SuperManager: Better Time Management
Christine: You’re listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas, friends and expert interviews to help you be a SuperManager.
Sam: Okay, so this week we’re here talking about better time management and I have my super time managing friends with me today. I’ve got…
Joel: Joel Emery with Ignite Strategies. I serve as a sales systems architect for small and midsize businesses.
Cathy: Cathy Sexton, The Productivity Experts and I work with small business owners who are overwhelmed, overworked and underpaid.
Mary: And Mary Kutheis with MCK Coaching and Training. I am a business coach and confidante.
Sam: And I am Samantha Naes with CN Video. We do corporate video production. I did a while ago, I guess the Myers Briggs, those personality tests.
Mary: Mhm, sure!
Sam: and I am, or at least I was at the time, I think you are for life, but I’m an ENTP.
Mary: Okay.
Sam: You’re nodding kind of like you, you know what that means.
Mary: Well I’m thinking about what that, yeah…
Sam: The “P” part of that…
Mary: Yeah.
Sam: Is counterproductive when it comes to the work environment because these are you,r off the cuff.
Mary: Idea generators.
Sam: On the fly…Yeah
Mary: Let’s do it a different way!
Sam: And so I found in order to better manage my time at work, the opposite of a P is a J and your J’s are your list keepers. I keep a list of everything, I check things off of the list.
Mary: Right.
Sam: And so I had to become a J in the office just to survive, because otherwise I was doing a little of this, a little of that and nothing was getting done. I had a hundred things halfway done.
Mary: That was a really good observation.
Sam: Nothing was getting done, and I found that that if I keep a list of everything, then I can take it a step further. First of all, I have much less time going, okay, so what now? What should I work on now? Because the list, I can look through the list. In the mornings, I can look at it and say, well, I’m going to need so-and-so’s input on that. So I better send them a message right away. So I give them time to respond while I work on this, this and this. And then if I get these batteries charging, they can be charging while I’m creating this production plan. And I’m able to kind of manage time a little bit better. I think I get by and I think pretending to be a J and making lists help a lot.
Joel: One thing I want to mention about that though, you’re also, Sam, one of the first people I’ve ever met who successfully implemented digital project management system for their company. You have all of your projects running through an automated system that helps you be more efficient and do all of those things. So whether that is a weakness as you articulated it initially or a strength now in terms of how you’ve responded to it though, I don’t know anybody who at that stage in development has successfully implemented one.
Sam: That’s my IT background. I was able to create something that actually worked with how I do business. Now, that becomes a little bit awkward as you hire people because not everybody works the same way I do and this system is very customized to me.
Mary: Well and that T in there, the thinking as opposed to feeling,
Sam: yeah.
Mary: that will help you with that too. Yeah, because I mean it’s a person looking the process of the situation as opposed to the emotion of the situation.
Sam: So are you saying that T’s are better at time management than F’s?
Mary: No, I wouldn’t say that because it’s a different skill, but the other thing I have to be fully candid about is I am not certified in Myers-Briggs. I’m certified in a lot of different assessments, but not that one. I just know enough about it because I’ve done it several times and it’s been around for a long time.
Sam: Right.
Mary: So you have to be careful about generalizing because of one of those letters,
Sam: Right.
Mary: What someone might be good or bad at. Same thing with DISC. People say, “Oh, I don’t like DISC. I don’t want to put someone in one box.” Well, it’s not one box. You have to look at all four of the scores in order to get a better picture of what that person is.
Cathy: Correct.
Sam: It did help me identify those shortcomings when it comes to time management and productivity.
Mary: And that’s perfect. That’s good. The awareness that your time management isn’t what it could be is the first step.
Cathy: Exactly. Because if you aren’t aware or you aren’t really looking and analyzing that, then you can’t change it.
Mary: Time is finite. There’s only so much of it so you have to know how you’re using it in order to know if you need to make some changes. So I suppose that’s a level of measuring,
Sam: Yeah.
