top of page

STEP BY STEP

Next Step

2

Shift your

PERSPECTIVE

"It's better to move slowly in the right direction than quickly in the wrong direction."

A shift in perspective is required to go from being a task oriented employee to a business manager/leader.  

 

Mastering the art of time management, understanding what your priorities are, how to use your time efficiently and how to delegate.

 

You can become an expert at looking busy but really spend most of the time chasing your own tail.

 

Ask yourself:

 

How much of my time is spent reacting to emergencies and how often am i able to plan and prepare?

 

Stephen Coveys time management matrix is a great module to help you take stock of the way you spend most of your time.

 

Although the shift in perspective is often required before the review and re-structure of a business, they both depend on each other.

 

In order to create more space and time to prepare/plan and prevent for the future, taking the time to implement structure and systems around you are vital to allow this to happen.

​

This is less about what you are doing, it's about how you are doing it.

​

Learn to set boundaries, with yourself and others and stop adding to the mayhem by:

​

  • Slowing Down

  • Taking Stock

  • Trying a different approach and creating new structure.

  • Focus on transforming the old problems into new solutions one step at  a time.

The Power of a Plan

  • Employee mind-set can be very task oriented and it can feel like you are wasting time if you are sitting back just contemplating a job.

  • As a leader you need to make the switch, spend time planning and preparing. This is vital if you are going to be a more organised, efficient manager of time.

Business vs Busyness

  • ​How much of your day is spent reacting to immediate pressures  and interruptions?

  • ​Do you find that you are constantly reacting and fighting fires? Or just don't feel as though you are as efficient as you could be?

  • You can spend a lot of time looking and feeling incredibly busy, but how productive are you with the time that you have?

  • Understanding the difference between being busy and being effective in business is essential if you want to succeed.

  • A necessary shift from being a task oriented employee to a business manager/leader is required. In order to do this, you need to spend more time in Quadrant 2 shown above.

Reactive vs Proactive

  • The shift from reactive (urgent) to proactive (not urgent) is really important,

  • At first, the way you will do this is by recognising what percentage of your work is of an urgent nature.

  • Then step by step, each time you find yourself reacting, you can stop and take a note of something that you need to review and add structure to. How can you be better prepared next time? Put a system or control in place before it turns up on your urgent list.

Compartmentalize

  • When you add structure, there are several ways to improve your time management including the ability to not react to each thing that shows up on your desk.

  • When you have structure in place, you can learn how to put things to the side and deal with it at a time that you have structured each day/week.

  • Learning how to also manage other people's expectations is important. Don't allow someone elses lack of planning to become your emergency, tell them you can discuss the issue but at a later time when you have scheduled, it's important to set boundaries.

  • Obviously you are still, in the short term going to have to deal with fighting fires and you can't turn off these daily things that arise but over time once more structure is in place, the urgent pressures will slowly diminish and you can allow any issues to be brought up at a time scheduled in your calender.

  • Obviously this can only happen once you have reviewed the areas of concern and started to add structure to your business to give you more space and time to focus on what is important.

Take the time it takes

  • One of the hardest things about adding structure is making time in your daily madness to improve something and you don't even know where to begin!?

  • That is where we can come in and help you to identify these areas and help coach you one step at a time to make positive change a priority.

bottom of page