Leadership Traits: Organization

Organization is the last of the 15 Leadership Traits, but is by no means the least.  Being organized is conducive to whatever it is you’re doing, it ebb and flow.

You have to develop your own style of organization in order to operate.  I’ve known people who could whip a document out of a jumble of paperwork that’d been sitting on their desk for six months without even thinking about it.  Most of us, including myself, need pigeon holes with labels.

Basically, you need to manage the who, what, when, where, why, and how of your time, space, and matter.

Time

Work time from a calendar.  Know what you need to be doing, and where you need to be, with what, when.  It’s best for your calendar to have adequate space for annual, monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly notations … in some lifestyles, it wouldn’t hurt to have space right down to the minute.  This can be cumbersome to carry around.  I carry with me a small pocket calendar, and a piece of paper for taking notes, then transfer what I need to into the more comprehensive system I have at home.

Take 30 minutes a day to organize your time.  Take 10 minutes at the start of the day to review what you need to accomplish.  Take 20 minutes at the end of the day to transfer notes, and set up the next day.  Take this time to write a synopsis of your day in a personal log, or diary; this technique is beneficial on many different levels, but for the purposes here, it gives you a broader future reference of what you’ve done.

Space

A cluttered space indicates a cluttered mind, and is difficult to negotiate during a fire drill.  Managing your space is directly related to managing matter, keep things put away.  Utilize vertical space to keep things off the floor.  Arrange things with ease of access, and flow of traffic in mind.  Filing cabinets, shelving, and drawers or tried and true space management systems.  If you have too much stuff to have a place for everything, either get rid of what you use least, or box it up and put it in storage.  It’s hard to chop an onion when your kitchen counter is cluttered with 2 crock pots, a popcorn maker, an espresso machine, a mixer, a juicer, and spare parts and tools used from an old vacuum cleaner you were working on last year.

Matter

Rule of thumb … if you pick something up, particularly a piece of paper, either throw it away, or put it away and stick a label on the space.  Don’t get back to it later, or your kitchen counter will be cluttered with 2 crock pots, a popcorn maker, an espresso machine, a mixer and a juicer, and some tools and spare parts from a household maintenance project from the previous year.

Till next time, remember, you are fantastic.