Mary: but it’s more of an awareness about where is that time going, how am I spending it and am I spending it in ways that is enhancing the quality of life and my revenue or am I kind of doing the easiest things or the things I like best or things that aren’t as high a priority or have as great an impact on the business. It’s an awareness that the most important thing that people have to have is the ability to slow down and look at it, because you cannot solve it with speed. People just think I need to be able to work faster, faster, faster, faster, and that’s not going to do it. You have to slow down, see what the problem is. And then fix the source of the problem. Not think you can keep going faster.
Sam: I say that to these guys all the time. Collin’s over in the corner nodding his head. I always tell people, it seems counterintuitive, but when you’re worried about getting everything done, you have to stop and slow down, not go faster.
Cathy: Correct.
Mary: Absolutely.
Sam: You have got to sure that you’re doing things right and not just doing things fast because you’ll end up digging yourself into a hole that way.
Mary: And we both know this one. It’s like the hospital triage. If you get a multiple people who are injured in the emergency room at one time, that’s what the lead physician does. It’s triage, what can only I do, what can someone else handle? I mean it’s all that kind of thing and you learn to do it really quickly because the doctor doesn’t take a half an hour, figure it out.
Sam: Right.
Mary: With the skill, you figure it out quickly and that’s what we can do too, when you get the skills to see that you’re kind of going off the rails and you’re able to slow yourself down and look at a process that was working for you before, if you had one, and get back on track, that’s the key.
Sam: But that’s easier said than done because what I’m finding is although I say, “Hey, listen, when you feel like you’re not things done or you feel like you’re falling behind instead of rushing through it, stop, come up with a plan, figure it out, prioritize.” Even though you say that, it’s hard to do because people, when they want to get things done, will get into, and I don’t want to call it a panic mode, but something similar to that where, what did you call that? Your something brain. It’s an animal.
Mary: Oh, your reptile brain.
Sam: Yeah!
Joel: They call it your lizard brain.
Sam: Your lizard brain!
Mary: Yeah, yeah
Sam: Your lizard brain says hurry up.
Mary: But see that…
Sam: and it’s hard to fight that. I mean, how do you tell someone when they want to hurry up, not to?
Mary: That’s the reason there are coaches, because it’s not easy. And what you’re trying to do is create new neural pathways to create ways of doing things, not habits, but ways of doing things.
Sam: Oh I was just going to say “Oh like habits!”
Mary: Yeah, but …
Sam: What’s the difference?
Mary: Well, the whole habit thing, the 21 days to a new habit is a myth.
Sam: Yeah
Mary: It was shifted inaccurately from another concept for a book that was written in 1966 but there is no science to back up that if you do something for 21 days, it will be a new habit. None. Zero. And I never knew anybody who done it. So I thought, why are people holding themselves to this standard? And that’s why coaches help people create new neural pathways. And this isn’t a sales situation here. It isn’t easy to change that. And you don’t just say, Oh, I should change that and then change it. You have to work on that and you have to practice it and practice it and practice it. Just like any other skill or talent, you practice it to get better.
Cathy: Right. And when you say, okay, you’re feeling like you’re in that panic mode, you stop and then you’re going to go right back to it. But the more you tell yourself, okay, stop, rest and then reanalyze what’s going on and what should you really be working on, what is that most important thing? And just taking the break and walking into another situation.
Sam: Yeah.
Cathy: will allow you to then regroup. But it really is about stopping and regrouping.
Mary: And you can even have a note on your desk that says, am I freaking out right now? Or something like that to remind you just to remember, because as with most things that you want to change for the better, you’re usually not refusing to make the change. You’re not remembering to make the change.
Sam: You know what’s funny is I actually think that can work. I used to work in a really, really, really stressful job and I was trying to train myself to not get too upset about things happening around me. And I made a post it note that I kept in my desk drawer and all it said was, “will this matter in five years?”
Mary: Wow.
Sam: And anytime I would start to get stressed or upset about what was happening in work, I would look at that and I would go, “No, really in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t going to matter much.” So it would be kind of a stop, take a deep breath and slow down kind of a note?
