Improve My Business

Steven Covey, in his groundbreaking work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells us to “begin with the end in mind”. The concept is to know what you want to accomplish, and to set up your tasks to assist you in reaching that goal. This is nothing more than knowing what you want to accomplish, and aligning your tasks and assignments with that goal.

Many folks get caught up in the social media craze – I admit that I did too for a while. The good news is that my personality gets ‘tired’ with things pretty easily – whether it’s posting 5-6 times per day on twitter, or connecting with acquaintances on Facebook, or answering questions in the Q&A on LinkedIn Answers. Why is that good news? Because I know that, once I ‘master’ this new application, it will lose its allure. So, I can focus on my new obsession in the knowledge that it’s only because I’m not expert at it yet; once I get there, my nature will allow me to naturally ratchet back on the time, effort, and brainpower I’ll put in on this.

Let me give you an example: when I first logged on to Twitter, I was one of the earlier adopters (I won’t say early adopters, but certainly am not a newbie to the app). I was focused on identifying posters who were interesting, humorous, leaders in their field, and leaders in my field. I grew my follower list thoughtfully (I don’t automatically follow those who follow me; and if someone follows me, I go to their profile, read 2-3 pages of the most recent posts, and decide to follow or not based on whether I want to hear what they have to say. If their entire post history are either retweets (RTs), responses (@twittername) or links to their own products (“come check out my 50% off sale!”) I don’t tend to follow them.)

My twitter followers to @marymcd has grown organically to around 1,000 – 1,100 followers – every week I gain some, and I lose some. I check out who I lose, and it’s invariably people who have followed me for 48 hours, seen that I don’t automatically follow them back, and they drop me (Twitter Quitters). Conversely, I’ve built online relationships with folks that I’ve never met IRL (In Real Life) and have a network of professionals I can tap at any given time to get their thoughts on something I’m struggling with. So, although I devoted a bunch of time to building this network, I don’t spend NEARLY that much maintaining it (and yes, I do post regularly on Twitter except when I’m travelling…)

What was my original goal? To understand this new tool, to figure out if I could build a revenue stream from it (yes, but indirectly only), and to connect with colleagues in far-flung locations. Did I accomplish this? You bet. Was it worth the effort? Yes, when I consider the friendships I’ve developed (you know who you are, @my-virtual-twitter-friends…) Am I a twitter guru? Not even close. I use the tool, and am happy with my use, but do not aspire to be a Twitter queen.

Re-examine how you are spending your time – are you doing things that support your ultimate goal? If not, why not? What can you do differently?

Technorati Tags: blogging, Business, communication, efficiency, goals, managing your time, Time Management, working smarter

Spring is in full swing, at least it is here in the southern part of the country, the trees are green, the sun is out and the flower are blooming. This has me thinking more and more about spring cleaning, and today specifically about spring cleaning for your ideas. Most people have a bunch of ideas that just come to them throughout the year, and if your involved in the running of a business a lot of those ideas probably relate to your business. Many of the business people I know record their ideas either in journals, or e-mail to help them remember the ideas later when they have time to act on them. Ideas always seem to have a way of always coming to you when you don’t have time to work on them.  So today, I want to talk about doing some spring cleaning of our ideas.

First thing to do is to consolidate your ideas into a single list. This may mean pulling together multiple entries into your journal, or searching through your E-mail for notes to yourself, or maybe you just have them all rolling around in your head and just need to right them down. One way or the other it is important to get all of the ideas you have been storing up in one place so you can look at them all together. Once we have our completed list we can being sorting through our ideas using the following steps.

1. Combine. I like to start by taking ideas that are related or similar and combining them, that way I won’t accidentally through out one part of a two or three part idea.

2. Review. This will inevitably happen when you go through to combine, but you want to review your ideas with a critical eye. Things to be looking for are ideas that are no longer relevant, meaning that either your business or the business environment has changed significantly sense you had the idea and therefore it no longer seems like a good one. Other types of ideas you might want to identify are ideas that are just too out there, unless your at a place where pursuing a pretty out there idea is what you are looking for, and ideas that are too grandiose, while we all like to dream big, putting these kinds of ideas on your to do list will only stress you out.

3. Discard. Any ideas that you identified during your review you should discard from the list, the goal after all is to reduce the number of ideas we have in our idea bank, thus making room for more ideas, not to mention giving us some space to actually work on the ideas not just have them. Other items to discard from the list might include ideas that never seem to get done, if you have had the same idea for two or three years and aren’t any closer to realizing the idea then you were then, it might be time to let it go. Alternatively these types of ideas can be great candidates for our next step.

