Scheduling nightmares. We’ve all been through the back and forth jungle of trying to find a common time for a group of people to meet.

An email gets sent to a group of people and everyone’s email inbox gets jammed full with the Reply All responses. As the coordinator of a meeting, you spend too much time trying to find the most common meeting date & time for everyone to meet.

Here’s a solution to your scheduling nightmares.

Doodle enables you to propose several dates and times through an email to a list of participants. inside or outside your organization, across calendars, and time zones. Participants can indicate their availability online through a poll. Once you choose the most common date from the online poll, you can send an email to set a firm meeting date. Doodle is free of charge and registration is not required.

Have a look at a demo for Doodle.

Doodle Calendar Connect and MeetMe are options worth having a look at. These enhanced features enable you to connect your calendar so you can share your availability, no matter what calendaring system other participants are using and regardless of which organization they are in.

Tungle.me is a similar option to Doodle.

When trying to set up an appointment with a client, by clicking on the Tungle.me link through the downloaded program, you are able to select available time options and send these options through an email. Once a suitable time is selected, an appointment is automatically added to each participants calendar.

Have a look at Tungle.me’s video demonstration:

Instead of spending your time searching for a suitable time to meet, save your time for your meetings instead. Give Doodle or Tungle.me a try and let me know what your preference is.

Some of you may have seen the commercials, alluding to the tax time filing pains in our nether regions, as we struggle with getting ourselves organized to file our taxes in time before the deadline. Even if you aren’t filing your own taxes, the trauma of finding all your source documents is enough to give you a headache or pain in the…

Gloria Munro of Munro & Company, CGA has these great tax checklists to get you prepared for your personal and business tax filings. Just filing your return on time will save you money on the late filing penalties, even if you are being charged interest on the unpaid tax amounts. According to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), April 30 (or June 15th, if you’re self-employed) is the deadline to file your taxes. After that, if you owe the government, you will be charged a 5 percent late penalty on the total owed, and 1 percent interest per month, for a maximum of 12 months.

Your business tax receipts may already be in a disorganized pile for this year’s tax filings, but by following these tips you will be in top form for next year. You’ve got one year to rid yourself of more tax pain…

1. Keep your tax documents in one location (section of file cabinet or separate file box)
2. Create Company File Folders for those you use often or receive monthly statements from
3. Create Category File Folders for expenses which may not have the same supplier (auto repairs & maintenance, office supplies)
4. Create Dedicated File Folders for tax accounts and government issued documents (HST, WorksafeBC, etc)
5. File receipts in the year transaction took place and only after they have been entered into your accounting system

Read more about good filing practices from Munro & Company, CGA

Another Workshop Announcement: Stay tuned for our workshop on how to organize your financial papers, co-hosted with financial planner Kendra Sivertson.

I provide my clients with systems for organizing their office and home spaces and managing work-life balance. A lot of the advice I provide comes from the inspiration and ideas I’ve gotten from successful people I’ve met here in BC and around the world. This issue of Chu On This… kicks off a new segment called Productivity Pointers from Top Business People, where I will share the organizing tips and advice many experts in various fields have used to achieve success.

Our first expert for this Q & A segment is sixty4media co-founder, Rebecca Bollwitt. Rebecca has been named one of the Top Ten Women in Vancouver Technology to Watch and one of Canada’s Top Ten Most Influential Individuals in Social Media.
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We are pleased to announce that Linda Chu, Principal of Out of Chaos has teamed up as an associate with Kwela Leadership & Talent Management to offer a time management workshop.

Kwela is a Vancouver-based consulting company dedicated to developing business leaders and the systems that will achieve their strategic goals. They believe that leadership and organizational excellence are interrelated. Kwela works with businesses in Leadership Development, Team Development, Talent Management and Training programs.

Their Time Management workshop is designed for the business person to “Get Organized”. Learn how to develop effective workflow practices and sustain them in the long term. Reduce workplace stress and burnout. Focus your time on what is important.

Register for the next Public Program of Get Organized Time Management, on September 17, 2009. Join Kwela’s Principal, Russel Horwitz in this inaugural public program. Linda will look forward to seeing you there.

With the downturn in the economy many are finding themselves doing the work of two or more people. Take for instance a recent Vancouver-based client of mine who was in the position of hiring for a short-term entry level position in their company. The vacancy created a flurry of over 100 applicant resumes applying for the position.

Out of Chaos was originally called in to assist this busy manager with managing her tasks and creating a prioritized action plan. It was very clear early in our process that activities relating to hiring personnel were not this manager’s expertise.

In consultation with Sandra Reder, Managing Partner of Vertical Bridge Corporate Consulting, the following steps in the hiring process can easily bog down the best of managers, especially if they are not in your area of expertise:

1. Placing the advertisement on various job boards, website and possibly in print media
2. Receiving resumes (these days it can be anywhere from 75 to 150 resumes for one position)
3. Screening resumes to the job description and short-listing the suitable candidates
4. Pre-qualifying calls to the short-listed candidates to see how they communicate, as well as to confirm some basic details about them
5. Possibly doing a more in-depth pre-screen on the phone to find out more about their past work experience before bringing them in for face-to-face interviews

“Overall this can take one person well over 20 hours of their time (this is based on 75 resumes if there’s more, then time will obviously go up).”

