Setting Business Priorities (have to share!!!)
Setting Business Priorities
Running a small business often means you have to do everything yourself. With so many small tasks to complete each day, like running to the bank or sending email, you may often feel like you’re not getting your important business objectives accomplished.
In order to build a business, an entrepreneur must learn to set priorities. How you spend your time is more important than how much time you spend. That may mean changing the way you schedule your working week.
To set, schedule, and pursue your top priorities, consider following these suggestions:
Use the ‘Rule of 3′. Instead of creating seemingly endless to-do lists, try breaking down your desired goals and related tasks into clusters of three.
Aim to accomplish just three things each week that will advance your monthly objectives. Schedule three minor tasks each day that will contribute to your weekly objectives. Once those tasks are scheduled, it’s amazing how everything else falls neatly around them.
For instance, a goal for this month might be to land one new client. To achieve that goal, you may need to schedule five prospect presentations during the month. To secure those five appointments, perhaps you’ll need to approach ten prospects by making cold calls. Schedule an hour a day to call two prospects and in five days you’ll move toward achieving your monthly goal.
Simply break-down your work week to support two other monthly goals and you’re following the ‘Rule of 3.’
In his worldwide bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey suggests we label our to-do items as rocks, pebbles, and sand. He also compares the limited amount of time we all have to a glass jar, capable of holding a finite amount of matter. Covey recommends placing our biggest priorities – the rocks – in the jar first, followed by smaller yet important tasks called the pebbles. The little to-dos like emails and phone calls and errands – Covey’s sand – magically filter around the larger rocks and pebbles yet still get done.
The essence of Covey’s advice is to identify your biggest work and life priorities – “the rocks” – and schedule them in first.
Schedule tasks
Making daily to-do lists may seem productive, but tasks may not get done unless you dedicate some time to complete them.
Try scheduling tasks as opposed to simply listing them. Want to review your financial statements? Schedule it in for Thursday afternoon. Need to proof new copy for your website? Book it for Wednesday morning. Blocking time helps commit you to getting the work done.
Be sure you’ve allocated a sufficient amount of time to get each job done. There’s a trick some business people like to use when scheduling time to complete a task or to travel to a meeting: triple the amount of time you think any task or journey will require. If you finish your task or arrive at a meeting early, then you can use that bonus time to get something else done. When the opposite happens, and you run out of time because you didn’t allocate enough of it, you create a work backlog and end up feeling stressed.
Plan for the following week on Friday afternoon
Once you’ve created your weekly calendar, step back and review it to make sure you’ve allocated enough time to get the important things done.
Just say “no.” Entrepreneurs are notorious for overbooking their calendars. Excited about the work we do, we can say “yes” too often and take on more work than we really should.
To stay true to your priorities, you must practice saying the word “no.”
If you are approached to get involved in a project, new business, charity, mentorship, or other activity; carefully consider the opportunity cost attached to it. Will saying “yes” advance your business goals? Will saying “yes” leave you with less time for personal priorities, such as spending time with your family?
It’s difficult to turn people down – and even harder to say “no” to ourselves. Yet we must be selfish with our established priorities if we are going to achieve our business and personal objectives.
Leave your business
It’s hard to think about the future of your business when you’re working in it every day. If you want to rewrite your business plan, develop a strategy for growth, think about solutions to existing problems, or simply catch your breath; consider scheduling in a monthly escape from your business.
Big companies call it a “retreat” which may involve traveling to an expensive and remote resort in the country. Where you plan your escape is up to you, but you may prefer more modest locations such as your local library, a favourite coffee shop, park bench, or a colleague’s boardroom.
Escaping monthly to your favourite thinking place away from phones and computers is a great investment in your business. It is well worth the time away from your daily tasks, and the work will still be there when you return. It’s even more important to plan an escape if you’re running a home-based business, because you’re likely facing additional distractions with everything under one roof. No matter where you retreat, you’ll return refreshed, re-energized and much more focused.
CEOs of large companies don’t get bogged down doing little tasks. They’re paid to plan, strategize and lead. They say “no” to distractions. And, they value time to think. Small business owners must do the same. It’s the only way to achieve your business dreams.
by Entrepreneurship Expert Roger Pierce, BizLaunch.ca, February 2008
If you’re interested in more information on Time Management, visit the Office Organization Card up in my right sidebar of this blog! – curt
My Resource is: http://www.dceb.ie/news/setting-business-priorities
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