1. Efficiency & Effectiveness
Ashley Munro, WASFAA President

2. Effective Efficient Definitions Adequate to accomplish a purpose
Producing the intended or expected result
Effective
Performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort
Efficient
Effective: Adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result
Effective: Performing or function in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort
Basically: Being effective is about doing the right things, while being efficient is about doing things right.
Can you do both at the same time? Absolutely! But not always. However, they should always be in sync.
While this session covers both, it heavily focuses on efficiency. We’ll start with effectiveness and move onto efficiency.

3. Effectiveness
Effectiveness is about doing the right things. You need to make sure you are pursuing the right goals, either professionally or personally. Make sure you’re headed in the right direction before you worry about efficiency.
It doesn’t matter if you found a faster way to send out award letters, if your award letters don’t serve the need of the students or the school.
There are two times when effectiveness is way more important that efficiency: with Goals and with People.

4. Effective People Be Proactive Begin With the End in Mind1
Be Proactive 2
Begin With the End in Mind 3
Put First Things First 4
Think Win/Win 5
Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood 6
Synergize 7
Sharpen the Saw
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey lists these seven habits and goes into details on each. We’ll cover some aspects of these during this hour, both in effectiveness and in efficiency. If you would like more details on these, I would highly recommend this book.
Effective People are:
Proactive- look for things that need your touch. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Anticipate change. Notice the small things around you and be prepared to move with it immediately, instead of ignoring it. We’ll look at this habit more closely in efficiency.
Begin With the End in Mind- Goals. What do you want to accomplish?
Put First Things First-A different kind of priority list. We’ll look at this a lot in efficiency.
These next three, we’ll discuss in a few minutes, deal with working with people
Think Win/Win- Find a better solution. If you want to know more about this one, I recommend registering for the WASFAA Fall Training
Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood- People are important.
Synergize- empathetic communication
And lastly, one we’ll save for later:
Sharpen the Saw- Story

5. The End Goal Provides the direction Keeps you focused
Creates a sense of accomplishment
Makes tasks more meaningful
Goals = “an effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived.”
SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound)
Goals will provide you with direction, keep you focused, create a sense of accomplishment and makes the tasks that follow more meaningful.
Take a moment and thing of a goal you have. Internally, we want to get there quicker. We want the hare on the speedboat. With goals, it is more important to be effective, to make it to the end, than it is to get there quickly.
Visualization Exercise: What do you want? Why did you come here? Keep this in mind. It’s the end…
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them” Albert Einstein
“An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived.” Stephen Covey

6. People
You can be efficient with things. You must be effective with people.
Be respectful
Listen to understand
“A [student] is not dependent upon us, we are dependent upon him. A [student] is not an interruption of our work, he is the purpose of it”
In order to be effective with people, you can’t be efficient. You can provide one word answers, or ignore phone calls and s and maintain great work efficiency. However, you’ve lost the respect of the people and are not longer effective. You aren’t moving your team to the end point.
In this case, we must all agree that people are more important. You need to decide right now: will you be efficient with people, or effective?
This is easy to forget in our work. We all SAY students are why we are here, but how many of us go an entire day or week without talking to a single student? Does anyone sigh when you get a phone call from a student, or a note pops up that there is someone here to see you? It “interrupts” our work. But in reality, the students are our work.
How do you feel when you go in to a store and the customer service person brushes you off? Do you feel that the person is being effective? No.
The time spent with people often doesn’t allow for efficiency, personally or professionally. If we change gears for a second: Do you want to have efficient time with your kids, or effective time?

7. Small Steps to Become Effective
Be Proactive
Take Responsibility
Build Teams
Create Your Efficiency System
Anticipate Change: What resources do you have to learn about change before it happens? Are you planning ahead? Wouldn’t you rather have 6 months to figure out how to make it work, than 6 days?
You may not be able to convince people that things aren’t broken- yet still need fixing, but you can be ready with alternatives with the first cracks appear. Effective people are not problem-minded, they’re opportunity minded. –Peter Drucker
2. If something goes wrong, accept responsibility and move on. “Look at the word responsibility- response ability- the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.” “we were never allowed to make excuses or blame our circumstances, friends, teachers for our problems. We were simply told to “make it happen” or “choose another response”.
3. Build your Team: It’s a time investment. Taking a few hours here and there to have parties, retreats, training opportunities saves you time later on. It builds trust so that you can delegate tasks and rely on people when its really needed.
4. Create Your Efficiency System: Lets Talk about that next!

