The Meades Knowledgebase

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The first step of successful time management is to have a clear picture

of what you are trying to achieve.

The 80/20 rule.

Avoid spending too much time taking on problems brought to you by your employees.

Outside companies may do things more efficiently and economically than you.

One minute of planning will save you five minutes elsewhere.

Life coach Brian Tracy identifies the major time wasters in the workplace.

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The first step of successful time management is to have a clear picture of what you are trying

to achieve. You need to state your goals – in writing. Even though written goals are proven to

contribute far more effectively to business success than unwritten goals, research shows that less

than 3% of people commit them to paper. And worse, less than 1% of people review their written

goals on a regular basis. It’s my bet though that this 1% contains the most successful people in

the world today.

If you find it difficult to express your goals, ask yourself questions like:

“If it were guaranteed that I would succeed at something I decided to do, what would I do?”

“If I won the lottery, what would I do?”

Your answers to questions like these can help reveal your wildest dreams. Your goals should include

both personal goals and business goals. Your personal goals are things you want to achieve in life.

Your business goals are things your business will achieve to enable you to achieve your personal

goals. Write down as many goals as possible – remember SMART (Smart, Measurable, Attainable,

Relevant, Timely) – and then rank them. Prioritise your most important goals. Once you have set

your goals, list the steps you will need to take to achieve them. Then ask yourself: “What obstacles

are stopping me from achieving my goals?”

Never lose sight of your goals, stick them somewhere visible like on the wall in your office. Ensure

that you do an activity every day that moves you towards your goals.

Remember the Pareto principle – the 80/20 rule? Well it applies here too. Twenty per cent of your

efforts produce 80% of your results. Apply this throughout your business. Decide what to eliminate

ie things you should not do. In your business this might be products or customers. In other words, if

80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, concentrate on these and drop the remaining

80% of customers.

A useful way of prioritising your goals and activities is to ask yourself whether they are URGENT

and whether they are IMPORTANT. The box below should help. One of your roles as a leader is

to prioritise your Urgent & Important tasks and manage your time so that these tasks get done

in order of priority. Urgent & Not Important tasks are ones you may choose to delegate to an

employee or somehow automate them. You do not need to trouble yourself with Not Urgent & Not

Important tasks.

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Urgent Not urgent

Important Must do these things now Must plan time to do these things

Not important Find a better way eg delegate,

systemise or dump

Eliminate or ignore

The trap that many people fall into is to spend too much time firefighting the Urgent tasks in the

left-hand side of the matrix – like taking phone calls, fixing computers, processing orders, handling

customer complaints and dealing with the post. As a result they put off the things in the top right-

hand box – ie Important but non-urgent things like goal setting, strategic planning and R&D.

Don’t fall into the same trap. Block out time for the Important but non-urgent things in your

business and in your life. Make that time sacrosanct. In other words, start putting first things first.

As a manager you want to be there to support and direct your team and no one is suggesting you

step back from this responsibility. However you need to be sure that you are not spending too much

time taking on the problems brought to you by your employees. If you solve their problems for them

all the time, not only are you not empowering and encouraging them to develop, you are frittering

away your own precious time.

How often do team members come to you and say: “We have a problem”. You spend 15 minutes

listening to them and end up saying: “Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.” Now their problem

is your problem; you’ve taken it on your shoulders. This is called Monkey Management and it might

be one or the biggest thieves of your time. In the book The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey

(Harper Collins, 1990) Blanchard and Oncken describe this as “Letting a monkey jump from your

staff member’s back onto yours”.

The key to avoiding Monkey Management is to only agree to take on problems if it is a problem

ONLY you can take. As your team member brings you a problem say: “We need to both understand

that ‘WE’ don’t have problems. If there is a problem it is either yours or mine. And if it is your problem

I will help you with it on the clear understanding that it will never become my problem. So at the end

of this meeting it will be you that has to do whatever it is that we agree needs doing. Does that

make sense?” Also make it clear in advance that whenever team members bring a problem to you

they must also bring at least one suggestion for the next step. Note: This alone will greatly reduce

the number of problems brought to you – as thinking about their suggested next steps, they will

often discover that they can solve the whole thing without ever involving you!

