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Most of us spend much of our days in meetings. At the risk of generalizing, I dare say that we all have experienced meetings that we wish we had not attended and that turned out not quite what we had expected. There may be meetings where do not come to any decision, meetings that get prolonged, meetings that start late, meetings that are completely chaotic, etc.

When you want to refine the way you do something, it is a good idea to ask the pros, those that apparently manage to develop their businesses from success to success, mostly by having meetings. A while ago, BusinessWeek published an interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of search products, where she ...

In a normal week at work, I have got a lot of different meetings with different people. It can be project-meetings, sales-meetings, lunch meetings or other kinds of meetings.

It is important for me that all of my meetings result in some form of progression, that they are tangible, and that all parties know the purpose of the meeting. It is not necessary that we make decisions in every meeting for things to progress; some meetings’ primary purpose is to get to know each other and our respective businesses, but ...

I have got an idea and I need your help.

In one of my current assignments, we need to…

If we, like Georges Perec in the fascinating novel “Life – a User’s Manual”, could freeze time just for a moment on an ordinary day at work, how much of your business would be visible to the naked eye?

Are the things you do visible only when you are doing them, or are your routines and flows visualized in any way, so it would be possible for an outsider to study them, even if everything was standing still?

To describe your business in terms of work-flows is valuable, both making the actual real-time description and the complete documentation afterwards. This is particularly important in service-businesses since the service isn’t visible unless someone is performing it.

Do you find pleasure, in the same way as I do, in mapping out processes? Do you enjoy drawing boxes and arrows in a schematic way? Is your working-day complete when you have captured an ongoing activity as series of flows?

Perhaps not, but the actual visualization of the work doesn’t need to be as formal as the flowcharts that first come to mind. A checklist, an animation, a map of symbols or maybe even a comic-strip may be the perfect way to illustrate it, as long as it is appropriate for the target-group and the purpose.

But what is the actual point of describing your business?

Here are seven reasons why visualizing your company through flowcharts is useful.

I have a penchant for always having something with me to write or record in. It can be a notebook or a stack of index cards.

At least for me, ideas are volatile. As I mull something over ...

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Fläkt Woods in Växjö, Sweden, in order to hold a course in personal productivity for their staff. Fläkt Woods is a global business in ventilation solutions and they are the market leader in their field.

Meeting them was impressive in many ways. One thing was ...

This autumn I have again had the opportunity to work with a group of entrepreneurs within a project called “Spira” (in English “spire”) here in Gothenburg. In this project, ten fresh entrepreneurs get help building their business during six intense months.

My assignment was to give a talk and to hold a workshop on how to formulate a long term vision and how to break it down into short term, detailed goals and milestones to guide you on an average workday. A month later, I met with every individual entrepreneur to work on their particular questions and challenges, regarding how to reach your long term goal as easily as possible.

When I sat down with ...

Have you also from time to time experienced that the things just waiting to be done are in a real mess and you need to get a good overview to sort out what needs to be prioritized and what are the next steps?

It might be needed in some area for you individually or for your entire business.

Here is a quick and efficient method used successfully by both myself and several of my clients.

Last week, I conducted an open course in personal productivity in Stockholm, with participants from a wide variety of industries: from disposal of radioactive waste to gardening, via pharmaceuticals (among others).

We talked about ...

Imagine that a business, any kind of business, consists of a bunch of processes involving and performed by different participants (which could be employees, machinery, software, etc).

So, a process is then a routine, a series of activities that have a certain starting point and finishing line. One, a few or many participants may be involved in completing the activities in the process.

The purpose of looking at the business as a bunch of processes is that ...

Have you ever delegated a task to someone or have someone promise that they would get back to you with some sort of information you need, forgot that you did, and then, at the very last minute or when it is already too late, discover that you never received the material you desperately need right now?

Here’s a hint to how to never repeat that unpleasant experience ever again.

Have you, like I have, ever thought “I would really like to start working in that way, start doing like that, but I never seem to have time to begin; I have so much to do, all the time”?

It may be about being better prepared for meetings, or about using to-do-lists, or about taking notes swiftly about what you and your customer agreed on in a sales meeting, or something completely different.

The good thing is ...

A consistent theme in creating a good personal or organizational structure is simplification, to make things simpler.

When things move too slowly forward and even when we get totally stuck, we and our business can get going and accelerate easier if we make things simple.

But, how?

Here are six kinds of simplicity to utilize.

Are you drowing in piles of paper on your desk? It may be piles of documents that you do not need at the moment but can’tthrow away because you know that you will need it later; next week, next month or next year?

The solution to this is called “the tickler file”.