A conference for managers on how to enhance intelligence and effectiveness

1. Executive Education
How to increase your
effectiveness
A conference
and a one-day course
for managers
Professor Patrick M. Georges, MD

2. Executive Education
Why it’s important?
• The business fight is tough and competitors are
numerous
• To reach your goals, to increase your effectiveness,
your results is possible if you reorganize yourself, if
you apply some work organization rules
• To increase your intelligence, genetic is too late,
education is too late, you are left with discipline

3. How to increase your
Executive Education
effectiveness ?
• We will give you an insight into management
sciences and cognitive sciences
• We will review some practical
recommendations to improve your personal
and your team effectiveness

4. Executive Education
About the speaker
• Professor in management
– Collège des Ingénieurs, Paris
• Medicine doctor, senior neurosurgeon
– University of Brussels
• Author of management books
– Amazon.com
• Small businesses owner
– Passion Investments SA Geneva

5. Executive Education
A list of recommendations
• In personal management
– How to enhance your intelligence and reduce your
stress
– How to manage your time, your workspace, your
information better
• In relationship, network and team management
– How to enhance your leadership
– How to organize your network and your team

6. Executive Education
The two-step method
1. Review the list or recommendations. Select
those fitting your objectives
1. Plan their implementation, starting from your
objectives and priorities

7. Executive Education
The limitations
• A long list of good practices
– Be highly selective
• A mechanistic approach
– Adapt these simplistic practices to your situation
• A focus on profit and performance
– Do not forget the bright side of business
• A flexible credibility
– Do not trust teachers, apply and check

8. At the end
Executive Education
you will be able to
• Reorganize your day, your desk, your tasks,
your priorities, your communication, your
information, your network, your team…
• …in order to be more effective, to enhance
your leadership, to get more results…without
stress.

9. Executive Education
PART I
Personal Management

10. Executive Education
Personal management
1. How to enhance your intelligence
2. How to manage your health
3. How to manage your time and tasks
4. How to manage your information
5. How to manage your work space
6. How to manage your objectives
7. How to manage your career

11. Executive Education
How to enhance your
intelligence ?
The brain’s rules

12. Executive Education
What’s cognitive
ergonomics ?
An introduction to human
intelligence for managers

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17. The functional
Executive Education Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Patrick M. Georges The NEURO project

18. Executive Education
The volumes are measurable
Patrick M. Georges The NEURO project

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25. Executive Education
Some practical recommendations
from brain sciences
Memory, intelligence and mindset

26. How to enhance your
Executive Education
intelligence
How to enhance your memory when reading
• Read aloud important information
• Get 1-minute breaks every 10 minutes reading
How to test your intelligence as a manager
• Short term memory test
• Attention span test
• Stress resistance test

27. How to improve
Executive Education
your decisions
Slow down
• Sleep on your mails
• Shift from spoken communication to written
communication
Take into account your natural decisions flaws
• We use automatic intelligence rules
• We are bad statisticians

28. How to improve
Executive Education
your decisions
Sleep before deciding
• “Night brings good counsel”: it’s your grandmother’s advice with
scientific backup.
Never sign a contract in front of the salesperson
• Your intelligence is not at its best in these circumstances
Your intelligence is not at its best in meetings
• Don’t decide anything important while in a meeting. There are too
many voices, too many faces, and too many distractions for your
brain to cope with.

29. Executive Education
Being a manager.
A mindset
Five brain learned good practices

30. The main reason for human anxiety is
Executive Education
thinking without acting
When our neurons work, they produce an anxiety
drug that is burned by our muscular contractions
If you think more than you act, this acetylcholine
anxiety drug will accumulate in your blood
Take more actions on your intentions

31. Executive Education
The brain is slower than life
It can cope with only one fifth of the information it receive
You will never finish your day. Your life is a draft with no
occasion to make it square
Learn to live slightly disappointed
Start your day with what’s important

32. The reality is never good or bad.
Executive Education All your worries come from your mind
We work with two brains.
The rational brain and the emotional brain
The average life is quite predictable.
No emotions are needed
When feeling emotional, note down the facts.
You will come back to reality

33. No happiness exists outside the
Executive Education
second or the eternity
Our prefrontal simulation system can
cope with two units of time only: the
second or the eternity.
See what’s to be done, do it, that’s it.

34. We are happy when we desire no
Executive Education
more than what we possess
Our dopamine system give us pleasure
when we want better things. Thus keeping
us permanently from full satisfaction.
Reduce your ambitions, accept what you
get.

