Fork 7 | Building trust by Overdelivering

1. Advanced Note-Taking - Know how to find everything everywhere all the time

There are many different note-taking techniques that can help you to be more organized and productive. I would say that you need to differentiate between notes-taking

in a controlled environment, where you can repeat what you have just consumed at any time and
in an uncontrolled environment, where you only have one shot (a conversation, a meeting or an event you are attending)

Both variants have their pros and cons but I am not getting into details right now. However, you will need two different approaches to these environments. I will give you my two favorites although I adapted them to my behavior (as the Inbox Zero).

1.1 Note-taking in uncontrolled Environments

Probably the most popular (and intuitive) technique is the Cornell Note-taking technique, created by Walter Pauk (Pauk, Walter; Owens, Ross J. Q., 2010). This technique helps you

organize your notes (A)
by summarizing (C) and
categorizing them (B) into headings and subheadings.

Very straightforward and therefore a good solution to coming up with the essence of a conversation. The categorization helps you in linking the notes to an overarching topic, for example with tags.

1.2 Note-taking in controlled Environments

Another popular technique is the Zettelkasten Method by Niklas Luhmann (Luhmann, 2014). This technique helps you to take better notes, by connecting your ideas together, and making it easy to find everything. He differentiates between:

Literature Notes: contextualizing your thoughts when consuming something
Reference Notes: grouping information by creating tags to help you find this or other grouped information
Permanent Notes: stand-alone ideas that can be further distributed and may be based on the other note categories

To give you an example of what it means in “my world”:

I read about note-taking methods somewhere (i. e. a book, website, blog, etc.) which is the basis for literature notes
I mark interesting content within the source which gets automatically saved and transferred into my note-taking tool (literature notes) with a reference to the author and the source address (reference note)
I add tags to it like “#note-taking, #tool #notes101 (reference note)
It automatically creates a reference page called “notes101” where I create bullet points which are the basis for this writing (permanent note)

1.3 The synthesis of the above: You create order as a habit

The goal of these advanced note-taking techniques is to ensure that you can quickly find everything you need to get your work done in any context as long as you have already made an experience with the topic you work on. In a business context it could mean:

During a meeting, an email gets referenced and you are fast in retrieving it because you know where to find it according to your structure
You create meeting minutes on the fly, consolidate them afterwards and reference them for future use
Somebody asks you for a certain information and you don’t know the answer but you know under which category/tag you can find it

Finally, it is unbelievably valuable to be the person whom other people reference as the one knowing “all the answers”. Typical questions are:

“Do you remember what we said about abc when we met with xyz?”
“Can you send me the mail/document about xyz?”
“Can you share with me your notes on xyz?”

And when you learn to query your gathered information, you will be unstoppable.

2. Advanced Communication Mgmt. - Overdeliver, always!

Advanced communication management is all about delivering more than was expected by the recipient of your communication. I remember exactly how I read this information in Keith Ferrazzi’s (former Deloitte C-level executive) book “Never Eat Alone” and it has stuck with me ever since.

Side note: Coming back to the note-taking: it was part of my literature notes and I referenced it to my principles which is again referenced to Ray Dalio’s (founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund) book “Principles”.

It can be something as simple as responding to an email faster than expected, or as big as delivering a project early. Whatever it is, it will increase your credibility and reliability towards the recipient (your boss, your client or just a normal colleague).

Why credibility and reliability are so important in business can be seen in a formula taken from “The trusted Advisor” by Maister, Green and Galford:

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation

Other generic examples you might want to pay attention to are:

Understand which communication channels are proper for the recipient and the information you want to deliver.
When you create a presentation, try to design it nice-looking, logical and as concise as the recipient needs it.
If there is anything in writing, always design it in a way which enables the recipient to forward it directly or to take it and use it as if he would have created it.
Don’t bother other people with problems you are facing due to your nature of communicating (i. e. people don’t respond to your emails, do not respond to calls or decline meeting invites) except for extremely critical things.

