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GETTING ORGANIZED: You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks or CAN You?

Guest post by: Kathy Paauw

Article Overview: Were you born disorganized? If so, do you excuse yourself by saying, "That's just the way I am! You can't teach an old dog new tricks!"?

GETTING ORGANIZED: You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks or CAN You?

So many people seem unhappy in their professional lives. Very few connect that dissatisfaction to being disorganized, which can make a good job seem unbearable. The good news is that it's easy to correct! Some of the most organized people I know were not "born organized." That means there is hope! You CAN teach an old dog new tricks...but only if the dog is motivated to learn.

Many of my clients are effective decision-makers on a higher level, but they have difficulty managing the hundreds of micro-decisions they must make daily, often in the form of paper - memos and letters to read, phone messages to return, mail to sort, reports and proposals to review, and to-do lists a mile long.

Although some people come by organization more naturally than others, I have worked with enough organizationally challenged individuals to realize that organization is a learned skill - a skill that includes a set of methods and tools to help you arrange your time, physical environment, communications, and thoughts to meet your goals.

As many as half of the people whose work involves management of people, information and time are not good at organizing their work at the most basic level. Since organization is the cornerstone upon which everything else is built, it's clear that many individuals and companies face significant productivity challenges.

If you question how fundamentally important organization is in the work environment, consider the cost of disorganization in these scenarios:

• Two attorneys (I'll call them Jim and Tom) were under consideration for partnership in their law firm. Tom was capable and dependable. Jim was brilliant. Some people thought that Jim was a shoe-in for becoming partner. But this brilliant attorney was known for his disorganization. One day a senior partner received a phone call from an irate client. Although the client felt that Jim was very skilled at what he did, she reported that he had not returned her phone calls. After several failed attempts to communicate with him, her company had decided to terminate their relationship with the firm. Jim's disorganization cost his firm a major client, and it cost him the promotion he'd hoped for. Ultimately, the partnership was offered to Tom, who was not as skilled as Jim but was more organized and responsive to clients' needs.
  
  NOTE: A large number of malpractice suits against lawyers result from failure to file papers by required due dates.
  
  
• The owner of a small auto repair company (I'll call him Gus) had a great reputation for doing quality work. He prided himself on quick turn-around time so his customers would not be without their cars any longer than necessary. There was only one problem. Gus hated doing paperwork...including depositing customer checks and paying his bills. Some of the checks in his office were for large sums of money and were more than a year old. Many of the vendors who supplied car parts to Gus' repair shop got tired of waiting to be paid. Eventually his largest vendor quit supplying the parts, and his work came to a standstill. Clients became angry when Gus could no longer have their cars ready by the promised time, and his reputation in the community became tarnished. It wasn't long before he was faced with the possibility of closing his doors due to lack of business.
  
  
• Poor organization and communication in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation created some missteps in failing to act on key information available prior to the September 11 attacks in 2001. In one memo, an FBI agent in Phoenix recommended that his superiors look for al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools. Elsewhere in the FBI was information about the August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who sought flight lessons in Minnesota and has since been charged with conspiring in the September 11 attacks. Had this information been organized in such a way that it could have been more freely shared within the FBI, as well as with the CIA, the correlation between this and other known information could have helped officials foresee and prevent the attacks. After the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on a plan to restructure the bureau so that such lack of communication would not occur again.

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