Randall Dean

Taming the E-mail Beast: Key Strategies for Your Managing E-mail Overload

Every day, managers and professionals are getting buried under a continuing stream of both useful and useless e-mail. Without a system for getting “control of the beast”, professionals spend much of their work (and personal) time spinning wheels and feeling highly unsatisfied. If you would like to get control of your e-mail “beast”, you should attend this program featuring specific tips for Outlook and Gmail users, but applicable to ANY e-mail user. Learn a proven system for taming your e-mail account, with strategies for keeping your inbox efficient and under control by building and administering a personal "e-mail processing system”. Learn how to get rid of all those “quick little” e-mails once and for all, prioritize your most important messages, and mitigate or even eliminate much of that annoying junk and spam. Finally feel on top of your e-mail and related activities, rather than feeling it is on top of you.

Finding an Extra Hour Every Day:Time Management Tips and Tricks for Busy Professionals

In this popular program on “finding an extra hour of productivity” every day, Randy Dean uses humor and high energy as he goes into many of the most common areas of productivity loss (and possible gain!) afflicting many busy professionals today: managing multiple projects, maintaining “traction” when dealing with tasks and interruptions, managing your e-mails more efficiently, clearing the clutter in your mind for better focus and attention, keeping staff on task, tracking “who owes you what” and getting that information on time, and better managing your calendar and contacts for better time and relationship management. His goal is to help stressed out performers learn several new and immediately useful strategies for finding a few minutes on tasks, activities, and actions you are already doing, leading to at least an extra hour of productivity every day.

NEW for 2017!! From Distracted to Productive:Finding Your Focus in Today’s Increasingly Interrupted World

E-mail. Texts. Interruptions. Project Transitions. Office Clutter. Smart Phones and Apps! Social and Other Media. Even Family and Friends. These key distractions sometimes make it almost impossible to get anything done. It sometimes seems like there is always SOMETHING getting in the way of what you really need to do. But with some forethought and effective strategies, as well as some personal discipline, it is more than possible to find your focus once again, even in a hyper-distracted world. As a matter of fact, those using these strategies will have a long-term competitive advantage -- both professionally and personally. In this new program by popular time & tech management speaker Randy Dean, we'll look at each of these key areas of distraction and define strategies for enhancing long-term focus, productivity, and performance. We'll share "game plan" ideas for getting and keeping your distractions under control, and finding critical "focused productivity" time each and every day, leading to not only performance but also clarity of mind and purpose.

RECENTLY UPDATED! Smart Phone Success & Terrific Tablets:Getting More Productivity (and Fun!) from Your SmartPhone and Tablet Devices

You know which apps are fun, but what apps and functions will help you turn your Droid, IPhone/IPad, and/or BlackBerry into a productivity workhorse? In this session, we’ll discuss the apps and peripheral devices that help take your Smart Phone (and tablets) from “cool” to “critical” when it comes to productivity, time, project, people, and e-mail management as well as “remote” productivity. A highlight to this program is when the presenter, Randy Dean, opens up the floor to program participants to share their favorite apps, allowing people to gain knowledge from all program attendees.Optimizing Your Outlook: Time Management Tips & Tricks for Busy Outlook Users (Similar to Finding an Extra Hour, but specifically for Microsoft Outlook users.)

In this popular program on “getting the most from your Outlook” for MS Outlook Users, Randy goes deeper into many of the most common areas of productivity loss (and possible gain!) afflicting many busy professionals today: managing multiple projects, maintaining “traction” when dealing with tasks and interruptions, getting more from time spent in meetings, clearing the clutter in your mind for better focus, keeping staff on task, tracking “who owes you what” and getting that information on time, and better managing your calendar and contacts for better time and relationship management. His goal is to help stressed out performers learn several new and immediately useful Outlook strategies for finding a few minutes on tasks, activities, and actions you are already doing, leading to at least an extra hour of productivity every day. Get more from all five of the key Outlook functions for greater productivity.

Time Management in “The Cloud” Using Gmail/Google: Managing Time, Projects, People, Ideas, and E-mail Using Gmail, Google Apps, & Google Chrome

For many years, Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and other "server-based" productivity applications have been the industry leaders. But in the last few years, popular programs and services created by Google and based in "the cloud" have been emulating the capabilities of these productivity applications, now to the point where a professional could seriously consider "leaping to the cloud" to manage their projects, time, clients, customers, ideas, e-mail, and more. Existing users of Gmail/Google will find they can build a comprehensive system for time/work/e-mail management using tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Google Contacts, Google Drive & Docs, and Google Chrome, as well as affiliated apps for their smart phone & tablet devices, and those not using these tools can use this program as a way to see if Gmail/Google can give them what they need to manage this info in their work and/or life. (And, if you are just using Gmail personally, you can see how these other applications might be able to help you better manage your personal information on your personal devices.)

Managing and Leading Great Staff & Team Meetings

With organizational resources tighter than ever, and staff and management busier than ever, frivolous meetings are simply not an option. Yet they continue to occur all the time. And too many unproductive, wasteful meetings create a major drag on staff morale and motivation, thus affecting productivity, turnover, and the “bottom line”. And, if you are the organizer or leader of unproductive meetings, it certainly doesn’t speak well for your personal management style, effectiveness, and/or competency – you simply cannot afford to look bad when you are “on stage” in a competitive or political environment. On the other hand, well-managed meetings are highly effective tools for keeping people and teams informed and productive, but they don’t happen by accident! Businesses need meetings that are effective, productive, and consistently create value for the organization. If you are a business that wants to plan and run more effective meetings using the least amount of valuable staff time and resources, this program provides you with the tools and strategies you need to plan, manage, lead, and follow through on effective meetings. And, this program has a few fun and interactive exercises, including a fun tutorial on how to run a better, more focused brainstorm session!

Taming the E-mail Etiquette Beast: Finding Sanity in Your Written E-mail Communications 

Join Randy Dean, MBA, and author of the recent Amazon e-mail bestseller, Taming the E-mail Beast, as he expands beyond e-mail processing, productivity, and efficiency into the realm of e-mail etiquette. We will discuss how to make your emails get attention, actually get read, and then get acted upon. We will deconstruct a good e-mail, starting with smarter subject lines that get noticed and get opened. We will move into opening instructions that make the e-mail easy to understand and make action points, delegations, and deadlines clear and obvious. We'll cover effective body copy that helps recipients fully understand the message. And, we'll talk about effective closes that leave the recipient confident with next actions. AND YES, we'll even discuss how grammar still matters (yes, it does!) We will also discuss multi-party e-mails and how to help make each person's action items and deadlines clear, assisting with team coordination. 

We will of course discuss several "problem" e-mail types -- those lacking clear instructions, overusing CC's, FYI's, and "reply alls", emails laden with complex or emotional content, "ping-pong" e-mails (you know -- those e-mails that keep bouncing around between folks) and more. We will also talk about the right way to use e-mail for critical and/or urgent communications, and how to identify and re-use successful e-mail communications and templates to increase efficiency while simultaneously enhancing communications quality. 

Note that many of these courses can be combined to make solid half- to full-day training programs. Most of these programs also work very well in a live webinar program format, and several clients have even offered a “webinar series” for their employees/group members on several of Randy’s topics.