Theory of Incremental Advantage

Time is Money

In some industries, there are very narrow windows of opportunity to generate revenues. When selling apparel, designers must have their products delivered during the appropriate season. Perishable foods distributors must deliver their products to stores highly efficiently due to the limited shelf-life. According to the Ditan Corporation, which manages inventory for many of the leading software firms, about 40% of the revenues from video games come in the first three days of release. Sellers of video games simply must have sufficient inventory as soon as it released.

The Importance of Managing Your Time

The most successful leaders manage their time ruthlessly. President Eisenhower signed his initials rather than his name to save time and excoriated his subordinates when they handed him unopened envelopes.

There is merit in giving your products names that will quickly roll off of their users' tongues. For instance, Reseach in Motion named its wireless phone and email platform Blackberry, in part, because it is a word that can be enunciated quickly. According to Will Leben, a

Stanford

University

linguistics professor, “When you pronounce the word black, black starts out crisp. The b is exploded and the k is exploded. These consonants are called stops. Strawberry, on the other hand, is not a crisp-or fast-word. Straw begins with a hissing sound that goes on a lot longer in time, twice as long as the b.”

Specific time management techniques include:

Do not be overly accessible. Being overly accessible invites interruptions which are extremely distracting and damage productivity. According to Basex Inc., a knowledge management research firm, work interruptions cost the U.S. economy at least $650 billion a year. Analysts Jonathan B. Spira and David M. Goldes reckon that 28% of the typical knowledge worker’s day, or 2.1 hours, is consumed by unnecessary interruptions and recovery time. Multi-tasking diminishes productivity. In a 2005 study, researchers at the University of California at Irvine found that information workers at an outsourcing company spent an average of 11 minutes on a project before they were interrupted. Once diverted, it took them 25 minutes to return to the original task. A British researcher administered IQ tests to different groups of people; the group that was distracted by E-mail and ringing telephones scored an average of 10 points less than a control group. Moreover, this dampens the self reliability of your subordinates. When subordinates can email their Blackberry-carrying bosses with every question that comes to mind, the subordinates do not develop their problem-solving abilities.

Do not accept every invitation.

Do not pick up the phone without an agenda. Regardless of whether you are calling a colleague, partner, vendor or client, you must know what you wish to accomplish by contacting that person before you dial the number.

Make a to-do list. This will give you a better perspective of the work you need to accomplish. When you are juggling multiple tasks in your head they can seem overwhelming; just putting them on paper can make them seem more manageable. Checking the small tasks off of your list gives you a feeling of accomplishment. Focus on the most pressing and complicated tasks when your focus and attention is greatest. Take care of the busywork when you are operating at less than optimal levels (e.g. at the end of the day).

Doing things consistently saves time. If, for example, you know exactly how you’re going to get ready for work in the morning or how you’re going to process emails when you arrive at work, you will complete these tasks with less time and effort than if you reinvent the wheel every day. By developing systems - and then maintaining them – you will bring order to your day.

Delete junk emails right away as well as emails from lists you subscribe to but rarely read. Don’t read every email right away. Scan over messages to determine which require immediate action. Use the preview pane to scan the emails. Designate a specific time of the day to handle emails. Don’t let emails accumulate and clutter your inbox. Delete or file them after you’ve dealt with them.

Don’t allow your cell phone or other wireless devices to interrupt your meeting. Set boundaries.

Don’t rely on Post-it notes to write down phone messages, which are likely to get lost or buried under other work. Keep a dedicated notebook for this purpose.

Don’t answer your phone until you are ready to speak to the most important person that could be expected to contact you.

Return telephone calls at a pre-designated time of day.

Tell callers right away how long you are willing to talk.

For meetings, distribute an agenda in advance.

When Being the Last is the Best

Decision makers are inherently prone to assume that the most available information is also the most relevant. This is called "Availability Bias". You should try to take advantage of Availability Bias by positioning yourself to be the last to present your proposals. The last person who lobbies for his proposals can often hold undue influence over the decision makers' verdict. This is true in terms of interviewing candidates, listening to zoning proposals for real estate deals, and arguing before juries.

