What It’s Really Like… To Be An Organisation Expert

They say the grass is always greener and this can certainly be the case when it comes to jobs so in a new series of articles, Her.ie will be sitting down with people in a series of professions to get a true picture of what it is like to walk in their shoes. Most of us wish that we were a little more organised, whether at work or at home. But what if your organisation skills were the different between the survival and the failure of a business? Well, that is exactly the case for South African time management and organisation expert Claire Burge, whose company GetOrganised delivers workshops, public talks and business turnaround projects for clients. Not content with streamlining people's work, Claire has also just released her first book SPIN: Taking Your Creativity To The Nth Degree so we caught up with her to see if we could glean some tips! Being an organisation expert is quite an unusual job, how did you get into it? I initially studied psychology before doing an MBA and focusing on entrepreneurship. As part of the course, we were put into companies that were in crisis and we had to do turnaround projects, with our mark depending on our success. It was huge pressure, with the CFO and CEO allocating our mark but I completely took to it. Once I finished the course, I renewed contracts with some of the businesses and began to work freelance in that area but the more I did those projects, the more I realised that organisation is actually one of the key issues. As part of my work, I connected with GetOrganised and discussed case projects with the owner. We got on really well and referred work and I was then asked to join the team. Nothing happened as I was quite busy with my own work but then my husband’s company transferred to Ireland so I said "let me take GetOrganised to Ireland!". Have you noticed any common traits among troubled companies in Ireland? When I arrived in 2009, it was just when the crash was happening so there were a lot of companies in crisis but the symptoms are the same. One of the areas that disorganisation stems from is family businesses and this is very prevalent in Ireland. Family has a natural hierarchical structure and that’s imposed on to the business when it shouldn’t be, because you might actually find that the people at the top shouldn’t be at the top at all. Also, in family businesses, there's usually a generational thing of a technology divide. The younger generation want to bring technology in but older generations are very slow to adopt it and that causes a big issue. One of the key areas where organisation comes into a company is the systems that are in place – the financial systems, the HR systems etc. What you also see is that many businesses began small as a start-up but despite growth, they are still trying to operate their company as a start-up. That is purely a structural thing. Nobody has actually sat down to think 'what if there’s an employee issue, what is the process?'. It’s assumed that as a start-up, you don’t need that formality and it's only suitable for a corporate but in fact, a start-up really needs it. It’s about finding that happy medium. If you could teach us one thing that would make us more organised, what would it be? Email would be a massive, massive thing. Email causes so many issues and that’s why it’s my pet hate! If I could rid the world of email, I would! I would ban it. What people tend to do is start their work day by opening their inbox but the way an inbox is designed is that the unwritten rule is that you need to empty it out. So you’re climbing on to a spinning wheel that you can’t get off of because as you are emptying it out, someone else is emptying theirs into yours. It’s this crazy vicious cycle that runs every morning! A lot of people get their tasks from their email and that’s one of the things that I teach companies, that their tasks should be separate from their email. There should be a task centre that isn’t a messaging centre. To put it into other terms, it’s like trying to do your work while being around the coffee machine all day. It’s not a productive place to be. It should be separate so that you are coming in and getting your tasks done and then going and clearing out your inbox. Your company focuses on organisation but your new book is based on creativity, why did you opt for this approach? I started keeping a life lesson book when I was fifteen and writing lessons as I learned them. Then I posted some of them in the Notes section of Facebook and they got a really big response. The publisher was watching me and saw the reaction so she got in touch and asked me to do the book. There were 900 lessons in the book so I sat and categorised them and looked at what was emerging. One of them was very definitely creativity and I feel strongly that creativity is a really underrated skill. What I’m seeing when I work with companies is that senior management are really frustrated because lower level management staff don’t think creatively. Our whole society has become information driven and stuff is flying at us all the time so people have gotten into just ‘doing’ mode. There’s no time for thinking and it’s causing issues in business because management are having to solve problems that, previously, employees would have solved but they don’t have the skill-set any more. That loss of innovation could have devastating long-term consequences. If you can bring solutions to the table rather than just churning out work, that will make you a better employee. I think the problem isn’t in the workplace though, I think it’s in the school because school is definitely not structured in any way for creativity. What do you hope people take from the book? I’ve definitely found that the people who really related to the book are people who are going through periods of change in their life. Then, there’s been a subset of people who have latched on to it who have really surprised me and that’s the creative people themselves. My initial thought was that they wouldn’t enjoy it at all! I can honestly say that I never wanted it to be a New York Times bestseller. I just have a passion for creativity and I really wanted people to foster that in their lives. The creative people I know are more fulfilled so it’s quite a ‘pie in the sky’ type of goal! It’s not that I want to sell a certain amount of books, it’s more that I hope it gets out there and people change their mindset. People tend to think they are either creative or they are not creative but my message is that creativity is a skill – you can learn it. I want to debunk the myth that you’re creative or you’re not. That’s my mission. Claire's book SPIN: Taking Your Creativity To The Nth Degree is out now. For more information, see www.claireburge.com.