Mary: Yeah, exactly. And the one thing that’s critical about that is like any thing that sits somewhere long enough, it will disappear. Not literally, but you just don’t see it anymore.
Sam: Yeah.
Mary: So having 50 post it notes is probably not a good idea.
Sam: Right.
Mary: Having one that’s reminding you of a key thing that you’re trying to alter right now, try to alter too much at one time and it also won’t succeed like the New Year’s Resolution idea.
Sam: So now the problem is, which is key, which post it note do you keep? If you’re going for better time management then it’s the stop, take a breath and think it through.
Mary: I would say that’s a good place to start. If you’re one of those people who tends to ratchet things up, that would be a good place to start because all good things will come from that.
Cathy: Well, yeah, and I really think it depends on what is the problem. Is it because you’re stressed and you’re going faster and faster, or is it that you’re constantly getting sidetracked and going in different directions?
Sam: Well, that’s true.
Cathy: So it really depends on that note is based on what is that thing that you need to remind yourself to focus on or remind yourself to slow down or remind yourself to go in one direction or not.
Sam: I don’t see that one as often because I’m a phony J. I’m a list taker at the office. So we all have lists of what we’re going to accomplish today. In order to get sidetracked, it has to be something of a high priority that comes up and we realize, okay, everything’s gotta be put on hold, this is going to happen. But I can remember before, before I learned to be a J that was a problem and that’s exactly the nature of the P.
Mary: Yeah.
Sam: Is to start one thing and now I’m in a mood for something else and now I’m in a mood for something else and to get sidetracked.
Joel: Our cell phones and computers have contributed to that.
Sam: Quite a bit.
Mary: Oh my gosh! It’s crazy!
Joel: It’s a significant thing. What’s interesting, I approach this from a different angle because a lot of my work is with sales teams trying to help them with time management. And one of the main things I always come back to is you nurture what you measure and so try to identify just the key set of activities that people are doing that you’re going to measure and track. And in the case of most sales teams, it’s some combination of say, cold calls face to face coffees or some other form of communication with your prospects. It’ll depend on the nature of the sales process.
Sam: Oh you mean something that you can control?
Joel: Something, yeah. And you set a goal for each day, I’m going to do 40 of this activity, five of this activity. I’m going to make 40 phone calls, have three coffees and meet two new people on every day and track it and document it. And it has to be a manageable set of things that you’re tracking and documenting. You get up to 10 or something and nobody does it. It has to cap at three or else people don’t do it. But what are those three most important things? And it’s amazing once you start tracking that what you could get with it. I mean, I have one client that they have an extended sales process and when I say extended, I mean nine months. By the time they acquire a lead to close a deal that’s at least nine months. And what we’ve discovered is the key success factor on a new lead is whether they have been called seven times or not. If they’ve been called seven times, they convert. If they have not been called seven times, they do not. And so we measured that. We found that metric and that is the key success factor that leads to success for this client. I mean there’s all sorts of other customer service and nuance and this and that, but that is the one metric that affects whether you secure the client or you don’t, is if you’ve called them seven times.
Mary: That’s a hugely valuable piece of information to have.
Joel: But then the other thing within that revenue generating environment is making sure people are in the right roles. If you have somebody who’s a Hunter type salesperson and you try to have them also service, it doesn’t work. irI mean they’re hungry for the new, they’re constantly looking for the new, and then they often will drop the ball on that actual client service. But also if you take that account manager, that client service expert who really is great at nurturing those clients and taking care of them and taking care of the client needs and try to make them a Hunter, that doesn’t work either. It’s not the right mindset. So you have to make sure in that sales environment you have the right person in the right role.
Sam: I feel like almost everything we talk about goes back to either hiring the right person or a good manager. It feels like every conversation we have goes back to do you have the right person in the right role and who’s managing that person?