4. Organize. In this step you want to organize your ideas in order of importance. The goal is to come away with a clear picture of what the next idea you want to work on is going to be, and the one after that, and so on. Often times with so many ideas floating around it is hard to pick just one to work on, so organizing your list is a way of focusing your energy on realizing the most important ideas first. Items to look at for moving to the top of the list are probably either, recent and time sensitive ideas, or those old ideas we discussed in number 3, if they still seem like great ideas and you just can’t let them go then try to get them off your list by making them happen.

5. Get to work. Now comes the easy part right? Just start working on realizing the idea at the top of your list. I know its typically not that simple, but at least by cleaning your ideas you can get more targeted and focused and clear up some mental space to really delve into your ideas.

Another thing that some people have found helpful but that I didn’t include in the list, is making two separate lists in the organize stage, sorting ideas into big ideas and smaller ideas. Typically this is done based on the amount of time it would take to accomplish the idea. This way you can always be working on one quicker easy idea and one more long term idea. The goal in either scenario is always the same though, get your ideas in order, get rid of the ones you don’t need, and make space for working on the ones that are most important.

Technorati Tags: Business, de-clutter, goals, improvement, organizing, working smarter

We all know that the hours in the day are numbered and that we need to make the most of them. So here are some tips that I have been using to increase my personal productivity.

1. Batch your E-mails. If your like me and most of the people in my office you have an almost constant stream of E-mails coming in. The temptation is to open them all as soon as they arrive. I realized that for me at least this meant stopping what I was doing and shifting my focus on average once every 15-20 minutes throughout the work day. This was very disruptive, particularly when there was something I wanted to read further in the E-mail and it wound up being a long distraction from the task I had been working on. The solution I have found is batching my E-mail reading into groups. Basically I keep my E-mail open, but don’t read any messages unless something urgent comes in that needs immediate attention. Instead I let things build up and then just before lunch and again just before I sign off for the evening I read through everything. I find this gives me longer blocks of un-interrupted time to focus on getting the important things I need to do done, without completely ignoring what is going on in my E-mail.
2. Pick one big thing every day and do it first. For me if I have a lot of things on my to do list I find that I often avoid the big ones and do all the little “quick wins” first. While this does shorten the list, it still leaves those big projects out there looming, and by the time I have done all the little things I often don’t have the mental energy to tackle a big project. To combat this I have started coming into the office each day, having picked out one large item from my to do list to tackle that day. I start my day off by first checking to make sure no urgent messages came in overnight, then getting right to work on my one big thing for the day. I don’t check E-mails, or make phone calls, or do anything else until I have knocked out my one big task. This has two benefits for me. First it gets those big tasks off the to do list in a timely manner, and second, I find myself having more energy throughout the day because I know that I have already accomplished something big and don’t have the stress of trying to find the energy late in the day to do a big project.
3. Have a defined plan. Beyond picking your one thing, I have also found it helpful to have a defined plan for the week. In other words I try to look at what I need to get done and slot it all into my week. This way I am not sitting here on Tuesday afternoon or worse on Thursday staring at my to do list and wondering how I am ever going to get it all done. I know how it is going to get done because I have already budgeted the time in my head. Of course my schedule gets shifted around a little bit as things come up, and it is important to remain flexible, but knowing what is on your list and what kind of time commitment it takes, then figuring out where you can make that time commitment can help overcome the feeling of overwhelm that comes with big to do lists.
4. Attitude is everything. Having a better attitude at work makes you more productive. If you feel like you have been productive you will continue to be more productive. This is what is really behind the other tips I have listed here, they all help me feel productive, which improves my attitude, and makes me more productive. Sometimes you even need to go so far as to force yourself to change your attitude, even if it seems superficial at first. If you tell yourself you have lots of energy and are ready to get something done, before you know it, it will be true. On the other hand if you sit around all day dreaming about a nap, you’re just going to make yourself more tired. So take a minute every now and then to check in on your attitude towards work and adjust it as needed.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, email, goals, improvement, managing your time, Planning, Time Management, working smarter

First off I would like to welcome everyone to the 2010 edition of the Improve My Business Now blog. I hope you all had a restful holidays and are ready to get to work making our businesses better. Now let’s get going on the good stuff.

