SuperManager: Measuring Productivity
Time is the most valuable commodity we have. You can’t make more, but you can be more productive to make better use of your time. And that starts with measuring how your time is being used, and how to better use it.
Listen in as our team of super managers discuss measuring productivity (part of a series on productivity), with:
· Samantha Naes – CN Video Production
· Joel Emery – Ignite Strategies
· Mary Kutheis – MCK Coaching
· Cathy Sexton – The Productivity Experts
Christine Lawrence
You’re listening to SuperManager the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas, trends, and expert interviews to help you be a super manager.
Samantha Naes
All right, so this week we’re talking about measuring productivity, part one of a series on productivity, and I am here with my very productive super friends,
Joel Emery
Joel Emery with Ignite Strategies, I serve as the sale systems architect for small and midsize businesses.
Cathy Sexton
Cathy Sexton, The Productivity Experts and I work with small business owners who are overwhelmed, over worked and underpaid.
Samantha Naes
And I am Samantha Naes with CN Video. We do corporate video production
Samantha Naes
We were talking a little bit earlier in the previous podcast, where I mentioned that I’m an ENTP and that P portion of it is kind of an on the fly kind of personality and I had to become a list maker in order to be more productive at work. Having lists, I believe, is helping me to spend less time thinking about what should I do next, and I feel like I’m accomplishing more. I have more things that are done at the end of the day and fewer things that are half done, but that’s just kind of how I feel about it, but I don’t really have any measurables. I don’t really have any… Before I started keeping lists, this is what I got done and what I didn’t get done and after… I wouldn’t even know where to begin. When it comes to measuring productivity,
Cathy Sexton
well, I think, let’s just talk about the list a little bit, and I think that people tend to think, Oh, I’m not a list maker or I don’t need list or they have tons of lists and tons of sticky notes. It’s all over the board.
Samantha Naes
I have seen people that go overboard on this.
Cathy Sexton
But I think the one thing that’s important is to realize that we have to have it out of our head because if it’s in your head, we can’t organize it or prioritize it. And so…
Samantha Naes
And it weighs heavy on you too,
Cathy Sexton
right, right. So we have 60,000 or more thoughts go through our heads any single day. We need to be able to capture the most important ones and if we’re trying to keep track of all the other stuff we have to do… so list is a way of us being able to, because so many of us are visual, actually see what needs to be accomplished. In that instance, I think when we’re talking about sales before, I think that’s really important.
Samantha Naes
That’s very trackable though.
Cathy Sexton
that that’s very trackable. That’s things that you can track. I mean, when you have a list of things to do. The problem is this item is worth more or less than something else on the list. So I think it’s important that we look at it from a standpoint of importance because a lot of time it’s just creating a list. Then we pick and choose what we want over it. Unless you’re doing a list in order of importance.
Samantha Naes
Well, I was gonna say I agree with priority, Like when you say some things are more important than others. I kind of agree with priority. But to me, if it’s not important, it’s not on the list. So, like everything is important, it just doesn’t all have to be done today,
Cathy Sexton
right? I agree with you there. But today what needs to happen today. You know, versus okay, all these things need to happen in the next two days. What am I gonna do? That’s a list that can take you down a lot of roads, but making sure that your list is prioritized with what’s important, what are those top three things I need to get done today? And that’s what I really tell people is, it’s about those three things. It’s not about the list of 10
Joel Emery
I have found. I have to make a new to do list every single day On paper. I can’t do it on a computer. Some people can track in a computer. I can’t do it. There are things that tracking a computer, but in terms of my individual today, Wednesday what I need to get done. I have to put it down on paper. And if I skip a day doing it because I’m too busy, I have a much less productive day.
Samantha Naes
Right
Joel Emery
There’s just something about that process in my brain. For Joel, it helps do that.
Samantha Naes
Well, you feel that way. But other than sales Joel you talked about in the previous discussion with sales, you can measure the number of phone calls, the number of coffee appointments, the number of this, the number of that. But I think in most day to day office environments, you don’t really have those measurables like that. It’s just Did I get my stuff done or didn’t I?
