Business efficiency

12th January 2012 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Operational management, Planning and preparation, Priorities, Productivity, Time management

Tips to boost your productivity

On 10th January I gave a 10 minute presentation,  at the Chichester College Business Breakfast Club, on what gets in the way of working productively. Judging by the number of e-mails, texts and tweets I received the subject and presentation were spot on. The slide presentation is on Slideshare and the following are the key points from the presentation:

• About 50% of the audience admitted to allowing their work to be interrupted by pop up messages on their screen, pings etc when e-mails, texts etc arrive. 
• Interruptions damage waste your most important commodity - time. Once used time has gone for ever.
• Interruptions are a distraction and reduce your ability to focus your concentration and effort on the matter in hand leading to lower quality work that takes longer to produce
• Many people use their diaries simply for appointments and sometimes to list reminders. Using your diary to schedule everything is a discipline and a disciplined approach to managing your time delivers results.
• To start using your diary effectively do a brain dump of everything you need to do - not just tasks, but strategic priorities or the actions needed to achieve these priorities. Go through this list and highlight everything you need to do this week then separate in to two lists for the week - one for strategic and revenue-generating priorities and the other for everything else.
• Schedule the strategic priorities into your diary first remembering that you can’t focus for more than 90 minutes at a time, effectively, then take a break. Make the most of the first 90 minutes of your working day - it’s when you’ll work most effectively  (See ‘The way we’re working isn’t working’ by Tony Schwartz.)
• In your breaks you need to do something different. If you’ve been sitting at your desk looking at Facebook or Twitter isn’t a break. Move around. Have a change of scene.
• Remember - successful people like Richard Branson schedule time to look at an action e-mails - rather than looking at umpteen times a day,  and also define one important or key task as the priority for the day.
• Electronic diaries make using different colours for different types of task easy so you can see what is fixed and what can be moved around.
• Like any new habit working this way takes a bit of time but once you start using your diary effectively you’ll:

1. achieve more priorities - providing you put everything in your diary and you don’t shy away from diarising the ones you don’t want to do
2. feel good about achieving more priorities .... and the business will benefit
3. be less likely to forget to do things as if you need to reschedule something you simply move it to another time
4. be better prepared for client meetings, phone calls etc because you’ve identified planning time in your diary
5. be in a better position to drive opportunities forwards and keep ideas on the agenda if you schedule time to write notes after all meetings
6. become more realistic about the time it takes to do something and hence better at estimating how long something takes - which is really important if time is money
7. find yourself working faster or more efficiently if you know you have an hour do to something - providing your interruptions are being kept to a minimum and you remember to take proper breaks
8. achieve things rather than getting to the end of the day and feeling a failure as you haven’t crossed anything off the to do list
9. discover if you really have more do to than time allows, thereby putting yourself in better position to evaluate what to delegate or outsource
10. have a better work-life balance
11. be happier!
12. It’s worth spending part of Friday afternoon planning your diary for the week ahead

If you work with other people the business will be more successful if everyone recognises that time is their most important commodity and knows how to manage it effectively.

Click here to go to the slides

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3rd January 2012 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Management, Planning and preparation, Priorities, Time management, Top tips

3 top tips for client meetings

When we're busy we often don't allocate enough time to prepare for meetings with our clients or follow up after the meeting.  Every meeting, or significant telephone conversation, presents an opportunity to sow seeds which may develop and grow the business with that particular client.

These three tips may help you make the most of these opportunities: 

► Send a summary of what was discussed and agreed within 48 hours of the meeting. If you don’t already send minutes or action plans Minutes.io is a useful tool.  A summary is useful ground work for future meeting agendas.

► Take time to reflect on the meeting and whether any additional information, or clarification, is needed to progress any work

► Plan the actions required by the client remembering to schedule time in your diary. As well as making sure actions don’t get overlooked, scheduling helps keep track of the time actually spent on each client/project

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23rd June 2011 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Holidays, Planning and preparation, Productivity

Holiday Planning

August in the UK is rapidly becoming like Christmas. Apart from the retail sector there are so many people away that many businesses either just bump along or grind to a halt. But can you afford to write August off?  Even if you have staff, clients and suppliers on holiday for large chunks of the month a bit of forward planning stop it being a complete write off. 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Start planning holiday handovers well in advance, rather than leaving until the night before.
• Aim to get key projects and priorities completed before holidays, or to a stage where someone else can oversee.
• Check when colleagues are taking their holidays and the likely impact of them being away. If there’s no impact - why are you employing them!
• How can the impact be managed?  Do you have adequate resources internally to cover for absences without over stretching?  If not do you know where to find suitable temporary or interim staff?
• Who will respond to communications for staff who are on holiday? (don’t forget social media) An auto response saying the e-mail will be dealt with on the recipient’s return isn’t great customer service.
• Agree how decisions can be made in the absence of senior staff and under what circumstances those on holiday can be contacted.
• Encourage staff to take a complete break - adequate planning may allow them to spend time without a smart phone in their hand
• Don’t use the holiday break as the chance to take short cuts or reduce your service - particularly with long standing clients. Complacency be the excuse they are looking for to move their business elsewhere.
• Use the quiet time to review your business strategy or plans, and your marketing plans, so at the start September you have a clear idea of where you are going and how you will get there.
• Similarly spend some time checking what your competitors are up to and adapt your forward plans accordingly.
• Review last year’s sickness absence from September until December. If sickness was a problem - why was it a problem and what can you do to stop the same happening again.
• If you are making any changes such as changing software support, changing suppliers, introducing social media to your marketing strategy, do some background research.
• Encourage everyone not to send masses of e-mails etc to people that are on holiday so they return to an overflowing in box.
• Take time to step back and review the way you are working - are you using your time effectively

We are supposed to be having some decent weather this summer so if you’re not on holiday make August a month to remember - in and out of work.

