Productivity Pit Stop Training and Implementation week for NGO’s / development organizations

The success of your organization depends on the personal productivity of yourself and your staff – If your team members have their work well organized, have trustworthy systems to keep track of all their commitments and have the methods and habits to keep it up to date, then they are free to focus their full attention and creativity at the tasks at hand, and success will follow.

On the other hand if your staff and yourself are struggling to keep track of their workload, continuously experience that your agenda is driven from outside, that your long term core priorities get flushed away by short term crises, that you are struggling to keep overview and focus, then you are not likely to get the results you desire.

With Carsten Norgaard joining Productivity Pit Stop and bringing 30 years of leadership level NGO/Development experience to PPS, we can now offer the “Productivity Pit Stop Training and Implementation week”, a cost effective, all inclusive weeklong training and coaching package tailored to the needs of NGO’s.

The training and coaching are based on the successful PPS training Course “Getting Things done with Microsoft Outlook” and on the hands on “Personal Productivity coaching” combined into 1 full week of training and coaching for your team.

You will likely have experienced coming back from a training course all jacked up and inspired and ready to implement what you have learned, only to find a few month later that it has mostly evaporated in the daily grind. During this training/coaching week we stay at your offices, we work with your staff based on their workload and their work challenges and by the time we leave they will have learned new skills and new habits and will have fully articulated and organized their present workload.

After the PPS training and implementation week we will provide active support for you staff for additional 2-3 months to secure a very high success rate in the ongoing implementation.

The core PPS methodologies has for many years been taught and used in the corporate sector with great success and now the methodologies have been adapted to the ideas driven and much more diverse, collective and inclusive NGO sector.

How will it work/what will you learn

Preparation: After a suitable week have been identified, Carsten will be in contact with your staff members to prepare a tailor made week based on your organizational situation, based on the needs of your staff members.

The Training and Implementation week:

• First there is 1 ½ – 2 days of initial training which will ideally take place in your own meeting room. It is very hands-on training; all staff members will work on their own computers and to a large extent on their own workload. During the training the basic principles of personal productivity is introduced and practiced in many different ways and a comprehensive system is set up in MS Outlook to keep track of all your tasks and responsibilities. You will learn more than you thought possible about the calendar, task, contact and email modules and how to tweak them to create a complete, fully integrated digital system that incorporates both your higher level thinking and the smallest of details. You will also be introduced to other productivity tools and to effective ways of dealing with your paper world. At the end of the training extensive and detailed individual plans for implementation is made up and will be the basis for the work in the rest of the week.
• The rest of the week staff members will work mainly on their own to implement their new productivity system and further their understanding of the PPS methodologies. This will typically include e.g. 1) setting up your physical working area, in- and out- trays, a system for all your ongoing projects, support materials etc, 2) Where applicable setting up or revising your filing systems, 3) working on refining and fully populating your new digital task management system in MS Outlook (this will require a thorough engagement with all your previous systems, the plans and strategies of the organization etc to extract all the projects and tasks you are responsible for, articulate what is needed, making upfront decisions about them and park them securely in your system), 4) de-clutter the rest of your office, go through each and every pile and stuffy corner and make up front decisions about what to do and either do it or entering it into your new digital/paper systems. – While all staff members are working their implementation, Carsten will work closely with them. He will have an extensive one on one session with each of them as well as several briefer follow up sessions, coach them in their implementation and do remedial training as needed. By the end of the week all staff members will have worked through, articulated and fully organized all their outstanding work, in the process, a lot of work will already have been done and a lot of confusing clutter will have been trashed.

Follow up

After the training and implementation week, Carsten will be available for advice and individual coaching by email and skype/phone for an extended period of time.

Benefits to your organization

Through combination of intensive training and coaching for a full week, followed by individual needs based support for an extended period a very high success rate is achieved and your average staff member will likely report a 5-10% increase in his or her personal productivity plus a higher quality of work due to a better focus and more creativity.

Due not misunderstand it, this is not a quick fix solution. Long term productivity gains are only achieved through substantial investments of time and energy in the initial phases and through a commitment to keep it up and stay organized. Above approach builds on proven methodologies and helps you minimize the investments and the trial and error and maximize the results, and help you stay the course and not give up half way through the process.

The PPS Training and Implementation week is ideal for a group of 6-10 employees. If you are more we should look at dividing you up in groups and scheduling more than one week.

Carsten Norgaard has 35 years of experience in international development, working in small solidarity organizations, large international NGO’s as well as for the Danish Government. He has worked with or in more than 15 countries with projects ranging from major government reform programs around e.g. education and governance through your typical midsized NGO project to support for grass root level self help groups. He has moved between coordinating a broad range of programs across multiple countries and sectors to getting his hands dirty in day to day implementation. Carsten can be contacted on carsten@iway.na or by phone +264 85 124 4219 and +264 60 110 1616

Carsten is based in Windhoek Namibia, but offers this course all over Southern, Eastern and Western Africa.