Cathy Sexton
Yeah, and I think it depends on the situation. And I think that for me, the whole thing is I have a goal set out here and I have a system to get there, right. Am I working every day towards that system, or am I skipping days
Joel Emery
and you’re right. It totally depends on what you do. I mean, if somebody’s laying tile, their goal might be a certain number of square feet to lay every day. And that’s specific and measurable. So I mean, finding where those measurables are in the context of the overall goals is important and that, generally speaking could be done. Just requires a thought.
Samantha Naes
Well, ultimately, and maybe not to the person performing the task, but doesn’t always boil down to money. I mean, it’s always about Are you meeting your revenue goal, and the things that you do on a day to day basis are towards achieving that ultimate goal, aren’t they?
Cathy Sexton
right? And it’s really about the bottom line does not even always about revenue, but it’s about the bottom line, and I think
Samantha Naes
well not to ask a stupid question. But what would another bottom line be besides revenue? Because I feel like it all goes back to revenue
Cathy Sexton
Well no, that’s what I meant. Revenue, but then you have other things
Joel Emery
now they’ve also done studies that if you focus exclusively on revenue numbers, that it actually is not as effective is also including some other qualitative metrics. So…
Samantha Naes
But that’s level of management. So you have your upper management or your business owner, and they’re focused on the revenue. Then you’ve got the people that are performing the day to day actions. It would not be revenue based goals because they can’t tie what they’re doing to how much that means in revenue for the company. Maybe they can in some situations, but
Joel Emery
let’s say one of the key parts of the business is I call center. So you want to track what the quality of the customer experiences with that call center, and the higher the customer experience is, the better the bottom line will be. So establishing metrics and expectations for the department and even down to individuals on the quality of that interaction.
Samantha Naes
You’re saying you start with and I kind of get your point. Ultimately, the business owner, the CEO, or the CFO is gonna be concerned with revenue, or revenue goals, but by department or by job role, you have to think, how is what you’re doing contributing to these goals. And so what are your goals that you need to meet in order for everybody to meet their goals in order to meet the revenue goals?
Cathy Sexton
Right. So let’s just take videos. For example, What is your job? Is your job too edit so many videos for the day. What is it that you need accomplished by the end of today, end of the week,
Samantha Naes
Oh now see you picked the wrong person to use as an example.
Cathy Sexton
I know, I know,
Samantha Naes
because I am so into organizing and thinking things through and planning. We actually have a sheet that we fill out, and I talk with everybody about… We meet our revenue goals two different ways, one by providing the right quality and the other by providing good customer service. So it’s the quality of the product and the customer service. And so I actually have a form. We just started with this where we actually rate ourselves 1 to 5 when we complete a project. How did we do in each of these things? Did the customer have to contact us and ask for an update on how their video is coming along? If they did, then that’s a one. If they didn’t, then that’s a five. And so I’m really into metrics and thinking through what it takes. I might not be your best example for that.
Cathy Sexton
No, but what I was what I was saying is, is your job just to edit videos if that’s the job? But
Samantha Naes
Oh so you’re saying per task, because oftentimes people play multiple roles. But you’re saying for this particular project or task that you’re working on
Cathy Sexton
right, right. What is that? And so it really comes down to what is the job and what should be accomplished as the end.
Samantha Naes
what does done correctly look like?
Cathy Sexton
Yes. To be able to measure anything, you have to know those two things. Okay, what is the task? What is the end goal?
Samantha Naes
Okay
Cathy Sexton
for you to be able to come up with actual metrics and in some cases
Samantha Naes
which is also probably very useful for the person performing the task to know what it’s supposed to look like when they’re done,
Cathy Sexton
right? Right. But if you’re in a position where say somebody’s in a store and they’re depending on people walking in the door that you can’t say, you have to handle 20 customers today. Well, what about they don’t walk in the door, right?
Samantha Naes
Right.
Samantha Naes
Some people’s jobs are so
Samantha Naes
Well it would be, you have to approach 90% of the people that walk in the door or something, right?
Cathy Sexton
Correct. But I really think it’s really about what is that position and what do you need to accomplish? And I think a rating when you just said, is one way to measure that.
Samantha Naes
What’s another?
Cathy Sexton
Well, we were talking about sales and a point system. The point system and I have known clients have done that, and I’ve set it up for people before. And I think a part of that is that self satisfaction. That level of Was I busy, or was I really accomplishing things, and really being able to be true to yourself on that.