Finally, giving you some real examples from my client-consultant experience:

When meeting with architects, I prepare as much technical documentation as possible to get their OK instead of informing them about what I need.
When meeting with lower management, I always include a high-level timeline and budget breakdown into CapEx and OpEx. Then I break down the OpEx into reoccurring costs and non-reoccurring costs which are then split into internal FTEs (make) and external FTEs (buy)
When meeting with higher management, I highlight every risk that is in my estimation higher than R6 with a clear mitigation proposal that is either dependent on them or not.

2.1 Your style is your personal brand and therefore your greatest asset

If you engage in a client-advisor/consultant/service provider relationship, you should never forget that your “style” of communication is the most important thing you need to focus on. Period.

You may say: “What are you talking about? Is it not your results?” The answer may surprise you but no, it is not. Results are according to the numbers of the service sector obviously a commodity and not the differentiator. It is part of reliability in the trust equation but I would argue that the communication (credibility) and your way of producing the results (intimacy) is much more important for your stance.

As soon as you have a profile, you will get praise and positive feedback which affirms your investment. But again: Never, under no circumstances underdeliver. Of course, you can make mistakes but you need to own them transparently and with humility which is another type of overdelivering because everybody else would start pointing fingers now.

The goal is not to solve problems but to get the chance to solve bigger problems for your client. You need to think like your client, understand who he/she reports to, what his/her goals are, critique them when they don’t work according to their own standards, and provide proposals on how to improve the status quo.

Make decisions easy for busy people. Here is a bit of advice:

When you have a problem to solve, come prepared with a suggested next step.
If you have a question, phrase it in a way they can answer yes/no.
If there are multiple options, lay them out and ask them to pick one.
Try to avoid expansive, open-ended questions.

You will rise fast in your career if busy people like working with you. So, stop complaining and start empathizing.

3. Keyboard Shortcuts - Speed up your usage of tools

There are many different keyboard shortcuts that can help you speed up your usage of different tools. I will give you the tools you need shortcuts for to make others amazed at how fast you work.

You need shortcuts for:

Your desktop/laptop (copy/paste, cut, search function, lock screen, change between open windows, etc.)
Your mail program (usually Outlook for MS users or GMail for Google users)
Your browser (most likely Chrome or Safari)
Your note-taking tool (create, tag, reference, search, etc.)
Your document-creation/messenger tool (markup language)
Your slide-creation tool (Google slides or rather PowerPoint)
Your document management tool (drive, sharepoints, etc.)

Make it a habit to look up shortcuts (which are usually the same or at least similar) for every new tool you might use. Believe me, it is so much fun. Example for writing an email in Gmail:

c to create a new email or r/a to respond to one
Put in some letters to find the right people and with 🔼🔽 choose the right ones
tab to subject and write the subject
tab to content field and write the actual email
Ctrl + ↩️ to send the email

4. Time Tracking - In order to plan ahead, you need to know yourself

Time tracking is a critical part of the higher levels of the productivity pyramid. It helps you to understand how long it takes you to fulfill tasks in a particular area. As a consequence, you will be able to plan a week better and better ahead, incl. space for unexpected events so you will stay on top of all the things you are doing.

There are many different time tracking tools available but I use Toggl. Most time tracking tools will allow you to track your time by project, task and eventually by tags. This is one of the few fields which I have not overengineered. I only use the project I am working on and a high-level description like “writing”, “admin” or something similar.

Especially, when you start previsioning (meaning foreseeing) topics, problems, resources, projects, you will not only be able to keep yourself in check but also others. You can manage others better if you have an intuitive idea of how much time they need to fulfill a certain task and then scale it to a day, a week and some might even be able to scale it to a month.

Conclusion

If you really want to make the things I told you about a habit, I encourage you to take the time in December and get used to the methods one by one.

Just a small warning at the end: If you lose control of your workload, you might get into real mental struggles. It happened to me last year and I don't wish it on anyone. The most important thing at such a time is to clearly prioritize the most relevant things, only working on them and telling your social circle that you might be less active during the next weeks or so.