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Managing your time more effectively as CEO

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Managing your time more effectively as CEOThe responsibilities of a Chief Executive Officer are seemingly endless. From managing strategic direction, evaluating group and company operations to communicating with various stakeholders – the daily schedule of a CEO can be relentless. There are never enough hours in the day, and for business leaders this is certainly true. So, if you’re a relatively new CEO or you’ve been at the helm for a while – how can you manage your time more effectively?

Master Delegation

The most important thing any business leader can do to manage their time more effectively is improve their delegation skills. It can be tempting to control and oversee every aspect of a business, particularly if you’ve built it from nothing, but it’s impossible to do this as a company grows. In order to delegate effectively, you must have the right team around you and an appropriate structure beneath you to support this. This includes people that you trust to get the job done, and competent employees that you can rely on.

Travel Smart

CEOs can spend a significant amount of time traveling between meetings, offices and partners. Therefore, being smart with this time is an absolute must. For example, you could opt for private jet rental instead of commercial flights to save time by avoiding busy airports, and give you more flexibility when it comes to multi-destination trips. It’s also important to make best use of the time while traveling to free up space elsewhere in the day. You could use your travel time to power through some emails or catch up on some work that doesn’t require much collaboration.

Reserve Time

Much is demanded of CEOs from others in the organisation, and as such, a large proportion of their day can be filled with meetings and other scheduled commitments. It’s essential that you reserve some time each day or week for your own priorities, work or even just for a 10-minute breather. Pockets of time here and there can help to boost productivity and break up the day. Reserving time for yourself also relies on delegation – if someone else can take one of your meetings per day, you’ll automatically create more time for yourself to work on other projects.

Power Sessions

Being a CEO is all about imagining and developing the big picture, but you can still get caught up in the intricacies of operations. Use power sessions, or periods of intense focus, to blast through the more mundane or administrative tasks that you will undoubtedly have to do every once in a while. The same goes for emails – reserve a time slot to power through your inbox and you will almost certainly clear it quicker than if you have your mind on other things.

4 Time Management Tips for Professionals

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Tips for Professionals|4 Time Management Tips for ProfessionalsAre you the type of person who feels like they need more hours in the day? Have you heard the saying: work smarter, not harder? What can you do to ream more time out of your day?

Instead of working yourself well over your allotted time, you need to learn the value of your time and plan appropriately. Structuring your day, and often relinquishing control over your duties can help maximize your time.

You should know your limits. When there’s a leak in your bathroom, you would call a plumber, right? At work, you might expect a professional like a customs brokerage or an attorney to take care of difficult tasks so you can focus on your work. If you adhere to this order in your daily life, you can create some beneficial habits.

Plan Early

First things first: get yourself a monthly planner! A monthly planner will help you to plan out your entire week in advance. If you have never sat down and planned out your whole week, you will want to start small.

If you are a working professional, the chances are that you are using a service company scheduling software and it’s keeping you busy. You might have meetings planned, personal appointments, or critical deadlines to meet. Any plans in motion are the place where you need to start. As soon as a new plan pops up during your work, you need to immediately write them down.

Research has shown that writing something by hand solidifies the information into your memory up to 30% faster.

Plan for Work-Life Balance

You might feel like every minute of your day is planned out to the minute. In that case, you want to set some time aside at the end of the day for some rest and relaxation. Otherwise, a massive burnout is approaching.

Set aside an hour at the end of the day where you’ll do only what you want to do and not what you need to do. If that means writing down any niggling ideas you have for work the next day, this could be beneficial for your stress level. It is always better to have your stressors written out—then it is like a promise to yourself to complete and cross off the task.

Don’t Let Your Day Control You

When you are feeling overwhelmed, grab your planner. Separate your day into 10-to-30-minute chunks. Compile a list of your high priority tasks, like deadlines or meetings, and categorize them into these chunks.

It could help if you try to do some more manageable tasks first to get your mind into a workflow, but doing this won’t let those more difficult tasks fall to the back of your mind.

Learn to Be Present

With the rise of social media, we have distractions at genuinely every point of the day. If you work in a fast-paced work environment, you might continuously be inundated with work emails or phone calls. This could seriously distract you from some of your more important work tasks.

