Busy? Good business isn’t “busy-ness”!
How are your new year business goals/ objectives/ strategies going?
A general principle in business is that you need to “spend money to make money”. This is the basic principle of capital investment, sales, marketing… the list goes on. These factors require you to make the investment and then receive the return. Business then becomes balancing risk and return. Sometimes we are able to “make the sale and then make the investment”, but generally the investment comes first. The same principle is true with time:
We need to “spend time to make time”!
Stephen Covey used to talk about “sharpen the saw”. A wood cutter would never spend all day cutting trees without taking time to sharpen their saw. The same is true of modern day arborists.. a blunt chainsaw is next to useless.
How often do we say with our own staff “it’s quicker to do it myself”. The challenge is that the next time you’ll still be completing the task yourself, hence not buying or making time. In my career Business Owners have often lamented training staff and they leave,
but in many cases the opposite is worse, we don’t train staff and they stay! Untrained staff suck up time!
This principle of development also applies to Business Owners – you need time out to sharpen the saw, to focus, to learn, to develop, to step back. Most Business Owners agree, but can’t find the time because they are busy. I’ve noticed when Owners do take time out, such as in the Owner Manager Program, (a development program for Business Owners), a few things happen:
- They realise that they had the time all along – that finding 3 days a month is easily achievable once you commit to it.
- They buy themselves more time. Suddenly their staff step up! One owner found that her staff did so much more when she wasn’t there that following the program she started working 4 days a week, rather than the 6 she worked prior to the program.
These factors then expand exponentially as the Owner gains greater clarity, focus, direction, and a better approach. All of which buys more time and less “busyin-ness”, leading owners to say:
“I wish I had done this earlier”.
Bill Gates was well known for taking a week out of his schedule every year to think things through. Whether it is programs like the Owner Manager Program, or a Bill Gates type of approach, make time, invest the time, commit the time…
spend time to make time!
If you don’t, in my experience nothing will change. Those new year business goals/ objectives/ strategies will still be there and you’ll be just as busy next year!!
