Leveraging Technology For Better Productivity

Is your leadership's management philosophy stuck in the 1960s? Let's redefine it: Leadership by Being Engaged. The concept of "management by walking around" came from Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (HP founders) in the 1960s, popularized by Tom Peters in 1982, and gets used today to describe what's missing in #remote work. "The expected benefit: by random sampling of events or employee discussions, managers are more likely to facilitate improvements to the morale, sense of purpose, productivity and and quality... compared to remaining in a specific office area, or the delivery of status reports." The literal concept doesn't work if your managers have people who are working in multiple locations, now the majority case. 60 to 80% of all "enterprise" company managers now have #distributed teams. 100% of Fortune 500 Execs have teams that are #distributed today, according to Atlassian (kudos Molly Sands, PhD). #RTO mandates rooted in this philosophy are trying to return to a world that no longer exists. Leaders need a both/and approach. Get employees together to jump-start #belonging, and build better #culture and #performance by being involved in the digital #collaboration tools that your teams use every day. Let's redefine a philosophy rooted in co-location into one for the #digital age. Four starting points for leaders looking to get digitally engaged: 🔸 Increase transparency. Internal transparency around clear goals and realistic progress against them drives focus on outcomes, and builds trust. 🔸 Get engaged in the work. Execs need to stop saying "Teams/Slack etc are for the kids; you'll find me in email" and get into the tools people use every day to work through account issues, project updates, and problem solving. 🔸 Participate in digital communities. Social forums at work build belonging. That cuts across everything from an Abilities ERG to Sneakerheads. Finding community at work boosts retention; even leaders need to find that. 🔸 Get a reverse mentor. Being available and engaged digitally can feel foreign as a leader, and initially scary to a team. Find a digital native in your organization who can coach you! What's your take? Retire the phrase, or revive an important concept?

Top performers protect their time differently. Most of us lose precious hours to chaos and distraction. On the advice of my business coach, I did a time audit. What I learned changed everything. I tracked my hours for a week. Captured everything I spent time on. Now I’m working to eliminate, delegate, or automate everything that doesn’t move the needle. If you struggle to get the important things done, here are 12 productivity tools that actually work: 1. Timeboxing Divide your day into clear blocks. Give each block one purpose. Nothing else happens during that time. It's simple but powerful. 2. Pomodoro Technique 25 minutes of focus. 5-minute break. No compromise, no distractions. I was skeptical at first. Now I can't work without it. 3. Two-Minute Rule If something takes less than two minutes, do it now. Those small tasks pile up and drain your energy when ignored. 4. Kanban Board See your work move from "to-do" to "done." It's surprisingly motivating to watch progress happen visually. 5. 1-3-5 Rule Plan your day around: 1 big task 3 medium tasks 5 small tasks This creates balance and prevents overwhelm. 6. Eat the Frog Do your hardest task first thing. Everything else feels easier after that. 7. Flowtime Technique Work until your focus naturally fades. Take a short break. Learn your rhythm. 8. 80/20 Rule Focus on the vital 20% that creates 80% of your results. Be ruthless about cutting the rest. 9. Getting Things Done (GTD) Capture everything. Organize what matters. Let go of what doesn't. 10. Warren Buffett's 25/5 Rule List 25 goals. Circle your top 5. Ignore everything else. 11. Eisenhower Matrix Organize tasks by urgency and importance. It shows you what really needs your attention. 12. Task Batching Group similar work together. Your brain works better this way. The reality is simple: Time management isn't about squeezing more into your days. It's about making space for what matters most. Choose your minutes wisely. They become your life. ♻️ Find this helpful? Repost for your network. 📌 Follow Amy Gibson for practical leadership tips.

