Prepare Your Business For Potential Fires

An emergency is a sudden and urgent state of need for help or relief that's created by some unexpected event. Regardless of your location and the risks uniquely associated with that specific place, we are all in danger of emergency resulting from fire. Plus, it is important to note that the hazard of fire is not limited to your home; your business is equally at risk of burning down. Are you prepared for such an emergency?

Fire can create disaster for your business at any moment, but it doesn't have to slow your business down. Take the following steps now to boost your preparedness for whenever fire might possibly strike. You'll appreciate being prepared when your business and personal safety are faced with a fire disaster.

- Make certain you have proper insurance. Inadequate insurance coverage can lead to major financial consequences if your business is damaged or operations are interrupted for a measurable amount of time. Ask your insurance agent, broker or underwriter if you are adequately covered for potential property damage as well as what business interruptions you could possibly face. Check out Ready.gov/business for a form that can be helpful in evaluating your insurance coverage.

- Back-up all important programs and data to an offsite location. While many rely on online file repositories, like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, Spider Oak and Sugar Sync, please keep in mind that these are not back-up solutions, serving instead to make your selected files available across your many devices and to make those files easier to share with others. Alternatively, I highly encourage you to consider "set it and forget it" solutions, like Backblaze, Carbonite, Crash Plan and Mozy.

- Make an evacuation plan. The ability to evacuate your team members, customers and visitors quickly can save lives. Ensure there is a warning systems (like smoke detectors) throughout your facility that everyone can hear, and schedule maintenance of those systems, particularly marking your calendar to replace batteries and test the devices regularly. Determine at least two ways for each team member to get out of every part of each building, including ladders to come out windows of upper stories, and educate your team as to how they can use that evacuation plan. Tell everyone to crawl on the floor because smoke rises and to check doors for heat before leaving any room. Identify a location away from your facility for everyone to gather outside their building, helping you determine whoever might be missing, and share this information every year with your team, educating new hires upon their arrival. Remind everyone that, once you've left the building, everyone is to stay out and do not re-enter for any reason. Plus, don't forget to call 911 from your safe location.

- Do what you can to limit damage before being struck by fire. When possible, prepare and maintain adequate firebreaks and green spaces around your property. Consider installing fire glass in windows and doors. Locate your sprinkler shut off valves so first responders can easily access them and prevent residual flooding; on a related note, routinely test your sprinkler systems to keep them in good working order. Likewise, know the location of major HVAC, piping, gas and water lines to aid in the domino effect of damage being done to your facility. Keep emergency exits clear and marked with plenty of signage to direct anyone in that area.

Risk management is a way of thinking that permeates your entire organization, from the most senior manager to the newest edition to your workforce, and seeks to preserve your company's ability to continue in the face of whatever might arise. Being prepared for emergencies and natural disasters should be no exception. Click here for my video of tips and visit the Ready Business website, launched by The Department of Homeland Security and The Federal Emergency Management Agency back in 2004 to make sure businesses are prepared in the event of an emergency.

Is your business prepared for a fire? What steps will you take to increase your preparedness?

Tried and True Rules to Organize for Success

 I partner with busy professionals to help them efficiently and effectively use their available resources for increasing productivity and sharpening their business organization. Throughout the process, I find myself utilizing several organizing- and productivity-focused mantras. Often, these mantras are catchy phrases to stick in their heads as a reminder of what habits need developing. Here are 10 of my most frequently used mantras:

1. “A place for everything and everything in its place”… Once something has a designated home, it is more likely to return to that home after each and every use. Further, when you know where things belong, you can avoid procrastination related to putting things away, especially as new items enter your space that are related to what you already have.

2. “Keep like with like”… When similar or related items are grouped near each other, it makes finding items needed much simpler for yourself as well as others using the same space. For example, store the tape, scissors and stapler in one drawer together.

3. “Location, location, location”… Frequently used items should be kept most easily accessible and closest to where you are usually working. For example, the items you use daily can be kept on your desktop or the top drawer of your desk. Then, items should be stored increasingly further from you as they are used less and less often. What you reference only annually or very rarely could be in a different room or, even, in a different building. Likewise, items should be stored near where they will be used in order to save time and make it easier to locate what’s needed when it’s needed; for example, keep printer paper near the printer.

4. “Horizontal is hidden while vertical is visible”… Whether it’s in a file drawer, a desktop file organizer or organizers designed to hang on the wall, it’s easier to see the contents when they are stored vertically. Alternatively, when items are stored horizontally, the items on top hide what items are further below, making it more difficult to quickly find what you need. Save time searching and make it easier to see what is where by using vertical storage solutions.

5. “Don’t pile it; file it”… Rather than piling a paper in your To File tray, just file each sheet of paper as you get it, thereby never having to schedule a mass filing session again.