Joel Emery
it has to begin somewhere with defining success both as an organization and as an individual. And then from there, how do you go about becoming successful.
Samantha Naes
I think Cathy, you said something just now that was really key is, am my busier? was a really accomplishing something? Those are two very different things. I once worked with someone who, a friend of mine jokingly called her the most. It was either the most disorganized organized person or the most organized, disorganized person, because this person was always busy. But nothing ever got done. It’s like, Okay, what’s going on here? How do you solve this problem? They’re just constantly, overwhelmingly busy. But nothing is getting done
Cathy Sexton
right
Joel Emery
And that’s where somebody absolutely needs a coach to come in. I mean, you can’t see that yourself. just like if somebody plays baseball. I mean, no matter how good of a hitter you are, you still need a coach to watch what you’re doing and find ways to improve. And that’s where you’ve got to have that coaching.
Cathy Sexton
Well, and I think when we go back to the list or doing things that we don’t like to do, right, I call it creative avoidance.
Samantha Naes
Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean by that.
Cathy Sexton
And so now it’s time to clean out my pencil drawer or whatever. What Mary said earlier, and what you just said, Joel, is about having somebody from outside be able to look at it differently than you see it.
Joel Emery
And even with that time management and you mentioned something about it all being about the bottom line, it isn’t necessarily. I mean, I know from me personally. A big part of it is I need the flexibility to take care of one of my Children that has some specific behavioral challenges. So I’ve structured my life and my clients and my day around that degree of flexibility and needing to do those things. Once I realized that I needed to do that,
Samantha Naes
I would argue that it still comes down to a bottom line. That’s a parameter
Joel Emery
No, I mean, the bottom line is part of it, but I’ve consciously chosen not to maximize my bottom line because I need to allocate bandwith over here with
Samantha Naes
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t think that’s
Cathy Sexton
yeah, but it’s about being effective in the time that you do, because you’re choosing to do this.
Samantha Naes
But we’re talking about measuring productivity. So how do you know if you’re productive or not? How do you know what is a reasonable amount of productivity for a day. I might say, Oh, I finished my list, therefore, I’m very productive. but I had an easy list or oh, I never get my list done, therefore, I’m not very productive. but I’m making an unreasonable demands on myself.
Joel Emery
I think, that’s beginning at the beginning, as opposed to beginning at the end. you have to begin at the end with again how you define success. What is my goal? How do I define success? So then what are the specific activities that I need to do to get there? And then how am I gonna measure those specific activities? And then that’s how you define your productivity by how those all flow together in line together.
Cathy Sexton
Right? So you’ve got the goal right, and then we’ve created this process to get there. So how far are you moving in that process is the measurement.
Joel Emery
So when you’re talking about let’s do list, that’s down to the specific activities. But have you even defined what the right activities are in the context of the goal that needs to be reached.
Samantha Naes
When you’re talking about measuring productivity, I still feel like that is maybe more based on abilities, then goals?
Cathy Sexton
No, because I think everybody’s abilities are different.
Samantha Naes
But that’s what I mean, somebody with more ability. Wouldn’t they be more productive?
Cathy Sexton
Not necessarily.
Joel Emery
Not necessarily
Samantha Naes
How does someone with less ability be more productive?
Cathy Sexton
I think it comes back to about the way we think and we work. And some people work in a real structured process. Right? And other people don’t work that way. They work here, then here, then here, then come back here, right, and it really comes back down to the end goal. Are you moving that process towards that goal? And so just because I don’t do it the same way you do it doesn’t mean I’m less effective than you are.
Joel Emery
and again coming back to the defining success. I’d like to use the tile layer example, so you might have one tile layer that can lay 1000 square feet of tile in a day to pull a number out of the air, and you might have another that can lay 500 square feet of tile in a day. But the 500 square foot one the accuracy is four times that of the one who lays 1000. So It depends on how you define success. So maybe the person works at half the speed, but the quality is four times better.
