The toughest decision I make each day is deciding what NOT
to do. Every day that I come to the office, I find that there is more to do than
can ever be accomplished. I inevitably have to close up my laptop in the
evening with some tasks undone and incomplete. I do my best to prioritize the
important over the urgent and can generally stay afloat. I've studied the likes
of Stephen Covey, David Allen, and others - they all have their merits.
Ultimately, you must come up with a system that works for
YOU, which may be a combination of many different tips and tools. I've tried everything
from Franklin Planners to One Note. Currently, I use a combination of Outlook
categories/flags and old-school note cards. That works for me, it may not work
for you.
But I came across a new truth recently. Well it's likely an
old truth that's new to me. I'd been focusing all my energy on the
prioritization of my daily tasks and project milestones. I was managing them
reasonably well. However, I never felt like I was making forward progress. I
was living out the definition of insanity "Doing the same thing over and over
again but expecting different results".
I sensed we were running in place and yet our organization
was growing at a record clip. So in reality we were not running in place, we
were falling behind. So I began to ask myself, and others, a series of
questions. I'll provide an example around "Process X"
-
What is the business purpose for Process X?
-
Why do we do Process X this way? Take the answer
to this question and ask "why" at least 4 more times based on those answers.
-
Have you considered alternative methods to do
Process X?
-
How would you change Process X if resources
(time and money) were unlimited?
-
How would you change Process X if no additional
resources were available?
And lastly...
-
What would happen if you stopped doing
Process X?
There's normally a valid reason why Process X is done and an
even better reason why it's done a particular way. However, it's possible that
the original business reason for Process X is no longer valid. Or there may be simpler,
more efficient, method to do the same thing.
Sometimes we live with broken and/or redundant processes for
so long we assume we still need them. They're sort of like our security
blanket. We must take time regularly to re-examine our processes, even the
successful ones, to evaluate their efficiency and most importantly to validate
their need.
One example from the past year at Fellowship Technologies
was time reporting. All of our people are salaried employees. We had everyone
enter their time worked each week into a web-based Time & Expense tool
called Quick Arrow. We began doing it because we wanted to track Paid Time Off
(PTO). We did this for almost 3 full years. As we grew the data entry and approval process became more
and more tedious and time consuming.
Eventually someone spoke up and asked the six questions outlined
above. We realized we could accomplish the same goal (record PTO) without entering
everyone's time worked. So we made a decision to NOT track the time for
every employee. We trusted them to do what's right. Now all we ask them to
record is their PTO if they took any that week. (We also still require our
delivery managers / consultants to enter their project-related time so we can
measure our efficiency.) But the vast majority of our staff are not required to
enter their time at all. This freed up our employees and our administrative
staff to focus on the business rather than busy-work. We might
still be doing it "the way we always had" if someone had not asked "What if we stopped
recording our time?"
I noticed Jason Powell doing something similar when he asked
the question "What if we turned off their office computers each night?" It's a
question not everyone would think to ask. And I see Fellowship Church doing this as they annually
re-evaluate the results of, and the need for, every ministry and event. There are
no sacred cows (ministries / events) at Fellowship Church.
So take some time this week, and on a regular basis, to consider
the alternatives to the "way things have always been done". Perhaps you'll
adopt the phrase "Just don't do it!"
God bless,
Curtis S