On the other hand, when you are making the decisions, you should not be overwhelmed by the last person to present to you. One way of insulating yourself from availability bias is to stagger the order in which each candidate presents to the various decision makers so that only one decision maker will be at risk of availability bias for any particular candidate.

Proper Application of Perfectionism

Attention to detail is one of the pillars supporting the Theory of IncreMental Advantage. Meticulous attention to detail indicates to customers that you care about the products you deliver to the market. It sets a standard for your employees to follow. It is a countervailing force to the drift that would otherwise occur. Knowing the intricate details of your business gives you confidence. Attention to detail is often the difference between success and failure.

However, it is important to focus and prioritize your attention to detail. You should strive for perfection for the things that matter. While you should demand extremely high levels of professionalism from your staff, demanding perfection for every thing you do will drain your time. For instance, many companies get carried away with developing Powerpoint presentations. Many of their high-level executives make dozens of iterations and add lots of ancillary features. At some point this exercise becomes counterproductive: Not only will your staff squander a lot of time but the audience will focus more on the slides than on the message you are trying to communicate to them. If your slides look good (but not amazing) and you have a point behind them, your presentation will be powerful enough.

Don't Fall into the Networking Quagmire

Many people will tell you that networking is one of the keys to success. There are extreme networkers out there who show up to dozens of meetings and events every month. They are extremely aggressive in meeting as many people as possible at these events. They hold the business cards they collect like the prey they have just killed. These extreme networkers frequently 'ping' the people they meet at these events by sending them emails to maintain contact.

Networking is overrated and is most often not a good use of time. Many of the people at these events are looking for the same kinds of clients that you are searching for. By networking too frequently you will invite a lot of nuisance follow-up calls from other networkers. It is highly unlikely that you will develop enduring business relationships from meeting random people at these events. People that are truly valuable to meet - such as members of the media - heavily discount untimely self-promotion. It is better to reach these people at a time when you can be of use to them - such as calling them when they are working on a story that falls within your area of expertise. You should be especially vigilant about employees who are trying to network themselves into another job at your expense.

At the most ludicrous extreme are networkers who call people they barely know to recommend products or services (in which they often have no financial interest) that they believe could be of help. These kinds of calls to stay in front of contacts are simply a nuisance and offer no return on the caller's effort. The very worst mistake that you can make is to introduce a person that you just met to another person that you recently met. In doing this, you will simply be wasting everyone's time since you will likely not know enough about either person to make a worthwhile introduction. Oftentimes, neither of these contacts will return your calls. When you try to connect these people you will not even promote the value of the serice that you offer. And the you will let someone else monetize a contact that could be of use to you in the future.

Showing up at too many of these events and being too solicitous will result in your being labeled a networker. At best this label will eclipse all of your positive attributes and at worst casts you as someone to avoid because you developed a reputation as a pest.

So why do so many people believe in networking? First, for some very outgoing and charismatic people, networking works. Networking is crucial in some professions such as real estate or automobile sales. Second, many people like going to professional events located at swanky addresses and enjoy the food and wine. Third, networking is elected because it is easier than doing the hard work of growing your business. This entails targeting people that you need to meet, calling them to introduce yourself, traveling to meet them and dealing with rejection. (There is substantially no rejection at networking events.) Finally, networking is worthwhile when your business is extremely slow or when you are looking to steer your business in a new direction but are unsure which business venture to pursue. During these low periods of your career, your time is of less value and it might pay to plant a lot of seeds. It seems that many people endorse this last point by attending networking events. But what is the value to you in meeting people at this stage in their careers?

The most successful people network very little and are usually not great at it. When they do network, they are highly selective about choosing events to attend. The most successful managers focus their attention on meeting prospects who can advance their near-term objectives. I won't go to local networking events because I have no need to meet the local florist or dry cleaner. I am much better served by going to national events that attract people in my profession. However, local events may be very valuable to my local florist or dry cleaner but not national industry events where there is little opportunity to develop business relationships.

