Jan Lehman of CTC Productivity (Circle The Client) has taken organization and productivity to a holistic level. Can The Clutter became CTC Productivity in 2018, which is when I first aired this podcast conversation. The branding change came through her evolving organizational work and productivity focus in both home and work environments.

She believes in not just making changes with individuals. Her focus is on working with progressive leaders who will hold the baton through change to create a culture of productivity in time management, technology, and talent. Our conversation then, is pertinent now. DOWNLOAD

Jan, her husband, and their three children moved from Oregon to Minnesota in 2013. It was a great move and Jan expresses her happiness with the growth and profitability of her company, along with being in Minnesota. She employs 3 full-time staff and five sub-contractors. An update of where she is at will air in May.

She grew-up in Bloomington, Illinois, went to college in Bloomington, Indiana and was hoping to live in Bloomington, Minnesota but that didn’t happen. She worked in Corporate America until she had children. Eventually she started Can The Clutter. Jan has always been conscientious of time management, not being wasteful.

Jan connected her work ethic and productivity with revenue results during her teens. She worked at an ice cream shop through college. At some point, she asked her boss if instead of being paid an hourly rate could her wages be based on the profitability of the company? Yep, an entrepreneur in the making.

She has three siblings living in three different states: Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Her Mom lives in Indiana.

We have a wonderful, easy flowing conversation filled with ideas for building a culture of productivity through time management, technology, and talent.

The Three most valuable ways of being productive are still:

Time: how you and your team and employees use their time and manage their time.

Technology: better manage emails, workflow that leverages technology, automating processes, customer relationship system. How do we abuse email?

Talent: making sure people are in the right seats and passionate about their jobs. A tip: procrastination is a place to analyze if a person is in the right role. What are your natural skills? Most coachable and most effective are a few ways to measure executive team members and employees.

Listen in for more insights, Jan’s current projects, and tips like retention policy ideas and electronic policies to consider. What do you have in your car that aids in productivity?

Mentoring Tips

After listening to our conversation:

• Make a list of the skills you are good at. Have your staff do the same thing. Compare notes.
  • Is everybody in the right seats and doing the work they are good at? Talk about it and see if the discussion leads to a bigger question about the level of productivity in the culture you have created.
  • Maybe this exercise leads to a bigger conversation about the work environment that could lead to more efficient practices, increased productivity, and a happier work climate. Find out. Let me know what you discover.
• Track how you use your time for a week and how you feel about the activities you are engaged in, every day this week. At the end of the week, assess where you are at and what you have observed. Jot down ways you can save more time.
  • Make a list of your main feelings throughout each day.
  • What activities were tied to those feelings? Try creating a stop doing list which is a list of activities that generate negative feelings or activities that snuff out or drown out your deeper feelings.
  • Make a list of the activities that bring you joy, and energize you.
  • Have those you work with make the same kind of list. Share those ideas and discover what you notice.
  • Are those you employ passionate about the work they are doing? Even if the work includes mundane tasks, is your staff happy to contribute?  
• Notice the quality of your work. Observe the quantity of work you are doing.
• What activities generated money that day. What activities generated money for tomorrow?
• If you have employees, have your staff do the exercise with you. You could make it a contest to see who was the most efficient person in the office(s)? Or, you do the exercise with your executive team and they do the exercise with the other employees.