By Admin / October 26, 2020
The biggest businesses weren’t born that way. It took years of burning the midnight oil to attempt, fail and get better. Yet 90% of startups fail and stakeholders simply don’t have a clue. More than a faulty idea, it is the faulty execution of a brilliant idea that has done the damage. Going deeper, the attitude of the business leaders and their routine lifestyles has been identified as key differentiators.
Entrepreneurs leading small organizations have to endure great pressures. And in the pursuit of sustaining the repute, they end up finding magical ways to achieve more in less time. Yes, that’s what productivity stands for in the corporate ecosystem but matching up with over commitments followed by poor strategies is the worst implementation.
If you are locking horns with unproductivity, here’s what you have been ignoring.
One at a time – Multitasking isn’t for you
Juggling with multiple projects, chasing leads, administration management and addressing employee grievances suck the life out of you. While all of them demand equal attention, resolving them all together isn’t an effective solution either. Hopping from task to task not only drains your energy but also produces ineffective results, creating more backlogs and ultimately leaving you in a bad mess. A great hack here would be to make use of various cloud ERP services that enable businesses of scales manage their processes efficiently.
98% of the population fails miserably at multitasking.
Resist the temptation to multitask. Pull your priority list and take one task at a time. Don’t take up the next until the current one accomplishes. Don’t leave the assignment incomplete. When you hone all your focus towards one particular task, completion happens in lesser time and the scaling productivity shows by the end of the day.
This may sound basic and not a suitable suggestion for decision-making leaders. But let’s face it, no matter an entrepreneur, you are a human first.
What to do? Implement Time blocks
An effective way of not pursuing multitasking and still gain results is by implementing time blocks. Time blocks are predefined intervals of time meant for a particular task only. So, if your roles involve answering lots of emails, have a fixed time frame every day. For example, the first and the last half hour of your workday devoted to answering emails will savor your repute of being a responsive business leader while saving ample amount of time to take up other critical tasks.
As you keep moving from one time block to another, you’ll see everything falling into the place with utmost proficiency.
For me, I’ve realized I’m most productive in the mornings, so I make sure that I’m working early to prioritize my productive hours. For example, I schedule conference calls for later in the afternoon.
As far as option are concerned, Oracle EPM cloud, Monday dot com, SAP cloud and Azure cloud platform are some of the leading systems.
Trust your employees – delegate them to work smartly
Do you know the difference between a freelancer and an entrepreneur? It’s the team that the latter has to share the burden. Hiring a smart team and successfully utilizing it for getting things done is the crux of a gradually growing startup. Trust your employees and assign them more work within the scope of their capacities. Don’t let less critical tasks consume your energies. Let that enthusiastic beginner in your office prove his metal. Remember, your organization is not you; it is a group of like-minded talented people led by you. Eventually, productivity goes up in 2 ways’ firstly, you are left with more time to focus on other crucial areas. Secondly, you have a more confident team prepared to take-up the next critical assignment.
What to do? Make use of task management tools
Start by choosing the best Cloud ERP solution. Regardless of your budget, you should be able to finalize upon a dependable solution. A simple software application that provides a common playground for everyone in your team to communicate efficiently is all you need. Make use of such productivity tools and delegate tasks with deadlines. Such a tool comes attached to performance analytics for you to examine the worth of every resource. At length, better planning and management of your workload is guaranteed.
Don’t attend all meetings
Certainly, everyone from different teams would love to chest thump their daily achievements in your presence. And if you end up making yourself available for all of those highly unproductive discussion sessions, no one but you are losing. As per the US Bureau of Labour statistics, unnecessary meetings have drained USD 37 billion every year.
What to do? Just get rid the of daily status calls
No, you don’t need them. Ask your team leaders to submit a daily report or reach out to you in cases of high urgency only. Allow them to take the lead and monitor the performance of their respective teams. However, a very brief weekly status call towards the end of the weekend is fine. In case an ad-hoc meeting is needed, make sure the agenda is clear.
Use your energy wisely
You aren’t superhuman. An unfit mind and body is the last thing a business leader would want. Though most business leaders value the importance of fitness in their blogs and speeches, they are hardly putting the thought into execution themselves. And that’s where the downfall of an entrepreneur and the organization begin. If you are working out every morning, great! But what’s more important is utilizing the energy wisely so that more can be achieved in lessened investment.
What to do?Sleep more than an average human should do.
After a hyper-busy schedule, the requirements of your body are more and henceforth, you must provide it with an extra hour of sleep every day. Sleep deprivation is such a scary factor that American companies lose USD 63.2 billion every year because the workforce isn’t sleeping sufficiently; including the business leaders.
Avoid staring at your devices since the blue light they emit affects the melatonin; a hormone that puts you to sleep. Limit the intake of caffeine; take frequent breaks from your desk and take a power nap.
Finally,
Stay true to yourself
As an entrepreneur, you may have to adorn multiple hats including the commitments to your family and friends. A beer at the weekend is a great idea but how efficient were you the rest of the week? Most entrepreneurs who have just started fall for the swanky lifestyles too quickly. Shockingly, most of them end up making excuses for themselves for the recreation they rewarded themselves with. Stay true to yourself. Monitor your progress and check how much time you wasted. Retrospect and change, today!