Purpose of the Productive Outlook Programme
The purpose of the Productive Outlook Programme is to measurably increase the productivity of MS Outlook users in your business, thereby improving your business performance.
Our Team
I’m Gerrit Cloete and I’ve been doing this work since 2001 with my colleague Duncan Hattingh. We’ve worked with more than 15 000 people from 320+ companies in 12 countries.
Our clients include seventy-three of the Top 500 Best-Managed Companies in South Africa. I’m the author of the book, Productivity 106, a compilation of my email newsletters that I share with thousands of my subscribers every week.
Does This Sound Like You?
We work exclusively with Learning & Development Executives, HOD’s, and Team Leaders in companies that use MS Outlook that are serious about making a measurable improvement in the productivity of their people.
Our clients are typically seasoned professionals who themselves have to deal with limited resources, time constraints, and resistance to change – not to mention the challenge of effectively measuring the impact of their training and development initiatives.
They represent a diverse spectrum of industries and company sizes, and with the use of technology, there are no longer geographical boundaries.
They are all forward-thinking and share a desire to develop human potential, increase engagement, and build performance capacity.
The people who are invited to join our programme are already successful and can use the basic functionality of Outlook for email and meetings.
Why Is Productive Outlook Needed?
Our participants find their workload growing over time as they must get more done with the same or even fewer resources.
But their knowledge of available technology and processes does not keep up to help them manage their workflow more efficiently.
Therefore, people find themselves wasting 20 to 90 minutes every day because they don’t have a reliable decision-making system for making better use of their opportunities and time.
Productive Outlook brings improved processes to existing technology, and also helps people develop a more productive outlook on their work by eliminating beliefs and behaviours that limit their productivity.
These Are Typically Some Issues Most Outlook Users Experience
They are frustrated by a constantly changing environment and demands on their time. This leads to uncertainty, poor prioritising, and a lot of unnecessary busy-work without delivering results.
They feel powerless against the amount of time that gets wasted in unproductive meetings. One of our clients determined that they are losing about R10 million per year due to poorly managed meetings.
They are overwhelmed by email overload. Research has shown that people waste as much as 1,5 hours every day while working on their email because they have no trusted system to efficiently process and organise their email.
Our Work Focuses on Three Outcome-Oriented Processes
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- Establish an effective prioritising strategy and decision-making framework. Don’t get overrun by the tyranny of the urgent but rather consider the impact of decisions and choose actions and projects carefully.
- Implement a proven process to have fewer, more effective, more efficient meetings. Planning and managing meetings are two critical skills to save untold hours of wasted time in meetings.
We ensure clarity about the purpose of a meeting, contributions of participants, keeping everyone on track, managing a flexible agenda, and above all, learning from every meeting to make the next one better.
- Eliminate email-overwhelm. Our Productivity Decision Tree transforms fuzzy emails in the Inbox into crystal clear actions and projects that are easy to manage and track in the Calendar and Tasks modules of Outlook.
What Can You Expect to Gain from Working with Us?
You will see a marked improvement in the productivity of your employees.
Clear communication the first time. No going back and forth to clarify requests – and getting all questions answered the first time!
Delegation and following up becomes much more effective, freeing people up to only do what only they can do.
Meetings will run on time – even shorter. No more time wasted by rambling off-topic conversations.
People will know what to do because clearly shared priorities are now guiding decision-making.
People will experience less stress, feel more in control, and be more focused. In a nutshell, past participants all say that the programme made their life and work, not only productive but also so much easier.
How Do We Work with Our Clients?
We work with ten to fifteen people per group and can have as many groups as necessary to cater for everyone you’d like to enrol.
Everyone gets lifetime access to our online course material. Our clients love the flexibility this offers.
We facilitate a series of six one-hour live, interactive, facilitator-led, online workshops, one week apart. This ensures structure, discipline, and accountability. People share their learning and demonstrate their progress by sharing their Outlook screen.
Everyone on the programme gets one or two 30-minute private online consultations to make sure they create a system that suits their way of working and thinking.
We also enrol them in our Productive Outlook Learning Community where they get free content, webinars, recordings of our productivity webinars, and the opportunity to meet like-minded people from a variety of companies and industries.
We have a follow-up and refresher workshop six to eight weeks after the last session of the course – at no additional cost to you.
Help is always just an email or a phone call away – even after the programme has run its course.
What Is Special About Our Work?
Our work is based on time-proven productivity principles. Therefore, it is effective for every role in every department in your company. “Generations” don’t matter.
One of our principles is “implementation through action”. We don’t just give you information. We work together to create a productivity transformation. Watching a bunch of videos and reading a library full of productivity books won’t help you improve your productivity.
We believe in shared learning and therefore our online workshops are not boring teaching sessions. It’s lively and action-oriented.
We make it fun, where “fun” means enjoying both the process and the result.
We remain a resource for our students long after the programme has been formally concluded.
What Do We Help You Avoid?
Our process encourages participants to form sustainable productivity habits. No more falling back to unproductive habits within a few weeks after completing the programme.
You avoid the time- and money-wasting traps of looking for information, inefficiently going through your email more times than necessary, interruptions, distractions, and “multitasking”.
We help you avoid the frustration of unclear communication and misunderstandings.
How Is Our Approach Different?
Our approach was developed by getting feedback and input from our more than 15 000 students since 2001. It is “battle-proven” and has stood the test of time.
We make our programme as customised as we possibly can. One size does not fit all. You can choose from a menu of content modules and methods of delivery.
We don’t stop working with our students at the end of the last workshop. In the Productive Outlook Community, we keep in touch and they can meet many other like-minded people from various industries and learn from each other.
The purpose of Productive Outlook is not to complete the course, but to change behaviour and habits.
What Is Productive Outlook Not?
It’s not basic “Outlook Training”. Our primary focus is on improving productivity. It’s not primarily about learning about the technology. It’s to use the technology to implement time-proven productivity principles.
It’s not just a collection of videos to be watched over and over in the hope that something will get better.
Productive Outlook is not an overpriced “information product”. It delivers a productivity transformation.
Your Next Steps
If you think Productive Outlook might be for you and help you to make your business more productive, let’s talk in more depth for about 30-45 minutes to make sure our approach is the right fit for you and your business.
I’ll mostly ask questions to better understand your situation, productivity challenges, and goals. Rest assured, I don’t use any heavy-handed selling techniques or apply any pressure to work with us. We must both feel and know that it’s the best thing to do for your business.
The easiest is to click here and send me an email. I will then be in touch and we can set up our conversation.
Thank you for your visit to our information page.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Gerrit Cloete
Founder-Owner at Productivity Pit Stop
Mobile: +27 82 737 3676