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Outsourcing is getting outside companies to help with business activities. It makes sense if they

can do things more efficiently and economically than you. For example, when we buy petrol we

are effectively outsourcing oil exploration to the likes of BP. No small business can afford to get

involved in oil exploration, so outsourcing this non-core activity is an obvious way to save time and

money. But there are many other less obvious non-core activities that can also be outsourced.

How to decide what to outsource though? Take a look at the ‘Deciding what to outsource’ matrix

below. This matrix is designed to help you decide what things must be done by your business – and

what things could potentially be done for your business by an external specialist (ie outsourced or

subcontracted).

High

Ab

ility

an

d c

ost

-eff

ect

ive

ne

ss o

f in

-

ho

use

te

am w

he

n d

oin

g t

his

act

ivit

y.

Explore Keep

Low

Outsource Acquire

Competitive advantage created by the activity

Low High

Draw up a list of your business’s core activities and decide how important each activity is to your

customers’ decision to buy – and keep buying from you – ie what is the competitive advantage

created by the activity. Next decide how well – and how cost-effectively – you can carry out each

activity compared to a specialist. Now place each activity in the appropriate box on the matrix. NB: It often helps if activities with extremely high or extremely low ratings are put on the outside edge

of the matrix, and those with moderate ratings on the inside edges. When you’ve completed your

matrix, follow these rules:

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• Keep doing the core activities in the ‘Golden Zone’ (ie the grey shaded top right box) in-house. Outsource the activities in the bottom left box since you are not very good at

them, they are not core to your success and you will probably save time/money by letting

someone else do them.

• Explore the possibility of selling your expertise (activities in the top left box) to

other businesses.

• Acquire the skills you need for the activities in the bottom right box – perhaps through

recruitment or by forging a strategic alliance with an organisation that specialises

in this activity.

Common examples of outsourced activities include payroll, office cleaning, plant care, security,

printing services, distribution and telephone and mail order fulfillment. For the clothing and textile

retailer Laura Ashley, distribution was a distinct liability (only 65% of its deliveries arrived on

time). In 1992 the company outsourced its entire supply process, including warehousing and store

delivery, to Business Logistics (a subsidiary of Federal Express).

If you are going to be effective at managing your time you will have to learn the art of effective

delegation. Whenever you delegate a piece of work, never ever assume the other person has

understood - get that person to feed that information back to you in his or her own words. And

the conversation must not end until the appropriate next steps have been identified and specified.

Choose to do ONLY what you do best. A good manager does things right, but a good leader does

the right things. Do more of what you do well and do less of what you don’t do well.

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One minute in planning will save you 5 minutes elsewhere. In other words, planning gives a 500%

return on your investment. It therefore makes business sense to plan properly and get organised:

1. Use a time planner to organise your week. Break each day down into blocks of one hour. You

may also want to use a time planner that is broken down for the year and month, as well as

the week and each day. Have a daily ‘to do’ list and allocate tasks to time slots. A useful tip is

to prepare your ‘to do’ list the night before. It is much easier to switch off and relax at home

without having to worry about tomorrow – since tomorrow has already been planned.

2. Develop a good filing system. Whenever you file a piece of paper, ask yourself the question: “When I come to look for this in 2 months time, where will I think of looking for it?” We spend so

much of our time looking for things we filed because we can’t remember where we put them in

the first place. And remember- try to only handle each piece of paper just once.

3. Approach large projects particularly carefully. Assemble the team in advance – focus on the

right people for the project well before the task itself. Set a deadline and set out the aims

or outcomes in writing. Break down the project into individual tasks and activities using

the Importance/Urgency grid. Give each task its own deadline. Identify any limiting steps or

bottlenecks or information requirements.

4. Be neat! Neatness is a key element in increasing effectiveness and productivity – clear your

workspace and operate a ‘clear desk’ policy in your workplace. Resolve to handle every piece of

paper just once – use the TRAF system to handle paperwork:

• Toss in the recycle bin

• Refer (or delegate)

• Action (set up an action folder)

• File – use filing sparingly. Unless you are likely to need a particular piece of paper in the future,

simply throw it away!

