casestudy

Case Study - June 2008

Barbara Hemphill, my mentor and the author of The Paper Tiger at Work was hired to
organize the office of a sales representative of a multi-national company and owner of
two additional businesses. Although he loves his work and is successful, his team
was frustrated with his chronic clutter and disorganization. He was concerned about
unnecessary stress and loss of productivity, and they were tired of compensating for
his lack of accountability and organizational difficulties.

We arrived at 8 a.m. His team was very skeptical about the ability of the 8 Hour Miracle
TM to change his behavior and keep him organized. We started with the top drawer of
the filing cabinet and in less than an hour had cleared out the entire cabinet. We
discussed principals of organization, Paper Tiger Rules and focused on two simple
categories for files: Reference or Action. Before long, the three of us were working
quickly and effectively. Barbara entered data into the Paper Tiger Software, I
assembled files according to her directions and the client was happily sorting and
assigning homes to his papers. Although he tossed many papers, Barbara was very
clear that there was absolutely no pressure to do so. The client needed to make only
two simple decisions about each item: needs action or keep for future reference.
Because of the keyword search capability of Paper Tiger, people who have different
ways of naming things are able to quickly find documents and file them correctly.

The entire office was transformed that day as they became enthusiastic users of the
Paper Tiger TM software. They joined hundreds of users around the world who are
successful because of their ability to find what they need in their office within 5
seconds. As I captured the traditional 'after' picture, it occurred to me that even though
they say "a picture is worth a thousand words"; in this case even a picture can not
describe the miracle that occurred in the life of this sales representative and his team.