It was recently World Productivity Day, and whilst it’s a timely prompt, we should always be looking at improving how we work (and live) to enhance our efficiency, and to reduce the overwhelm.

So, here are my Top 5 Ways on increasing productivity in your business...

1. Focus on the Important.

Stop getting distracted on urgent activities that demand immediate attention; the phone ringing is urgent, but it may not be important.Important activities get you from A to B; if you don’t do this then you’ll never reach your desired results.The challenge is, these are proactive, so you need to simplify, eliminate or delegate those tasks that are urgent but not important.

2. Record and Deal with Interruptions.

Interruptions are stopping your business from growing.If you’re constantly being interrupted and derailed from running your business, then you need to keep a log - a basic record of the interruptions you experience during a day. You can then see whether they are necessary or alternatively plan for them in your daily schedule. There are only three reasons for interruptions:

·“I don’t know how to”- lack of knowledge is easy to remedy, for example, by producing a manual.

·“I’m not allowed to”- simply give, or up the level of, authority.

·“I need stroking” - team members want interaction and pop in for chats. This cripples your business, so you need to find ways to give your team attention, i.e. via structured 1:1 feedback, daily huddles, social events etc.

3. Land One Plane at a Time.

A key challenge in any business as it scales is to not get bogged down in the detail. The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch outlines that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

You have access to dramatic improvements in profitability by focusing on the most effective areas and eliminating, ignoring, automating, delegating or retraining the rest, as appropriate.But there’s a tendency for most, regardless of size, to solve the immediate problems facing the individual, department or business.

90% of the time the actual issue or challenge will only be solved forever if something else is fixed. Invariably the cause of the problem is something else that is bigger than the symptom, hence the 80/20. As a leadership team, it is key to identify the 20% of things that are causing the 80% of issues. By solving this you solve lots of issues.

Most businesses try to land too much. The key is to land one plane at a time. Heathrow is the world’s busiest airline with over 73 million passengers and nearly half a million flights; but it only has two runways!

4. Learn Lessons.

You need to imagine your business always learning from its mistakes. By noting lessons down in a log, and allocating who is accountable for solving each one, you can focus on striking them off and remove any barriers to growth.

A business will tell you everything that’s going on, but only if you ask the right questions, so you need to create the right culture to feed this all in.I.e. what do your staff really feel? What are your numbers telling you? How happy are your customers? Why did you lose that contract?

5. Continuous Feedback.

We all need, and deserve, to give and receive continuous feedback; it helps us perform better and ultimately succeed.Start asking: what do we need to stop doing? What do we need to start doing? What should we continue doing?

Allocate 90 minutes this week to reflect on what you can be doing better with each 5 of these.

BW,

Martin

Martin Norbury

Investor | Business Mentor at Advocate | Author of I don't work Fridays

PS here’s how we helped one of our private client’s Keith:

“Martin’s tools and tips have helped increase productivity in my business by more than 50%.We’ve moved from ‘firefighting’ into a position where I have been able to grow my business thanks to a focused goal, new services, and of course, increases in efficiencies.”