Smart time-management and team-productivity skills are behind every successful career and high-performing organization. Don't let competing priorities, tight deadlines, meetings, e-mails and interruptions derail your growth, impair your team performance and lead to stress and burnout.

Indeed, working under tight deadlines has never been easy and today it seems more difficult than ever. Despite your best efforts to do a superior job and lead a rewarding life, you may be overwhelmed by endless change and competing priorities. Far more than intuition and business acumen are required to get organized, do a superb job the first time and sort out the good from the bad projects, calls, e-mails, paperwork, impromptu meetings, drop-in visitors and constant interruptions. In this hectic climate, no one is immune to time wasting. Without adequate skills, your performance suffers, giving rise to stress and conflict both at home and at work. You need more than techniques to reverse this trend. Get the Harvard road map, skills, best practices and cutting-edge tools that are critical to the success of decision makers and professionals in leading organizations.

This workshop provides you with the current knowledge and competencies to allocate your scarce time effectively in order to excel in your profession and get the best out of your team, peers and manager(s). The focus is on practical skills, tools and techniques to maximize collective gains in effectiveness and productivity.

You will be able to tackle the deeper causes of time wasting, regain control over your agenda, focus on important issues, and achieve the vital balance that is necessary for inner peace. Your ability to cooperate with your customers, peers, managers and your own team will improve. You will also be prepared to prevent crises and harness the untapped opportunities brought about by the power of new technologies. You will have ample opportunity to practice with each planning and control instrument. You will take home new ideas, proven tools and sound timesaving skills, most of which are unavailable elsewhere.

You will gain no less than 45 working days per year in time savings or their equivalent in increased productivity. Planners and software products will be the subject of a very brief session. The focus will be more on the skills of lasting value and which are considered essential to sustain a leading edge.

The specific objectives of this workshop are to acquire the skills and tools to:

• Validate where your time actually goes (based on facts not perceptions)
• Set and negotiate goals and priorities in partnership with management, your team and important stakeholders;
• Organize your day and manage time including deadlines, e-mail, voice mail, meetings, drop-in visitors and time-wasters;
• Manage difficult people and awkward situations using Roger Fisher's principled negotiation framework;
• Make your manager(s) and staff (if any) more effective; improve working relationships; assume more leadership and managerial responsibility without the benefit of authority;
• Clarify the role of everyone in your team and prevent role conflict with demanding clients and other stakeholders;
• Make your job more meaningful, build trust, and take charge of your growth and career plans.

Without facts, performance improvement is merely an academic exercise. We therefore need your help to:

1. Sample what you do. Please select two random non-contiguous working days and record everything you do on these days indicating the time and duration of each task. Bring the log to the seminar where you will have a practical opportunity to focus on your goals.

2. Think of three time-management challenges you face (interruptions, delegation, meetings, scheduling, e-mail, teamwork). Note important details (issue frequency, people involved, current response).

3. Complete the pre-readings on mission, goal setting and validity testing, priority and urgency, managing interruptions, delegation and team leadership.

Alain Paul Martin coaches team leaders, executives and intelligence analysts and teaches strategy, risk management, negotiation and leadership. His experience includes the turnaround of a national financial institution and the management of projects ranging from airport security, and e-business strategy for a multi-billion dollar client, to the evaluation of TV coverage of major news events at the CBC. He has advised the Director General of UNESCO on restructuring and renewal, and has served as executive member of the non-partisan Committee of The Prime Minister of Canada on Government Reform. His presentation titled "Building a Great Nation and Governing in a World of Surprise Events" was attended by the Prime Minister of Canada, Cabinet ministers and legislators, among others.

He led the most advanced risk management workshop for senior managers, team leaders and engineers in the nuclear-power generation industry (OPG, B&W, AECL). He also advised a task force integrating into a single organization five agencies mandated to protect investors, maintain the integrity of the securities markets, and regulate financial institutions.

Mr. Martin's clients include Boeing, Boliden, Bombardier, EDC, GE, Cap-Gemini, GM, Hilton, MetLife, Procter & Gamble, Skanska Cement of Sweden, Ontario Power generation, The Association for Science and Technology in China (CAST), the Swedish Employers Council, The Engineering Advancement Association of Japan, telecom companies, governments and NGOs.

An alumnus of Harvard Business School and a recipient of patents and innovation awards, Mr. Martin has invented the Harvard Business Planner and developed Harvard University Global SystemT - a practical framework comprising management tools and road maps on human intelligence, issue analysis, strategy, risk and project management. He has also been recognized by the Project Management Institute (PMI) for "his outstanding contribution to the state-of-the-art of project management".

