By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon
Last week, we spent a good bit of time talking about the need to help your staff perform their best work.
What about the stuff that no one would consider their best work, but is “work that must be done and since no one else is here to do it, I will.”
Studies have been performed to determine what CEOs do during their work day – mostly to see what makes the great ones so special, productive and different from the average ones. One thing stands out: the average CEO says they only spend about 25% of their day doing what they feel is meaningful work.
Meaningful work did not include “pushing paper”, reading emails and attending meetings that they felt had no business attending.
Does that sound similar to your typical day as a business owner / manager? I believe business owners have no time for this.
Avoid strategic work
Management may unintentionally avoid strategic work by spending too much of their day doing low-value work – and often make it worse by doing it manually.
It starts by not seeking a better way to deal with tasks that we’ve always done a certain way because that’s the way we learned.
When business owners and managers make meeting arrangements or other appointments for themselves by playing phone or email tag with the other people involved vs. using a tool like Doodle that can resolve the “Sorry, I’m busy then but I can meet two hours later” problem automatically, rather than by repeatedly interrupting each person involved in the appointment.
You may also spend time opening mail, sweeping the shop and performing other low value tasks. No question, these tasks must be performed. However, are you the one who should be doing those things?
I don’t think so.
Business owners have no time
Is it not valuable to sweep the floor? To make sure the windows are clean? To open the mail? To drive to Costco to pickup a truckful of TP? To answer the phone professionally and be helpful to the caller?
Of course these things are valuable, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to actually perform those tasks. Your job is to make sure your systems assure that this work happens and your training makes sure it gets done the way you would do it so you have the time to focus on the CEO work that you and only you can do.
Devaluing it by saying the work is below you sends a dangerous message to your staff. It isn’t that this work is below you. In fact, if you think that, you should rethink it. It’s very dangerous to believe this work is below you, because you will eventually communicate that belief to your staff, explicitly or otherwise.
Below you isn’t the point. The real issue is that in smaller businesses, you’re often the only one who can perform the business’ most valuable work.
Me and only me?
Exactly.
One of the ways that you can identify this work is by breaking down the work you do into two lists:
- $10 an hour work
- $100 an hour work
Put the work you do in a typical day / week / month into those two categories.
There’s probably work done at your place that’s between those spots, but we’re talking about the work YOU do.
Now that you have your list – look at all that stuff on the $10 an hour list. My guess is that all of it can be delegated.
Now look at the $100 an hour list. How much on that list can ONLY be done by you and no one else?
Make a new list, call it what you like – say a $25 an hour list. Everything that’s on the $100 an hour list that someone else can do to your satisfaction, even if it takes training, systems, etc – put it on that list.
What’s left on the $100 hour list should be the things that only you can do. Here’s the kicker… there’s probably a $500 or $1000 an hour list of things you should be doing but never get around to. Dangerous to let that work slide.
Review the lists regularly. Business changes and so does your work.
Next Stop?
Have your managers and senior staff take a look at this process and see what they should be working on vs. what they can delegate.
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.
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Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him atmriffey@flatheadbeacon.com. Check out the Flathead Beacon archive of all of Mark’s blogs.