Joel: It always touches on that at some point
Sam: What do you…
Mary: And certainly if you have the wrong person, if you have a farmer, is that what they, what do they call it? That’s not the Hunter, it’s the other one…
Joel: There’s farmers, hunters and fishers.
Mary: The zookeepers or whatever, but if you have that person in a sales role, their time management is probably going to be very poor because really good salespeople are very resourceful. They use their time efficiently because they know it’s going to impact the bottom line and it’s a different brain for someone who’s working more on not nurturing the sales relationship, but actually the client relationship as they’re doing the work, they’re going to have a different sense of urgency than a sales person would.
Joel: Yeah. In my worldview, they’re all sales in one form or another, but people conflate exactly what the roles are. I mean there’s sales in terms of business development, but there’s also sales in terms of account management. I mean they’re still selling, they’re just a different steps in a sales process.
Mary: That’s a good point.
Joel: and the skills are very different. If you’ve got people swapped in those, it’s not good for anybody.
Cathy: Yeah. I think assessments really, are really huge when you’re talking about that aspect of hiring because it is important to have them in the right roles.
Sam: But sometimes people are just in their job and they have responsibilities that this is part of the job and they just need to be able to do it. And what you’re saying is absolutely true. The things that tend to not get done, I couldn’t find time for it. I couldn’t squeeze it in. There was some reason why this couldn’t happen is typically the thing that you enjoy doing the least.
Joel: Right.
Sam: And typically you enjoy doing it the least because it’s not a natural ability or, or something like that. So as a manager, aside from saying, okay, you don’t really like doing it, you’re not getting it done, so let’s just take it off your plate. Sometimes that’s not an option.
Mary: Right. Last week I did a program for a room full of attorneys and it was called Carving Out Time for Business Development because they don’t just have a sales force in the law firm. All the people who are attorneys are supposed to be networking and building relationships and so on. And the truth is, one of the things that’s going to make it tough is they don’t like it. They don’t want to do it.
Sam: Right.
Mary: So then it was, if they still want them to do it, they need to have some kind of measures so that they know if they’re successful or not. Are you meeting what the company’s expecting if it’s not closed business, is it, have you met five new people who are potential prospects? And then it’s finding the thing that you hate the least. Perhaps maybe you would prefer taking someone out for a beer rather than going to a play or something like that. Figure out or maybe you’re better at sending articles that you know someone likes or sending notes.
Sam: So it’s not about the specific action that you should be taking, but just the goal you should be achieving and then finding a more palatable way to achieve that.
Mary: Yes, try to align with the thing, and again, if you just hate that but you still have to do it,
Sam: That makes a lot of sense.
Mary: then you got to do it, but find the way to do it the least painful way.
Sam: It’s seems like you should be able to find a palatable way to accomplish anything if you really put your mind to it. Like you said, having a beer instead of going to a play. How do you argue with having a beer with someone?
Cathy: Well, if you don’t drink I guess!
Mary: Or because that’s usually an after work activity and maybe.
Sam: I see.
Mary: you’re just the kind of person who, you’re more of an introverted person.
Sam: Right
Mary: So once you’re done with the day, you really want to go home. You really want to be with your family or alone in your house.
Sam: So do lunch, meet for coffee or…
Mary: Exactly, exactly
Joel: I tend to do mid morning coffees, early morning, mid morning or lunches, late day coffees. But once it’s afternoon, the kids are off school, I want to be home with my kids. So,
Cathy: So, and I think it comes back to what we had talked about earlier, Myers-Briggs, DISC, whatever it is, it’s really understanding yourself and knowing what works for you. But just because it works for me doesn’t mean it works for Mary,
Mary: Right.
Cathy: It doesn’t mean it works for you.
Sam: I think that’s easier said than done though. I mean, it’s easy to say, know yourself and know what works for you. But if I want to manage my time better, I said I’m not a list keeper, and keeping a list might help. But what about people that don’t know?
Mary: They hire people like me and Cathy.
Sam: Bring in an expert, bring in an expert to help.