35. Executive Education
What’s personal management
training ?
1-day seminar
to increase personal effectiveness

36. Executive Education
Increase your resistance
against tiredness

37. Executive Education
How to eat
Eat like a king at breakfast, like a prince at lunch, and
like a pauper at dinner.
• Cereals in the morning. Light lunch
Drink very little alcohol.
• Eat olives before drinking wine or beer
Eat dark chocolate

38. Executive Education
How to sleep
Always go to bed and get up at the same time.
• Practice this even on the weekend
Get to know your ideal sleep schedule
• Your gene clock sets it.
Keep cool before going to sleep
• No strenuous exercise, heavy meals or coffee less than two hours before
going to sleep
Put a notepad by your bedside.
• Write down your to-do list, your intentions, and your worries, and you
will sleep better

39. How to resist
Executive Education tiredness better
Start your day with the most demanding
tasks: decisions, studies and writing
End it with the most exciting tasks:
meetings, visitors and mail reading
First work alone, then work with others

40. Executive Education
How to increase
your stress resistance

41. Executive Education
Why its important ?
Stress decreases your intelligence
dramatically
Details seem more important than
they really are when you are under
stress

42. Executive Education
Watch your early stress signs
Do you have mood swings or sleeping problems?
Be careful, you are in the red zone. Slow down
Medical staging
• Stage I Quick mood variations
• Stage II Change in sleep pattern
• Stage III Stress-related diseases

43. Add a strong third pillar
Executive Education to your life
Test you safety : present yourself without speaking of your
job and family
Add a third “personal development” pillar to your life.
Exist outside of others and money at least 20 percent of
your time.
Increase your time spent at personal development
activities

44. Executive Education
Act on triggers
Match each intention with a decision.
• Do something about every red light that
comes on in your head.
Eliminate more
• Fifty percent of the messages you get are of
no interest to you

45. One “zeitgeber” a day
Executive Education
keeps the doctor away
Take a special break every afternoon.
Keep a moment for yourself every day
without fail
Your choice.Nap, pray, meditation,
reading, tea time

46. Executive Education
How to cope with stress
Select a job compatible with your stress resistance
Stress comes from uncertainty. Being well organized
reduces uncertainty
Don’t actively manage more than three direct reports.
Your stress is proportional to the number of people you
manage yourself

47. Executive Education
Renounce and concentrate
Only think about what you see. See what needs to be
done and do it. That’s all
Concentrating is the best way to increase intelligence.
Do one thing at a time, and finish what you start
Concentrate on your current priority task only.
Renounce to projects, ambitions, objectives

48. Executive Education
How to reorganize
your work space

49. How to organize
Executive Education
your desk and office better
Clear your desk before leaving. You’ll
work much better tomorrow at an
empty desk
Protect yourself from voices. They
are very distracting to your
concentration

50. Executive Education
Protect your intelligence
Protect yourself if you need to do important work.
Keep out all voices, faces, and interruptions.
Open space offices are intelligence killers
Close your door from time to time.
You can’t always be both liked and respected

51. Executive Education
Protect your intelligence
Work back to back, not face to face, with your colleagues
Use your voice mail regularly
• If you are a decision maker, get protection from interruptions at least
30 percent of the time
Protect yourself from interruptions two hours a day
• One interruption is twenty minutes of lost time for you

52. Collect random
Executive Education
incoming messages
Read and listen to messages when
you decide to, not when they arrive
Read messages during the time you
have set aside, unless you are a
fireman.

53. Executive Education
Handling distractions
Silence your cell phone
Let voice mail pick up your call
Turn off e-mail notification
Put up a “Do not disturb” sign on your door

54. Executive Education
Slow down
Use your voice mail more often.
• You will be more intelligent if you have more
time between questions and answers
Answer important questions off-line
• Less than three seconds between question
and answer guarantees errors.

55. Executive Education
Reorganize your desk
Organize your Mission Control screen
per desks / objectives
Always be only one-click away from
your current 10 hottest files, 10
hottest contacts and 10 hottest links

56. How to organize
Executive Education
your office better
Display your activities and results on a front
panel facing your desk
• The six figures that pilot your professional life
Hang a whiteboard in front of your desk
• Display the deviances from your six targets. If it’s in
your line of sight, it’s important.