What is your time worth? Consider the value of outsourcing hiring related activities to the experts and free yourself up to focus on your core business.

Finding the right balance invariably comes into conversation when I work with clients. This month I’ll share with you a tip for your work, yourself, and your environment.

No Time to Open All Those Emails
Here’s a quick tip to put into practice immediately, to save precious time when managing your emails. EOM — End of Message. Use this in the subject line to signal the recipient of your emails that they don’t have to open up the email. All they need to know is in the subject line of your email.

This works nicely for things like. “See you Friday at 11:00 am. EOM”, “Congratulations on a great job!. EOM”. Forward this email tip and get organized.

When time is limited, every second, or in this case, every click counts.
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An organized business may not be recession-proof, but as many of my clients have mentioned lately, it helps them keep the business running while undergoing cost-cutting and restructuring.

Many companies right now are looking at ways of cutting costs and even laying off staff. But the people who kept everything organized are no longer around, you can see the direct business impact of organization on a company’s productivity and bottom line.

After all, time spent searching through file folders, piles on desks and (in a worst-case scenario) the clutter in your waste-bin means lost productivity. Imagine if the average employee in your organization lost 20 minutes a day at that. The combined wages add up quickly.

If the key people who keep the office organized in your company are let go, files get lost, invoices go missing and important paperwork can get mixed in with clutter and garbage. The gatekeepers who knew where to find everything are no longer around to direct traffic. But it’s as important as ever to keep office processes streamlined.

As I’ve often advised colleagues and clients, having a consistent system for organizing can help mitigate productivity loss, even more when key people leave an organization. This means:

1. A filing system that works. Having a bunch of big metal filing cabinets might work for your office, but how is all this paperwork sorted? Do the files include post-its and scrap paper, not just official records? Do you separate out tax-related documents? Are the files updated regularly? Do some records get purged from your files after a period has elapsed, and if so, how does this take place?
   You need to have these processes in place to make the best use of the file storage you’ve got.
2. Train your employees to organize. Try to create an organization that doesn’t need to rely on gatekeepers. Train everyone in how your filing system works. Even if they’re not actually doing the filing themselves, they must be able to find information when they need it. Train them on what kinds of papers they need to keep and what quickly becomes clutter. Consider combining a 10-minute organizing party with a month-end staff meeting.
3. Keep cubicles and desks organized. Some people believe that a messy desk piled high with papers shows off how busy and important they are. Alternatively, some use it as a crutch to avoid extra responsibilities (ie. “You need me to help you with Project XYZ? Have you seen this pile on my desk?”) I’ve often found that the most productive and successful members of any organization have the cleanest desks.
4. Organize your office supplies. For everything from pens and stationery to scissors and staplers, have a central spot where you keep things. Keep certain items on strings to make sure they don’t wander off to another part of the building. Keeping better track of your inventory will ensure everyone has the basic things they need to do their work and also saves you reordering costs.
5. Get outside help to keep things organized. Outsourcing may seem counter-intuitive for some companies facing restructuring, but a disorganized office status quo can cost a business in productivity month after month. An organizing expert can be a cost-effective solution, helping all members of an office understand how to maintain an organized space.

SheTeam, the online business and marketing resource for women entrepreneurs, offers insights and practical information from trail-blazing CEOs, including Linda Chu. An innovative community, SheTeam encourages all female entrepreneurs to “Be in business for yourself. Not by yourself.” Sign up for the daily blog.

We’ve got a problem these days that past generations would have loved to have: too much information. Now, organizing the information takes on paramount importance. It’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Emails demand to be read. Refrigerator doors and bulletin boards become graveyards for lost and forgotten sticky notes. And that million-dollar idea you had during the morning commute? Forgotten in the hectic drama of the first fifteen minutes at the office.
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The embarrassing piles of clutter around your place forced you to cancel yet another pleasant dinner with your close friends.

Your inbox at work has gotten so high that it has become a workplace safety issue, even though you’re actually taking work home every night. So much for work-life balance.

Meanwhile, the accounting department has just given up asking you for those receipts. All those business travel expenses are coming out of your own pocket.

Finally, you’ve had enough; you know you need to hire a professional organizer.

But where to start looking?

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When you go shopping, do you know what you are looking for? Even if you do not go into a store and select something off the shelf with purpose, you may just be window shopping and waiting for that magical moment…when you can ‘feel’ how right something is.

Selecting the right Professional Organizer for your needs is not unlike shopping. When hiring someone to provide a service, it is similar to hiring a caretaker for your children. Would you select someone based on price alone? The right candidate will be privy to sensitive and confidential information you keep in the drawers of your desk, much less privy to what you may keep in your underwear drawer.
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