It’s Monday morning. The phone is ringing off the hook, your In Box is overflowing. There is a lineup at your door. You are an entrepreneur starved for time.
You have a limited amount of time to work on our business. While it may not feel like it today, you do have choice about how you spend your time. You can continue on your well worn path or make a right turn in a new direction. Use these ideas to get out of firefighting mode to take back control of your time.
Say No and …
Say no to picking up the phone.
Say no to all those emails.
Say no to the lineup at the door.
If you let yourself be interrupted all the time, you cannot work on anything else. People keep coming to you for answers, because you keep giving the answers. You set the tone, by following my next suggestion.
Delegate and …
You need to delegate tasks and let those you delegate to figure out how they can best do the task. If you insist on making them do it exactly the way you do it, they will get frustrated or give up. As an entrepreneur, it is your job to clearly define the outcomes and then make sure people have what they need to achieve those outcomes. This will happen more often if you try my next suggestion.
Hire A Players and …
Entrepreneurs can be intimidated by hiring people smarter and more experienced than themselves. If you hire B Players, they will hire Cs, and pretty soon all you’ll have is Zs. Hire people who are better than you. Hire people who fill in the gaps in your weaknesses. Your job then becomes helping these people to be the best possible people they can be. That is more likely if you follow my final suggestion.
Focus on Strategy and …
As an entrepreneur, your role is to set the long-term vision for your business. Working with your senior leadership team, develop goals for the next 3-5 years, 1 year, and this quarter. Then stand back as your team and your company hyper focus on those handful of goals you set for the quarter. Keep helping develop your people to be their best, while they and you stay aligned to the quarterly goals.
Monday mornings (or Sunday night if that works better for you) should be where you review progress of each of your first reports, you think about your strategy, and you fill your calendar with the time to complete the tasks you need to complete for the week.
Entrepreneurs get to decide whether they are starved for time or not. What choice will you make today?