57. Executive Education
How to plan your day
and list your tasks

58. Executive Education
First make your day
Don’t begin your day by reading your mail.
• Your goals have priority over those of other people
No meetings before 11:00 a.m.
• Your morning intelligence is powerful but easily disturbed by others
Choose a “concern of the day” when you get up in the
morning
• Decide to complete one important thing before evening

59. Executive Education
Your lists of tasks
Your to-do list
• Calculate your productivity by checking off the items on your
to-do list
Your main list
• Ideas, tasks to do or not
Your log-book
• Fill out your logbook every Saturday morning. Write down all
the important things you accomplished during the week

60. Executive Education
Your decision list
To decide before tonight
To decide before the end of the week
Decided

61. Executive Education
Your lists of tasks
Don’t drive without a voice recorder.
• Don’t clutter your memory with intentions; it
only remembers the stress
Start with the most important tasks, and
leave on time.
• You will never be done anyway.

62. How to organize
Executive Education
your time better
Start with demanding tasks, finish with exiting
tasks
Only one or two mail reading session per day, only
one hour, get your mailbox empty at the end
Always finish your day by preparing the first task
for next day

63. Executive Education
Your day reorganized
3 hours for 3 important issues, files,
projects, decision
1 hour for your to do list
1 hour for urgent matters

64. Executive Education
Your quarter reorganized
Set objectives by week and by
quarter, never by month or by year
One personal objective per day, one
team objective per week, one
business objective per quarter

65. Executive Education
Reorganize your
information
Categorize your information better
and test your access to the right
information

66. Executive Education
What are the good practices?
In addition to classification by subject, classify
by key word, by contact, by type of document,
by type of information, by objective…
Respect the rule of proximity: the more
useful, the closer. In the distance or in clicks

67. Executive Education
What are the good practices?
Arrange for quick access to the current most
important 10 people, most important 20
documents, and most important 30 addresses
Empty the folder “To file” at the end of the day.
Empty the folder “To read” at the end of the
week.

68. Executive Education
What are the good practices?
Get rid of most paper documents
Create a master file listing the clear titles of all your files
Place a file on your desk only if you are currently
working on it
One mission, one desk.

69. Executive Education
Reorganize
your personal finances
To get rid of financial worries
as soon as possible

70. Executive Education
What are the good practices
Set up a budget with planned income and spending and stick to it
Spend less on brands and status symbols. You do not need them at your
level.
Save 15 % of your income for future objectives
Limit your debt to productive investments
Your fixed expenses should be no more than 75 % of your income

71. Executive Education
What are the good practices?
Control your variable expenses by setting a limit on how
much you can spend per category: restaurants, books,
gifts…
Secure three sources of income: work, real estate and
sales / trading
Delay spendings, purchases and payments… for one week
or for later than usual.

72. Executive Education
Build wealth
Set clear, quarterly financial goals
• Saving goals, spending goals, asset goals
Spend later
Limit your debt to investments
Be your own bank and insurance
• Reduce premium and interest paid

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Always consider the two ways to
be rich : have a lot of money or
have few needs

74. Executive Education
Your personal strategy
Your goals, your three-year plan, your
six-figure scoreboard, your key
project and your career management

75. Executive Education
Your three pillars goals
Reorganize your priorities

76. The foundation of your
Executive Education
time management
Professional life
• Safety goals as money and power
Relation life: family and friends
• Relationship goals
Personal development
• Serenity and quality of life goals

77. Executive Education
Write out
your three-year plan

78. How to set your objectives
Executive Education
and priorities
Get a business plan model and adapt it to
you as a one-person company
Write down your six, quarterly,
measurable, personal and professional,
objectives on one page.

79. Executive Education
How to select your six figures
Decide what your perfect day will be like five years
from now
• Assets, revenues, job, location…
Decide what will be written on your tombstone
• 20 words, 20 minutes
Decide what will be written on the first page of your
biography

80. Executive Education
Make a clear choice
A career based on effective, cost conscious, operations
• Are you a natural effective person ?
A career based on high flexibility, high customer-orientation
• Are you a natural sales person ?
A career based on high innovation
• Are you a natural creative person ?

81. Executive Education
Visualize your six
figures

82. Executive Education
What are your six figures
You cannot improve what you cannot
measure
On display, in front of your desk
Measurable quarterly

83. Executive Education
The six-figure manager
Select the six numbers you will use to pilot your
performance
Three numbers are generally chosen for you by your
work environment. The other three are your choice
Set your own climb rate. Want what you have plus 5
to 15 percent

84. Executive Education
Your ten commandments
Write your own ten commandments
It’s the only way to quickly and
effectively sort through the excessive
amounts of information you receive

85. Your personal objectives
Executive Education
Post your objectives and your results in front of your desk!
• You can only improve what you can measure
Give yourself a measurable goal every three months.
• What you can measure is done
Choose a Personal Project every quarter.
• Do something personal, different, and risky every quarter
Define yourself.
• Properly balance your goals and limits among the four sectors (wealth, fame,
power, and happiness) and the twenty-four success indicators described in
the values scoreboard.

