The benefits of time management can help you improve your business and make it a more productive place. Making the most of your time in business helps you to make more and have a safe work environment. Time management helps you to increase business and to be more organized. 

Seeming busy is looked at as being successful, but business owners who are constantly busy find it hard to improve their business. This can lead to skipping meals or avoiding other obligations. Balancing your personal and work life can be helped by practicing time management skills. Here are some specific tips that can be applied to your company to help you improve. 

1- Avoid Multitasking

Many individuals in business think that multitasking actually helps them get things done faster. If you can take on more responsibilities and check off more than one task at a time. Multitasking actually makes it harder to complete a task well. Focusing on one task at a time helps productivity and performance.

Multitasking is not just limited to doing multiple tasks at a time, it also refers to answering emails and texts and micromanaging every issue that comes up. Multitasking means that you will likely need to go back and correct careless errors later. Taking on one thing at a time is the best way to get things done effectively in your business. 

2- Don’t Be Afraid To Delegate

If you run a business, you have likely hired people that you trust, so why not trust them to do work for your business? If there are tasks that you no longer have time for or ones that you feel less confident in doing, pass them on to an employee that can handle them. There are also ways to hire interns to help with smaller tasks or outsource to freelance contractors. 

Delegating is often looked down upon on for seeming overwhelmed or the boss is not working as much as the rest of the company. Delegating helps the business run smoothly and utilizes everyone’s skills. 

3- Plan Ahead

Literal and figurative clutter can slow down your work or set you back on your task list. If your workload is chaotic, it can be hard to complete tasks on time and hard to organize your thoughts. Time management can be helped by planning ahead and creating a calendar to keep track of tasks. You may need to schedule a set amount of time to work on tasks or to take breaks.

4- Schedule More Downtime

Being busy again does not automatically mean that you are successful. Scheduling downtime can help you to limit stress and feel more in control of your life. Scheduling downtime during the day as well as taking vacation days can help to improve your personal life and your motivation to work. 

Some ideas to do this can be taking a walk on your lunch break, going away for the weekend, or taking mental health days when needed. Limiting stress can improve productivity and help you to avoid burnout. 

5- Embrace Apps

Most people own a smartphone, so using it to your advantage for your small business can be the best tool you possess. You can use apps to schedule and complete workflow with to-do list apps. 

You can use apps to track how many hours you have spent completing a task and make invoicing easier. If you want to help improve the flow and organization of your whole team, using a project management site or app can help everyone to see what is being worked on and track progress. 

Benefits Of Time Management

Some benefits from the tips may seem obvious, but behind the scenes, time management can improve more than just one aspect of your business. 

Some benefits include:

• Maximize what you can accomplish
• Track progress
• Identify critical areas for special attention
• Identify delegatable tasks
• Focusing on key tasks
• More time outside of work
• Limit distractions 

Over time and with evaluation can help bring more benefits to your company. Reevaluating what you have set up for time management can see if it is actually working or if you need to adjust the course. 

Working With Wasatch ActionCOACH

Your business is important, but should not be put before your family or other social aspects of your life. We help to walk you through important steps in your business and can help give you advice about how to improve your productivity.

Our certified coaches can help you achieve:

• Time-Saving
• Improved Efficiency
• Priority Management
• How To Take Advantage of Systems/Technology

If you want to improve your business or just your time management skills, we offer different methods of coaching to best fit your needs. Contact our office today or fill out a contact form on our website. We have helped many businesses succeed and improve their time management skills.

Coach Frank Bonnin

Setbacks in business happen all the time. And the question is how you handle them. The most important thing to remember when you’re facing a setback, a problem or a challenge, is what we at ActionCOACH call the Point of Power.

A lot of times when setbacks or challenges happen, the first reaction is blame.  To say things like, “Yeah, we’re having a hard time in business right now because of COVID.”  Or, “People don’t want to come work for me because they want to work from home and they got used to it during COVID.” Or, “There’s absolutely no employees to be had out there.”  Or whatever the blame is.

COVID has taken a lot of blame recently for setbacks in business, but the fact of the matter is, is in order to stay above the point of power, you have to maintain accountability, ownership and responsibility for the situation. If you blame something or someone else, what you are doing is giving up control. When I say control, what I mean is the ability to positive affect change. You are giving that control to whomever / whatever you are blaming.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want COVID to be in charge of my business! I want to be in charge of it. So, I might say, okay, we’re having a setback now and I own my environment and I am going to exist in the environment. And here are some things I’m going to do about it to work towards a resolution or improvement.

As coaches, we help business owners and entrepreneurs best deal with setbacks in business. We help people stay above that point of power. We ask business owners, “Okay, what control do you have?  How can you take ownership of the situation? How can you take accountability and take that control back so that you can effect positive change? What are you doing to do so?”

When COVID hit, there were a lot of businesses that went under. ActionCoach clients, they did not go under. They succeeded. They expanded. Because we were able to help clients stay above that Point of Power and find ways that they can affect positive change in their environment and continue to grow.

