You are struggling to work out what to focus on, what is important and how you can move forward. You are stuck and frustrated and possibly overwhelmed…
Many organisations get stuck in a time trap, not having enough time to work ON the business, because you are stuck working IN the business.
I often meet leaders and organisations that work incredibly hard, who are deeply committed to the results they are trying to achieve, and are frustrated because they feel that they are not getting there. What often happens is that they are so stuck in operational day-to-day thinking, that they get overwhelmed and are not always getting to what is important. This is far more common that most people realise. Taking the time to ensure that you are working on what matters makes a material difference to your results, stress levels and sustainability.
First, you have to clarify what matters and why it matters. Priorities are not always obvious and can often be counterintuitive. For example, sometimes in order to create capacity, you have to make time for your team, rather than just get a new team member. Identifying what is most important is the first step. The second step is to figure out how to make sure that what is important is done first, supported and the scaffolding is created to ensure its success. This helps with the overwhelming feeling of being too busy.
Step 1 – Identifying what is important.
This is different for every organisation, but critical to the sustainability of all. Understanding your values, and how you create value in the world by what you produce or offer, is critical to long-term success and sustainable outcomes. We don’t often think about these things because we are too busy doing, but that can be counterproductive. Taking time to think about how to organise resources in sustainable ways is essential to success (profitability or impactability).
This is basically the reason for strategy. Strategy and strategic questions assist you and your team to identify the crucial work for your organisation to grow and sustain. What are the most important things for you and your team to get right in the next 6, 12, 18 months for your organization to thrive and produce the results/impact you want?
Steven Covey writes about “First things First” in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, an oldie, but a goodie! Another great resource is Eisenhower’s quadrant. It’s a fantastic way to work with day to day priorities, and it is still useful to do strategic thinking because it looks at your context and asks questions you don’t often ask yourself.
When you are very busy with the operational realities of your work, it can be very challenging to make time and space for working on what really matters. Operational emergencies and firefighting will often crowd out important work that is not urgent (see quadrant above). The real engine room of growth and sustainability is working in the second quadrant, this is often where process, structure, team development and culture live.
Take a moment to answer the question below.
What are the most important RESULTS you would like to create in your business in the next 12 months?
Think about the 5 or 6 things you really need to get right in the next 6-12 months for your organisation to thrive. Write it in the present tense as a clear tangible outcome. Example: We are profitable and have reduced expenses. We have an effective website that generates leads.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Step 2 – How do we make sure what matters is done first?
Once you have identified your priorities, it is then absolutely critical to ensure that they are translated into time and space in your schedule and in your team’s schedule. This next part of the work is to allocate the time you have to ensure that the important things get done first. This is trickier than it seems and takes practice. I have seen many beautiful strategy processes gather dust and never really materialise because people couldn’t figure out how to fit it into an already demanding work schedule.
One of my favourite tools for doing this is the Glass Jar exercise.
Glass Jar: Time available in a day – 24 hours
Rocks: Big important tasks or high level goals for your business and life – These go into your schedule first, make sure you and your team focus on them every day.
Pebbles: Tasks with average importance – try and delegate as many as you can.
Sand: Small, unimportant tasks – this is where the most time gets wasted, try and get rid of them.
Don’t start with easy, unimportant stuff! If you think about what you answered in the previous question, they would be the rocks here. They require focus and often are difficult and challenging tasks. For this reason, we often do the easier, less challenging tasks first and then end up not having time for the REALLY important things. This affects our profitability, our results and our stress levels.
What do you need to delegate or get rid of urgently to make the best use of your time?
Identify the low value activities that take up too much time and could be delegated to someone else.
1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
Making the time to identify what your priorities are and how to focus on them is a very powerful way to create capacity in your life and organisation, as well as achieving the results you want, as opposed to being on autopilot and not being able to see the wood for the trees. It’s not easy, it takes considerable time and effort to make this work in an organisation.
Make the time, it’s worth it!
If you are thinking “yes, this sounds great!”, but don’t know where to start, consider contacting me for an exploration session to see how I could support you and your team to untangle priorities.
Mignon@thestrategycircle.co.za