Progress doesn’t always mean pushing forward; sometimes it means reinventing where you’re going in the first place. In the era of Industry 4.0, not all digital initiatives are cut from the same cloth. Sure, everything gets the “Digital Transformation” label, but there are really three different flavors—each with unique goals and metrics. 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐥 Think of this as hitting the refresh button on old systems. It’s swapping outdated equipment, moving from on-prem to cloud ERP, and digitizing paper processes. Sometimes you see an immediate ROI (yay, fewer crashes!), sometimes it’s just clearing the path for bigger changes in the future. Measuring success? Look for fewer failures, easier integrations, and faster deployment of new projects. 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 Once you’ve modernized, it’s time to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of what you’ve got. This is where you deploy predictive maintenance, automations, and data-driven insights. It’s all about speed, accuracy, and cost savings. If you’re hitting better cycle times, lower waste, or shorter lead times, you’re doing it right. 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 Now we’re talking next-level reinvention—completely new business models, product-as-a-service offerings, or immersive digital experiences. This isn’t about cutting costs; it’s about long-term strategic impact. The metrics here revolve around adoption rate, new revenue streams, and market share growth. 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: These don’t have to happen in perfect order. One plant might jump straight to efficiency because its core tech is already solid. Another might aim for a big transformation play to disrupt its industry. The real key? Know what you’re aiming for, and measure it the right way. If you judge a radical new business model by the same ROI metrics as an optimization project, you’ll never let it get off the ground. So before you label everything “Industry 4.0,” ask yourself: am I modernizing, optimizing, or transforming? The strategy—and the success—depends on choosing the right path. 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐄𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐊𝐏𝐈𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡:  https://lnkd.in/eNSBCkVz ******************************************* • Visit www.jeffwinterinsights.com for access to all my content and to stay current on Industry 4.0 and other cool tech trends • Ring the 🔔 for notifications!

Your to-do list shouldn't control your life. 6 methods that kept me from losing my mind: (And doubled my output) 1. The Two-Minute Rule If something takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. Not later. Not tomorrow. But now. This simple rule prevents small tasks from snowballing into overwhelming anxiety. --- 2. Never Miss Another Detail I used to scramble taking notes during meetings + interviews, missing key points and action items. Now, I use Rev’s VoiceHub to auto-record and transcribe everything. It’s more accurate than alternatives like OtterAI and it’s easy to share the info with my team. --- 3. The Focus Formula 3 hours of deep work beats 8 hours of shallow work every time. Block your calendar, turn off notifications, set a timer, and just start. Watch your output soar. --- 4. Energy Management > Time Management Stop planning your day around the clock. Instead, match tasks to your natural rhythms – creative work in the morning, meetings after lunch, admin work when energy dips. Work with your body, not against it. --- 5. The Weekly Reset Ritual Every Sunday, clear your inbox, plan your priorities, set three main goals, and prepare your workspace. This turns Monday from a bottleneck into a launchpad. --- 6. Automate Everything Possible If you do something more than twice, automate it. From email templates to calendar scheduling, let tech handle the routine so you can focus on what matters. --- These tools & techniques will help you stay organized, manage your time better, and maintain your sanity. Try them out and see which ones work best for you. Reshare ♻ to help others. And follow me for more posts like this.

AI field note: my word of the year is 𝔼𝕍𝔸𝕃: celebrating the art and science of rigorous measurement of AI performance, progress and purpose. (1 of 3) This year delivered a wealth of new AI models, architectures, and use cases - all united by one thread: evaluation. Model benchmarking, evaluation, or just "eval" has evolved from a simple, singular measure to a more complex blend of stats, metrics, and measurement techniques. Today's evals help discerning practitioners make pragmatic, informed technology decisions and measures improvements as AI systems are tuned. With AI innovation accelerating, staying up to date on evals ensures informed trade-offs when building intelligent systems, agents, and applications. Let's start by looking at measuring "performance"; the best way we know how to compare model behaviors, and find the right fit-for-purpose. Defining 'good performance' now involves a sophisticated suite of metrics across diverse dimensions. ⚙️ Task eval - beyond raw performance numbers. Today's evals measure how models perform across diverse scenarios - from basic comprehension to complex reasoning, reliability, consistency, and nuanced evaluation of reasoning paths, output quality, and edge case handling. 👛 Token economics - balancing cost, efficiency, and operation. Understanding token costs - both input and output - was essential last year, but evals have evolved beyond raw price per token, to understanding efficiency patterns, batching strategies, and the total cost of operation. ⏲️ Time-to-first-token. Speed is a feature, as they say, and while streaming responses have improved user experiences, this metric has become particularly crucial as models are deployed in production environments where user experience directly impacts adoption. 🔥 Inference compute: The amount of compute used for prediction shapes what problems a model can solve. More compute enables greater complexity but increases costs and latency - making it a pivotal benchmark for 2024. For some light holiday reading to explore this further: Service cards (OpenAI, Amazon), Meta's Llama 3 paper, and Anthropic's evaluation sampling research (links below).

