Sense, Statistics and Productivity… Part 5

The fifth and final part of my Time & Motion series (who knew I had so much to say about productivity and business improvement?! but if you want to read the rest, you can find them here) is looking at communication and clarity because these are two major stumbling blocks to time management and taking a long, hard look at both of these can save you lots of time and effort in your business.

As a final sign off for the series (and possibly a bit late) I thought I’d summaries the meaning of the Time & Motion study itself…

Time and Motion Study

NOUN

a procedure in which the efficiency of an industrial or other operation is evaluated.

As with the other blogs, let’s look at the questions you should be asking yourself as a part of your own productivity study:

·       Think about who you are doing things for – are some tasks ones you’ve invented yourself but that the client doesn’t actually need or is everything you do necessary?

·       Think about communication – How do clients communicate with you and what’s your turnaround, are you over committing yourself or wasting time in meetings?

Who you are doing things for…

If you’re a helpful person or have a tendency to aim for perfection you may have the same problem I do – in that you overdo what you’re asked to do. It’s not conscious but often I find myself doing that ‘little bit extra’ that isn’t actually asked for – or needed – and that can be a massive drain on your time.

For example, I used to sort a clients tax payments each month – payments were made online and an electronic copy sent to their email but in addition to that I downloaded a copy which I emailed (doubling their confirmation emails) and printed it, annotating it with the date and time of payment. Being conscientious is great but did I really need to do all of that when the client had already had confirmation?

That problem is then compounded if it ends up becoming a part of your routine and takes valuable time each week. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t anticipate your client needs and make sure that you do the extra in order to ensure that you meet their expectations and needs that they, perhaps, hadn’t realised they had.

Have a look at every task you do – are you doing exactly what a client wants/needs and not doing anything that is extra effort or extra time but that is not needed.

Think about communication…

For me communication is a massive part of how I work with my clients – but it’s something I have learned the hard way over the last 7 years. Every client I work with is different and requires you to communicate/update/hand over in different ways. The key, I have realised now, is to establish how they like to communicate upfront rather than waste time doing something one way that doesn’t work and results in frustration and delays.

For example, I have a client who does not read long emails – bit like a long and complex text they will see the first point and nothing else. Writing these long emails took me time, I tried many different ways of laying them out to highlight all the things I needed but it never worked – work would get delayed and I’d end up chasing over and over again. It is actually quicker- and more effective – to have a catch up call once a week where I’m like the Spanish Inquisition and am firing questions at them. It has ultimately saved me huge amounts of time and stress.

It's important to review how you communicate with clients – are there frustrations, repetitions and stresses that can be erased by changing the way you do things? This works the other way too – if you have a client who calls you repeatedly during the day, interrupting your work and causing issues then you might want to let them know that it is not acceptable – perhaps schedule an update call at the start of each day or ask for tasks to be set over email which can be left until you’re free to read them. It’s not just about how you manage your time but how other people manage it too. Creating boundaries can free up time.