Mary: Yeah you do, I mean for Joel, they don’t know why they’re not getting the revenues and it’s because they haven’t looked at the fact that they don’t have a process, that everybody’s just kind of out there doing stuff,
Sam: Right.
Mary: but it’s not measurable and it’s not getting results. So they need to hire Joel to get them in there. The expertise to say, here’s what you’re missing. Someone who can see it from the outside. That’s the value. It could be a coach, it could be one of the big round table kind of groups where you’re talking to other business owners who are similar to you but in different industries. There’s a lot of different ways to get that, but you need someone looking at you from the outside to see what you can’t see.
Joel: One solution I’ve seen done in the sales end of things I’ve not personally implemented, but waiting for the right opportunity. Now with the caveat that every sales process is different, every target market is different and so there’s a nuance to that. There are a core set of sales processes. I mean between phone calls, emails, if it’s a face to face thing, coffees, lunches, attending networking events, all the sales activities you do. If you track them long enough, you can assign point values to each one of these. So let’s say, arbitrarily, meeting a new person and getting a new contact is worth five points. Placing a cold call is worth half a point. Having a coffee with somebody is worth four points, something along those lines.
Sam: Six if it’s decaf.
Joel: There you go. Submitting a proposal is worth 10 points and over the course of a week have the person have a goal of achieving a hundred points and they can mix it up however they want. Maybe the person really likes cold calls and so they do that if they track with the what they’re doing they could get a hundred points.
Sam: See my thought on that is, is that a distraction? Because I feel like people should manage their time based on having a good understanding of the priorities and how to do things, and I’m afraid that incorporating a point system is going to kind of muddy the waters a little bit.
Joel: Well again, I’m talking about sales in specific as opposed to somebody who’s more of an operational capacity. But I mean the goal is to get people doing the sales oriented activities as opposed to getting distracted by any number of other things they could be doing that don’t lead to results.
Mary: Making file folders or something.
Cathy: Right. So it’s really about, okay, here’s the goal to get so many sales or whatever. But that’s just one way of giving someone a method to get to the goal because it’s all about the method to get that outcome you want.
Sam: And it sounds like the method really depends on the person.
Cathy: Correct.
Sam: We can’t give the golden method that’s going to work.
Cathy: Correct.
Sam: I think I found what works for me and what works for me, seems to work for Collin, but…
Mary: And Joel, you probably don’t recommend a point system to every one of your clients.
Joel: No.
Mary: I mean it might make sense for one, but it doesn’t make sense for another.
Joel: And honestly I’m familiar with that. I’ve never implemented that because I haven’t had the client that it fit with. I hope it comes!
Mary: It’s in your toolbox.
Joel: Yeah, it’s there, it’s waiting.
Sam: Do we have anybody that’s got a horror story having to do with time management?
Mary: I will say that this was just,
Sam: You don’t have to mention any names.
Mary: I won’t mention any names, but this was some time ago and I had an appointment with a client who did not show up and.
Sam: because they didn’t, they couldn’t find the time.
Mary: Well, I, the call that I had to make was, I’m very sorry but I’m going to have to charge you for this appointment even though you slept through it and it was in the middle of the day.
Sam: Did they say they didn’t come because they overslept or,
Mary: yes. Well, no, because they were asleep. I mean it was a, it was like one o’clock in the afternoon appointment,
Sam: They just said they were asleep… huh.
Mary: so I had to charge them even though they slept through it, because one of the things is it was a client, it wasn’t a prospect, it was someone.
Sam: Right.
Mary: and I’m training them to use their time more efficiently and sleeping in the middle of the day. Avoiding what you should be doing is not a good thing to be doing. So it was a tough call, but it also got a message across that this is, there’s a better way.
Sam: I think we stumbled onto a new product. You need to make like subliminal recordings on better time management that people can listen to in their sleep.
Mary: In there sleep yeah! They’re probably out there. Who knows?
Christine: Thanks for listening to super manager by CN Video Production. Visit our website cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of super manager resources, or give us a call at (314) VIDEO ME.