Samantha Naes
I actually had this conversation with my ex husband several years ago. He is a I’m gonna work on one thing at a time from start to finish kind of guy. And we used to drive each other crazy because I am a I’m kind of in the mood to do this. So I’m gonna work on this for a while, and I’m not in the mood to do that anymore. Now I’m going to switch gears and do this for a while. And he always used to say, You are so counterproductive. You never get anything done. You never. And I said I never get anything done because you keep making me go back to this one thing that you want to finish. I said, give it a chance. Just give me a few months and don’t interfere with the process and what we determined was, that over a 3,4,5,6 month period, I was able to get the same number of things done. It was just they were in a state of partially done for a longer period of time. But at the end of the six months, all five items got done. Whereas if he worked on it from start to finish, he could get five things done. It ended the same in the same period of time. We just frustrated each other because my complaint was Well, I don’t feel like working on that right now. Therefore, I’m not gonna be very productive. And his complaint was You’re not getting anything done. You’re starting things and you’re leaving a mess.
Cathy Sexton
That’s why coming back to employees again. But that’s why micro managers don’t work because micro managers think you have to do it this way, and somebody else that does that their way is gonna be much more productive because that’s the way they think and work.
Samantha Naes
You’ve just gotta have that end goal and say this is when
Cathy Sexton
yes
Samantha Naes
it needs to be done, and this is what needs to be done and
Cathy Sexton
let them do it the way they need to do it. You’re gonna find that you’re going to get better quality because they’re doing it their way. And when we try to make somebody do it a totally different way because we think that’s the best way. Then we can possibly slow them down or even stall them.
Samantha Naes
So you can’t really measure someone’s productivity unless they’re doing things in their comfort zone. The way they’re comfortable doing it, it’s gotta be. Did you reach the end result?
Cathy Sexton
Right, Right. It comes back to this success of the goal. What is that? And how much progress have you made towards that?
Samantha Naes
And I think Joel, you kind of started to hit on this on the previous discussion just a little bit. It was knowing how you’re spending your time during the day. We did. And I’ve heard people talk about thes before, too. Where you do an exercise where you say, ok, I’m gonna monitor. I’m gonna keep track of everything I do for a two week period and how much time I spend on it. A lot of people don’t finish that because they find it too time consuming to keep track of everything.
Joel Emery
That’s why I like finding just the three things we’re gonna track. If you track too many things, it’s too many. And again, I’m coming from the sales perspective. But if you find the three core activities that you’re tracking
Cathy Sexton
well, and I think back to what you just said. I will have my clients a lot of times do that. I will have them do a time study. It’s more for tracking and making them aware of where they’re spending their time. And is it into the things that are the most effective? And are they using the time or should that be going to somebody else?
Samantha Naes
I did this a couple of years ago with some employees because we weren’t getting things done that I felt should have been getting done. And I said, Okay, everybody, whenever you start doing something right down the time and when you stop, write it down and let’s figure out. And we went back and looked at it. It was like we’re spending 1/3 of our day in meetings. How is that even possible? They’re like, Well, we do the morning meeting and then that turns into a discussion. And then that turns into another meeting, and that turns into. And so I was able to get back a lot of productivity by simply saying Okay, the morning meeting is going to be 15 to 20 minutes long. It cannot go on for an hour, an hour and 1/2 that sort of thing. But it slips away from you. You just don’t realize that you’re spending that much time. And then when you actually put numbers to it
Cathy Sexton
and for a great thing for meetings, and we’ll just talk about that on productivity side. Well, it doesn’t need to always be in our meeting. We’re going to do this and we’re going to do it in half hour, 45 minutes. Just think about all those 15 minute increments. Everybody has just gained, right. And it’s really about having agenda and sticking to the agenda
Joel Emery
management discipline but self or group management.
Samantha Naes
But that goes back to being aware of where you’re wasting a lot of time.
Joel Emery
It’s all about resource allocation at some point along the way. I have one client that I started working with a little over a year ago and we began putting some systems in place, and since the beginning of this calendar year, we’ve really been able to track a lot of metrics, and we’ve been able to drill it down to the point where when a new lead comes in, we’re able to track specifically who it goes to, what their results are, how many leads they’re converting, what their final revenue is. And we have members of the team that are say for every dollar we’re spending on lead generation making $7 for the company. We have some that for every dollar we’re spending our making. $5. We have some that are, for every dollar was spending or making $2. We have some for every dollar spending are making zero dollars. Well, after six months, the one who’s making $0 was removed from that lead generation cycle and somebody else was plugged in because that was not a good use of scarce resource is at that point, and he could go generate leads and another manor if he wants. But again, you gotta track this stuff on, know what the goals and expectations are.
