“First Things First!”

     I never figured out why my father always shouted this statement, but I guess it was because he was always in a dither when it occurred to him. Most of us don’t think much about prioritizing until we’re feeling overwhelmed with no place to turn. It’s kind of a “force your hand” type of response. OMG, I’ve got 3 hours to do 27 hours worth of tasks and then the world ends. Right. I’d better prioritize. 

     Here’s the deal: Let’s work backwards at this. One of the life-goals most of us share (beyond not having any IRS surprises!) is to avoid last-minute panic situations and 11th hour rush jobs, right? And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in; that’s an unspoken priority for most of us who are not earning a living by participating in extreme sports. So, okay, the target here is to be –and stay– organized. 

     Establishing priorities means, first and foremost, that you have a busy agenda, or that maybe you’re too busy to even have had time to put together an agenda (which makes me suspect of why you’re even stopping to read this, but nice to see you all the same). Either way, implications are that what you really need to address as Step One is to do a Quick Risk Assessment.

     Nothing magical here. Simply list all the burdensome tasks on one piece of paper (or txtmsg2Urself) and then run through each item with a 1,2, or 3 ranking. It’s a 1 if you just stepped in something brown and gooshy on your way into a building for a big meeting. It’s a 2 if your shoelace broke. It’s a 3 if you just realized your socks don’t match. Determine the relative risks.

     What on your list absolutely positively cannot wait until tomorrow (or the end of the day, or next week, etc.)? Each of those items gets a 1 assigned to it. Let the rest fall by the wayside for the moment and focus 100% of your time and attention and energy on getting your number 1 issues resolved before even looking at the rest of the list to decide if the remainders are 2s or 3s (many will migrate up to a 1 ranking by the time you finish the immediate 1s).

     When a couple of someone else’s have both “assigned” tasks that are battling for THE number 1 position, go back to those someone else’s(bosses or customers or lawyers or spouses or whomever) and ask them to talk with each other to sort out what exactly you need to put next on your runway for takeoff because there’s only one of you to go around! Hand the responsibility for deciding back to the sources!

     Restaurants may be in the food-service business, but cleanliness has to always be Priority One or there may not BE a food-servicebusiness if food poisoning prevails. Maybe you’ve been focused on a date for printing materials for a client when the reason for the materials is more important . . . having finished documents ready to travel with for an out-of-county trade show, needs to dictate the prioritizing for print preparation schedules.

     The undercurrent throughout the prioritizing process is that you need to have a grip on time management (and never get into the position of not having enough time to do time management!) and — aha! —  Our old friend: stress management take some deep breaths!

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

“Is what I’m doing right

this minute, leading me 

 to where I want to go?”

I kept this sign above my desk for many years. It helped keep me focused. It prompted staff and visitors to think twice about how we were using time. It’s hard to justify much water cooler chit-chat while appointments, online research and paperwork pace around your workspace awaiting your return.

Running a business is a balancing act to begin with. The mercilessly ticking clock demands even more. Business owners and managers are only as effective as their ability to manage and productively use time.

Mail carriers sort, doctors triage, retailers catalog, military personnel classify, librarians alphabetize, and the rest of us stumble through –organizing, arranging and categorizing– as a preamble to prioritizing.

The process of taking what you have and organizing it, combining appropriate interests along the way, then ultimately determining the rank order of importance is a lifeline to action! It sets leaders up to attack the first most important task first, and the second most important task second, and so forth. All good, logical, rational thinking here.

Unfortunately, unless you’re an accountant, life is not logical and rational. Stuff inevitably happens that pushes all the logic out the tenth floor window. If you’re not prepared for such uproars, you’ll get dragged out with it. And ten floors is not enough time to open your chute, but enough free-fall to play smash-face.

If your past solution approach has traditionally been to start listening to your LED watch and –as if it was a doomed rabbit– giving it violent hound dog shakes with a startled look on your face, you may want to consider some alternative that involves a booster shot of proactive planning.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy tells us that for “every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.”

