Summer, summer … Lots of sun, fun and ice cream! Yes, summer is a great time for holidays! But it is also a great time to get some work done!
During the summer, things calm down: check your emails and you’ll probably notice that you don’t receive as many emails as you usually do. And that’s good! Instead of dreaming about your departure on holidays or being depressed if you already came back, make sure you make the most out of this summer time to increase your productivity and get things done!
Here are 5 meetings to book in your agenda this summer! No worries, Julie will help you get through this and avoid headaches while struggling with everyone’s holidays.
Meeting #1: Results Review
Summer means half of the year has already passed. Time to look back and see the results thus far.
To avoid everlasting and unproductive meetings, ask Julie to schedule a meeting with the folks from your team one week ahead and specify the metrics you expect to be presented as well as their main conclusions. As Julie includes all the notes in her meeting invites, everyone will know exactly what the goal of this meeting is and what needs to be prepared.
At the beginning of the year, you probably defined your goals –if not, you should do it ASAP- so you can easily compare what you have achieved so far: 50% of the objective? Already at 80% of the goal or only 20% achieved?
This meeting will help you plan and adjust the end of the year.
If you don’t really know what kind of metrics you should follow, here are some KPI examples from Klipfolio
Meeting #2: Process Management
Even if we already agreed that too many processes can prevent a company from being agile, it doesn’t mean you don’t need process!
Summer is a great time to handle fundamental subjects and work on your process. For instance, at Julie Desk, we take advantage of the summer to work on our CRM system: merge our data, implement new tools, redesign processes… All these tasks are easier to handle when business slows down a bit; you have more time to focus on them. The result? A better customer experience for our users in September 🙂
Use these 2 months to settle your processes in: gather feedback and see what works, what doesn’t and what needs to be improved etc.
If your structure is complex and you really want to move on to your process management, you may have a look at tools dedicated to Business Process Management.
Meeting #3: Cleaning Time
Time to clean your to do list!
There are some great tools to help you better organize your tasks. At Julie Desk, we use Trello for instance: each week we can have an overview of the main project each team is working on and who is managing what.
If you also have a task management process, you may have noticed that sometimes, there are some tasks that you keep moving from one week to another. 2 options to explain it:
- First, you are suffering from the little Monkey in your head (for those who don’t get this private joke, watch this TED Talks about procrastinators 😉 ): In this case, you, or your manager, definitely need to set up a strong and non-negotiable deadline to let know the little Monkey you’ve reached the emergency situation and really need to focus on that task to have it done by the deadline.
- Second option, the goal of this task doesn’t seem that urgent anymore and in this case, you need to ask yourself if this task is still relevant or not :
- Yes: you define a true deadline for it to be done quickly.
- No: you need to archive it.
This cleaning will help you and your team have a better idea of what the main projects are and get September off to a good start! That’s why you shouldn’t do this cleaning on your side: ask Julie to set up a quick meeting -don’t forget that Julie knows your preferences regarding meeting durations- when you will review the current tasks for your team.
If you don’t have a clear task management process, here are 3 methods to manage efficiently your tasks.
Meeting #4: Learning Sessions
How many times do we see an event we would love to attend, a book we want to read… but never find the time to do so?
Now you may have more time! Don’t waste it! Summer is a great time to watch all the replays from events or tutorials, to read all the articles or books you had bookmarked from the beginning of the year.
As I said earlier, summer means we have already done the first half of the year and during your first meeting, you might have realized that you need to get fresh ideas if you want to reach your goals by the end of the December.
Make a list of the things you would like to investigate and book them steadfastly in your calendar (don’t forget, Julie can help!). Stepping back from your day-to-day tasks will help you see things in a new way and bring more ideas to rock the end of the year!
If you need some inspiration, here is a “mega reading list” with books selected by Ted Speakers, for you to read this summer.
Meeting #5: fun time and … holidays!
When all your colleagues are on vacation and send you pictures of them drinking a nice cocktail on the beach to mock you, you tend to feel frustrated, especially if you are not taking a vacation or already came back!
Don’t be frustrated! Take advantage of the summer to develop team building and organize nice activities with colleagues from the office: a lunch outside (BTW, have you noticed Julie can now book restaurants?), a movie projection, some outdoor activities… I am sure you will have plenty of ideas! It will help the summer workers enjoy those days and in the end, increase their productivity!
Yes, summer is great to move forward on your to-do list. But summer is also great to… go on holidays: it will boost your productivity!
So don’t forget to send Julie, your flights, train, hotel reservations in order for her to update your calendar and make sure nothing will be added to distract you from having the best holidays!
Want a little tip? One thing I love to do when I get back from holidays is to schedule my next ones in my calendar 😉
What about you? What kind of tasks do you usually run during the summer?
Enjoy your summer!