DR.PRABIR DUTTA - Dec 12, 2006 10:19 pm (#1 Total: 11)
CALCUTTA MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION

There is nothing to prioritize to gain  immediately.I seek those to gain who need it from me.It is to be candid," a continuos process without any loss on my part".

I make profit out of benefit yielded by my society.

qazi - Dec 13, 2006 9:07 am (#2 Total: 11)

Hi Charles, I first must admit that prioritizing has been and continue to be a major problem in my personal and professional life. However, I have, over the years, learned the art somewhat and here is how I try to prioritize:

• Stephen P. Covey's 'time management matrix' in the book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" helped me a lot to differentiate among the works that are  'important and urgent ' vs. 'important but not urgent' and so on;
• Alan Alekin's system of priority where he recommends that the highest priority work be given an 'A', and the second highest a 'B', etc. sends a very clear signal as to one's priority. As many know, even within an 'A', there could be A1, A2, etc.
• Recently, I am prioritizing on the basis of two criteria: First I choose paid work (consulting and training) that contributes to my long-term ambition of founding a private university meant for poor but talented people in Bangladesh. Admittedly, there aren't enough engagements of this kind to pay all my bills, sp to speak. So, my second way is to work for a certain number of days  in a week (say 3 days) which may not directly contribute to my future ambition but is good enough to pay all the biills and even save some for social work.
• Since I was at 2006 Skoll World Forum, I am hooked onto the idea of 'social business' --the particular version which Nobel learute Prof. Yunus first talked about at the Skoll Forum and recently in his Nobel lecture at Oslo. I believe that I can contribute in this area as an adjunct business school faculty(teaching this course), Ashoka Affiliate (I encourage disadvantaged kids to go in to social business) and with a serious interest in promoting higher education as a tool for reducing poverty.

In summary, I look for work that is related to povery reduction.Thus, when I do consulting assignments in the corporate sector, I would rather take up an assignment related to corporate social responsibility(CSR) or corporate community investment(CCI), as opposed to other mainstream topics.

A work-in-progress website of our firm's training wing can be found at http://www.futureleaders-bd.com/ 

 

Oliver Tessier - Dec 14, 2006 6:11 pm (#3 Total: 11)


I consult to many organizations at once, so I am constantly balancing multiple sets of priorities. For big projects, I identify the intended outcomes, then each step toward achieving those outcomes. I put steps on a weekly timeline (in Microsoft Project) so I have a way to measure progress, and I assign them to the responsible parties (very often myself). Then I track tasks on my daily calendar, highlighting the ones that must be completed. And I follow up to make sure all the other players are on task.

To manage client priorities, I keep lists that tell me the status of everything we are doing. After meetings, I follow up with written "To Do" lists. "Here are the highlights of our discussion. Here's what I will do by X date; here's what you will do by X date."

To the degree I can manage it, the prioritization happens early on, during the planning process, when I can look at the competing tasks and decide if I will have the resources to complete the tasks on time, rather than at the last minute, when decisions would have to be urgent ones. And I hold onto the prioritization by monitoring progress and maintaining dialogue with the players.

It's not foolproof; if a CEO I'm coaching fails to deliver annual goals on time, I may have a series of meetings backed up, but I try to stay ahead of projects enough to compensate for lags like that.

Which is not to say that I don't occasionally get stuck in a really great novel and ignore the whole lot for a morning.

Hope that's helpful.

tutormentor - Dec 15, 2006 7:59 am (#4 Total: 11)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

Over the 30 years that I've been leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program I've begun to create a segmented understanding of each of the actions that need to happen to help a single program grow from good to great, or that would help an entire city of single programs grow from good to great.

I have a wall in my office that shows the major categories, and some of the sub categories of actions that need to happen each year.  It stretches along about 20 feet of space, so when talking to people I ask them to think of the calvary charge in the old western movies.  It's a long line of horses with riders, and one person carrying a flag, pointing toward the enemy.

For my organization to be successful, each horse/rider represents something that needs to happen. If I have a staff person or volunteer responsible for that action, then all I need to do is follow up to make sure they are headed in the right direction, and lead (carry the flag) to keep stretching them to do better.