I know how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by the constant flow of communication. I’ve built several practical systems using AI that dramatically improve how I manage information without drowning in it as a CEO. Here’s what works for me: 📥 Make your way to inbox zero. Reaching inbox zero is essential for my mental clarity. With a clear inbox, I find myself more present and receptive to new ideas. But it’s a lot easier said than done! Measuring my progress works really well for me. I track my inbox zero status using a Gmail integration in Coda, which creates a progress tracker inspired by Wordle that gives me an immediate visualization. You can create your own tracker here and check out some of the rituals that help me maintain inbox zero: https://lnkd.in/g5j6ppni. 📑 Turn meeting notes into action drivers. My top tip is to use AI to auto-draft summaries for each audience, get a concrete list of actions, and then send personalized recaps to attendees. This is super helpful and ensures my meeting notes actually serve a purpose instead of just going into a filing cabinet, never to be surfaced again. 📤 Set up forwardable notes as an alley-oop for your team. I have a solid structure in place that helps me reach customers, partners, and candidates my team wants to connect with. It’s a pretty simple idea: instead of writing a note that I will send, write a note to me, and I will forward the email after adding a small personal addition. And an important note is that for this to be effective, the notes should be brief and clearly articulate the ask and all details. Those processes for inbound, outbound, and in-person communications work for me today, but I’m constantly refining them and exploring new tools that might make them even better.

🌐 "How can we lead inclusive team meetings when our team is so widely distributed across timezones?" That's a question our #Inclusion Strategy team at Netflix has been reflecting on quite a bit lately – and that's surely not an issue we face alone. Here are some ideas that popped up as we put our geographically distance heads together to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in discussions that are relevant to all: 1️⃣ Establish a Meeting Time Rotation: to ensure fair participation, create a rotating schedule for your meetings. This means alternating meeting times to accommodate different time zones, so that each team member has an opportunity to attend during their regular working hours on a rotating basis. 2️⃣ Consider Core Overlapping Hours: identify the core overlapping hours when the majority of team members are available. Aim to schedule important meetings during these hours to maximize attendance. This may require some flexibility from all team members, but it fosters a sense of shared responsibility for ensuring everyone's voice can be heard. 3️⃣ Prioritise Meeting Relevance: ensure that meetings are called only when it's essential for all team members to be present. Avoid scheduling meetings for routine updates that can be shared asynchronously, giving team members more flexibility to manage their schedules. 4️⃣ Create Pre-Meeting Materials: provide agendas, and key discussion points well in advance, so team members who cannot attend live sessions can still contribute their input asynchronously. This way, everyone can stay informed and engaged in the decision-making process. 5️⃣ Encourage Rotating Facilitation: consider rotating meeting facilitators to accommodate different time zones. This not only distributes the responsibility but also allows team members from various geographies to lead discussions and bring diverse perspectives to the forefront. 6️⃣ Use Inclusive Meeting Technologies: leverage virtual meeting tools with features like real-time chat and polling to foster engagement from all participants, regardless of their location. Consider having all meetings recorded by default (unless there's a compelling reason not to), streamlining access to the team immediately after each recording is ready. 7️⃣ Promote Open Feedback Channels: establish channels for team members to asynchronously provide feedback on meeting times and themes, and communication methods. 8️⃣ Acknowledge and Respect Personal & Cultural Differences: be mindful of cultural practices and observances that may impact team members' availability or participation. Strive to do the same about individuals' needs, too (like dropping kids at school). These strategies can help create an inclusive and equitable approach to meetings, enhancing the chances of all team members feeling valued and empowered to contribute. How else can you foster that? 🤔

