In an ever-changing environment where uncertainty and change are becoming the new norm, knowing how to manage time and priorities is becoming an essential skill for maintaining and combining performance and peace of mind on a daily basis. Training to better manage time and priorities is therefore an essential response to these new challenges. Discover the NUMA Focusing course to help you concentrate on what really matters: a program adapted to all levels to better manage your time and energy and protect your concentration. 

Pedagogical objectives

The pedagogical objectives of the Focalisation course are to equip participants with the essential skills to optimize their management of time and priorities. By learning how to save time in their week, set clear objectives and give themselves the means to achieve them, participants will be better equipped to anticipate the unexpected and make informed decisions when faced with sudden changes. This course aims to reinforce skills which, although often perceived as trivial, are crucial in an environment where everything seems to become urgent. By refocusing on what really matters, participants will be able to navigate their daily tasks with greater serenity and efficiency.

Please note: each workshop in the program can be taken separately, à la carte, or as part of another course co-constructed with our team.

The program 

1. Fewer but better meetings 

The aim is to hold fewer meetings and make the remaining ones more effective. 

• Limit meetings: replace them with asynchronous sequences or refuse them without rushing the organizers.
• Prepare and run a meeting so that the time spent together is as useful and productive as possible.

Course: 

• Limiting meetings: discover alternative formats for dispensable meetings and explore their use in everyday life. 
• Learn to refuse meetings without rushing the organizer. 
• Preparing and running a meeting: analyze, criticize and improve an invitation to a meeting (title, framing, objectives, participants, agenda, etc.). Then, learn how to build a sequence before/during/after a meeting whose objective is to make a collective decision.
• Explore techniques for running an effective meeting (opening, distributing the floor, involving participants, closing, etc.).

For a first glimpse of the NUMA approach to this theme, discover our guide to improving your meetings by 30%.

2. Asynchronous communication

‍Objective: communicate effectively and avoid systematic meetings.

• Choosing and using the right communication channels for each situation.
• Master asynchronous channels, especially the written word, and improve the quality of collective writing.

Course : 

• Set common rules so that everyone knows which channel to use, depending on the topic.
• Identify opportunities for asynchronous communication.
• Improve the quality of your written communication and that of your colleagues.
• Discover non-written asynchronous communication techniques using new tools (audio, video) to reduce the number of meetings and improve team performance.

3. Prioritization

Objective: Choose what to focus on collectively and individually.

• Arbitrate on collective priorities: strategic objectives, projects to be launched or stopped, etc.
• Define your individual priorities: in the long term, to focus on the activities on which you have the greatest impact, and in the short term, to arbitrate even when everything seems urgent and important.

Course : 

• Prioritize collectively: How do you define ambitious yet realistic goals? How do you decide whether to stop a project?
• Prioritize individually : How can you spend the most time on what's most valuable? 

4. Time and energy management 

Objective : organize your weeks to optimize your time and energy.

• Organize your week around the value you want to create.
• Manage your calendar as your main hybrid communication tool.
• Preserve time and focus.
• Put your energy in the right place.

Course : 

• Manage your diary and protect your time by reserving uninterrupted work periods and distinguishing between in-depth work periods and "to-do" work periods.
• Know where you want to create value, and make the right choices to maintain or abandon your focus depending on the situation.
• Learn to say no in a positive way to coach your teams and use asynchronous meetings to reduce the number of meetings.
• Manage your own energy and that of your team.

5. Delegation and performance

Objective : to make a success of your delegations and manage the unexpected along the way. 

• Make clear frameworks and delegations.
• Use the right postures to manage problems.
• Manage and delegate tasks to people you don't manage. 

Course: 

• Clear framing and delegation: share the meaning, identify the right indicators to monitor, define the right level of autonomy, avoid gasworks, clarify reporting... and avoid the pitfalls of delegating "on eggshells" to people you don't directly manage. 
• Monitor individual performance with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, and find the right postures for each case.
• Manage problems: lack of reporting, occasional or repeated poor performance, freewheeling, etc.

6. Deciding under uncertainty 

Objective : make the right decisions in a context where no decision seems obvious 

• Gain clarity and make decisions more easily.
• Manage the timing of your decisions.
• Challenge your decisions, individually and collectively.

Course : 

• Gain clarity: how to isolate useful information, take a step back and make more informed decisions?
  Example of a tool: the "Present/Future" matrix for deciding whether to take a decision now or wait, depending on the context and available information.
• Control your biases and make better collective decisions
  Example of tools: thescorecard to objectify everyone's opinions and simplify collective decisions.
  
  Peer practice: revisit a recent decision and question it using the techniques learned during training. 

7. Deciding under uncertainty 

Objective : Make the right decisions in a context where no decision seems obvious.

• Gain clarity and make decisions more easily.
• Manage the timing of your decisions.
• Challenge your decisions, individually and collectively.

Course :

• Gain clarity: how to isolate useful information, take a step back and make more informed decisions?  
• Control your biases and make better collective decisions
• Peer practice: revisit a recent decision and question it using the techniques learned during training. 

The NUMA pedagogical approach

Situational engineering

Each of our training contents is developed on the basis of more than 500 real-life cases that we get participants to react to. Each case is matched with tools, best practices and techniques that can be applied directly in their daily lives. The key to creating commitment throughout the training: your participants come and come again because they are convinced of the concrete usefulness of what they have learned. Priority management and planning are essential pillars of our approach, enabling you to focus on the skills that really matter.

The workshop

Depending on the challenges you face, we co-construct a series of thematic modules, both remote and face-to-face: workshops. This short format (2 hours remote, 3 hours face-to-face), in small groups (up to 12 participants from your company), covers around 6 real-life cases on which we get participants to react, with the resulting actions. The modalities of each session are designed to maximize efficiency and learning. Task management and situation control are an integral part of these workshops. Each workshop also includes an evaluation to measure learning effectiveness.

The trainers

NUMA trainers speak the same language as the participants: with over 15 years' experience in management and leadership positions, each coach is therefore an expert and ultra-legitimate on the subjects he or she tackles, enabling participants to experience first-hand the best ways of handling these situations while sharing their feedback. Each trainer is selected on the basis of his or her skills and experience. Speakers bring unique perspectives and proven strategies for managing emergencies and critical issues.

To find out more about our approach and how we structure our training courses, click here.