Welcome!

The monthly e mail newsletter for business professionals who want growth from Energise Brand Communications Ltd and Rachel Brushfield.

The purpose of this newsletter is to share simple tips and tools to make your life and work easier and help you to market yourself and your business as a unique brand.

This month’s theme is about…………… Being specific.

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Question - what wastes time, creates stress, causes confusion and results in lost money, motivation and productivity more than anything else?

The answer is not being specific enough.

Specificity affects everything and there are few occasions when it is not useful. Even if you are having a loose free thinking blue sky brainstorming, you still need a specific outcome or topic to make the investment of time and resource worthwhile.

Being specific is important for you to feel clear and purposeful and it is especially important when getting someone else to do something for you. It takes time to get clear and become specific and it is very easy to create shortcuts when time is pressing, which it most often is. Add to this people’s fear about looking stupid or ignorant which may stop them from asking clarifying questions, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The bigger and more complex the project, and the greater the number of people involved, politics, the worse the potential problem and cost of not being specific enough e.g. building Wembley Stadium, the Millennium Dome. One country’s Olympic committee focused on the use of the new sports facilities for the Olympics but didn’t think through and specify how they would be used afterwards. Result? Expensive white elephant.

What an interesting research project it would be to measure the consequence of cutting corners because of lack of time at the beginning of a project or briefing process and the impact of this on the subsequent length and cost of the project. Scary consequences!

With pressure on budgets and a desire to increase productivity from existing assets and resources, paying attention to this one simple concept – being specific would pay dividends for individuals and businesses. Literally.

In this newsletter:

• Why is being specific important?
• What are the consequences of not being specific?
• 10 tips to help make specificity happen

Why is specificity important?

Specificity is important because what you focus on is what you get. Whether you are giving feedback in an appraisal, delegating a task, briefing someone to do something, creating clear boundaries for your children, chairing a meeting, shopping for something, defining an objective, recruiting a new member of staff or choosing a pet or car for your lifestyle, being specific is vital.

Being specific enables you and your company to feel and be clear and purposeful, it reduces procrastination and confusion, avoids wasted time and late nights, reduces the likelihood of mistakes and things being misinterpreted and needing to be done twice.

If individuals and businesses were to focus on being more specific, they would save millions of lost hours and millions of pounds. Pure and simple.

What are the consequences of not being specific?

Not being specific costs:

• Confusion
• Procrastination
• Lost sleep
• Stress
• Late nights
• Reduced productivity
• Resentment
• Mistakes
• Blame
• Demotivation
• Frustration
• Wasted time
• Wasted budgets
• Lack of clarity
• Poor prioritisation

A simple habit of being really specific can make all the difference.

What examples can you think of where not being specific enough had a cost for you? Examples might include getting a different brand of pasta to the one you expected when someone does your shopping for you; being sent inappropriate job adverts or house details when job or house hunting; projects taking much longer and costing more than they need to; a design or advertising agency presenting creative concepts different to what you had thought you had briefed; a junior/trainee having to do something twice because they weren’t given a clear specific brief. The list is endless.

Lack of specificity also stops clear prioritisation e.g. the 5 simple words I need it this week, uttered by someone in authority can result in a whole team of people running around like blue arsed flies, working late, cancelling social plans, when what was required might have been one simple task this week, with everything else needed in a month’s time. Crazy, true and all too common.

10 tips to help make specificity happen

Putting the importance of being specific high up in your awareness is a good start and also reminding yourself to create a specificity habit, e.g. via a post it note. Below are 10 tips to help make specificity happen.

1. Create regular time to reflect, plan and get clear on what specifically you want for yourself and from others – if you’re not clear yourself, how can you be clear with others?
2. Start with the outcome in mind – what is that you want to achieve? How will you know? What will this do for you?
3. Use the ‘S.M.A.R.T.’ mnemonic as a specificity checker for actions – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timed
4. Avoid generalisations e.g. always, never, everyone etc.
5. Check the clarity and specificity of something by imagining an alien from outer space, with no prior knowledge or experience having to understand it
6. Check assumptions – it is easy to assume that others think like us and read our minds when they do not and cannot
7. Check understanding – get the other person to summarise what they think they are doing to ensure clarity
8. Craft questions carefully – asking incisive questions allows specificity to emerge and helps others to become clearer and more specific and will prevent you having your time stolen or being manipulated by bullshitters too
9. Put actions and agreements in writing so that there is less risk of misinterpretation of information and make them as specific as possible. This helps to manage expectations
10. Sum up actions at the end of meetings and important conversations and make sure that they are clear – who,what, when, where, why, how is a simple method to remember to do this

Put your focus on being more specific this month and let us know what difference it makes.

We’d love to hear the results.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers

Rachel Brushfield ©
Director, coach and marketing mentor
Energise – Insight & Clarity for Growth

Previous newsletter topics include: rewarding relationships; career crossroads; 2005 stock take; becoming unstuck; self-promotion; safe risk; optimism; more health, wealth and happiness; how to handle ‘difficult’ people; how to stop wasting and save time; maximising your potential;how to do absolutely nothing; listening; career choice and change; stress; focus for results; procrastination; reflection; fear; rapport; productivity; self-branding; beliefs; time management and S.M.A.R.T. goals.

If you’d like to receive a back copy of any of these, please e mail us to mail@energisingconnector.co.uk putting the Energise Tips & Tools newsletter of interest in the subject box.

Contact

Rachel Brushfield
Energise Brand Communications Ltd.
t +44 (0) 845 22 55 010
m +44 (0) 7973 911137
mail@energisingconnector.co.uk
www.energisingconnector.co.uk/
Offices in WC2 and Chiswick W6

Helping business professionals make leap ups.

Energise - Insight & Clarity for Growth

Our services are:
C areer coaching, CV design & personalised outplacement
A ction learning sets
M arketing & brand mentoring
E xecutive coaching
L ife coaching

More tips and tools

Our web site has a ‘Tips and tools’ section, which is regularly updated, sharing free tips and tools to help make life easy. Why not check it out? Visit www.energisingconnector.co.uk and click on the Tips & Tools button

Why Energise?

There are lots of coaching companies, so why choose us? Here’s some facts about Energise:

WHY:

We feel strongly about helping people to help themselves and are passionate about addressing low self-esteem & lack of self-belief in society that so often acts as a brake to people maximising their potential. Often people don’t recognise their own talents and potential, so with our background in marketing and brand communications, we help our clients to market themselves as a unique brand so they maximise their potential

HOW:

We personalise our service to the individual and get to the heart of the matter fast, so are time and cost effective. We are down to earth, focused and focusing, practical, human and energising. Unlike many coaching companies, we do not insist on a contract, so coaching is flexible from as little as 1 hour a month.

WHO:

We work with: big companies including Diageo, Sony Ericsson, Cranfield University, AWAS and Clifford Chance, small businesses and many individuals. We also do pro-bono work for selected charities e.g. working with disaffected young people and prisoners.

WHERE:

Our central London office is on Denmark Street, WC2 - the Energise ThinkSpace which is also available for hire, we coach from our West London home office in W6 and on the telephone

WHEN:

Energise was set up in 1997 so we have an established track record of 8 years plus 10 years full time experience before that. We coach our clients from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday – Friday. We work with people at a crossroads/point of transition in their lives and jobs, helping them to define their goals and realise and maximise their potential.

WHAT:

Our services are:
C areer coaching, CV design & personalised outplacement
A ction learning sets
M arketing & brand mentoring
E xecutive coaching
L ife coaching

Memberships

Energise have professional memberships with:
The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)
The International Coaching Federation (ICF)
The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)
Business Network International (BNI).

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