I remember a few years ago everyone in the business world was espousing the benefits of a new productivity book called Getting Things Done (GTD). I read the book and was initially blown away. Here was a productivity system that promised to eliminate every future minute of wasted time in my life.
But I never put the system into place. I tried, but I realized I didn’t need such an elaborate system to get things done. Instead, the real power of GTD was in a single question author and creator David Allen pushed near the end of the book, and that was always asking the question, “What’s the next action?”
Asking this question is the habit of every high performing executive I’ve ever worked with, and in a world that’s becoming more and more overcome by “Analysis Paralysis”, it’s only becoming more valuable.
Each and every week, thousands of people get the Tuesday Tidbit. Most read them and forget them. Many will hit delete soon after reading this line (don’t do it yet!) Others will skim through and look forward to the next Tidbit.
But each and every week, without fail, I get a handful of emails from people who take me up on my weekly challenge. They try something new. They challenge their sales & marketing team. They follow-up with a past customer. And they ask questions they weren’t asking yesterday, and so they start to see some new results. There’s always a handful of responses from people in companies of all sizes talking about the impact of just ONE of the things I’ve recommended or posed as a challenge.
This second group reads the tidbits, and then asks themselves “What is the next action, now that I have this idea?”
Last week I started talking about the Pick-3 process to make the point that it’s the consistent actions that often have the most impact.
After writing that Tidbit, I had a chance to give one of my best clients a sneak peak at the Pick-3 process, and we immediately decided to adapt the process to his business. He said, “this is brilliant because it’s so drop-dead simple!” And that’s how simple programs like the GTD should be. The ironic thing for most people who try to adapt something like Getting Things Done is they can’t even Get the Book Done, it’s too complex. I recently saw another book called the One-Page Marketing Plan. It caught my eye, but then I saw the book was 268 pages. That’s one long page!
Last week I suggested you pick three clients and perform a simple, retention-focused activity. Did you do it? I know of at least seven readers who did and all saw results by the end of the week. The seven came from companies ranging in annual revenues of a few million dollars to a company with revenues north of 500M.
Your challenge for this week:
Do something small to connect (or reconnect) with one of your clients or past clients. Anything that you wouldn’t otherwise have done. If you can’t think of anything compelling, here’s an example of another simple Pick-3 exercise that you can do…(I’ve recorded a LOT of pick three tasks into videos for my clients – here’s one I’m sharing with everybody today.)
