Delegation

Dec

2020

Your Big Rocks need you to say ‘NO’!

When you say “yes” to one thing, you must say “no” to something else. If you don’t prioritize your big rocks, you may saying “no” to yourself?

This week I had several meetings with referral partners and conversations with clients who said some variant of “it’s been a busy week and I feel like I accomplished nothing.” This is not something new and unique to this week. I’ve heard it before. Is it that these people I spoke with had no plan and were consuming themselves with busy-ness? Perhaps not.

It’s been said that it takes one-thousand “no’s” to defend a single “yes.” What are the things we are obligating ourselves to which are not our priorities and which do not support our goals? One of my conversations this week was with an insurance broker who aside from being an expert referral connector and a master of his craft is also one of the nicest people I’ve met in recent months. He shared a story about a client of his who was moving out of state. In addition to asking my insurance broker friend to move his insurance policies to his new property, his client asked him to help him move and to drive a truck.

My friend willingly agreed, without hesitation, because he is that kind of person. He admitted after the fact, when we spoke, that it was not the best use of his time and that he has trouble saying “no.”

Put your oxygen mask on, before helping others

It’s human nature that we want to help those around us and it is the reason many of us got into business. I would prefer to surround myself only with those who have servants’ hearts and who embrace the spirit of giving. I’m not advocating for anyone to be cold nor callous to others. I am advocating for you to put yourself first. Remember that safety speech on the last flight you took? The same one they’ve given forever? You put your oxygen mask on before helping others.

If you neglect your own values, goals, and priorities, you may regress in your own growth and development and this will eventually impact your ability to show up for and to serve those around you. If you want to help others, you must put yourself first!

Start with your schedule. If you have followed me for any amount of time, you know I am an advocate of focusing on your plan and living by a schedule. Go ahead and open your calendar. Take a look at the things you’ve obligated yourself to. How many of them will further your goal progress or directly support your values?

I’m not here to tell you which calendar tool is the best to use, nor to criticize your choice. There are a lot of great options out there and the decision is entirely personal. I will however make a case for paper planners and schedules and then share a tool for my digital friends, to help you put yourself first. So what’s up with “big rocks?”

Big Rocks

A high school teacher stood before his class and placed a large glass jar on a table. He grabbed several large rocks and placed them in the jar until they reached the top. He asked his class, “is the jar full?” In unison, most of the class exclaimed “yes.”

The teacher then reached beneath the table and lifted out a bucket. He poured from it small pebbles which tumbled over the rocks and filled the space between them, all the way from the bottom to the top of the jar. He then asked the class if the jar was full and a few responded “yes,” while many remained silent.

The teacher reached under the table again and arose with another bucket. This time he poured sand into the jar. The fine particles of sand flowed through the pebbles and the rocks filling all of the cervices and eventually reaching the top of the jar. The students who were now wise to the exercise were prepared and when the teacher asked this time if the jar was full, many exclaimed “no.”

Get your big rocks in first and prepare to defend them by saying no to things which do not support your values. — Image Credit: http://www.integrativenutrition.com/

The professor then reached beneath the table and grabbed a pitcher of water. As he poured the water into the jar, it saturated the sand and filled all of the remaining space. Surprisingly, the entire contents of the pitcher fit into the jar. This time when the teacher asked “is the jar full?” the entire class return a harmonious “yes!”

When the teacher asked the students what the exercise symbolized, one student shot his hand up and offered “if you do it right, you can fit more things in the jar.” The teacher replied “perhaps more important, if you don’t place the big rocks first, you won’t be able to fit them in.”

Put your big rocks in your schedule before you say yes to anyone else, or you may not fit them in. — Image Credit: http://www.integrativenutrition.com/

Which is mightier? The pen or the PC?

We have access to a lot of great tools today to increase productivity and expedite communication. Some of our scheduling tools like Calendly save an incredible amount of time in the scheduling of meetings and appointments within the availability of multiple people. These tools, in all of their strength and convenience have one major flaw… They allow the priorities of others to consume our time, without our saying so. If we haven’t already placed our big rocks in our calendars, we may not be able to fit them in amidst everyone else’s sand, gravel, and water.

I promise to keep my soapbox speech for paper planners to one sentence. Here it goes: No one else can put their priorities in your paper planner, unless they pry it from your hands and write it in with a pen.

That wasn’t so bad. Right? I keep both a digital calendar and a paper planner. My business does require the ability to receive calendar invitations which have links to Zoom meetings (which would be awful write out in my planner and then to type in at the time of the meeting) and to allow for tools like Calendly to set appointments with potential clients. While I embrace this tool, I live by my Planner Pad.

2 Quick tips to put yourself first and to ensure your priorities are met, each week:

1.Place your big rocks first.

Plan ahead at the year first, then at the start of each month, and finally at the week level. Place these big rocks in your calendar at the start of each period and block them out before the pebbles starts falling. Determine your own level of priority, however, yours may look something like this:

Long vacations
Time off
Time with loved ones
Planning time
Personal development and training
Your ONE Thing

2. Build guard rails around your life

I promised a trick for you digital calendar folks. Bonus… You get two!

Whether you use Google Calendars, Outlook, or the like, browse your settings. You’ll find you have the ability to set a few things like office hours and the ability to have all appointments and invitations by others placed as requests, not as calendared appointments. You do not need to RSVP “yes” to everything that comes through just because you don’t have a conflict!

