How To Change What Needs Changing
The biggest problem facing small business owners is finding the time to deal with everything that’s required of them.
With operational issues, compliance, regulation, staff issues, finance, marketing, sales etc., it's no wonder business owners feel overwhelmed and work harder and longer to keep up.
The result is that lack of focus has businesses owners running from one urgent issue to the next, often overlooking or forgetting about important issues such as marketing or having a monthly management meeting.
There are many books on the matter and some of them good but many are unrealistic and ideological. At EBA we encourage our clients to create lists. No matter how small or big the item, it needs to go on the list. Bigger ticket ‘to-do's’ can be broken down into sub tasks. The task list needs to be recorded in a common place. In other words, all in one place and not on loose pieces of paper such as post- its which can be easily misplaced.
This can be done in a notebook or electronically using software such as Outlook (task lists) or cloud based solutions such as Evernote or Basecamp.
Personally I like to use a whiteboard. That way the tasks are up there in plain view and not hidden out of site in a file somewhere on your hard drive.
Some people may struggle to create tasks or projects so what is required is a practical process for businesses to create or refine the ‘to do’ list. Once a comprehensive list is created the next challenge is to refine it so that each task has a clearly articulated purpose. This helps to set the actions that need to be undertaken to execute the task.
An effective method of prioritising tasks (to help better achieve a work life balance) is a 10 minute exercise to rate yourself in the following areas. Assign a score from 1 to 10 in each item of each category.
1. Having fun
When you enjoy what you do you have a better balance. Find ways off delegating, outsourcing or offshoring mundane tasks.
2. Discipline
Work Hard and Play Hard. Work to get things done not for the sake of working. When you are in the zone go a few extra hours and get as much knocked off your to do list as you can. When things are dragging and you don’t feel up to it sometimes you’re better off quitting for the day and spending time with family and loved ones instead.
3. Clarity about your core purpose and values
Clarity about where you are at in your life and where you want to go is a good way to stay motivated and get things done.
4. Prepared to take risks
To achieve in life one needs to fail (a little) along the way. These are important life lessons. To achieve a better work life balance you will need to make some changes. All change has a small element of risk which can be easily managed if properly researched and analysed.
5. Thirst for Learning
Be open to new ideas, technological innovations and opinions. New ideas will create opportunity
6. Email
We are dominated by email in today’s modern society. Email servers can be set to only send and receive emails intermittently. By only looking at your email every couple of hours you avoid the trap of attending to matters that have appeared in your inbox and thus supersede the priorities that you had set for yourself at the start of the day.
7. Setting deadlines
It is important to allocate deadlines to tasks so that they do not overrun unchecked.
8. Effective meetings
Meeting need to be structured and an agenda circulated to all attendees prior to the meeting. Allocate an appropriate amount of time to each task and don’t overrun on agenda items.
9. Toxic relations
Take action to distance yourself from people who are draining your energy and therefore not letting you live the life of your dreams.
Once you have scored yourself on these 9 items pick two. Rome was not built in a day, so we can’t fix all of these in one go. Which two you pick is not really important. What is important is to pick the two you think will most significantly affect your work life balance. If you can significantly improve them over the next 30 days.
Review your task list and identify which actions are aligned with your priorities. If there are none that specifically tie in with objectives identified in this exercise then set the actions and write them down on the task list. Commit to getting these done in the next 30 days.
Make a point of reviewing your progress by doing this exercise every 30 days. Get your team involved and do this exercise monthly. Across the board, those organisations that go through this process were more successful than those that didn’t.
Planning in business can be viewed by some as a luxury but the data suggests that those organisations that take the time to plan ahead reap the rewards.
Author Credits ::
Grant Meyer
Owner, Everest Business Accountants
Phone: 08 9467 9850
Web: www.everestbusinessaccountants.com.au