GenXmanager: Leadership for the Generation X Manager

The Office season premier was last night on NBC. First, it was hilarious as expected. Second, and more importantly, I picked up one business lesson from last night’s show. Well, it is not so much a business lesson but a productivity lesson.

At a certain point in the show Michael Scott, the boss and fearless leader of the Dunder Mifflin, Scranton Branch, states (and I’m paraphrasing), “Great work everyone. Go home, take it easy. Great productive day.” The irony is the fact that Michael Scott and his staff don’t do any work. In the course of the day in question he hit an employee with his car and organized a 5K race to raise “Rabies Awareness”.

Have you ever had a busy day but accomplished nothing of importance or value? I have. We all have. Productivity is not about doing lots of stuff. Being productive is about doing a few important tasks well.

I’m not going to spell out tips for being more productive as I’m not an expert in that area, but I will provide some resources for you to investigate. Here are some excellent books:

Our modern workplace doesn’t make it easy to be productive. There is information and “stuff” begging for your attention all the time. You can try to act on all of it but that will lead to stress and burnout. You can ignore most of it but that will just lead to failure. Somewhere in the middle there is a balance. The books listed above will help you find that balance.