Samantha Naes
Cathy, I’m curious about one thing because we are a service provider, we track our time like when we’re working with a client. We’re starting to edit this video, so we have, like, a timer that we turn on in this automated system that we use. So all of the things that we’re working on have little time trackers that’ll keep track of hours so that we know how much to invoice. You said you have your client’s measure, how much time they’re spending? Well, first of all, how did you get them to do that? Because that is a difficult thing to do. How were you able to reasonably do that? I mean, how do you track your time if you don’t have an automated system to do that?
Cathy Sexton
Manually
Samantha Naes
You just have him write on paper
Cathy Sexton
on a spreadsheet and I have it in categories because mainly I’m just working with small business.
Samantha Naes
Would they would they own up to? Okay, so it’s not the employees, it’s the owner,
Cathy Sexton
right? Right, right. But I mean, I’ve had people have done it with their employees, but then you kind of give him some categories. Basically, not everybody will do it, but those who have and those who are so amazed with where their time goes and and then it really, really does allow them to say, OK, what do we need to shift?
Samantha Naes
Do the employees do it accurately, though, because I can see the business owner would want to know where is time being spent? But if you’re an employee, are you really gonna mark on your sheet that you spent 45 minutes on a personal phone call or do you think they’re gonna make it look like it’s more work related? Go well, I’ve got to account for this 45 minutes. Let me stick an extra 15 here on an extra 10 there. Are you getting good, honest answers, or how do you get that? Get that information.
Cathy Sexton
So, the companies that I’ve worked with, where we’ve done it with employees, it’s usually been where we’re time tracking more of a labor type thing. How long’s it taking us todo embroidery or… But it was more so not so much for productivity based. It did come down to that later, but it really was starting out to make sure that we were costing products correctly.
Samantha Naes
Right, Right.
Cathy Sexton
So I’ve not really dealt with a lot that have done it like in an office setting.
Samantha Naes
Okay,
Joel Emery
I think that would depend a lot on both the company culture, as well as the coach-ability of the individual employees that so an intersection of the two things on whether or not that could work.
Cathy Sexton
Yeah, and it works for service providers like yourself. Where when I usedto have my bookkeeping business, all my employees had a timer and it was either office time or was client time. So that was measurable. Because if I phoned that they were spending a lot of time in office time, I might not know exactly what they were doing, but
Samantha Naes
oh, so when you say office time, our client time you’re talking billable time or just other administrative stuff.
Cathy Sexton
Correct. I feel like that they were probably very honest with that aspect because I didn’t say Okay, Were you doing…
Samantha Naes
What specifically were you doing?!
Samantha Naes
Any horror stories having to do with measuring productivity?
Samantha Naes
I actually thought of a pretty good, pretty good horror story. I found a very unique way of measuring how someone’s time was spent. This person was the most organized, disorganized person, and she went on vacation and I took over her responsibilities while she was on vacation. Yeah, and it was interesting the conversation that we had about it. I was looking at her list of things to do in a day at the time we were using send out cards. It’s like, Okay, I need to send out these birthday cards or congratulatory cards or whatever, and I noticed that for every card I had to type in our return address. And so I’m like, Oh, that’s kind of silliness. So I went out and I saved it so that it would remember it for each one. And as I’m working on tasks while she’s on vacation, I’m thinking, Well, why is she doing it this way? It’s so much quicker. It’s so much easier. And when she got back, I was so excited to tell her I said hey listen, I was able to automate this, I was able to automate this… And she goes, Oh, but I like doing those things. So what was interesting was she was doing things in a very counter productive way because it was her comfort zone and she liked… I don’t mind typing in the address every time. It was kind of an odd way of coming up with the productivity measurement when they were gone and somebody else had to do their job, and it’s like, Oh, whoops.
Christine Lawrence
Thanks for listening to Super Manager by CN Video Production. Visit our website at CN-Video.com for additional episodes and lots of Super Manager Resources. Or give us a call at 314-video me.