86. Executive Education
Your main KPIs
Time Facing Customer
• Spend more time with your customers
Sales From New
• Acquire new competencies
Gain From Processing
• Process your activities
Key Project Status
• Focus on one key project
Return on your Critical Resource
• Measure the return per hour of your time
People Responsibility Levels
• Give more to your best capacities

87. Executive Education
Focus on one
key project
Organize your activities as a project

88. Your Key
Executive Education
Personal Project
Plan in your day
Give that project a Divide it into weekly
calendar one, two or
clear objective, a steps, each with a
three hours for that
target problem tangible output, an
project, first thing in
solved end product
the morning

89. Your Key
Executive Education
Personal Project
Delegate tasks to
Record all co-workers with an Display the
deadlines in your accepted deadline timeline chart on
calendar for a precise the wall
deliverable

90. Executive Education
Plan your career ahead
Keep moving, don’t be a sitting duck

91. Executive Education
Stay a moving target
Continually put yourself
on the job market
•Your employers will be less
and less faithful to you, so
always be ready to move on

92. Internal or
Executive Education
external growth?
Target upgrading your job every three years .
By external growth, changing from one
company / business to another, or
By internal growth within the same company.

93. How to plan
Executive Education
your internal growth?
Initiate contacts with them. Attend
List the names of the three the same meetings, conferences,
decision makers who may increase projects, elevators… and fire your
your chances of getting your target elevator speech, a 30-second
job marketing summary of yourself as
a desirable services provider.

94. How to plan
Executive Education
your external growth?
Post your resume permanently
on specialized web sites to check
your potential on the job market

95. Update your resume
Executive Education
quarterly
Add some new work experiences, learned
competencies, projects
participation, certifications, seminar
attendances, publications and
presentations, software or tools mastering,…

96. Executive Education
Apply to all desired jobs
No matter what are your chances.
Ask recruiters what you should improve to get
to that position next time it will be open again

97. Lunch with head hunters
Executive Education
twice a year
Learn what training / competencies
are most valued on the job market.

98. How to draft your personal
Executive Education growth plan ?
Post your CV permanently on Step Stone or Monster
• One job offer a month to check your value on the job market
Invest 5 % of your revenues in yourself
• Education, equipments, assistance
Get to manage a profit center, internal or external
• Create and sell

99. Executive Education
PART II
Relationship Management
You are ready now,
start to get connected

100. Relationship
Executive Education
management
1. How to enhance your leadership and
communicate better
2. How to brand and market yourself
3. How to build and maintain your networks
4. How to manage a team

101. Executive Education
How to enhance your
leadership

102. Executive Education
Be a king
Never show signs of stress
• Followers look for certainty
Upgrade your dress and standing code
• Upgrade your watch and your shoes
• Stand and sit right
• Eat and speak slowly

103. Executive Education
Be a king
Never explain, never complain
Increase your visibility, decrease your
accessibility
Increase your similarity, decrease your familiarity
• Look like others, don’t be like others

104. Executive Education
Effective communication
Don’t smile if you don’t feel like smiling.
• You can always spot a fake smile
Start your presentations with the conclusion.
• Your audience only has a minute for you
Apply the written presentation rules
• Turn your titles into questions

105. Delegate everything
Executive Education
but the principles
Have principles and delegate.
• It’s difficult to act and think at the same time, especially when there’s too
much to do
Keep the projects for you.
• Delegate the processes to your number 2
Do things that will make people respect you rather than like
you.
• You can’t be liked by everyone all the time

106. Executive Education
Decide
Don’t spend EUR1,000 to make a
EUR100 decision. Decide without
knowing everything
Don’t try to control everything, you
won’t be able to

107. Executive Education
How to brand and
market yourself

108. Executive Education
Work your e-leadership
Check and improve regularly your image and reputation on the
Internet
Work your Google index, internal and external
• Check yourself on 123 people
Manage your presence: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
• Add your social media links to your email signature
Get your own web site and blog to control your e-reputation

109. Executive Education
Market yourself
Prepare your elevator pitch
Draft your personal marketing plan as a
one-person company
Brand yourself

