Take notes
Some people carry a micro-recorder with them or on their phone that they use to keep track of things, but for Martin, he just takes notes with a pen.
“I keep a little pocket sleeve on the inside part of my jacket and a pen,” he says. “The first thing I did this morning was I went down the hallway to meet with one of our top advisers who was out meeting with a significant corporate relationship yesterday. I wanted to know how the meeting went because I knew it was an important meeting.”
When Martin left the meeting, he jotted down a few notes that he deemed important.
“There was every potential it could be another hour before I got back to my office because I might get stopped along the hallway talking to other people,” Martin says. “I record things and I try to keep a daily log in a side drawer where I sit at my desk. I’ve tried to capture things in the course of a day. It could be thematic things that I’m starting to see systemic repetition of. It could be anecdotal pieces of information. It could be a good idea I want to share across the broader population of the employees. It could be a people issue that we need to address. Whatever it is, I keep a master list.”
No one questions the value of face-to-face communication, but it’s not as easy to keep a record of what’s being said when it’s not in an e-mail, text message or voice mail. So as your company gets larger, you need to find a way to keep track of what you hear so that you can process it and possibly incorporate it into your organization.
“Then at the end of each week or before I leave on Friday or even when I come in once on the weekend, it’s easy for me to get over and plan my week ahead,” he says. “By the time you’re running a $300 million or $400 million business with 300 or 400 employees, you’re going to have a lot more issues come up than something on a smaller scale. At some level, you can keep track of it in your head, but at some other point, you’ve got to move beyond that.”
How to reach: Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., (800) 637-7455 or http://www.totalmerrill.com/