If the request is not the best use of your time, give “no” a try. On this topic, many of these calendars have default meeting times of 1-2 hours. If someone sends you a one hour meeting request, before you accept it, ask them for an agenda and if it really requires a full hour. Remember: Work expands to fill the time allowed.
1. When I first started using Calendly, I synchronized it with all of my Google calendars and watched it build out my availability around my scheduled appointments. While it did a great job of not creating conflicts with my scheduled appointments, it did a terrible of disrupting my day. I found myself with meeting requests at 8:00am, noon, and 4:30pm. There was no consistency. I quickly learned the settings and I built two time blocks each afternoon for these meetings.
  
  Now, if you would like to schedule a 30 minute call with me, you will find my availability is from 1:00-3:00pm and from 3:30-5:00pm, Mountain Time. Click here to see what I mean.

Aug

2020

3 Things YOU Can Do Today to Free up More of YOUR Time!

Are you working on your business or in it? All too often, I hear business owners tell me that the buck stops with them. I hear that no one is better suited to lead the charge, make big decisions, or to even pick a new shipping supplies vendor than them. You may have begun your business as a visionary and there is no doubt that it is and has remained your baby. The question is: Has your baby grown up to be Frankenstein’s monster?

When you started out, it was big dreams, no clients, and your biggest challenge was where your next sale would come from. You didn’t need any employees… it was just you. You certainly couldn’t afford office staff, because when your revenue is $0, you don’t have a lot to work with. Maybe you’ve done well and turned that revenue into a five, six, or even seven figure number. Perhaps you still haven’t found your first sale. If you’re really lucky, you’re just starting out and you fortuitously stumbled upon this post and it will give you years of experience over your competition.

Seldom can we run a business and do well at it alone. If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, you can surely recall the late nights, the sleepless nights, the Saturdays you skipped out on family plans, because your business was calling and without you, it was bound to fail. This is all too often a “necessary evil” and a “means to an end” for those entrepreneurs who eventually plan to leverage themselves and bring on more help. Whether you have hired more help or you haven’t, if you find yourself and your free time consumed by your business, you need to take action to solidify your own success and prevent burnout.

1. Do what matters most!

A common myth I encounter when working with business owners and leaders is that all things matter equally. They start their day with clarity, a schedule, and a to-do list, only to end it with little completed, a longer list, and more stress. It’s easy to mistake all of the things on your to-do list as a should-do list.

Start off by identifying the top priorities on your list which will move your business forward and those which are you highest priorities. Everything else belongs on your could-do list. Practice the 4 D’s: Delete, Delegate, Defer, and Do:

As you review this list of your lowest priority items, I challenge you to find one item that is of such little importance you can Delete it. Imagine the time you will free up and the feeling of liberation!
Your next sweep of the list is to identify those things you can Delegate to someone better suited to serve this purpose than you. For now, if it’s just you, this may just be back to you. Is there outside support you can enlist? Third party vendors who can lighten your load?
Next pass, find those things which don’t require attention today, which you can push forward in your schedule and Defer. The goal over time is to turn these tasks into Deletes or Delegates, once you have identified they are not integral to your success.
Finally, if these items have passed the first three tests, you must eventually Do them, however, you should have a strategy in place convert these Dos to one of the other D’s.

2. Work from a written job description and organizational chart

What are your job requirements? Before you answer “everything” consider why you got into business? If it was to run around with your hair on fire, tending to things you don’t enjoy, and spending your nights and weekends putting out fires, then never mind… proceed. If you’re like the rest of us, you probably began with a vision.

You imagined yourself being the visionary and either doing something you really enjoy or enjoying the opportunity your business gave you to live your life and to pursue your dreams. How then did you end up in your office on a Friday at 7:00 pm, shipping products and making collection calls?

Even if you’re just getting started, give your role in your business boundaries and know where your next opportunity to leverage your time will come. Your job description comes first, even if it’s a dream at this point. Then, identify the team you will need to support your goals and give them job descriptions as well. Finally, place all of these positions, even those which aren’t yet filled, on an organizational chart. This is your roadmap to leveraging your time and expertise to put the best people in the best positions to ensure your success.

If you have an established business with employees and even if you have an org chart, it never hurts to revisit it. Your business has undoubtedly evolved and new tasks and responsibilities have cropped up. I bet your employees have a keen eye for those things which are “above their pay grade” and “not in their job description” and which have likely fallen on you, the leader. It’s important to continually audit your role and those of your team.

3. Time Block

I love Google Calendar. I just want to throw that out before I tell you how much I despise what Google Calendar does to our lives. There is no doubt that fewer appointments are missed, varying time zones aren’t misinterpreted, and schedule changes are clearly and efficiently conveyed, because of digital calendars. They are great for collaboration, yet terrible for success. The trouble is that other people, with their own agendas and priorities can steal time from your calendar, almost without you even knowing. If you don’t claim your time, someone else will.

Time blocking, as it sounds, means blocking other things from interfering with your time and your top priorities. Once you have determined your success habits (see step 1), you need to get clear on how much time you will allot for them and the best time of day to accomplish them (typically first thing). Then, you will block that time out and protect it as though your biggest dreams depend on them… because they do!

Time blocks are virtually immovable. The only reason I say “virtually” is that if your significant other is in the hospital getting emergency surgery and you are at your office lead generating, you are soon to have a lot more time to lead generate, as you may soon be single. In the event that a time block conflicts with one of your top values, you must re-assign it. If you erase, you must replace! If your time, which you’ve committed to your success is not satisfied today, it must be done tomorrow. If not then, you’ll have to face yourself and explain why your goals are left unfulfilled.

If you are ready to take a role in growing your business and living a life in alignment with your goals, I am ready to help you get there. Tell me in the comments below your takeaway and how you will better leverage your time, to ensure your success.