8. Efficiency
Efficiency: What about this topic did you want to learn? What did you think I could teach you?
Efficiency can come in two forms: Personal Efficiency and Process Efficiency. I’ll touch on process efficiency, then we’ll spend the rest of the time on personal efficiency.
I consider myself an efficient person. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be efficient, it comes naturally to me. However, I’ve observed some differences and have worked in other areas to improve efficiency and I’ll share these suggestions with you.
At some point, you will need to decide: Do you want to be the guy in front, or the people in the back? You may need to make some sacrifices or changes to get there.
Know where you live
Be willing to change
Find what works for you

9. Efficient Processes What takes time in your office? Ask “Why?”
Flow charting helps
Look for Process Improvement Groups
How do you make processes efficient?
What takes time in your office?
Ask “Why?”: If you can’t bring it back to a regulation or a mission, then why are you doing it?
Example: Budget need sheets. No want wants do to them, we do about 1000 each semester, we hate them. Why are we doing them? Its not a regulation for us, but its part of our mission to assist students with other funding. We can’t NOT do them. But is there a better way? YES! Applied for funding through OIT for an automation grant, if funded, this is no longer a manual process.
Flow chart the process: this is a great way to ask Why at many different levels.
Having new eyes in the room while you do this is very helpful. Ask someone from outside your office to facilitate the flow chart process. Does your campus have a Process Improvement Team/ Project Management Team?

10. Where Do You Live? Urgent Not Urgent Important Quadrant I: Crises
Urgent
Not Urgent
Important
Quadrant I:
Crises
Pressing Problems
Deadline-driven projects
Quadrant II:
Prevention activities
Planning
Recreation
Recognizing new opportunities
Not Important
Quadrant III:
Interruptions: call,
Meetings
Quadrant IV:
Busy work
Mail, calls
Where do you spend most of your time?
Are you dealing with crises and deadlines? If so you’re living in Quadrant I. This leads you to experience stress, burnout. This is unavoidable sometimes, its emergencies. But you can’t live here forever. You MUST get out!
Are you dealing with interruptions, constant meetings? If so, you’re living in Quadrant III, you have short term focus, crisis management, see goals as worthless. You may think what you’re doing is important, but in reality, you are working on the priorities of others. Now you’re being ineffective. You’re not moving towards any end point. You’re simply solving immediate problems. Again, its sometimes unavoidable. But you can’t stay here forever.
Are you dealing with busy work? s, phone calls? If so, you’re living in Quadrant IV, you feel dependent on others, and irresponsible
When living in Quadrant II, you have vision, perspective, balance, discipline, control, few crises. “Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions because you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventative things that keep situations from developing into crises in the first place”.
It will take practice and persistence, and not everything may take a Quadrant II approach, but you can begin to make headway on a few of them, and start a Quadrant II mind-set in the others.
Covey, Stephen. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster, New York.

11. How to get into Quadrant II
Time Management
To-Do Lists
Delegate
Why aren’t you already there?
Do you lack the ability to prioritize? To Organize? Or lack the discipline to actually do it?
“You can adapt; you can be flexible. You don’t feel guilty when you don’t meet your schedule or when you have to change it.” On why you need habit 2: Begin with the end in mind.

12. Time Management Track Your Time Assign Project Time Lengths
Create a Weekly Schedule
Include Emergency Slots
Stick to It
Track Your Time: Just like a financial budget, track your time during the week. It’s a lot of work, but by doing this, you’re already living the Quadrant II life! Be honest and realistic. If you spend 30 minutes a day checking social media, include it. It matters. Remember, you don’t have to share this budget with your boss.
Assign Project Time Lengths: You’re probably a good guess at how much time it will take you to do X. Be realistic, and over-estimate if necessary. If you need to write a presentation, for example, it will take 6 hours of your time. Schedule an hour a day for 6 days, or 2 3 hour chunks. Whatever you prefer.
Create a Weekly Schedule: Organize your schedule weekly, rather than daily. Go into as much detail as you’d like: You can do 15 or 30 minute intervals, these are better than 60 minutes. There are many paper schedules or electronic apps that will help you do this. Make sure to include “private time” or time in your schedule. Once you see it on paper, you’ll probably be surprised at how much blank time shows up. Set aside time each Friday (4-5pm?) to reflect on your week and prepare your schedule for the following week. If you struggle with work-life balance, schedule your priorities first. Put your school pick-up times, or kids’ concerts on the weekly schedule first. Then fill in the rest. Allow for some flexibility. You might not be in a creative mood when your presentation preparation comes around- that’s OK. Switch it out with something. Just make sure to come back to your presentation this week.
Include Emergency Slots: Schedule some time each day that can be used for emergencies. If one doesn’t pop up, that’s great! Use that time to work ahead or actually go to lunch. If one does pop up, try to settle it in the allotted time. When possible, wait until that time slot to take care of it. Tell the person that brought it to you: This will be reviewed between 2:00 and 3:00 today. Inevitably, you need to have time for those Quadrant I activities that are unavoidable. But, planning for them, you do not need to slip fully back into living in Q1.
Stick to it: as much as possible, stay on your schedule. You do need to be somewhat flexible, but don’t push everything off until tomorrow or you’ll never catch back up.