Planning is only a waste of time if you choose for it to be and fail to follow the path you cut out, or fail to adjust it to best fit the circumstances.

One major key to planning and time management success is to always have a contingency arrangement thought out. Why? Because you can almost bet there will be interruptions, and often unexpected emergencies. Just as fire drills have often been credited with saving lives, contingency plans often save businesses.

  In other words, stay tuned in to what’s happening in real time, but always be prepared to be sidetracked. Thoreau once talked about being “forever on the alert.” Not bad advice all these many years later.

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931.854.0474    Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

When you add

a splash of red

to a sea of blue,

people stop

noticing the blue…

     My wife Kathy (God Bless Her!) has been my business partner for 23 years. It takes an extraordinarily special relationship to survive and thrive in the same workspace AND the same homespace. 

     Oh, but don’t thinkI have a limited perspective on this. I’ve worked with every kind of FAMILY business imaginable … from restaurants, HVAC, farms, clothing, sewage, chiropractic services, heart surgery, landscaping, mattresses, trucking, dentistry, lumber, accounting, candy and travel, to manufacturing of computer and rocket-ship parts that fit under your fingernail. And that’s just my tip- of-the-iceberg list.

     Yeah, you might say, but just doing their brochures and websites doesn’t put you in the thick of things. How do you know what it’s really like? As a management consultant, trainer, coach, and counselor, believe me I’ve seen it all. I’ve managed succession planning, rookie coaching, crisis intervention, family foundations, partnership formations, partnership separations, and one fist fight.  

     The biggest problem with family business is family. Family relation-ships are a hotbed of emotions. Consider the statistics that claim every one comes from a dysfunctional family, which means there are an awful lot of weirdos out there. When the dysfunctional types become part of the family business, people see the business as dysfunctional. When you add a splash of red to a sea of blue, people stop noticing the blue.

Only a handful of really smart family business leaders have the good sense to realize a proven professional can help grow the business AND save the family.”

     When high emotions reign in a family business, you can be sure the business will not be a recommended long-term investment. Business ventures can be immensely emotional and supercharged, but keeping control of all that energy requires great leadership finesse, objectivity, and balance.

     Imagine a ship in a stormy sea, with an angry, blood-vessel-on-the-cusp-of-bursting, near-incoherent, screaming captain at the controls. You’d want to be figuring out the quickest route to the lifeboats. Some family businesses keep these stormy sea antics below deck, but they still take their toll.

You’d want to be figuring out the

quickest route to the lifeboats.”

     Here’s the good news: None of it is necessary. Here’s the bad news: Only a handful of family business leaders have the good sense to realize a proven professional can help grow the business AND save the family. The basic principles of anger management, stress management, time management, communication skills (especially effective listening), goal-setting, and leadership transparency are the ingredients of family business transformation and success. Someone who knows how and when to use these tools can help you get the red splash out of your sea of blue, and steady the controls.  

     The more generations involved, the greater the need. The more family members involved, the greater the need. The solution direction is simple. It takes a commitment to want to succeed, a willingness to share “dirty laundry” with an “outsider” (and a sense of partnership and perseverance with that outsider) to combine forces to make a difference.

     Family business growth and development is directly tied to the 4 R’s: Receptivity, Responsiveness, Responsibility and Respect. If those are present, an experienced coach can help them all work for the good of the business, and the good of the family.  

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

Gonna Chunk It? Then Chew It!

     If your current state of existence fits the last (“Discombobulated?”) post, and you’ve decided to try managing your time in chunks instead of clock ticks, be aware that you can’t just wolf down the chunks like my Golden Retriever. She rarely bothers to chew when she’s excited.

     You however are not a dog. At least, I must assume that you’re not. But just in case you ARE some blog-reading canine phenom, please call me immediately; we’ll make lots of money together. So the bottom line is that your digestive system simply doesn’t work well with chunks.

     Still with me here?We’re talking time management. Chunks. Chunking up time and activities is better than nonstop eating of the same (physical, mental, or emotional) food for eight hours a day. After all, even casino dealers work 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off.

