regular meeting is "Mtg", weekly meeting is "Wmtg", monthly meeting is "Mmtg", lunch meeting is "Lmtg", and dinner meeting is "Dmtg".
When I search with "Dmtg", I can find how many times I had business tables.
I also have keywords such as marketing, in-company meeting, client care, etc.
This will help me analyzing the number of business tables or time I use for marketing are appropriate.

4. Put the stone
Let's say that there is a goal that must be achieved by January 2009.
First, you think about what you have to do today, this month, next month, what you need to confirm every three months, then schedule everything in order.
If you can forward the plan, of course do so. If something get behind the schedule, reschedule it and rethink your schedule how you can meet the deadline.
Schedule small matters based on this big schedule.

Scheduling management is not appointment management, it is a visualization of the process to achieve one's goals.
Do not schedule a meeting just to meet someone.

Put your dream into your schedule, in that instant, your dream will be your plan and goal.
And if you have a lot of dreams, remember that your dreams are just dreams and not actual schedule yet.

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