Are you managing your time and priorities?

We all know that time is a finite resource, and yet we still don’t use it well enough to achieve all we set out to do, or to enjoy it in the process. Nick Brown explains how to organise and optimise your time.

Despite all the helpful books, and the electronic promptings of Outlook and our PDA’s, it is tricky getting that balance right. If you can’t get it right, how can you expect to manage your team to deliver!

It’s not a dress rehearsal!

The above comment about dress rehearsals, though dire is nonetheless true. Time is a finite commodity and one that, if we are honest, we constantly struggle with.

You are not alone, and indeed in very good company with the challenge, one of the 20^th century’s great thinkers J.K.Galbraith who was quoted as saying “One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done”.

Time, how do I control and utilise it to my best advantage?

I am writing from the school of experience, backed by copious reading and having endured and enjoyed several management schools around the world. From this I have distilled a way to help establish priorities for a business that will in turn enable you to spend your time where it is of most value.

For your business/department/practice identify:

What makes it successful?
How can I measure this?
What can I impact?

Key performance indicators.

Before you convince yourself that this is simple, that it’s merely a matter of establishing some KPI’s (key performance indicators) for the business and then monitoring them that may not be the complete answer. All well run businesses will have a series of financial numbers to monitor, likes sales revenues, margins, profits etc.

If you are forward thinking, you will also have some KPI’s that are non financial, which could be as simple as the sales manager monitoring his team’s value of quotations and tenders to success and visit rates.

Any good organisation’s Quality department will tell you about error rate and/or reject level, customer returns, warranty costs etc.

To be candid there is no limit to the criteria you can measure and manage. But it must be a means to an end, a way of improving the business in one way or another, and some are more tangible than others.

Identify priorities and responsibilities.

Establish what is important. This will be more diverse the higher you are up the organisation, it will illustrate where you can be effective and will help you identify your priorities.

These could come from your Strategic or Business plan, your annual budgets, or even the result of doing a competitor analysis to see what the “best in your class” achieve.

For example, it's clearly the responsibility of the line supervisor to achieve the output required whether it is in the office or on the factory floor. If there is a problem due to lack of facilities, it is not the supervisor's fault and outside their ability to rectify It is the middle managers responsibility, and so it evolves through the organisation.

However, if the failure to meet the output can be attributed to poor attendance,

this is the supervisor’s responsibility, in terms of motivation or training skills etc. One of the less tangible attributes referred to above.

If you establish what’s important and where you can make the most significant impact on both soft and hard issues you can, as Managing Director, easily set all the levels of responsibility and remuneration in the business and in this way motivate the team. You will also motivate your employees by setting a good example, and by providing a positive place in which to work.

Balancing priorities - a means to organisation.

Your challenge becomes how do I balance/prioritise these hard and soft issues, and how do I ensure that I spend the right amount of time on each.

Break the tasks down in terms of importance and impact. The company cashier should start the day checking the company bank balances; the FD should know the balances on a daily basis whilst the MD should be aware weekly. This methodology will go through the business, establishing priorities.

The tangible goals and tasks will follow naturally from the frequency required of you to give your effective involvement. Be aware of the cause and effect re time!

If your business has a monthly operating cycle it clearly makes little sense to have meetings on monthly performance that may be improved or bettered weekly. Items like debt collection, for instance, can have immediate impact, whereas inventory levels may take a whole monthly cycle to improve.

Spend your time where it’s effective and contributory, either by adding technical expertise, management approval or even motivational interest.

Remember dependant on the size of your business, it’s a combination of organisation, trust, delegation, communication, planning, setting deadlines, measuring, frequency and implementation.

Organisation – taking control, structuring your time.

I am a great believer in lists and deadlines, both for the business and ones self, even if these are self imposed.

Take control of the whole issue of managing your time.

What are your priorities? - both in business and in your personal life
What can you measure? - create those KPI,s
What can you impact? – identify where your time is spent most effectively.

Develop a structure to your week, most people like order and a pattern. Even if it’s only you in the business, pick a day to check your debtors, and to progress the enquiries. No matter how small or large your business, the issues are very similar.

Involve all your employees – work as a team.

Motivate your staff and yourself; give praise, communicate, and integrate. Make time regularly to do these soft issues; don’t assume people know you think they work hard, tell them!

I know a successful business owner who complained to me that his people didn’t call him enough!! When I asked him how regularly he rang them other than to tell them ‘they weren’t hitting target’, he said he didn’t. It was no surprise that his management team actually thought he didn’t care! My recommendation was simply, not only to ensure that he talked to them all at least once a week, irrespective of results, but also, and some say of twice the importance, listen to what they have to say.

Controlling and utilising time to your best advantage.

Prepare a list of your daily priorities, ideally the night before; do the difficult things first; set aside personal time to review the business overall. On Fridays organise the week ahead. Use a tool like the tasks in Outlook and really follow through, don’t assume ask and check.

Plan to delegate; provide employees with the timing and performance goals expected, and the deadlines.

Don’t be distracted from the overall goals; remember as a director/manager it’s your job to have the bigger perspective.

Be focused and set the pattern. Be organised, and other team members will see it as a priority.