Working Smart

The publisher I worked for several years ago used to stage roughly 30 conferences a year for their various trade magazine portfolios. Anyone who has even had a brief passing with the field of conference organizing understands what a logistical nightmare it can be.

With room blocks, selecting speakers, travel arrangements, sponsor agreements, meals and coffee breaks and even booking entertainment, it’s a job suited for only the best organized.

This brings me to the topic de jour.

One of the conference staff members was a pleasant woman with an extensive resume in the field, who put in some of the longest hours imaginable. She would often be at her desk until midnight some evenings and like clockwork, return promptly the next morning at 7:30 am.

Yet she accumulated more warnings on her job performance than one could possibly imagine considering her extensive time commitment.

By contrast a woman in her department with whom she shared an open office, had two children under the age of five, began her work day at 9 am and left exactly at 5:15 each evening to pick them up from day care and prepare dinner.

And she accomplished roughly twice as much as her time-challenged colleague.

So one day I ambled to her desk and point blank asked her how she got so much work done in such a compressed time frame.

“Simple,” she said. “I don’t work hard, I work smart.”

She patiently explained the difference in a manner even I could understand.

Each day she made a checklist of what had to be done and by what time and assigned them levels of priority. So for example, if she had to secure a sponsor for conference event she committed a certain time for that task to be completed. If it wasn’t, she went on to something else less demanding and later returned.

If there was paperwork to be completed, she often went into an unoccupied meeting room to avoid any time-draining interruptions such as phone calls and emails.

She was also a master at delegating. If there were basic conference-related projects that could be handled by junior staff, she would hand it to them – as opposed to her harangued colleague who insisted on doing everything herself.

Not surprisingly she was eventually contacted by a head hunter for a large consulting company who needed a senior conference manager and she departed for greener pastures and a much larger paycheck. Since that time I have tried to emulate her “smart” work process with some moderate success.

However, despite my progress in this area, I think programming a conference with 500 attendees or so will continue to remain out of my comfort zone.