MEDITATION INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY IN BUSINESS

Here are the five powerful ways for a business to improve productivity. The most powerful methods are listed first.

1) Stress management

Stress management is listed first because without it other ways of increasing productivity are either less effective or impossible to implement. For this reason there have been a lot of programs aimed at reducing stress in business. Unfortunately most of these programs have not been effective, and do not have any research backing them. We where only able to find one program with research showing effective reductions in organizational stress. The Transcendental Meditation program, usually recommended as a relaxation technique to high blood pressure patients, proved to be effective at reducing organizations stress, during a study in a high security government agency. See meditation stress research here.

There are many businesses that use Transcendental Meditation to reduce stress and increase productivity. They all seemed very happy with the results and recommended Transcendental Meditation as one of the best ways to increase productivity.

2.) Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese term that literally translates into meaning "good change". In the business world Kaizen is part of something called LEAN, or LEAN thinking, through which companies eliminate waste and improve productivity. Within LEAN Kaizen reefers to a process of continuous improvement, where by a company regularly self analyzes their own processes and improves upon them.

Kaizen and other LEAN methodologies have been some of the most successful programs for increasing productivity, and have been adopted by many of the largest most successful companies, including Toyota, Intel, and Boeing. Kaizen is lot limited to use in large companies, it works just as well for small and/or start up companies.

If your interested in implementing Kaizen in your business consider reading "Lean Thinking" by Womack and Jones this book describes how LEAN is broadly applied in manufacturing around the world. Also consider reading "Value Stream Management for the Lean Office" this book is a step by step manual for implementing Lean more or less anywhere.

3.) Steven Covey's Time Management Matrix

Steven Covey is the author of the best selling book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". In his book he mentions a time management solution that is both simple but extremely effective. Covey recommends using a time management matrix with four quadrants. His system suggests that you organize all of your daily tasks into one of four groups, as follows:

group a) Important tasks that require urgent attention

group b) Important tasks that are NOT urgent

group c) Non important tasks, that require immediate attention

group d) Non important tasks that do not require immediate attention

Groups (a) and (b) are represented in the top to quadrants, and this is where you should have your attention. Obviously if something is important and urgent(group a) you should take care of it, other wise you should be focusing on other important tasks (group b), and avoiding distractions(group c), or trivial tasks(group d).

4.) Meaningful Deadlines, and/or Time Quotas

Deadlines and time quotas can be a very good way to make sure your not spending to much time on any given task but they have to be used correctly. How to use Meaningful Deadlines and Time Quotas:

a) Don't think of deadlines as a way of pressurizing yourself or your co-workers into "working harder". Setting a false deadline simply to add pressure will create distrust amongst your employees and eventually lead to lower overall productivity. If you set false deadlines for yourself, then you will be just wasting your own time and the result will be even less overall productivity.

b) You need to discover what the real deadlines are for your business. And then, make sure you understand the underlying business needs that require these tasks to be completed in a given time frame.

c) Make sure you communicate the reason for a deadline to whomever is performing the task, this will make it clear that you are not just trying to pressurize them. Your communication should differentiate between deadlines that are time related, and those that are more cost related, this is important because often rushing to perform a task quickly can cause a business more money.

d) Everybody in your organization should understand the economics of your business, and should take responsibility for making the business profitable. For example, in a business that makes pizzas, it might be that you have allocated $0.45 worth of time for preparing the crust. That $0.45 then translates into 3 minutes of time. If your workers understand that time limitation then they won't spend 10 minutes getting the crust on a pizza "just right".

e) It's ok to shorten deadlines a little to create a safety buffer. For example saying the project has to be done tomorrow when you have one more day. This can be necessary on important deadlines and is different to setting a false deadline that are not tied to any real business requirements.

5) Task management with the 20,000 dollar idea.

The twenty thousand dollar idea was first introduced to Charles Schwab (a manager at a steel plant) by a new management consultant named Ivy Lee. Lee said that he could help Schwab find better ways to do the things that were necessary to make the company a success. Schwab challenged Lee saying "Show me how to do the things we ought to be doing, and we'll pay you whatever you want." Lee said that he could do that in 20 minutes. He even offered to let Schwab use the system and then pay Lee whatever the steel company executive thought it was worth, if anything. Schwab was impressed with Lee's confidence and told him to proceed.

Lee handed Schwab a piece of paper and said, "Write down the things you have to do tomorrow." Schwab did this. "Now number these items in order of importance," Lee continued. Schwab did that. Then Lee gave Schwab his instructions. "First thing tomorrow morning, start working on #1 and stay with it until it is completed. Next take #2, and don't go any further until that is completed. Then proceed to #3, and so on. If you can't complete everything on the schedule, don't worry; at least you will have taken care of the most important things before getting distracted by the items of lesser consequence."

Lee said that if Schwab completed every item on the list before the day was done, he should make a new list and start on that; or, if any items were left at the end of the day, they could be considered for the next day's list. "The secret," Lee continued, "is to do this daily, evaluate the relative importance of the things you have to get done, establish your priorities, record your plan of action, and stick to it. Test it for as long as you like and then send me a check for whatever you think it is worth."

In a few weeks, Charles Schwab sent Ivy Lee a check for $25,000. This was big money in the 1930s! Schwab reportedly told his associates that this was the single most valuable idea he had ever received.