110. How to draft your
Executive Education personal marketing plan
Describe yourself as a service producer
Analyze the needs of your internal customers
Select the distribution channels of your services to your customers
Sell your products to more customers or sell your customers more products
Generate regularly new capacities, competencies

111. Executive Education
How to build your
network

112. Executive Education
Working LinkedIn
Your profile
• For coworkers. Will you like to work with such a person?
• For head hunters and hiring managers. Will you hire such a person?
Your network
• Coworkers
• Professionals in the same field
• Prospects for your profile
Your messages
• Give valuable information, share documents
Your blog
• Have a blog on your rarest competency

113. Executive Education
Your blog
External or internal on your company’s intranet
Let people know your rarest competency, what’s special
with you. Be the number one for something.
News you gather on
• A special customer
• A special competitor
• A very special technology

114. Executive Education
What’s team
effectiveness training ?
1-day team seminar
to increase the team cohesion

115. How to organize
Executive Education
your team better
Bond your team by setting out its mission on a single page.
• Write your mission down first
Practice the open agenda.
• Get automatic access to your main collaborators’ schedules.
Do not accept a team as you receive it.
• First list the competencies you need to reach your objectives

116. Executive Education
Organize better meetings
Spend a little less time in meetings every year
• Calculate every meeting’s cost-benefit ratio
Have your team meetings on Friday afternoons
• It’s better to provide objectives before a rest day than
before a workday
Organize three meetings to build your team
• The breakfast meeting, the weekly meeting, the quarterly
meeting

117. Respect the team mailing
Executive Education
conventions
Fill in the subject line with team files names
Only one subject per mail
For action or for information
Feedback within 24 hours

118. Executive Education
Build a joint scoreboard
Give your team a measurable objective every week.
• That which is measured is done
Create real team spirit by building a team scoreboard.
• Your team doesn’t know your scoreboard, and you don’t know theirs.
Dedicate a meeting room to team decision making.
• Set up a real management room where all team scoreboards are hung up
on the walls.
Make a list of the 12 questions that preoccupy you the most.
• Formalize your informational needs and review them every three months

119. Executive Education
Practice the TCI exercise
Note down the list your six KPIs
ranked by order of priority
• The name of the indicator and the value to
reach at a date
Ask your coworkers to guess what’s on
your note

120. Define the team
Executive Education
local processes
List the 20 most frequent problems /
demands /situations
For each of them, write the
instructions to team members on how
to face them in a standardized way

121. Executive Education
PART III
Increase your effectiveness.
Practically. The exercises.

122. What’s the rationale for this
Executive Education
course ?
You underestimate yourself. You should do better
• It’s a duty for the gifted
You can do better
• By setting clear objectives : your six figures
To reach those higher objectives
• First reorganize yourself, then your network, then your business
When you will be wealthier
• Pay back the society, give back to the less gifted

123. What are the three steps to
Executive Education
reach your objectives?
Get ready
• Reorganize your agenda
Get connected
• Enhance your leadership
Get business
• Apply the 24 golden rules to organize a business
that works

124. Executive Education
What’s intelligence ?
Your capacity to reach the highest objectives
• Your objectives and career planning
Using a minimum of your resources
• Your time, equipments, information, money and others
Overcoming obstacles
• Your competitors and your environment
With quick moves
• Your projects

125. Executive Education
What should you do?
Decide on
your quarterly
scoreboard
Select a few • Decision making and intelligence
rules to apply • Work place organization
to reach those • Time and tasks management
• Physical and mental health
targets

126. Executive Education
Don’t forget
Do not trust teachers • Try by yourself
Adapt the good
practices to your • We are not in your shoes
situation
Do not take that literally • Business is not that simplistic
Do not forget the bright • Social and ethical values
side of business

127. Executive Education
Conclusions

128. Executive Education
Credibility rating
Three stars recommendation
• Statistically validated publications
Two stars advice recommendation
• Peer review validated publications
One star recommendation
• Experts opinion

129. Executive Education
Warning
A too vast catalog of good practices
Nobody apply them all
Be highly selective
Do not change a wining method
Performance is a personal choice

130. Executive Education
Warning
A « black or white » presentation
A too mechanistic approach
A provocative, exaggerated presentation
Several exceptions and limits to those good practices

131. Executive Education
Handouts
• In my Box on LinkedIn
• Questions ? pgeorges@arcadis.be

132. Executive Education
Conclusion
Do not forget the bright side of business:
intuition, humanity, emotions,…
Forget that course, forgive the teacher and
follow your heart