Are You Being Efficient AND Effective in Your Business?
As a business owner and leader, you’re expected to be world-class at ‘time management’. But what does this actually mean? Well, it’s simply being effective as well as efficient.
Let me explain with a few questions (I usually go through these with my clients face to face with a whiteboard, but you get the gist). Please try to answer as honestly as you can and hold up the mirror to see what is really happening in your business right now…
What Does Urgent Mean to You?
Urgent is NOW. It’s reactive.
The phone ringing is urgent. But it may not be important.
Urgent tasks are usually associated with achieving someone else’s goals and they’re often the ones you concentrate on because the consequences of not dealing with them are immediate.
So, how would you define Important?
Important gets you from A to B based on your goals and vision. Important tasks have an outcome that leads to you achieving your goals, whether these are professional or personal.
If you don’t do this, then you will never get your end result. But the problem is that these are proactive.
If it’s Urgent and Important, then what’s this?
It’s a crisis. And it’s reactive.
What if it’s Important but Not Urgent?
If it’s important, but not urgent, then we know its proactive. These are opportunities for you, and they do happen. But if you’re distracted firefighting elsewhere, you miss them.
And if it’s Urgent but Not Important?
We call it deception! Do you have people in your team that are constantly telling everyone else how busy they are? Think of how incoming emails distract you, however non-urgent they are.
Finally, what if it’s Not Urgent and Not Important?
Well, you don’t need to think about this as it’s just irresponsible.
Why this is so important – and why you must tell your team – is that you spend zero time on anything that is in this last category. Stop right now.
And all those tasks that are Urgent but not Important, then you have to simplify, eliminate or delegate.
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But believe me, I see so many business owners that are busy rushing around sweeping the floor every day because there’s a hole in the roof. If they simply fixed the roof, then they wouldn’t need to keep on sweeping and could move from firefighting to focusing on scaling their business.
Your challenge this week is to find out what holes there are in your business and fix them.