Coming through the Covid19 has been very daunting for many businesses. As we move back to work and challenge ourselves on how we can get our businesses thriving again, we need to refocus on mastering basic skills. How a business survives and thrives depends significantly on the time management of all the team, especially the people in management and leadership. People are often very ‘busy’ seemingly working at their desks, out for the day on meetings or working from home answering email and making calls. However, many business owners and managers don’t truly know what their team are doing day to day. They are taken on trust that they put in the work required, focus on work and not social media and make effective use of their time.
As a business owner, what is it you can do to improve the efficient use of your team’s time to ensure you get the best out of your team? Many work from to-do lists and simply come to work, sit down and think what they should do that day. Some may have deadlines to meet, but many may not.
Is a simple to-do list the most effective way forward? Is there another way?
Time in Planning is Rarely Wasted
Taking a moment to plan your use of time is the single most effective use of the time available. Accept that you cannot achieve everything you want to achieve, so learn to prioritize your time effectively. How can you do that? Firstly, a business needs to know what it wants to achieve in any given time period. Business owners/managers who don’t have goals tend to be reactive and not proactive, miss deadlines, and have less structured days. They are always busy fire-fighting, handling issues as they come up and generally being very committed – but not always effective. With clear set goals and plans on how to achieve them, the owners/managers can then determine what they need to do on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis.
Likewise, if each member of the team is aware of those same goals and more importantly, their role in achieving those goals then they too can spend time more effectively planning their work.
When planning your time, the most important plan you can have is your day plan, your week plan and then your monthly plan. Planning must be done prior to the period in question and not at the start…so plan each day the night before, each week on the Friday/weekend and each month at the end of the preceding month.
Priorities
Once you’ve determined what needs to be done, expecting that it cannot all be done without ignoring your family and friends, how do you prioritise? Depending on your role, many business owners/managers use the 4 Ds of Do, Delegate, Defer and Dump. Ensure you delegate as much as possible. Don’t take everything on, otherwise, you’ll be working at the weekends whilst your staff are playing golf! In prioritizing, consider on a daily basis the 4 key questions.
1. Will this definitely make the business money?
2. Might this make the business money?
3. Will this definitely stop the business from losing money?
4. Might this stop the business from losing money?
If none of the above applies, take a close look at the task and ensure you’re confident it needs doing and more importantly be certain if you need to do it.
Are Your Team Effective With Their Time?
So you know what to do for yourself, but you don’t know how your staff are using their time? Create an achieve list for each staff member to complete each evening before leaving their office. Each list is left on the desk for the manager/business owner to see what they wish to achieve the next day and how they are going to prioritise the list. You will be amazed by how much the team progress in their work from this simple list.
You feel you can manage your time better but don’t quite know where to start? Start with a simple time log that can analyse your time use over a month on a daily and weekly basis. You’ll quickly learn what you’re doing with your time and whether that is an effective use of your time or not. If you want a time log format or wish to know more, contact me and I’ll gladly forward a time-log through to you.
