One of the biggest challenges professional practices face, regardless of industry, is time management.
There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do it all and somehow the list of what you want to do just keeps expanding. Once your practice grows you expect this to change but then you need to make the time to manage your team in addition to doing your own work.
The key to managing your time, rather than just simply doing the most urgent work on your desk, is to create a time management plan. Decide where you personally add the most value to the practice, assess where you are actually spending your time today and manage the difference through delegation, outsourcing, focus and a priority management system.
In his article Time Management for SME owners, Sean McPheat shares a few valuable insights about the time management conundrum:
Many SME owners think that by “letting go” of certain tasks or hiring others to do them, it adds to their cost base. Yes, it does add to the cost base but what does an additional 80 per cent of you doing what you are best at generate for your business in terms of turnover and profits?…
– keep a log of what you do and when you do it. …take a look at it and identify the most frequent time stealers that reduce your effectiveness in the workplace.
• Doing work that others should be completing
• Answering emails/too many emails coming in
• Telephone interruptions that should not have got through
• Interruptions from staff that could have gone elsewhere
• Unnecessary meetings
• Tasks that you should have delegated
• Tasks and decisions that you have been putting off
• Getting involved in the “doing” too much
• Putting out fires
• Poor communication
• Duplication of work
• Lack of skills or knowledge
• Lack of planning
• Tiredness
• Can’t say NO
Once you are aware of the tasks that are preventing you from maximizing the value you can personally add to your practice, you can begin the process of making the choices that will enable you to rewrite your own job description.
Photo credit (top): Leo Reynold
I think outsourcing frees you from regularly spending a lot of time with your fulltime inhouse employees. The results of outsourcing depend upon applying right strategy at different levels. To know more outsourcing strategies, http://www.outsorcerer.com/blog too may be a good source.
Thank you for the comments and the reference for further information on this topic.
I would like to add that while some types of outsourcing will result in time savings, others will in fact require an investment of time.
For example, when clients hire me to faciliate a marketing, business or strategic plan, we spend a lot of time together in working meetings and we both have preparation work to do before these meetings can happen. This situation is an example where outsourcing helps to move your business forward but does not necessarily result in time savings.