     The guys who clean out the winery vats are basically AA candidates after just 15 minutes of vintage fermentation fumes (although that’s not such a bad way to go) and have to take mandated breaks.

     Imagine for a minute if the chiropractoradjusted every single bone in your body all in one visit. You’d be like Gumby. It’d take you a week simply to get off the table. Ah, then there’s the dentist and doing all the fillings and extractions and crowns and all the other rotten stuff dentists do all at one time. Whew! That one hurts even to think about.

     Start by breaking up your daily “To Do” list…little pieces work better (like outline the Narrative section of the business plan,” which could take a couple of hours). Little pieces are more attainable, and achieving each will motivate you a whole lot more than having “Write Business Plan” on your list, which could take months.

     In other words, after chunking, chew. After chewing, digest. Your body wasn’t made to take a pounding 16 waking hours a day. Neither was your mind, nor your emotions. The more you push and force yourself, the longer you’ll take to complete each task, and the more likely you will be to screw up each task, not to mention the indigestion, heartburn, and ulcers that you’ll be cultivating. 

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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Discombobulated? 

     When overwhelm strikes, like a tsunami, and you dive under the nearest pillow or cannonball into your hot tub from the second floor deck, or run screaming down the hall that little chickens are falling from the sky, you may be on the cusp of committing to some daily psychotherapy explorations, but you’re probably normal. You may simply have spent too many years locked in your office.

     We all feed ourselves to the clock and occasionally become time-stricken. Great, you say, to hear so many others share this misery, but, you say, whassup with how to get out of the clock before it chews off my feet –or head, depending on how close it was able to get to me when the hickory-dickory docked?

     The answer, my friend, is not blowin’ in the wind. It’s in chunking up your day so you’re never in any one place mentally or physically or emotionally long enough to get gobbled up by Old Man Time. In other words, start planning your daily schedule by “CHUNKS” instead of by hours.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy suggests we ask ourselves, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” as many times as we are able to think of it, day after day.

He says that asking ourselves this question consistently makes us more productive and guarantees success.

     If you’re finding yourself lost in your work for days on end or corkscrewing yourself into a bottleneck of problem-solving, you may want to re-visit some of what you might have forgotten about the art of delegation, and you may want to simply start taking more breaks.

     Some of the world’s most UN-productive people are those who dedicate their efforts to their work so single-mindedly that they eat lunch at their desks, cannot relax around family or friends, injure themselves anytime they try some kind of exercise that takes them away from their jobs, and have to have it be a real effort…to smile ;<})

     When you can chunk up your work schedule, your exercise, family time, your goals, decision making, even travel, you will be happier, healthier, and more productive more often. Remind yourself that your body is not a machine, that you ARE your body.

     I mean imagine that carnivorous clock noted earlier eats your body, now what? What’s left? Don’t give me “heart and soul” stuff here. Think it through. You run a business. You know how to think. Do you know how to chunk it up? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? More valueless time?    

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Biz Cards in the Men’s Room?

     Filling your pipeline has to do with how attentively you are keeping as many sales prospects as possible, alive and kicking, at any given moment on any given day! If you make your living by selling, you know what I’m talking about, and unless you’re in one of those numbing slumps, you need not read further.

     IF YOU RUN YOUR OWN BUSINESS, however, you could stand to examine this post a little more thoughtfully. Why? Because when you’re not selling 100% of the time, filling your pipeline is easy to forget. It’s easy to overlook it, or become pre-occupied.

     It is especially easy to drift away from your pipeline when you’re busy tending to new and existing customers and projects. But therein lies the challenge. How can you prompt yourself to physically, mentally, and emotionally rise to the occasion?

     What can you do to rattle your own cage? How can you be running your business AND continuing to network and cold call while servicing others? Knocking on doors, after all, takes time and energy, not to mention travel preparations and expenses.