The next time you face challenges or setbacks in business, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I taking ownership of the situation?
• Am I taking accountability?
• Am I taking responsibility for the situation and its resolution?
• Have I been blaming something / someone else for this setback in business?  (The economy / politicians / my competitors.)
• Have I previously been in denial that there even was a problem or challenge?
• Have I been making excuses to other people about this problem or setback?

With the Point of Power, you can be either Powerless or Powerful.  Do you think you can affect change when you are below the Point of Power?  Or I should say do you think you can affect ‘positive’ change when you are below the Point of Power?  No, you absolutely cannot.  You can affect ‘negative’ change, however, when you are below the Point of Power.  Is that the type of business owner and leader you want to be??

Business ownership is not easy.  You will always encounter problems / challenges / setbacks in business along the way.  It’s how you deal with those setbacks that sets you apart.  A highly effective, successful leader will focus on remaining above the Point of Power when those situations arise. 

Will you always be above the Point of Power?  No.  Everyone slips below it into Blame / Excuses / Denial at times.  The important thing is to recognize when you do slip below it and then focus on changing your perspective to get yourself into a more positive and powerful mindset.     

This will not go unnoticed by your team.  This is an excellent way to lead by example.  You should want your entire team to also focus on staying above the Point of Power.  That way when they encounter challenges or setbacks in their roles, they can consciously make the choice to accept ownership, accountability and responsibility.  In this space they will be in a powerful position to affect positive change and reach a successful outcome. 

Fore more information about the Point of Power, check out this video by Coach Sterling.  Or check out this Blog. 

Coach Sterling Broadhead

In working with our coaching clients, we start with business fundamentals, the building blocks of business.  The first step we take them through is Mastery, which includes Destination Mastery.  This is when an owner and their team know where the business is heading.  They know what the ultimate goals are.  Too often owners have a general idea, but they do not get very specific and they do not get buy-in from their team. 

The first of the business fundamentals we work with clients on is a Vision Statement which identifies the goals of the organization.  What are you trying to achieve as a business?  What are your future stretch goals?  If you do not have a Vision Statement, take the time to craft one. 

Equally important to having a Vision Statement is ensuring that everyone on your team knows what it is.  Share it frequently with your team, customers & clients!  Post it in your lobby, include it at the bottom every email, on forms and invoices, your website and social media.  Ideally everyone who knows your brand will know what your vision is.

Next, we work with our clients on their Mission Statement.  I get asked all the time… What’s the difference between the Vision and the Mission? And the mission is the vehicle that will get you to your vision.  So, the Mission is the how. How are you going to accomplish this vision?  Another in the business fundamentals toolbox.

To give you an example, the Vision Statement of ActionCOACH is “World Abundance Through Business Re-education”.  We want companies to be successful so that the communities around them are successful. Our Mission Statement in ActionCOACH is quite lengthy, but I like to tell people we kind of simplify it to our purpose, which is “A Coach in every Business”. That’s the vehicle of how we plant to achieve this world abundance through business re-education.

Hopefully this example helps you as a business owner so you can question… What is my vision statement? What am I trying to achieve? What’s our big stretch goal? And then your mission statement, what’s the vehicle we’re going to achieve that?   

The next business fundamental we work with our clients on is the culture of the business.  And one of my favorite parts about building a culture is that you, as the owner, get to define it!  The trick is, if you don’t take time to consider what you want and define your culture (along with your team) it will be defined for you.  What business owner wants their culture to be defined for them? So, we spend time with our clients asking: What are your points of culture?  What are you trying to cultivate in your company?  

I have a great example of how doing this can directly benefit the business, often in ways you wouldn’t anticipate. One of our clients has been looking for a new employee. A very important key position, the front office manager. And so, from the very beginning, we helped him set up his vision statement, his mission statement and define his culture. ActionCOACH founder Brad Sugars teaches that when you are trying to recruit staff, you need to recruit based on your culture, not the position details or the skills and the ability of that position.  First and foremost you need to recruit with your culture.

That’s exactly what this client did. That resonated with him. First, he defined his culture.  Then he created an introduction video explaining what their culture is, what their business is all about. And he posted that video along with the position that they were trying to attract and fill. After that, he made a second series of videos where he goes even more in depth about the culture and what he’s looking for.

There were several people who applied, but there was one that stood out who he eventually offered the job to. And his feedback that he shared with us is, you know, those videos worked! The first one caught her attention and she realized, yeah, I like that!  That’s the kind of organization I want to work for. And then the second video that followed defined it even more. And she’s like, Yes, this is what I’m looking for. This is the type of environment I want to work in. And what was interesting was this person wasn’t desperate searching for a job.   

So, by focusing on business fundamentals, this client of ours was successfully able to find the perfect match. And he’s very excited that he was able to find her. And he wouldn’t have been able to find her if he hadn’t defined his Vision, Mission, and Culture (focused on business fundamentals) and created these videos to attract that type of person.  I’m very excited to see where this takes his business. It’s a wonderful example of a client working on the mastery step, specifically Destination Mastery and having a big win to celebrate.

If you would like to work on some of your business fundamentals, or would like to learn more about what a business coach can do for you, fill out this form for a complimentary coaching session. Our coaches are here to help!