Handling a Chaotic Work Environment: How to Prioritize Work and Make Good Decisions Under Pressure - Webinar (Recorded)

This highly interactive Webinar offers you and your team an array of practical tools to help you get things done in today's chaotic and constantly changing work environment. You’ll learn practical techniques for making structured decisions-even under pressure-to earn buy-in from bosses, coworkers and customers. In a workshop environment, you will participate in valuable exercises utilizing real-world case studies. You'll emerge with an action plan you can use right away to master expanding workloads and complex decisions.

Areas Covered in the Session:

Managing Escalating Pressures

• Develop Answers to Vital Questions on Managing Work Pressures
• Use New Tools to Control Stress, Reduce Backlogs, and Redistribute Work Overloads
• Adopt Visual Maps That Help You Stay Calm under Pressure, While Rebuilding Confidence and Energy
• Collaborate with Coworkers to Invent Shortcuts
• Juggle Multiple Projects without Dropping the Ball

Gain Certainty about Priorities

• Prioritize by Validity, Not by Urgency
• Apply Three New Rules to Prioritize Your Projects
• Make Your Priorities Visible to Requesters
• Rank Your Priorities with the PAR Chart
• Apportion Your Time between Strategic and Tactical Work
• Start Priority Negotiations Early with Requesters

Prevent Collisions among Customers, Internal and External

• Replace Three Outmoded `Rules` of Time Management
• Adopt Two New Rules for Today’s Chaotic Conditions
• Learn Four Strategies to Avoid Calendar Collisions
• Design Tools That:
• Educate Requesters on `Blind Risks` in Their Requests
• Help Requesters Arrive at Your Door Better Prepared
• Create a Selective Daily Action Plan
• Match Assigned Deadlines with Actual Estimates

Manage Traffic While Meeting Needs

• Outline for a One-Page Business Case: Convince Others
• New `To-Do List`: Help Everyone Face Reality
• The `Dot Chart`: Rechannel Interruptions
• Work Request Validation Card: Help Requesters Make a Case When Seeking Your OK
• Quick Interim Review: Correct Employee Performance Shortfalls before They Escalate
• Smart Subject Lines: Eliminate the Need to Open e-Mails
• `On the Wall` Meetings: Shorten Meeting Time-Upgrade Involvement and Improve Joint Decisions

Communicate Powerfully Despite Pressure

• Employ Assertive Responses No Matter How Manipulated or Provoked You Feel
• Determine the Rare Occasions When Non-Assertive or Aggressive Responses May Be Advisable
• Decline a Request Successfully, Whether from Above, from Peers, or from Customers
• Use a Risk Reduction Card to Encourage Requesters to Assume Their Half of Any Negotiation
• Select Final Commitments and Refine Applications for Tools Introduced Today

See How Your Values and Thinking Styles Drive Decisions

• Learn How Your Values and Thinking Style Drive Your Decisions
• Apply Three Survival Steps to Decisions
• Detect Your Preferred Thinking Patterns

Learn the Decision Guide

• Come to See That Decision Making Is a Learned Skill
• Understand the Decision Guide Format through a Demonstration Case
• Learn the Decision Orbit Format to Generate Options for a Case

Apply the Decision Guide to Your Own Case

• Form a Team to Assemble a Real-Life Case Using the Decision Guide
• Complete the Decision Guide and Orbit, Step by Step
• Demonstrate Your Case for Fellow Attendees; Collaborate on Refining Your Decisions

See Others on Options

• Use Verbal and Visual Tools to Overcome Stakeholder Resistance
• Take Part in Role-Plays to Demonstrate a Choice of Verbal Tools
• Create Risk Clocks, Calendars, or Bar Charts to Educate Others about Risk Escalation
• Learn New Processes to Gain Internal Team Commitment

Fast Focus Analysis

• Try Out Fast Focus Analysis, a Tool for Making Complex Decisions with Multiple Issues and Opposing Stakeholders