In a small organization, many roles have no one on the horse. Thus, I have to take that role. 

What I've learned is that not every thing has to happen at the same time. Thus, I'm able to switch from one role to another at different times each day, or week, or month.  As long as I can look at the wall, and know that we're making progress toward goals, based on the time/resources we have available, then I'm confident of what we're doing.

Another way I describe this is that my wall, or my calvary charge, is a blueprint, similar to what contractors use to build buildings.  While a calvary charge is a horizontal line, hopefully moving in one forward direction, a blueprint is a vertical stack of diagrams, and each page represents the actions of many people that must take place in the right way before the contractor can move to the next page of the construction.

In my blueprint, the foundation, or first step, is building a database of tutor/mentor programs, and of volunteers, leaders, donors and others who are interested. If this database does not exist the city does not have an overview of where programs are operating or where they are needed.  If we don't have a list of programs and supporters, we cannot invite people to come together to build relationships, or do what's needed to help more programs be in place to help kids.

The next step is sending invitations for people to come together, and for people to be volunteers, donors or supporters of various programs in the city.  The step after that is building a better understanding among all of the stake holders of what everyone does, and a shared understanding of some of the common needs that could be resolved if programs were working together.

There are additional steps, but with the limited resources I have (time and money) I primarily focus on maintaining the first few steps so that I'm able to grow to the steps that follow as I get the resources to do so. 

I look at these charts and my wall every day, and I document actions taken to achieve these goals in an OHATS section of http://www.tutormentorconnection.org.  This way I can see where I'm making progress, and where I need to spend extra time to move forward in areas where I'm not making progress.

With this blueprint on my wall, and in my mind, I'm able to audible in any conversation I have, with anyone in the world, to connect what they do, to a role they might play, in helping me do what I do.  I do this every day in order to find volunteers, donors, or partners to be some of the sub contractors on the blueprint I've described, or riders on the horses in the calvary charge.

Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Dec 15, 2006 8:06 am (#5 Total: 11)
HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates


Welcome, all!

It's a funny thing, but I have the feeling that we're getting to grips with the second half, only, of the issue I was raising. We seem to be talking about how we annotate our priorities and organize ourselves around them once they're formed -- a valid and important topic, to be sure -- but not how we form those priorities, how we evaluate possibiities so as to know what priority they should have for us.

Oliver -- greetings [ and I have a strange feeling we've crossed paths before this ]

I note that in one of your documents, you talk about vision, mission and values as though mission needs to be aligned with vision, and values with (vision and) mission -- you may be speaking here of another kind of "value" to the sort I'm thinking of, but my question here is about the vlaues that allow you to form a vision.

How, in a world of multiple needs and tensions, as a human with multiple needs and tensions, do you chose what is most significant to you? In those "moments of scanning my whole life"?

I'd love it if we could add a little of this side of the equation -- call it "how do you evaluate" as opposed to "how do you prioritize" -- into the mix here...

Dan:

How did tutoring / mentoring come to have such primacy in your life?

tutormentor - Dec 15, 2006 10:13 am (#6 Total: 11)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


Charles, I went to college in the 60s and thus the Civil Rights movement and the War in Viet Nam were part of my learning. I studied history in college, so learned to look at what happend at one time and in one place, and apply that thinking to what is happening, or could happen in current times and where I live. Then I spent three years in the Army, in the Intelligence Corps. I learned to collect information from different sectors, rate it, and use it to solve problems.

In 1973 I became an Advertising copywriter at the Wards HQ in Chicago, and shortly thereafter, a volunteer tutor meeting weekly with a 4th grade boy. In 1975 I became the leader of the tutor/mentor program, and by 1981 I was responsible for the creative development of all Ward national advertising and for developing the annual ad calender.

I had no knowledge of running a tutor/mentor program, or of being a mentor when I joined this program, and I had no knowledge of advertising when I joined Wards.

However, my background prepared me to learn from what others were doing and to apply that to innovating ways to get better at what I was doing. I was lucky to have some great mentors, and be inspired by some great ideas.