6. “Minimize paper clutter”… Since it’s easier to locate what’s needed from electronic documents than paper files, when you must keep the contents of a paper document, scan whatever you can. Options like Doxie Go, Fujitsu ScanSnap and Neat make it easy to convert your paper to electronic. Likewise, limit unnecessary incoming paper by stopping junk mail before it arrives; eliminate unwanted mail with catalogchoice.org, greendimes.com, dmachoice.org, PaperKarma stopthejunkmail.com or 41pounds.org.

7. “Utilize the power of one”… While many say that one is a lonely number, I believe that one is extremely powerful for enhancing one’s productivity. It’s important for each professional to have one calendar for both work and personal items, one running tasks list that funnels into one daily to-do list for each day, one “data dump” that enables our brains to think instead of remember everything, one address book to better maintain all our contacts’ information and one weekly strategy session, dedicating time each week to create the next week’s game plan. With one of each, we’re less likely to duplicate or have anything slip through the cracks.

8. “Done is better than perfect”… Stop procrastinating and start moving forward on your existing projects. If a task can be done in 5 minutes or less, just do it; if a task will take longer, get started. You might be surprised by how much you get done when you simply start working on it; plus, when you allow yourself to just do rather than striving for perfection, you can accomplish so much, leading to greater productivity, and you can always tweak your work later.

9. “Neat is not the same as organized”… While neat is defined as “in a pleasingly orderly and clean condition”, organized is actually defined as “structured and systematized”. In other words, while something that is neat will look attractive, it is only be implementing organization that the environment becomes another tool in your toolbox, better empowering you to quickly find what you need when you need it and to get more done in less time.

10. “Plan your work and work your plan”… Every action item that is assigned a time during which it can be addressed is more likely to be completed. If we wait for that free time in which we envision completing said task, that task might never move from “to-do” to “done”. While distractions and unplanned issues might arise, if you start the week with a game plan, you can more easily tweak each day to make sure all tasks and appointments get resolved.

Do you currently utilize any of these mantras? Are there any other mantras that you find helpful in your efforts to be more productive and more organized?

Manage Self, Rather Than Myth of "Time Management"

 Chances are good that you've attended a presentation about time management, read about it in books or magazines and tried to use some sort of planner or app to "manage" your time. You may ask yourself why, with all your acquired knowledge and all the related tools at your disposal, do you still struggle to get everything done. Well, I'd like to share a thought or two about this with you.

I believe that there is no such thing as time management. Yes, it's a great "buzzword" that evokes the image of someone in control and able to accomplish all that is intended for the day. However, everyone is gifted the same 24 hours in any given day, and it's not about managing that time. No one can control time; it's going to keep ticking away regardless of what you or I do. Instead, I believe getting more done is more about managing oneself as it is much more realistic to control ourselves than the hours in any given day. Manage yourself, not your time.

As we work to get more done in less time, there are specific steps we can take to manage ourselves. Here are a few of the many such steps we can take:

• Complete a weekly strategy session where you create a game plan for the upcoming week's tasks, appointments as well as opportunities for personal and professional development. Instead of prioritizing your schedule, schedule your priorities; focus on making time for what is important.

• Start each day with a written list of 3 - 5 "must do" items. Plan your work and work your plan to be more effective.

• Wrap-up each day by evaluating which action items got done versus need to be carried over to the future and, then, schedule the carryover items to be done on specific dates since "every what assigned a when is more likely to be done".

• Put a stop to procrastination and build momentum by starting on your bigger projects. Set a timer for 15 - 30 minutes and work hard for that shorter duration with a burst of energy.

• Batch tasks so you are completing "like" actions in one, lump grouping; for example, return all calls back-to-back, process all received emails together at set times and schedule errands so you complete all your running around in a single trip.

• When you block off chunks of time for completing what actions are important for achieving your goals, be sure to include buffers for travel as well as "unexpected" opportunities or hiccups.

• Be fully present for each scheduled task or appointment, focusing on the individual, group or activity in front of you rather than thinking ahead or multi-tasking... Not only will you get more out of that specific task or appointment, but you will complete things more efficiently and effectively.

• Identify and eliminate as much as you can the time stealers in your workday. Close your door to limit drop-in visitors. Send phone calls to an assistant or directly to voice mail when you are focused on a specific task at hand. Communicate your priorities clearly. Encourage planning prior to meetings, leading to better meeting management. Options are limitless!

Contrary to the connotation typically associated with "time management", the dictionary definition of "the analysis of how working hours are spent and the prioritization of tasks in order to maximize personal efficiency in the workspace" appears to be quite a bit more accurate. With the aforementioned thoughts and that definition in mind, what do you find is something you can control when working to get more done in less time? What tactics do you utilize to boost productivity and enhance efficiencies?