If your business is like ours you probably spent the last several weeks wrapping things up from 2009, getting caught up on the things that inevitably fall through the cracks, and perhaps most important of all, thinking about what you were going to do in 2010. Well 2010 is here now, are you doing the things you thought about and planned for?

Whether you went through a formal strategic planning session in the latter part of the year or not, the holidays always provide a break from the frenetic pace of business and allow us to slow down and take a critical look at where we are, how we got here, and where we want to go next. Usually this comes in the form of setting goals for the New Year then coming up with plans to help us meet those goals. I am sure you are all already familiar with the importance of setting goals and planning how to meet them, but in case you need a reminder there is a good article about the importance of strategic planning here. If you didn’t get an opportunity to do some strategic planning in 2009 it’s never too late to put a plan in place.

However, this post isn’t about strategic planning, it’s about follow through. For most of us, we probably have our plan for 2010 at least in mind, if not actually written out somewhere, but what are you doing to put it into action? The truth of the matter is that strategic planning is only as good as the follow through. Your goal to grow sales by 40% over the next year is tremendous and your plan to accomplish it through increased marketing efforts, development of your sales funnel, and increasing return business sounds like a surefire way to make your goal a reality, but at the end of 2010, what is really going to matter is not the goal and the plan, but what you actually did.

Take a look at 2009 or any other year that has already come to a close. What were your goals for that year? Did you meet those goals? Why or why not? It is just as critical to review your old strategic plans and compare them to your actual results as it is to make new plans. Even if you don’t have a written plan, think about what you wanted to accomplish last year. Did you get it done? These reviews are a great way to judge follow through and goal setting. You can look at your previous goals and plans and determine whether you were able to effectively set reasonable goals, come up with actionable plans that meet those goals, and follow through on those plans. The point of these reviews is not to point fingers and establish blame if the strategic plan failed, they are about information. If you were able to put your plan into action and meet your goal that is great, if not, that is great too, by reviewing you can discover where the break down occurred and make sure you do better this year.

What I find most often when I look back at old strategic plans is that as soon as the pace of business and life picks back up in the beginning of the new year we make a couple attempts to start the ball rolling on our plan, then the plan gets forgotten in a cloud of dust and finds its way into a filing cabinet somewhere never to be touched again. Part of my plan in 2010 is to make sure that I stick to the plan, follow through on what I have said I am going to do, and make sure that, when I review my strategic plan at the end of this year, if I haven’t met my goals, it isn’t because of a lack of follow through. Until you have adequate follow through on your plan, you will never be able to tell if your goals are reasonable and if you plans are adequate to meet them. When looking forward, the plan is the key, but in review, it’s your follow through that really counts. If you didn’t follow through, nothing else matters.

Technorati Tags: Business, Follow Through, goals, Planning, Plans, Strategic Planning

Last time I shared an article about being efficient versus being effective by Robert Rolih. Now here are the rules on goal setting from http://www.time-management-toolbox.com/articles.html:

1st rule: Your goals should be specific. The clearer the goal, the clearer the outcome. So, always set specific goals that can be measured. Let me give you an example. If I say, “Next year we will increase our market share,” is this specific? Well, not really! But if I add “by four percentage points,” it makes this goal specific and measurable. There’s an old saying that goes, What gets measured, gets done, so always be specific when you set your goals.

2nd rule: Every goal must have a deadline. Human beings operate best when they have clear deadlines. Deadlines get us moving. So every goal you set should have a deadline – the date by which you will accomplish it.

3rd rule: Your goals should be challenging. Aim high: Set goals that will provide you with a challenge; but be careful – they must be realistic! You must believe you can achieve them.

4th rule: Write your goals down. Gene Donohue once said, The difference between a goal and a dream is the written word. So, write your goals down. This will make them concrete.

Ok, those were the four goal-setting rules.

But what if your goals depend on a boss, and you don’t know what they are? Then go to your boss and ask him! Always be clear what your boss expects from you. Otherwise, you will be doing the wrong things most of the time. So, the real secret of effective time management is choosing the right things to do. That means choosing the things that help you achieve your goals. And those things that help achieve your goals are the tasks that will bring you to your goals faster.

Best-selling author Timothy Ferriss once said: Doing the right things is infinitely more important than doing things right. Efficiency is still very important, but only when you do the right things – the things that will bring you closer to your goals.

Technorati Tags: effective, efficient, goal setting, goals, Time Management