Assuming you already have employees on board, how well do you manage them? Do you manage them or are they managing you?
Today, small businesses have to make the most of limited resources, and that includes people.
My definition of managing people is easy; it’s simply to help the people who report directly to you to be the best they can be.
When you look at your to do list at the end of the day, how many times do you find that “stuff” got in the way and prevented you from completing tasks you had set yourself?
These are your productivity speed bumps. See how many of them ring bells for you. There are many ways people diminish their effectiveness or allow it to be diminished by others.
Focus. Systemize. Delegate.
Your productivity, your effectiveness, your ability to get more of the right things done and maintain your sanity while doing so all start with your mind set. That is – a productive mindset.
A mindset is a set of attitudes and beliefs and expectations you have about any given situation. I describe mind set as equaling results plus systems plus delegation.
Focus on results, systemize everything you can and delegate everything you absolutely don’t have to do yourself. So let’s look at each of those.
The rarest commodity in small business is … Time. There’s never enough of it and the biggest problem is that it is abused and not used. You’re too busy to even think about it. Why is that? Well, usually it’s not that you’re doing too much work, it’s that you’re doing too much of the wrong kind of work. For that reason, right now it’s difficult for you to see how to do more of the right kind of work or even what the right kind of work is.
How do you use your time each day and what can you do to maximize your productivity? Some people like to think of the process of dealing with this commodity as time management, but they are taking the wrong approach.
I have a lot of systems in place in my practice, but can’t get the staff to follow them. They continue to do everything their own way, or not follow them at all. What can I do?
Systems are vital to every business – provided they are the right systems and provided everyone has buy-in. Your employees need to understand why the systems are there, and what difference having them there will make to them and the way they work. If systems are imposed rather than being developed consultatively, they can cause resentment and elements of rebelliousness.