On Monday, March 30, Slaughter Development hosts the Indianapolis Productivity Summit, a full day of courses on working smarter.

Every worker in every company, every non-profit organization and every government office knows that time is the most challenging resource to manage. Every distraction, system outage and workaround requires more time, meaning there is less available time to get work done. Time is the ultimate enabler of progress and the ultimate enemy of of getting work done.

Participants who attend in one or more of the ninety minute sessions are investing time to save time. The 8:30AM course on Managing Email Productivity, for example, will likely pay for itself within a week. As The Methodology Blog has reported before, most people are drowning in email. Saving even fifteen minutes a day on email will dramatically transform business efficiency.

The 10:30AM course on Power Modeling-Self Training exposes the larger problem with most workplace systems: our mental models do not line up with the internal mechanisms of software, hardware and services. Just as we use email as a catch-all messaging system instead of a focused communication medium, we use everything from Microsoft Excel to the office filing system to the telephone in a way that does not reflect the actual mechanisms at work. Time lost in frustration with tools not only wastes our day, but leaves us feeling dissatisfied.

The next 90-minute class, Workplace Productivity Tools at 1:30PM, reviews techniques for increasing effectiveness and reducing delays in the office. Topics include document management, workplace communication, meetings and collaboration and social media. As more and more systems enter our workaday lives, we must learn to better manage time and energy to remain competitive and keep stress at bay.

The final class of the day is a Continuous Improvement Primer. From 3:30PM to 5:00PM, we will outline all the major trends in change management, including Six Sigma, Lean, TCO, TQM, 5S and Kaizen. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and everyone—from CEO to line employee—should know the basics about each to understand their impact and importance in the world of work.

You can still sign up for the seminar, and as readers of The Methodology Blog do so at a discount. Just enter the discount code METHODOLOGY during online registration. See you on Monday, March 30!

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