     Okay enough questions. Here are some answers. CONTINUE TO LEARN ALL YOU CAN ABOUT YOUR SELF! By doing this with relentless attention, you will do a better job of working with others — customers, staff, vendors, prospects, the community. Because the more you know about what makes YOU tick, the more you’ll understand what makes OTHERS tick and the easier it is to be productive in your dealings with them, and inspire their productivity in return.

     CONTINUE TO APPLY ALL YOU KNOW ABOUT HOW TO MANAGE YOUR OWN STRESS! Do deep breathing as routinely as you can remind yourself. Take a cue from wristwatch beeps, from little signs in your briefcase, on your rearview mirror, in your medicine cabinet and refrigerator…whatever works for you. Click here http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=35 for detailed 4-step approach that takes a full 60 seconds! Do yoga, meditate, exercise (regular fast-paced 20-minute walks will do it!), dance, sing, play with little kids…

     PAY MORE ATTENTION TO TIME MANAGEMENT! Return phone calls at 11:30-noon and 4:30-5pm when people are less likely to waste time because they’re getting ready for lunch or their commutes home. Use to do lists (and add interruptions) and colored markers to cross out accomplished tasks (including those added). ALWAYS PLAN FOR DELAYS (BE READY FOR THEM, NOT PROMPT THEM) as times to be productive with phone calls, text messages, pen and paper writing, reading, laptop activity. BRING READING & WRITING MATERIALS EVERYWHERE! Polish up your delegation skills and learn to let go of nonessentials tasks!

     SET REALISTIC GOAL TARGETS OF HOW MANY NEW BUSINESS SALES CALLS AND PITCHES YOU WILL MAKE EVERY MONTH, BY WEEK and stay flexible enough to shift gears if you get overloaded with other tasks or people issues…or underloaded!

     FOLLOW UP. FOLLOW UP. FOLLOW UP. KEEP ACCURATE RECORDS OF EVERY CALL AND DECISION. SEND A GAZILLION THANK YOU NOTES. 

     COLLECT AND GIVE OUT BUSINESS CARDS EVERYWHERE YOU GO. EVERYWHERE. YES, EVEN THERE!  

 Good Night and God Bless You!  halalpiar     

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“We should enjoy here

while we’re here,

’cause there’s no here there!”

                                                                                      –ZIGGY

     Okay, all you entrepreneurs, don’t start with the excuses that you have no time for time management. That’s a choice. You know as well as I do that you need to MAKE the choice and TAKE the time to do a few things besides business, and that this is as good a day as ever to give it a go!

     Yes, it really is true that you need to take time out to eat. Maybe you thought that candy stash in your desk drawer would get you through the day, or that your idea of good nutrition and getting your daily “greens” meant the pickle on a Big Mac or the fried green pepper with the sausage sandwich, but guess what?

     So that little kick in the butt reminded you to eat something that’s actually good for you. Good. Next, let’s look at how else you spend your business-steamrollering 24 hours (besides the 4-7 hours sleep). No, YOU look. I don’t really want to know. Take 20 seconds out to look at how you’re allocating those 17-20 hours each day. If it’s all work and . . . you know the rest.

     I just want that you should open your mind to open some doors by building in at least two or three of the following seven activities every day to supplement your focus on the thought that you need to take time to WORK because it is the price of success.

     Why should these other seven activities matter? Because too often (besides WORK) ill health and broken families become the price of success. So here . . . seven focused activities that those most successful businesspeople of good health and strong families routinely include in daily existences:

1. Take time to THINK; it is the source of power.
2. Take time to PLAY; it is the secret of perpetual youth.
3. Take time to READ; it is the foundation of wisdom.
4. Take time to WORSHIP; it is the highway to reverence.
5. Take time to BE FRIENDLY; it is the road to happiness.
6. Take time to LAUGH; it is the music of the soul.
7. Take time to DREAM; it is hitching your wagon to a star.

. . . and, the bottom line: CHOOSE to take time to live!  Or as cartoon character Ziggy once said:

“We should enjoy here while we’re here,

’cause there’s no here there!”

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