TRANSFERRING FOCUS TO TOP PRIORITIES

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PlanPlus™ for Microsoft® Outlook® FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities

Executive Summary
Implementing PlanPlusTM for Microsoft® Outlook® software and the new Focus Workshop at Chamness Relocation Services, Inc., has enabled employees to manage their time more productively, focus more clearly on what is most important to the company, and bring more order and control to their work environment and their personal lives.

"The Focus training is so simple and yet so powerful. The goal setting and straightforward models have really helped get employees thinking about how they spend their time."
- Erin Hollingsworth,
Training and Development Director
Chamness Relocation Services

"The Focus training I received to complement PlanPlus was exceptional. Not only did I learn to better organize my life, it reminded me to keep my goals within focus at all times!"
- Jill Foster,
Field Development Coordinator

Feeling the Need for Focus
What began in 1988 as a corporate housing supplier to a single Fortune 500 company, Chandler, Ariz.-based Chamness Relocation Services now provides national and international destination consulting and corporate housing solutions for the corporate transferee.

According to Marketing Manager Angie Enabnit, Chamness employees were immersed in a culture of running from meeting to meeting and agreeing to every task and project. This left little time for critical priorities, which meant burning the midnight oil to get the most important work done. Employees typically didn't plan their workday or week, and they lacked the skills and tools to distinguish the truly important from the merely urgent.

"From my perspective, we were constantly in fire-drill mode, being driven by urgent tasks that had to be done right away and not stepping back to assess their importance," Enabnit said.

Erin Hollingsworth, Training and Development Director at Chamness, said the company definitely needed training in time management and goal setting. "Employees had the desire to do better and be more productive, but it seemed difficult to make it happen," she said. "I knew FranklinCovey as a notable company in productivity training and tools. From their website I learned about the workshop FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities and about PlanPlus for Microsoft Outlook. I became certified to teach the curriculum to our employees because I already knew the content was to be good, and we had PlanPlus installed on 80 PCs at our corporate office."

Focusing on the Highest Priorities
Hollingsworth arranged for Chamness employees to attend a one-hour orientation session on PlanPlus, followed by the Focus workshop the next day. The Focus workshop teaches productivity skills integrated with a powerful planning system that helps employees clarify, focus and execute the highest priorities.

Training participants discover how to:

• Gain control of the competing demands on their time-e-mail, voice mail, meetings, and interruptions
• Reduce stress by recognizing and eliminating low-priority activities and distractions
• Achieve balance and renewal in their lives to avoid burnout and cycles of frustration
• Stay focused every day with the FranklinCovey Planning System available in a variety of formats, including PlanPlus for Microsoft Outlook and the paper-based Franklin Planner
• Use PlanPlus software to plan and achieve professional and personal goals-all from within Microsoft Outlook

PlanPlus Extends Outlook
PlanPlus for Microsoft Outlook is an exclusive add-on tool that seamlessly integrates FranklinCovey's proven planning method with the Outlook scheduling and e-mail environment that most corporate workers are already familiar with. PlanPlus encourages employees to create and practice a habit of proactive planning. It keeps employees on track with the organization's "big picture" goals while helping them manage all of the day's tasks, increasing productivity and effectiveness. It also helps employees answer the question, "What's the most valuable thing I could do with my time?" before accepting meeting requests.

The PlanPlus Home view brings three most frequently used tools into one convenient view-calendar, e-mail, and task list. The Weekly Planning Tool walks users through a quick exercise to help them stay focused on their most important assignments, sort through all they need to get done, and make a realistic plan.

Marketing's Angie Enabnit had glowing words for PlanPlus. "My day is always crazy. I absolutely love the PlanPlus add-on for Outlook because it places everything at my fingertips all within one view. It's also great from a planning perspective to see the whole week and get the big picture versus just hour-by-hour. I feel a lot more focused and productive."

Hollingsworth added that the quick-prioritize feature of PlanPlus is invaluable for daily planning. "I also enjoy the fact that you can drag and drop your e-mails into your Prioritized Daily Task list or Outlook calendar to create tasks and/or appointments," she said.

Responsive Implementation Support
Chamness MIS professionals anticipated roughly three weeks for rolling out the PlanPlus implementation on 80 PCs in the corporate office. According to Information Technology Coordinator, Trey Kunzelman, the first week involved going through and checking each user's system ensuring the PCs were fully up-to-date with Windows updates and security packs. The second week encompassed PST back-up and recovery options for e-mail stores, while the third week was devoted to the actual installation of PlanPlus on each PC, installing early in the morning and late in the evening so as not to not interrupt the work schedules of personnel.

"Our implementation of PlanPlus went well," Kunzelman said. "The FranklinCovey support team I worked with was very responsive to any requests we had, and was more than willing to answer questions, participate in troubleshooting, and resolve installation issues."

Concluded Erin Hollingsworth, "As a result of implementing PlanPlus and the Focus workshop, more of our employees are planning their days, focusing on what will mean the most to the company, and achieving more balance in their personal lives. I know there are a lot of other companies that offer software productivity solutions, but FranklinCovey makes it hard to use anyone else because the people are so wonderful. They've been available to us at any time, have always gotten back to us, and have provided the solutions and answers we needed."

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