Enhanced Productivity 101: Automation, Delegation, and Time Management
You’ve probably heard that time is money. However, have you ever considered that saving your employees time might make you more money as well? Indeed, research shows that organizations who treat their employees’ time like a scarce resource, drastically outperform their peers. This logic applies not only to companies but to individuals as well.
When you work to make the most of every minute of the day, you’re left with more energy to apply toward productivity with less time wasted and no momentum lost. The right techniques and productivity tools are essential in this process. Automation can also save you tons of time and help you outperform the competition
Below, we’ll go a couple of things businesses (big and small) need to know for enhanced productivity, improved performance, and a happier team in general!
Keeping Your Team Sane and Working Efficiently Leads to More Productivity
Ensuring that those who work on your team are able to handle tasks with the right tools is important. Therefore, you have to put an emphasis on efficiency, productivity, and delegation. Just because one team member can handle an assignment doesn’t necessarily mean that they should.
Ask yourself: “could an automated system or IT person handle these more efficiently?” Instead of focusing on getting a job completed, put the focus on maximizing output. This is critical to a productive and profitable work environment.
“Time is a finite resource; every hour has a real opportunity cost.”
– Eric Garton, Bain & Company
What if you could get more done by Thursday at 10 am than what your competitors can do in an entire week? How much more would you get done if you had an extra hour back in your day? Leaders in industrial performance have come to a consensus on how to improve productivity. Their research shows us a few things:
1. Companies repeatedly make the mistake of wasting the time of their workers.
Companies historically have been obsessed with financial capital. But what about human capital? It seems, not so much. Many corporations have wasted the finite resources of their employees’ time. This may fly for a while, but rest assured, it will ultimately lead to issues. Whether you are talking about a small family business, independent LLC, or mega cooperation, the way that every team member uses their time is integral!
2. The best companies think about how to manage human capital.
Have you ever asked yourself what the great companies of the world are doing right? For one thing, they’re making it as easy as possible for their employees to be effective in every area and as they accomplish any task.
Specifically, good employers use the human capital in their workforce properly. They help workers accomplish jobs as efficiently as possible as it relates to time, talent within the organization, and organizational energy. Organizational energy is an engaged, satisfied workforce that can complete an array of tasks, jobs, assignments, etc., efficiently and as a team.
Consider this (false) mentality: A person costs $100k a year. He/she will always cost that, I can’t improve that cost. This mentality is wrong. Productivity is overlooked due to some perceived, fixed expense. Human capital is often ignored! However, it is a truly scarce resource.
Now, consider this mentality: Human capital is scarce, and employees must be able to operate efficiently, saving themselves and the company precious time.
Unless you unlock human capital through the utilization of your teams or yourself, you have no chance of growing as an organization or beating your peers.
The companies that changed their in-house performance mentality were able to outperform their peers and competitors by 40%. Over a 10-year period, these companies will “produce” 30x more than their peers as well
A single idea can propel a company for a monumental period of time. Think of companies like Apple and Amazon, or Continental Resources (Invented horizontal fracking) and all they have created. These singular ideas were no small accomplishment. Golden ticket ideas come from people who have the time, talent, and energy needed to think clearly and envision future possibilities
The Bottom Line:
- Time is the foundation of it all (time talent and energy that is)
- Time leads to finding and retaining good talent
- Treat employees as ASSETS, not expenses
- Try and get a “return” out of your employees or yourself
A good worker (whether an individual consultant or an employee) can be two to ten times as productive as the average person in the industry.
Companies need contrive ways to:
- Arm their people for whatever challenges they may face
- Equip employees to take advantage of any potential opportunities
- Position as many people as are needed to achieve the maximum levels of production
3. There are certain areas where time is mismanaged on a consistent basis.
It is also important to understand that there are a few areas in essentially all companies, corporations, and businesses, where time is mismanaged on a regular basis. These high-level areas must be addressed and fine-tuned to get a noticeable performance boost
High-level areas where time is mismanaged include:
- Situations where employees lack tools or aids
- Any lack of direction or poor training
- Inefficient work & unproductive cultures
- Too many meetings
- Complex organizational structures with unclear hierarchies
Think about what the above high-level problem areas mean in terms of production. How might these issues impact the people within your organization, their energy, or your team culture?
Never do the following:
- Supply your team with the wrong tools
- Provide your team with too few or no tools/resources
- Forget to give a clear directive as an organization
- Allow management to be disorganized in general
- Promote defeat by letting (appropriately trained and equipped) team members give up entirely on a task
- Encourage scenarios where workers are inefficiently completing tasks (we all know when we are being inefficient)
- Allow the growth or continuation of cultures that relate to being a burden on people
The above incorrect practices add drag, stress, frustration, and a range of other counterproductive attributes to the mentality of your entire team
Drag and time-wasting will inevitably negatively impact your team’s mentality. What does this drag do to the mentality of your talent? What does it do to you? What does it do to your ability to access/keep talent or employ satisfied people? Inspired, creative, diligent workers cannot thrive in these conditions. Studies have proven this time and time again!
