Written by: Tim Rylatt, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
When you run and manage your own business, your time can be sucked into a never-ending black hole. There is always someone or something needing more of your time and taking you away from your other priorities in life. At some point, you will need to regain your work-life balance (and perhaps a sense of sanity too!) but it takes a concerted effort to do it! To help you make that breakthrough we’ve written out our 4 top tips for regaining control!
Time management is the holy grail
You will find a lot of talk about time management, and if it was easy, everyone would be doing it well! Real life gets in the way of how you plan to spend your time. With the day-to-day needs of your business calling for your attention: from paying your team’s expenses, the photocopier not working, an HR issue, a sales pitch, networking to checking in with your team – there just aren’t enough hours in the day!
Then there are the things that don’t proactively call for your attention but need doing for your business to progress – inspiring your team, looking at the company’s strategic direction, team development, partnerships, and planning.
Time management is all about efficiency and prioritisation.
In the case of small and medium-sized business owners, it is also about accepting that some things aren’t going to get done. It is all about balancing energy and time to create the greatest outcomes possible within set parameters. What will deliver the greatest return for your business? Where is your time and energy best spent? The parameters need to be inclusive of and boundaried by adequate time for rest and relaxation.
Define all of your roles and determine their value to the business
As an SME business owner with two companies myself, as well as a role as an active business coach, time management is a particular challenge to overcome! As I tell my clients, it is all about understanding your roles and priorities.
Start with defining all of the roles you are accountable for – from the office cleaner, payroll administrator, operations director, team manager, IT support, sales director, CEO, finance director and anything else. Once you’ve got your list, recognise that each of these roles has value, and each requires sufficient time and focus to be allowed if it is ever to achieve its own performance objectives.
Owners often get caught in the trap of pushing back anything that isn’t operations or finance as being less important but the truth is that all roles play a functional part in business success, and very rarely is top performance achieved in an ad hoc, purely reactive setting.
4 Steps To Managing Your Time
1. Set boundaries for yourself and others
Now that you know your roles, and the relative value of them to your business, give each of them an appropriate allowance of time. Once you’ve set those minimum allowance boundaries, be strict about the amount of time you spend on it – there has to be a clear start and end point for them.
This will also help you be more ‘present’ in any given task you are fulfilling, which will also improve your performance and efficiency in them – as well as maintain your sanity rather than thinking about the million other things that need doing!
2. Prioritise
The time allowance you give to each role is not just about how long it takes to do something, but also about the relative value of it to the business. What is genuinely important and urgent, versus important but non-urgent?
If everything is important and urgent, then I’m sorry to tell you – but none of them really are!
3. Delegate
Once you’ve set your boundaries and priorities, it will likely become clear that there are certain roles, functions and tasks members of your team could be doing instead of you.
You may want to focus your energy on a particular area of the business, or you want to focus on the strategic direction and future of the business, or maybe you just want more freedom for other priorities in your life. Whatever the reason, these all mean you need to delegate some of your roles and responsibilities.
This is not about simply handing things over, it is about genuinely investing in the future of your business by developing others and making the business less reliant on yourself.
If you are going to delegate to others, you need to reflect on the team members own time management, ensure it aligns with their development plan (and they know this!). Ensure you provide training and the tools necessary for them to complete the role or task, be clear on the expectations and standard required and write it down for them too! There is no point delegating if their capability to deliver on requirements is not there. Systemise, train, allow them to demonstrate competence, then delegate.
4. Automation and systemisation
If one of your tasks or roles takes longer than you need it to versus its value to the business, actively take steps to reduce the time you (or others) spend on it. I don’t mean you need to do it quicker!
For example, can a process or an IT system help you be more efficient or perhaps even do the task for you? Investing a little into creating a process and a corresponding toolkit, which buys you back an hour every week, so you can spend your time on a higher value activity in your business, will soon pay for itself!
Time management tools can help too
There are three specific time management tools I’d also recommend looking into in order to help with this.
1. A digital and balanced diary
Using the roles – time allocation discussed above, physically map it into your diary on a recurring pattern. This will chunk up your time per role and you can place them at the best time of the day for them to be done. Google Calendar is helpful here so it can be shared with others.
2. Time tracking and reporting
Assumption makes a fool of us all! Actually, record how and where you and your team are spending their time. This allows you to analyse and gather insights into your own and others performance.
Are there tasks which could be automated or made more efficient?
Does someone need some more training to help them be more efficient and effective?
Has a job been sold correctly to a client or time under/over estimated?
Are there errors in the supply chain which are causing jobs to take longer with your team?
These are just a few of the insights you can gather from time tracking and all will help improve your business’ performance and likely get rid of some of the everyday annoyances you and your team have!
3. Project management tools
This will vary considerably by industry, but project management tools help create a common, consistent and shareable system and process. There are free options such as Trello but there are also paid versions.
Better time management will increase your business performance
Gaining control of your time and diary will improve your own performance, and that of your team too. Through better time management, you can have the work-life balance you want which is good for your mental and physical health. It will also help you focus and be more effective when undertaking a task.
With you focusing on more valuable tasks, you can generate more returns for the business.
So I challenge you to write down all of the different roles you fulfil in your business, and start prioritising them, allocating time against them and looking at what can be delegated and automated. It can be a really eye-opening experience and potentially life-changing!
One of my clients, for example, went from an 80 hour week down to 45 hours, all while developing the team and increasing his business’ profitability! It really does work!
If you’d like to be more effective with your time and improve your business’ performance, I’ll happily do a complimentary 90-minute Business Review with you. I promise not to mention my services unless you ask me to! So you can relax and enjoy a strategic and in-depth conversation about the future of your business.
Tim Rylatt, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Tim is a business coach to smaller/medium-sized business who have found themselves on a ‘plateau’ in terms of performance and want to make a change. He gets real pleasure from seeing business owners reclaim control and create personal/work-life balance. His valuable real-world insight and experience spans many sectors and industries, with businesses at all stages of their journey from start-up through to exiting a business. You would be hard pushed to find a more experienced business coach, having worked with around 250 companies throughout his career. He is also a published author on the subject.
