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May 15, 2006
Making GTD stick with teams
I wanted to share some ideas about helping GTD stick with teams. If you've been through a seminar and find that the GTD honeymoon is over, maybe something here will kick start you back into why you were inspired to get back on track.
- One group I've worked with has a GTD User Group meeting every Friday morning at 10am. Sometimes they do their weekly reviews together in a conference room with laptops and in-boxes in tow. Other times they are sharing tips and tricks or challenges and wins they are having. I've sat in on a few of these meetings and found them inspiring and useful. If weekly seems like too often, consider monthly or as needed. I'd suggest setting an agenda so the meetings stay on purpose.
- Consider a group purge day of reference filing. Everyone could probably benefit from some dedicated file purging time. It may be easier (and more fun) to do if the whole group or company is doing it together. Perhaps an hour on some day that tends to be quieter than most.
- Create your own internal newsletter, SharePoint or Intranet site with GTD tips and tricks.
- Do a refresher seminar with someone from our team. I've done some really great follow-up classes for companies based on the key points of GTD. One I did recently went through a review of the five phases and had them breakout into teams after each phase to talk about what's working, not working, best practices etc. Our director of tele-coaching, Meg Edwards, created a refresher session for a client recently that was done entirely by phone using Skype. Pretty cool stuff.
- I personally find it helpful to re-read the Getting Things Done book. Inevitably I'll read something that I swear wasn't there before. Lately I've also been listening to David's second book, Ready For Anything, on my iPod while I workout. They are nice little sound bytes that are easy to digest. I like when it's on shuffle because I'll hear something from David interspersed with my 70's disco, like Macho Man. Pretty funny.
Posted by Kelly at May 15, 2006 03:10 PM
Comments
I've set up a monthly Getting Things Done reading schedule, as well as a weekly Ready for Anything reading schedule.
Posted by: Cuccu at May 15, 2006 05:18 PM
Hi Kelly,
I know this is a year old, but still it's an important topic that comes up a lot.
I think using GTD or whatever variant you like to handle things and demonstrating how effective it is with your own productivity is a really good way to bring teams aboard too.
We wanted a way to collaborate on projects and all use GTD style method while staying in communication on task status here at Brainmurmurs,. At first we tried a mix of programs and methods, ended up very disconnected and it was more work to manage- so we finally built our own tool.
We made Mentat to let us capture tasks from the desk, mobile, phone or wherever, and file them away speedily...and also assign tasks to team members, add comments, status updates, etc. So if someone is on your project team, they have access to the same task lists. They add one, you see it, vice versa. When a task is closed or reassigned, a comment window pops up to let you tell the task owner or anyone following the task know what's up.
It's really been a boost for our productivity and remedied a lot of pains so we recently went live with it as a web service to share:
http://gomentat.com
Check it out with a free trial or personal account if you like & try it for your team GTD methods if you decide it fits!
Thanks for the blog & I look forward to seeing more
Posted by: Erik at October 12, 2007 01:33 PM