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Life coach Brian Tracy identifies the major time wasters in the workplace as:

1. Telephone interruptions

2. Unexpected visitors

3. Meetings

4. Fire-fighting crises

5. Socialising

6. Indecision

7. Procrastination

Here are some simple ways to make sure these don’t sap your time:

1. Telephone interruptions• Use the telephone as a business tool, not a social tool. Get on it and off it quickly. Plan your

calls in advance – create an agenda before making the call. Jot down a written agenda as you

would with a face-to-face meeting; this helps you cover all the important points.

• Batch your calls – make all of your calls at the same time.

• If the person you are trying to ring is not in, find out the best time for you to call back. If

you are not in, or you are not taking calls, ensure your receptionist knows when any callers

can call back.

• Have chunks of the day where you don’t take calls and make sure your receptionist is aware

of this. Screening calls is not customer-friendly so don’t make what you’re doing obvious. Use

your prime time for creative work. Everyone has a prime time – this is the time of the day when

you are most effective.

2. Unexpected visitors• Have known quiet times when you aren’t open to visitors or knocks at the door.

• If someone sits down in your room you know it will be a long conversation, so stand up

when someone walks into your room – they probably won’t sit down and the interruption

will be shorter!

• Bring conversations with unexpected visitors to a close by saying, “One more thing before you

go…” as you lead them to the door.

• Avoid being a drop-in visitor yourself. Get into the habit of saying, “Is this a good time, or

should we get together later?”

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3. Meetings• Every time someone suggests a meeting, ask yourself: “Is this meeting necessary?” Would an

email be more appropriate?

• Establish a purpose for every meeting and write an agenda. Distribute the agenda at least 24

hours before the meeting so that everyone is prepared for the meeting.

• Start and stop the meeting on time and don’t wait for latecomers. Once you get a reputation

for starting meetings promptly, latecomers should get the message and arrive on time.

• Cover the most important items on the agenda first. If you run out of time for the less

important items let these wait until the next meeting – or even deal with them via email.

• Summarise each item and get closure. In other words, don’t move on to the next item on the

agenda until you have got agreement to the next steps.

• Create an action plan with responsibilities and deadlines. Record them in the minutes.

4. Fire-fighting crises• Crises happen, fact. But if you find yourself facing recurrent crises, ensure there’s a system

or a policy in place to deal with recurring problems. That way other people can deal with

them. Get the facts and ask yourself: “Why has this crisis arisen and what can I do to stop it

happening again?”

• Delegate action wherever possible.

• Before you deal with a crisis, write it on your ‘to do’ list for the day. This will reveal its relative

importance compared to the other items on your list.

5. Socialising• Restrict chatting and socialising to lunch breaks and after work. Use the phrase “Back to

work”. If you find yourself socialising with a colleague, just say: “I must get back to work”. Encourage your team to do the same. You risk being called ‘Fun Police’ but as long as you build

in plenty of opportunities into the year for your team to socialise, you’ll find that people will

cooperate willingly.

6. Indecision and poor decision making• An imperfect decision made immediately is often better than a perfect decision made too late.

Very often we miss out on opportunities simply because we were unable to decide.

• 80% of decisions should be made when they arise, 15% of decisions put off until later, and 5%

should not be made at all.

• Get the facts before making a decision but remember, when it is not necessary to decide, it is

necessary not to decide. Delegate decisions where possible.

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7. Procrastination• Develop a sense of urgency. We pay more money for people to do things fast (priority delivery

for example) so if we want to earn more we should do things fast.

• Set worthwhile goals. If your goals are important you are less likely to delay a task that moves

you closer to the achievement of that goal.

• Set a deadline for all the important tasks. Put them on your planner and block out time for

them. If you make promises to others a task is more likely to get done. For example, if going for

a jog first thing in the morning is important (and looking after ourselves certainly is), then you

are more likely to go, especially if you have arranged to meet a friend to jog with.

• Create a reward system. For example, if you complete an important project you will go on

holiday with your friends/family for the weekend.

I hope you have found this guide useful. If you’ve not already done so, why not take a look at the other titles in the ‘How to...’ series? Better still, get in touch; we may have added new titles since this guide was published.

And if you’re looking for a really good page-turner my book, ‘How to make your company fly’, is full of thought provoking ideas and some great business tips. It is available on Amazon.

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