In each of my jobs I worked on the same calendar of activites each year. Thus each year as I repeated what I did the previous year, I learned more about what I was doing, and with this experience, I could innovate more ways to do it better.

By 1990 I had 17 years experience in both careers, and my understanding of what needs to be done to connect tutors and mentors in one organization, or many organizations, had grown to a passion.

I was given the opportunity to leave Wards, and I converted the original tutor/mentor program to a non profit so I could earn a living doing what I had a passion to do. Not many people are so fortunate.

Over the last 16 years I've added to what I learned from the first 17 years, but I've been able to devote 60 to 70 hours a week to what I'm learning, and I've been able to use the Internet to expand my network of who I was learning from.

Thus, my current passion and sense of purpose comes from a lifetime of involvement.

This is exactly what I'm trying to duplicate in my leadership of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. If we can get more business people involved in more places, and keep them involved for a lifetime, teach them to learn from what they do, and what others do, and teach them to apply this learning every day to leadership that helps kids in poverty get the support the need to move to jobs and carers, we'll create hundreds of leaders with the same sense of purpose, but with a variety of skills and networks that I don't have.

Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Dec 18, 2006 10:10 am (#7 Total: 11)
HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates


Thanks, Dan -- wonderful story!

I'm really surprised (and a little saddened) that this item hasn't taken off, and I have a hunch as to why that might be -- which I'll post here on the off-chance that it triggers renewed interest.

The question we're tooking at here -- setting priorities -- is really in two parts:

how do you know what you really value and what choices to make, and

how do you organize your day / week / month to be effective?

Here's my guess...

The second question may seem so obvious or trivial that many of us can't quite be bothered to answer it -- "I use a daytimer, of course", or "I make lists" just doesn't seem lkike something worth saying in a world that's already overflowing with time-management self-help titles and so on.

And the answer to the first question -- how to we value, how do we really come to understand what's important to us, and align our lives with that understanding -- may itself be more a matter of intuition and instinct than a rational process that can be easily put into words.

That's my hunch, anyway -- that the way we come by our primary oprientation and values in life may be somehow too organic an internal process for easy explanation...

Any comments? I'd love to know why this event has been so quiet, and what's really going on "behind the scenes"...

Pamela McLean - Dec 18, 2006 12:51 pm (#8 Total: 11)


Maybe others feel a bit like me on this one:

Ref question one: how do you know what you really value and what choices to make,

That's a deep question - would take much too long to answer....

Ref Question two how do you organize your day / week / month to be effective?

Personally I've nothing helpful to share there - in a word - "Badly"

Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Dec 19, 2006 5:56 pm (#9 Total: 11)
HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates


We'e on the front page for another week!

Regarding question 1: how do you know what you really value and what choices to make, Pam writes:

That's a deep question - would take much too long to answer....

Maybe that's a good sign, maybe that's an indicator that we're touching on something profound (rather than something so irrelevant it's easiest and best just to ignore it). Let's take a stab at it. If three of you will attempt to answer this question, I'll give my own answer, too.

DR.PRABIR DUTTA - Dec 20, 2006 3:42 am (#10 Total: 11)
CALCUTTA MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION


Attached my biodata in short.

Attachments:

biodata.doc (35 KB)

tutormentor - Dec 20, 2006 2:27 pm (#11 Total: 11)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

Charles, I'll give this a go.

What I really value, is related to what I'm trying to accomplish, and what needs to be done every day to move toward the goal. I'd like to be working with lists and weighted priorities, but in a small organization, this is more art than science. I described my "blueprint" and "calvary charge". These are all visualizations of the many different actions and tasks that all need action in order to be successful. However, they don't all need action every day, nor could I possibly give each my attention every day.

Thus, I prioritize by what needs attention most, based on what it is, and what value it is to the organization. This is subjective, based on my own understanding of the goals, and the importance of one action vs another.

I think the most important thing I could pass on to others is that without a clear goal/vision in mind, and without being able to segment achieving this goal into groupings of activties that need to repeat over many days, months or  years, then sub groupings, it's not possible to sort through all of the choices each day to determine which needs attention.

It's also not possible to recruit others to help you by taking on one or more of these actions as their own responsibility.