Other good networking habits to adopt after you select the appropriate events include:

• Try to get an RSVP list so that you can target the people most worth your while to meet.
• Look at the guests' name tags for their company affliations before you introduce yourself to them. If they are from a vendor, avoid them; if they are a potential client, introduce yourself to them.
• If the guests are by-and-large not people that you need to meet, leave early. I am sure that you have better things to do with your time.

Multi-Tasking is Counter-Productive

According to Hal Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego, “There’s less concurrent processing in your brain than you might think; the brain is more of a time-share operation.” If you don’t count subconscious and automatic processes, the brain mainly works one task at a time. When it is moving between tasks, the brain actually stops for a few milliseconds. So constantly, moving back and forth between tasks actually slows the completion of any one of them. And the more complex the tasks, the harder it is for the brain to move between them. When you really have to concentrate on something, you really have to concentrate.

Writing Emails

When you have a flash of inspiration and wish to share it with your colleagues, it is best to write the email in Word (or a similar program). First, opening up an email, searching for all of the email addresses of the intended recipients, and crafting a catchy subject line takes a lot of time. Many sophisticated professionals block their constructive thinking and communications process by going through this process. They forget their brainstorm by the time they are ready to write their emails.

Another benefit of writing in a word processing program is that it will catch typos and syntax mistakes. You can sabotage your idea by carelessly communicating it.

A third advantage of writing the email in another program first is that you eliminate the risk that you will inadvertently send it prematurely. Thus, addressing the email should be the penultimate step (right before hitting 'send') in emailing.

Just a word about sending emails with attachments. Always, and I mean always, open up the attachment to make sure it is exactly the right version of the document you wish to send. We all have form documents that we modify through the 'Save As' process. We write the same basic contract for several clients and just save various versions by changing the names, dates and a few clauses. I have made the horrendous mistake of not opening attachments. Some of these mistakes cost several thousand dollars as the terms were more favorable for the unintended recipient than for the intended recipient.

Knowing Your Commitments Enables Your to Make More Judicious Commitments

David Allen wrote a very profound passage in Ready for Anything about inventorying and making commitments as well as budgeting your time. Mr. Allen writes,"If you don't know the total current inventory of your work, you won't be fully aware of what you can not do. Your integrity will lead you into an infinite amount of new to-dos. When you consciously track all your commitments, that same integrity will force you to discriminate and say no, because you will be more aware of your capabilities. For instance, if you have put things to read in various locations, you will have trouble getting through any of them. Put them all in one place, and you will handle many with a two-minute glance."

Tips for Getting Dressed Quickly

A lot of time can be saved over long periods of time by getting dressed quickly. Rory Tahari, vice chairman and creative director of Elie Tahari Ltd., pairs each blouse with pants or a skirt. She places all the elements of a single outfit on one hanger. She suggests acquiring so-called combination apparel hangers, which can hold a jacket and top, as well as skirt or pants. She even hangs a necklace or other jewelry over the outfit on the hanger. And she uses a Polaroid camera to photograph the shoes that go best with each outfit and ten tapes the shoe photo to the hanger.

Diamonds are Made Under Pressure

Truly monumental accomplishments have been achieved in very condensed periods of time. When the right people are highly focused on the mission at hand and have time pressure placed on them, they can accomplish amazing feats. For example:

• The blueprints for the Empire State Building were drawn in only two weeks. The entire 1,250 feet high building was constructed in only one year and 45 days.
• 24 Japanese individuals, divided into 8 subcommittees, worked 17 hour days to expand General MacArthur’s three principles into a full-fledged Japanese constitution in only one week.
• The Petronas Towers in Malaysia were built rapidly because two contractors were hired, one for each tower. One contractor was given a two week head-start. This resulted in the second contractor racing to catch up. The first contractor raced to ensure that they would not be beaten after having received a head start.
• The designs for the Pentagon were drawn in a few days and the world's largest office building only required 16 months to build.