• Essential steps to conserve, control and make time for what matters the most
• Griessman: The secrets of the greatest achievers

• How to set mission and clear priorities
• How to validate goals and assess urgency
• How to focus on what really matters
• How to achieve balance in managing time

• How to set reasonable deadlines
• How to control your day & focus on high-return tasks
• How to work in an open-office environment
• Open-door policy: Do's and don'ts
• The quiet hour: How to make it happen

• Working smarter not harder: Counter-intuitive drivers
• 10 ways to secure greater control over your agenda

• Practical tips for telephone, voice and e-mail
• Reading skills: Best practices from broadcasting and medicine
• Videoconferencing and groupware productivity

• How to control drop-in visitors, interruptions and telephone calls
• The Internet: Tips to avoid wasting time online
• Dealing with other major time-wasters: Paperwork, equipment and working tools

• How to run effective meetings and focus on collective gains
• Best practices first hand

• The Harvard framework and practical tools for high achievers

• How to pull together to build a winning team
• How to collaborate and compensate for each other needs

• Interventions to prevent procrastination
• How to manage team and family resistance to change

• How to reduce your stress and paperwork and fully enjoy life
• Herb Shepard: Essence of a Proactive Life

• Exercises, group discussions
• Personal action plan for the next 90 days

• What to keep in mind to deliver value every day

The workshop tools and time-management framework have been proven and are applied both in North America and abroad. Some of the tools are registered under Harvard University Global System trademarks. This framework consists of practical instruments (road maps, working templates) essential to define work, validate objectives, define responsibility and role, diagnose conflict and improve personal effectiveness and team productivity.

Following is a list of the unique course materials that are invaluable in accelerating the learning process and the acquisition of lasting skills:

• The pre-readings from A. P. Martin's papers on mission, goal-portfolio setting and validity testing, priority and urgency, managing interruptions, delegation and team leadership.
• The main workbook covers the agenda and provides supplementary papers and time-management references. In addition, two books on time management, life and career planning will be provided: Herbert Shepard's Essence of a Proactive Life, and A. P. Martin's Bringing Time to Life - 120 Practical Tips for Managing Your Time and Enjoying Life. The objective of these course materials is to keep the participants current and growing professionally at their own pace long after the seminar.
• Individual hand-outs include three Harvard work-improvement templates (checklists) for running effective meetings, auditing individual performance, and clarifying roles between clients, team members, project leaders and other decision-makers and their support staff.
• Three management road maps (Harvard University Global System) feature a step-by-step framework for planning (value creation) and execution (value extraction), time management and risk mitigation. The Harvard Time Management Road Map details the annual, monthly, weekly and daily tasks considered essential to high achievement. With a novel and original 3D design, these laminated 22 x 34" road maps remind the users constantly of the most important questions in time and risk management. When kept in sight, they help users reduce the workload and focus on what really matters by paying attention to details that count without losing track of the big picture.

• In order to prepare for the session and maximize individual and team benefits, it is important that the participants complete the pre-readings, get a head start and be more comfortable with the program content and terminology.
• Two weeks before the session, the workshop leader will call several participants, selected randomly, to validate expectations and the completion of the pre-readings.
• The program does not cover software products or writing and presentation skills. The focus is on the skills of lasting value and which are considered essential to sustain a leading edge.

The cost for preparing and delivering the workshop is broken down as follows:

• Fixed speaker fees as posted at executive.org/inhouse. This amount also includes the rental of two training videos (Managing Difficult People, Running Effective Meetings).
• The course material cost, at a special discounted price. These include the main workbook, two published books, three Harvard road maps and the hand-outs.
• Speaker travel expenses, on cost-recovery basis, including airfare, hotel accommodation, local transportation and meals.
• Course material delivery.

Taxes are extra where applicable.

The client is responsible for the conference room, audio-visual materials including 2 flip charts, an 8x8 feet projection screen, a VCR player, an audiotape player, a digital projector for PowerPoint presentations and a lap-top computer (as a back-up machine).

Please note that the conference-room walls should be free to post five 25x35" laminated case-study templates, one for each group of five participants. We also recommend round tables, each seating five participants, in a crescent arrangement, to face the workshop leader.

An adjacent room for lunch is highly desirable. It would enable the participants to acquire further knowledge during the lunch break viewing two 40-minute videos, at no further cost to the client.