In This Issue
- Henry and Marissa's Update
- Two Minds Tip: Creating Savvy Business Systems
- Feature Article 1: Increasing Personal Productivity by Andrew May
Hi everyone!
Hope everyone's had a wonderful week.
It's spring time down under and we've been having some great spring weather in Sydney. We've been wonderfully busy and excited working on including more good stuff into our 1-Day Program to help business owners escape the small business trap.
Taking in the essence of spring as we were working on this project just feels like it's such a perfect time for growth and we're really looking forward to helping others do just that! More on that in the next few days...
Our garden full of azaleas in bloom is giving us lots of enjoyment. And we had a great few days at Bondi with Joanna Martin and the rest of her Million Dollar Masterclass members integrating, creating strategies and having a wonderful time.
How can this spring be a time of boom and bloom for you?
Warmly,
Henry and Marissa
Two Minds Tip
Create Savvy Business Systems
an extract from "How To Grow Rich Together" by Henry Chow and Marissa Carlos
Standardising your business with various systems provides you and everyone involved a structure for how things work best. Take a business systems approach to operating every aspect of your business. This means that how things work is organized, automated, and measurable.
A business systems approach is about consistently doing things the same efficient way. Once you establish the smartest ways to communicate, execute and monitor every aspect of your venture, reaching your productivity goals becomes much easier.
Businesses prosper by achieving sound strategies. You will only know which strategies are paying off once you continuously have easy access to the information you needed to make good decisions. So strive to create efficiencies and establish routines in these four key areas:
- Marketing perspective,
- Financial perspective,
- Workplace perspective, and
- Time management perspective.
It's important to have systems such as these in place:
- Determine a preference for the order that your jobs are to set up, processed, produced, and evaluated for results. Teach your formula to your employees as a system.
- Organize major parts of your financial system by using bookkeeping software. Once automated, lots of time will be saved handling your invoicing and other accounting tasks.
- Buy or lease copiers, fax/printers, scanners, computers and other equipment. All of these will speed-up your operations, making more time for everyone involved to move the business forward in other important ways.
- Designate certain days (and specific times of a day) when you always do your payroll, execute your marketing plan, check your employees’ performance, and do other cyclical activities.
- Regularly prepare reports and hold meetings. These are effective planning and communication vehicles that should be considered important parts of the systems equation.
- Standardization even means using the same suppliers and equipment. Not only will you benefit from becoming familiar to your suppliers, from a branding standpoint, your clients will perceive that you’re consistent and operate professionally down to a science.
©2009 Marissa Carlos and Henry Chow
Increasing Personal Productivity
This success tip comes from Andrew May.
Andrew runs Switched On, a consulting company based in Sydney and London. He is one of Australia's leading experts on performance and gives keynote presentations around the world and coaches CEOs and senior managers. He also runs PT Plus, a mentoring and coaching business.
What are your top tips for dramatically increasing personal productivity?
The first thing I teach people to do is to work to their natural energy platforms. Then I teach the concepts of chunking time, the half-day lock-out, forced isolation and avoiding the Noddy syndrome.
Chunking - at first thought, multitasking seems a logical response to our compressed and tightly-packed schedules. While doing a couple of tasks at the same time might sometimes feel more productive, multitasking is not nearly as productive as most people think.
Chunking is about doing similar tasks at the same time. While this is a very simple concept, it can make a massive difference to daily output. For example, check and respond to emails at two or three specific times a day only, and block out time to work on proposals and reports. Modify these ideas to fit into your job responsibilities, I'm sure most people have a lot more control over organising their day and their precious time than they think.
The half-day lock-out - a lot of people who have participated in our corporate programs have picked up the concept of an uninterrupted half-day. This lock-out means turning off the mobile, not checking emails, avoiding constant interruptions and walk-ins, and is best completed when your energy platforms are at their peak. Focus on being present and attentive on the task. This works especially well when you have to write a report, finish a proposal or do some high-end cognitive planning.
Forced isolation - I use this concept when I have a big task to finish. A friend of mine has an amazing holiday house two hours' south of Sydney in a little place called Gerroa. I regularly shoot down to Gerroa and chunk my time working on finishing an activity (thanks Gary Green - you are a legend!). I find that when I am in the office, interruptions just happen! There is no email access at Gary's house and I turn off my phone and work in chunks of time. I usually give myself a small energy break every 45 to 60 minutes and a larger energy break, to walk on the beach or swim in the ocean, every few hours. Over two or three days at Gerroa I get more work done than I would working at home or in my office.
If you don't have the luxury of having a mate like Gary, build forced isolation into your current environment. I used to set up a desk in my garage and lock myself away from all of the noise of my flatmates. Working from home on a normal working day is also a form of forced isolation. Just make sure you don't settle in and watch the TODAY show and then read the daily papers before turning on Oprah or Dr Phil.
Avoiding Noddy syndrome - I think most of us suffer from Noddy syndrome - always nodding 'yes' to please other people. Sometimes it's hard to say no because you feel like you might be letting someone down, but in the end if you say yes to everyone and everything else in your life the only person you're really saying no to is yourself.
I like the old saying, 'Sometimes you need to say no for a great yes down the road'. Be assertive with others and practise saying no to other people's requests if they are not essential. Whether you are doing so many things for ego, because you don't want to let people down or because you are pressured into doing them, there comes a time when you must learn to say no.
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