13. Email Joselyn Glei Unsubscribe
Use apps to organize and snooze messages
Batch your box
Create folders
A new study found that employees spend an average of 4 hours a day on . During your time budget, track it! That’s nearly 50,000 hours of your career reading and responding to .
When you log in and see s in your box, its overwhelming. If you’re used to it, get unused to it. There is no excuse for this. You probably missed something in there.
Joselyn Glei, Unsubscribe: How to Kill Anxiety, Avoid Distraction and Get Real Work Done.
Use apps to organize: EasilyDo Mail: free app lets you snooze messages with one swipe: groups travel, bills, receipts, etc. Makes it very easy to unsubscribe froom unsated newsletters. on Deck: provides a free temporary address that allows you to sign up for a service and confirm your without getting on a promo list.
Batch your box: Check your at designated times: Work that into your weekly schedule. Log out the rest of the day if you struggle with this.
Create folders: File away your messages. You can use your inbox as a To-Do list, file away once done. If you can’t be bothered to do this and want a magic solution, SaneBox is a paid app that uses algorthms to identify s that are important to you and sends everything else to a SaneLate box.

14. To-Do Lists Use whatever you like Set deadlines for accountability
Break them apart
Savor the success
Use whatever you like to track what is needed:
Sticky notes
White board
Apps
I use a combination. Long term (semester) goes on the elephant, short term stays in my . When I really feel overwhelmed, each task goes on a sticky note I can crumble up and throw away.
Set deadlines for accountability. 41% of to-do tasks are never completed (Lifehacker). No actual plan to accomplish them (set deadlines). Each Monday or each morning, pick 3-5 tasks you will get done that day/week.
Break them apart: The 59% of tasks that get done, get done quickly (within a few days). If you have a longer term project, break this up into sections to allow for the feeling of accomplishment as you get them done. There is a fine line here. Don’t micromanage your tasks. Use this to make better, more responsive plans.
Savor the success. Do something as a reward. I love crumbling up sticky notes, or cleaning off my elephant each month. Find something that makes you feel accomplished when you cross things off your list. This could be keeping track of a DONE list. Track what you accomplished.

15. Delegate Trust others Communicate results Set parameters
Offer resources
Provide accountability
“you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone” Stephen Covey
Trust: You are not the only one that can do the task. You may be the only one that can do it the way you want it done.
Communicate results: be very clear in what you need. But don’t micromanage: let the other person have some say in how to do it; Trust…
Set parameters: If there are rules, share them. Point out things for them to avoid, but don’t tell them how to do it in detail.
Offer resources: Where can they go for help? How much budget do they have to make it happen?
Provide Accountability: When is it due? What happens if its not done?

16. Practice: An Average Day at the Office
Have lunch with your Associate Director (1.5 hrs)
is overflowing (1 hour)
Catch up on NASFAA’s Today’s News articles (1 hour)
Prepare a presentation for conference (3 hours)
Attend scheduled meeting with enrollment team (2 hours)
Media wants an interview about loan default (1/2 hour)
Advisor requests a meeting with you (1 hour)
Learned something is missing from your P&P, needs research (2 hours)
Student with major issues needs your assistance (1 hour)
Annual budget report is due in 3 days (3 hours)
This represents 16 hours of work. You only have 8 hours of work (9 if you include the lunch hour). How can you get this done?
Think about Quadrant II activities and the tips you’ve learned. How would you scheduled your day?
What would you put off for tomorrow? What would you delegate?

17. My Answer 8:00 Organize & Respond to Email 8:30 9:00
Create Agenda for Enrollment Team Meetings (limit to 90 min)
9:30
Media Interview
10:00
Student with issues
10:30
11:00
Make outline for conference presentation
11:30
Lunch with Assoc. Director
12:00
12:30
1:00
NASFAA Today’s News Articles & Reflection
1:30
2:00
Enrollment Team Meeting
2:30
3:00
3:30
Meet with Advisor
4:00
4:30
Create outline for budget report
What’s missing?
Policies & Procedures Update: Assign this to someone in your office that deals with this particular part of the process. Have them conduct the research and draft up an edit to your P&P. This would simply need a quick revision by you, or your approval. Give them a deadline (week?), and give yourself a deadline to approve it (within 2 days of submission).
This is based on my own personal priorities. The people come first. I won’t push off the advisor that requests a meeting, nor will I ask them for a quicker meeting. Same with the student. I also wouldn’t delegate the student appointment, unless this student would be served better by someone in my office. I would take the time for lunch with the Associate Director. We could discuss plans for the office, or just catch up personally. Either way, I’m building a team.
I organize and respond to first thing in the morning. Its my own preference. Setting aside this hour each morning allows me time to answer correspondence. I still find times throughout the day, but I don’t leave any unread s in my box before 9:00.
NASFAA news is important, just as important as the budget that due in 3 days. You need to be prepared for potential changes, so you can work them into your schedule.
This may no be right for everyone!

18. ASK: What one think could you do in your personal and professional life that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life?
What is the most important thing that I need to start doing in my professional life that would have the greatest positive impact?

19. Questions & Comments