Has Amazon cracked the code on developer productivity with its cost to serve software (CTS-SW) metric? Amazon applied its well-known "working backwards" methodology to developer productivity. "Working backwards" in this case starting with the outcome: concrete returns for the business. This is measured by looking at the rate of customer-facing changes delivered by developers, i.e. "what the team deems valuable enough to review, merge, deploy, and support for customers", in the words of the blog post by Jim Haughwout https://lnkd.in/eqvW5wbi . This metric is different from other measures of developer productivity which look only at velocity or time saved. Instead, "CTS-SW directly links investments in the developer experience to those outcomes by assessing how frequently we deliver new or better experiences. Some organizations fall into the anti-pattern of calculating minutes saved to measure value, but that approach isn’t customer-centered and doesn’t prove value creation." This aligns with Gartner's own research on developer productivity. In our 2024 Software Engineering survey, we asked what productivity metric organizations are using to measure their developers. We also asked about a basket of ten success metrics, including software usability, retention of top performers, and meeting security standards. This allowed us to find out which productivity metric was associated most with success. What we found in our survey was that *rate of customer-facing changes* is the metric most associated with success. Some other productivity metrics were actually *negative associated* with success. But *rate of customer-facing changes* is what organizations should focus on. Sadly, our survey found that few organizations (just 22%) use this metric. I presented this data at our #GartnerApps summit [and the next summit is coming up in September: https://lnkd.in/ey2kpc2 ] Every metrics gets gamed. So I always recommend "gaming the gaming". A developer might game the CTS-SW metric by focusing more on customer-facing changes. But... this is actually a good thing. You're gaming the gaming. We will be watching closely how this metric gets adopted alongside DORA, SPACE, and other metrics in the industry.

I see so many posts on LinkedIn along the lines of: “I tried ChatGPT, and honetsly, it didn’t make much difference for me—barely added anything to my productivity.” If that’s your takeaway, it’s time to rethink. The fact that AI doesn’t feel transformative to you? That’s not good news for you—or your industry. What you should be asking is this: “Is there already someone out there putting this to good use and achieving a level of productivity that I’ve never reached?” The real disruption happens when just a few people in your field start using AI effectively. Their productivity can shift industry standards, reshape career paths, and leave everyone else struggling to catch up, in just weeks. I see this firsthand. My AI team has completely changed how I work, amplifying my productivity in ways that would be impossible without them, so I have honored them with names from heroes from the past: • Goran, powered by Grammarly and Writesonic, manages my communications, drafting emails and reports with tailored tone adjustments that keep me on brand effortlessly. • Magnus, combining ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and NotebookLM, dives into complex analysis, organizes content, and delivers insights that drive strategy. My very own management consultant. • Annie, my content producer, turns ideas into compelling video, audio, and graphics, leveraging tools like Veed, Videoleap, Prome AI, MidJourney, and NotebookLM to keep content creation seamless. • Veronika, my executive assistant, keeps everything running smoothly by managing my calendar, booking meetings, and taking notes during hybrid sessions. • Kim, based on Gamma AI, builds presentations with precision, saving hours and ensuring every deck is polished. These aren’t just tools—they’re AI colleagues enabling me to work at a level that wasn’t possible before. They raise my bar for what’s achievable, driving new standards for speed, creativity, and quality. Gone are my days of burning the midnight oil aligning boxes and making powerpoints great at 02:30 the day before an important presentation. Gone are the days of sending your deck to a shared service center. Gone are the days of ”high hurdles” to get going on something new or difficult. AI isn’t about making everyone more productive. It’s about how exponential impact occurs when someone leverages it effectively. Leaders who recognize this will drive the future of work. Those who don’t the train is about to leave the station. Also, this is why the 2 most transformative and persistent structural changes continue to gain force within workplaces and offices: 1. Companies are doing more with less. 2. Distributed work is gaining traction. #FutureOfWork

Quantum-ready blockchain strengthens digital trust by protecting data, smart contracts, and decentralized operations from quantum threats. We must see this evolution as essential for the future of digital ecosystems. Quantum computing is progressing faster than many expected, and traditional encryption could soon be insufficient. Preparing our infrastructures today means protecting the integrity of tomorrow’s data flows. A quantum-safe blockchain applies advanced cryptography designed to resist future decryption algorithms. It enables organizations to automate processes securely, manage collaboration without central authorities, and maintain transparency across complex networks. These qualities will be critical for global businesses that depend on reliability, privacy, and interoperability. The transition toward quantum security is not only a technical necessity but also a cultural shift toward long-term digital resilience. It challenges us to think beyond current risks and to build trust into every layer of our digital interactions. #QuantumComputing #Blockchain #CyberResilience