Our loss of interest and distractions are the most pressing reasons for time management struggles. It is important to ground yourself in between these high-stress moments and keep yourself on track. One great way to do this is to set a timer or an alarm to stay aware of your time and keep your mind on the present moment. You might even want to consider pausing your notifications when you’re working on more pressing tasks!

Have You Strategised How Productive Your Business Is? Time To Focus

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Productive Business|Have You Strategised How Productive Your Business Is? Time To FocusWhen you start a business, no one can really prepare you for the steps that you may need to take. It can consume you in those early days, and you may put all of your efforts into it. But as your business progresses you find that you spin too many plates and are not able to focus on the priorities. This is when you need to strategize to ensure that your business is more productive. So here are some of the things to consider.

Placing a value on your time

One of the first things to think about would be placing a value on your time more effectively. The issue that so many business owners and entrepreneurs have is that they tend to want to do everything themselves, but as their business progresses and thrives, there simply isn’t enough hours in the day. This is when outsourcing certain aspects of your business can help you get more out of it. You might also want to think about things such as Information management services to help with IT things and such. Placing a value on your time enables you to focus on the areas of the business where you can make the most difference.

Is your business productive when it comes to marketing?

The next thing to think about would be whether or not you think that your business is productive when it comes to marketing opportunities. Often it is more to do with analyzing things like social media platforms and working out the times in which to post and also what platform gets the most engagement and reach for you. The mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter would be beneficial if you came up with a strategy to remain consistent to beat the algorithm.

Happy employees means productive staff

As businesses progresses, you get to the point where you need to have staff and employees. The issue is that you then become responsibility for their productivity. This is when happy employees make productive staff. Think about the working environment and the atmosphere, make sure that you look at how you communicate with your staff members and keep things professional while ensuring that you do all you can to get the best out of the people that work for you.

Making use of technology and shortcuts

The next thing you might want to think about would be the use of technology and shortcuts that are available to you. Customer relationship management systems to stay in touch with clients and customers, scheduling tools so that you can always be present online.

Gap in the market and jumping on the opportunities

Finally it is always going to be worth keeping an eye on the business trends and ensuring that you spot the gaps in the market. Jumping at these opportunities makes you productive as a business owner, as you seek out the next step to take to make your business the success you dreamed it would become.

Let’s hope these tips help you when it comes to being productive in your business.

Common Productivity Errors When Managing Remote Teams

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Productivity|Common Productivity Errors When Managing Remote TeamsTime is money. Or, to put it more accurately, how you use your time is money. And that’s as true for you as it is for every member of your team. Particularly in the current climate. Even in the best of times, every day is a battle for productivity, the wring the most out of every day, optimize output and ensure that your overhead costs (including the costs associated with your personnel) are maintaining an optimal ROI. In the current climate, however, maintaining and managing productivity has taken on a whole new level of importance.

After all, this is one of the most economically and commercially challenging times in recent history. Businesses of all shapes and sizes have had to implement radical operational changes almost overnight, or risk losing ground to competitors with potentially fatal consequences. Every customer and every sale seems harder won than ever, and your competitors are snapping at your heels more voraciously than ever before as they try to engage customers who have become increasingly loath to spend.

You’re likely still adjusting to managing your team remotely. And as a leader, it’s up to you to ensure that you get the most out of each and every one of them. That means avoiding these all-too-commonly made mistakes…

Assuming that productivity isn’t your responsibility

Your employees need to take responsibility for their own productivity, right? Your job is to oversee and facilitate, not to babysit and cajole? This mentality, while understandable, is an oversimplification that can cause serious lapses in productivity and profitability.

Yes, employees need to be accountable for their own productivity. But it’s your responsibility to provide a technological and operational infrastructure that allows them to get the most out of every day. And to give them support and guidance when they struggle with this.

