Yesterday I visited a friend's office. Prior to visiting his office, my friend always sounded professional, smart and a real manager. But when I entered his office, I could not find him as his work table had piles of files, disarrayed office chairs, ash trays full of cigarette buds and the whole office smelled like a brick making factory as it was smoky, smelly and uneasy.
And then to my surprise, a head appeared from behind the files and I saw an equally disarrayed person, trying to smile to welcome me.
Now imagine, if this is how a client encounters a company representative, what impression he is going to carry about the person and the company itself. It shows overworled work environment, non-professional managers and I-don't-care-I-want-results type bosses.
We fail to realise that unless we have a conducive workig environemnt, clean and well kept office and fresh faces, neither can we produce nor achieve the goalposts given to us. As managers we have to first ensure that our office looks as clean and tidy as we would like our homes to be.
A research on office management concltdes that a neat and tidy workplace can increase one's efficiency by 50% or in other words manifold.
So how to go about it? It is simple and difficult as well. If we want to to do it, it is simple - but if we want a staus quo based on Newton's first law of motion "The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force," meaning by if we do not apply ourselves to the situation around us, there is going to be no change in our situation or environment.
The first and foremost action of ours should be to break the inertia and make a resolve to keep our workplace as a living example for others.
Secondly, start from the peripeherals like telephone, pen stand, day planner, table lamp, photographs(if any) and keep these according to their usage and accessibility. Normally people keep the telephone to the right and when it rings they pick up with the right hand but have to shift it to the left hand if something is to be written. Therefore telephones should always be placed to the left and attended to by the left hand (since mostly people are right handed) - this will allow easy use of telephone and taking notes if required.
Thirdly, keep only those things which are essential - rest all be placed in shelves under the telephone desk for easy access.
There should be nothing in the drawers except directories, calculators, stamps or ready-reckoners- becasue if once you start dumping things in the drawers, then these will have things you would have never used even in months. So keep only those things in the drawers that are handy and are required occasionally.
Always clean your office of files that have been used and referred to - these must go back to their cabinets as early as possible, lest these are misplaced or dumped under other files and erroneously taken away.Some managers are in the habit of placing visiting cards under the table glass for 'easy and quick reference.' Believe me, these are seldom used. Have these visiting cards in the custom made folders and kept in the drawer. The frequently consulted clients are even otherwise fed in your cellular phone, so have unnecessary contact information cluttering your office outlook?
And the last thing - clean up once you leave. When in my earlier post I talekd of having a 'flex time', keep a part of the flex time for the end of the day for cleaning up. Clean your desk and table to from all files taken out during the day and put these back where these belong. If these are to be consulted again, stack them or better would be to tie them in specially made folders and place these on one side so that when you come the next day, you confront with a clean and healthy hellow from your work station rather than a messy and ugly looking site.
Well that is all about today. But what about your cellular phone - is it well organised too? I am sure in most cases it is not. We will talk about it some other day. In the meanwhile, why not get out of the inertia and start a cleaning - rather a cleansing operation rightaway: it wont take long but would leave you refreshing and smiling. Say Cheeeez