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21st April 2011 / Posted in: Business efficiency, Operational management, Planning and preparation, Priorities, Productivity, Staff engagement, Time management

Turning Bank Holiday Disruption on its Head

In the days when I was young, and an employee, the prospect of 4 bank holidays in less than a fortnight was a dream. Now that I run my own business and advise others about running theirs I feel very differently.  The prospect of a reduction in trading days in April and May, the distractions caused by Easter, the Royal Wedding and the recent sunshine, and staff wanting to take an extended Easter break will be bad news for many businesses.

Don’t take the defeatist approach assuming that business will be bad, but turn the situation around to limit the damage or even make it work in your favour. The most valuable commodities to your business are probably your staff and time so focus on making the most of what you do have during the next few weeks. Refocus everyone’s energies and priorities on what delivers your strategy and drives revenue into the business.  It may even give you an advantage over your competitors.   Finally, don’t forget to communicate these plans clearly with your staff, explaining why you are putting them in place and getting their feedback. Good two way communication and a few treats in the office will motivate your staff, keep them focused and make them feel appreciated.  

'What gets measured, gets done. And what gets recognised gets done again, and even better.' Robert Crawford, Director, Institute of Customer Service

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24th January 2011 / Posted in: Business efficiency, General, Management, Operational management, Productivity, Strategy, Time management

How much of your time is spent profitably?

My day last Friday started with a networking breakfast with the Chichester Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Vicars Hall.  I wasn’t wholly focused on networking and eating as, in a moment of weakness, I’d agreed to do the 10 minute presentation. Consequently my mind was preoccupied with pre-presenting nerves and whether my Taurean tendencies would deposit fried egg and coffee down the front of my crisp white shirt.

My shirt remained unscathed and judging by the feedback, on Twitter, e-mail and text, my presentation – “How much of your time is spent profitably?” – which only touched the surface of the subject – was very well received.  It’s a great feeling when things go well and although a number of people requested copies of the slides I thought a blog would be more useful,  so here goes …

How much of your time is spent profitably?

My background is in operational management which centred around developing businesses to reach their full potential through utilising their resources effectively. As people are usually one of their most important resources, particularly in smaller organisations, I became HR qualified.

There isn’t a magic answer to using your time more profitably – but if you want different results you probably need to change the way you work. It’s easier said than done given that a staggering 95% of our behaviour happens out of habit – either subconsciously or as a result of external demands.  That’s why we keep doing what we’ve always done – because it’s comfortable and familiar. We also have an infinite capacity for self deception so it’s easy to convince ourselves that if we want to work more profitably we just need to work longer hours.

Central to every (serious) business is its strategy, and writing one takes an enormous amount of time and effort, particularly for small or medium sized businesses. In my experience once the strategy is written and agreed, everyone involved gives a sigh of relief and moves onto something else.  It’s always struck me as odd that we go to so much effort to write a “recipe” for success then fail to refer to it regularly.

Many of us prioritise what we want to do, or what someone is shouting for, rather than focusing on delivering our strategy.   That’s often because the strategic priorities take us somewhere we don’t like going – outside our comfort zone.  But, for your strategy to become part of your priorities – what I call “making strategy reality” – it needs to be part of every working day for you and all your staff. After all if your staff aren’t all working towards delivering the strategy, what are they doing, what are you doing ….. and why are you paying them?

To make your strategy reality means recognising your strategic priorities – even if you are continually bombarded by non strategic demands.  This quote by Dr Stephen Covey says exactly that – very succinctly –

“The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule ... but to schedule your priorities”

You can make your strategy part of every working day by:

• identifying the objectives, goals and actions needed to deliver your strategy and translating them into manageable, achievable chunks for everyone in the organisation.
• using your diary – not just for appointments but for scheduling time to focus on your strategic actions.  In my experience if it’s not in the diary it won’t happen. Electronic diaries are great as you can colour code everything. Don’t be tempted to fill your diary up with long sessions thinking you’ll get something cracked because it’s been proven that we can’t stay fully focused, and work intensively and productively, for more than 90 minutes at a stretch. (see The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working by Tony Schwartz)
• making two “to do” lists. It’s something I’ve adopted and it works. I write it in a book and on the left hand page I list my strategic priorities for the week – I often call them revenue generating and on the facing page I list all the rest.  I’ve found it works better than the traditional way of identifying important and urgent.  I schedule time for the strategic priorities, for breaks and for time to get the other actions done.

This may be sounding like it’s creating more work for you – firstly I’ve asked you to change the way you work, then to add your strategic priorities to your workload – so how are you going to fit all this in? Take look at yourself and the demands on you at work. Do you:

• Pursue what you love – always work to your strengths and  passion.  Do you have the skills, passion and application to deliver the strategy?  If the buck stops with you it doesn’t mean that you actually have to do all the strategic priorities
• Spend 80% of your time doing what you are best at
• Review your work load in light of what you love and what you are best at and ask yourself – “Am I the best person to do this?” If you aren’t then the most effective solution is to delegate or outsource

I’ve suggested some big changes which will involve a lot of personal effort, self-discipline and commitment – or you could just stay doing what you’re doing and put your prices up to make more profit.

• by making strategy reality your business will fly
• you’ll have the best people doing every job if you delegate or outsource which brings competitive advantage
• you’ll have more time to focus on what you are really good at

So in summary your business is more likely to reach it’s full potential …. and so are you.

I’ve only had time to touch on this enormous subject very briefly and would like to leave you with a one final thought about how our busy busy lives are affecting us. It’s a quote from Tony Schwartz:

“Is the life you are leading worth the price you are paying to live it?”

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