Failing to use the right communications tools

Speaking of technological infrastructures, you’ve likely had to make some changes to yours in order to maintain connectivity and communications. Yet, while improved technologies have made it easier for teams to communicate, failing to use the right tools (or failing to use their full gamut of capabilities) can be damaging to your productivity and your ROI. The right tools can reduce misunderstandings, facilitate collaboration and multitasking and help to maintain social cohesion among your employees. Which brings us to…

Neglecting the importance of socialization

Your employees miss one another! They miss the sense of camaraderie they shared. The feeling of working together to achieve shared goals, and the sense of buzz and excitement that pervaded in your physical workplace. And while it’s easy to dismiss social cohesion as a by-product of a productive working environment, it’s actually the engine that drives it! Which is why it’s important for leaders and entrepreneurs to set time aside for social activities, even if necessity dictates that they’re carried out remotely. This link has some great ideas for remote activities for teams.

Maintaining rigid working hours

Structure is important. It helps members of your team to compartmentalize their time and their thoughts. It allows them to distinguish between “home mode” and “work mode” when working remotely and prevent team members from pushing themselves too hard, stretching themselves too thin and burning out. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that rigid working hours must (or should) need to be enforced.

Indeed, maintaining the same 9 to 5 working day could actually be counterproductive to remote employees. According to a 2020 study, a 94% majority of respondents said that they would benefit from increased work flexibility. Most commonly cited benefits included improved mental health / stress management, better ability to manage their home and personal commitments and happier working days.

A little flexibility can go a long way in keeping your team happy, healthy and a peak productivity.

Failing to recognize and celebrate employee achievements

Finally, it can be very challenging to keep your team motivated when they’re working remotely. Working from home means having to contend with a range of distractions from the urgency of housework to the allure of daytime TV. And when employees don’t feel engaged in their work, it’s very difficult to remain motivated. Especially when you’re not on-site to guide and support them.

The good news, however, is that recognition from leaders and peers alike can go a long way in facilitating engagement and motivation. There are a wealth of employee recognition apps which work just like social media platforms. Through them you can recognize, share and celebrate employee achievements. Not only does this help to engage employees, it also helps to build a greater sense of social cohesion amongst your team.

How To Improve Your Business Productivity While Working From Home

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Business Productivity|How To Improve Your Business Productivity While Working From HomeWorking from home can be challenging for some because there are so many things that may need your attention. From your children to household chores, your productivity may be suffering. If you are looking for ways to improve your business productivity, here are some helpful tips that will help you get through the day getting everything done on your to-do list.

Be More Efficient

Think really hard about how your business is running. Are there any opportunities for some processes to be streamlined? For example, if you own a commercial dash cam company, installing fleet tracking dash cams can be beneficial to improving your delivery times as some of these come with GPS features. Maybe you are spending too much time answering emails in which case a simple day restructure will help you move more efficiently. Ultimately, it depends on what your business’ short-term and long-term tasks are.

Know When To Delegate

This is something a lot of great managers and executives understand. You cannot do everything yourself. There is not enough time in the day. Delegating allows you to focus on the most important tasks for your day while someone else can handle the less pressing, but just as important tasks. Delegating can feel uneasy because you are essentially giving someone else the responsibility of pulling through.

Doing this not only improves your productivity but it also benefits your employees by giving them a sense of achievement and direction in their careers.

Cut Out Distractions

Distractions are typically the main culprits when it comes to business productivity. Things like social media and texting can be major time wasters. You want to make sure that you and your employees are utilizing the work hours efficiently. While you do not want to implement a no-phone policy, you can instead opt for frequent breaks. Taking lots of breaks will reduce your chances of getting distracted.

Use The Right Tools

Thank goodness for technology and apps. There are tons of time and productivity tracking apps that you can use to help keep you productive. These apps help you stay accountable for your time for the day, making sure that you are getting most out of the workday. You can also use collaboration tools like Google Drive and Trello to keep track of your projects and those contributing to those projects. Google Drive streamlines the collaboration process, allowing you to share things in real-time as they are being updated.

Keep Your Employees Up-To-Date With Training

Set your employees up for success by offering training that allows them to develop their productivity skills. Sometimes the process of hiring someone new can be nerve-wracking because this is a time typically when things start falling through the cracks. The best way to avoid this is to make sure all your employees, new and old, are properly trained. Training greatly benefits not just the employer but also the employees as well as improving greater efficiency and productivity.