How to Overcome Procrastination

Not doing something that should be done is called procrastination. While procrastination can be good, for example we end up not doing something that isn’t important, it can also be harmful to our businesses as described in last week’s blog. There are many causes for us to procrastinate. Fear, overwhelm, distractions, laziness to name just a few.

There are tools and techniques to help overcome procrastination. This week I am sharing our favourite seven. Not all of these will work for everyone. Pick out the one(s) that best suit your personality and your way of working.

 1.  Just Get Started

Many times for me the procrastination door slams shut when I must start writing something like this blog. The very thought of staring at a blank screen trying to get my thoughts in order is enough to stop me from starting. But once I start the words just flow out of my fingers. So Just Get Started!

 2.  Ask For Help

Asking for help is a most positive human trait. So ask someone to make you accountable to them. Not for completing an activity but FOR STARTING AN ACTIVITY! Then be accountable to them for completing it.  Ask someone to work with you, or delegate the entire job to someone else who you know will do it.

 3.  Start Small

The old Chinese proverb states: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  So when you are faced with a large endeavour stop thinking of the enormity of the task ahead and instead break it into small steps. Some experts in this field suggest breaking the task into small chunks of no more than 10 minutes each.

 4.  Remove Distractions

Have you ever clicked a link to a YouTube video and found yourself 3 hours later clicking through to hundreds of related videos? Before you feel procrastination sneaking up on you remove all potential distractions. Some examples:

• Don’t click the link to a YouTube video
• Close your email program
• Switch off the phone
• Shut down the computer game

 5.  How Will I Feel

While procrastination has its good points more often than not it causes stress. By not doing something that should be done just weighs on our minds, waking us up in the middle of the night. So when faced with this sit quietly in the corner and paint a picture of how you will feel when the task is done. For example, stress will be gone, the task will be complete and all will be well with the world. The picture will be so motivating you will throw procrastination out the window.

 6.  Must. Should. Nice

They say we are attracted to water because our early creepy crawly ancestors crawled their way out of the sea. If that is the case then our ancestors must have been huge fans of “To Do Lists” because we love them! These lists, instead of helping us achieve our plans usually cause procrastination because they are so long. When this happens go through the list and mark each item as either Must, Should or Nice. Cross out the Nices, leave the Shoulds for another day and start working on the Musts.

 7.  The Too Tired Syndrome

Procrastination loves tired people. They sit at their desks, staring absently into the distance and bemoan how tired they are. Too tired to write the blog. Too tired to call the client. Too tired to read the report. Too tired to make coffee. When there are days when tiredness takes over don’t stress yourself. Go to your to do list and find some fun tasks that may not be Musts but will still move your business forward.

Make sure you tune in next week for our first ever Reality Blog. We asked for examples of procrastination in your life and we got a wonderful example. Our guest blogger will describe how procrastination turned a huge tax liability into a tax refund!

 

Be sure to visit our website at  yourplanningpartners.com

Pitfalls to Avoid When Building Your Team

Building your team does have challenges but it also has huge rewards. You will be energized by the team’s successes. The team will allow you to focus on those things you are really good at while others are doing work they are really good at. The business will thrive and the capability of your team will grow. You will be proud of them!

However there are some common pitfalls but they can be avoided. If you know what they are!

• Don’t hire your best friend. This could be the quickest way to lose a best friend! Best friends are in short supply; qualified candidates are not.

• Don’t hire for short term gain; you may end up with a long term pain. For example, you have a serious need to get your backlog of business cards into Outlook. You hire the person who can do that. As the job grows you realize he is unable to grow with the job; he must be replaced.  Ask yourself: Is this a project or an ongoing need?  Projects are easily outsourced.

• Don’t hire for the person; hire for the position. For example, you meet someone you really like and is so perfect for you that you lose site of what the job is. High probability that there will be a mismatch of person to job.

• Don’t do this alone especially if you have had no experience in hiring people. Pay someone for guidance on ‘how-to’ create job profiles or execute the interview itself. Have other people do second interviews.

• Don’t hire until you have a clear understanding of what you need. For example, you think you need an Admin Assistant but what you really need is a Marketing Assistant.

• Don’t rush the hiring process. It is far better to get it right rather than get it quick. Keep reminding yourself you are hiring someone to help you build a strong business so take the time to hire the right person.

• Don’t cut corners because you will get what you pay for. Hire a precocious 10 year old kid to do your web site and you will get a 10 year old precocious kid’s web site!

So remember the People Mantra:

I cannot grow my business without the help of other people who can do some work better, faster and more efficiently than me, allowing me to be doing what I should be doing!

Build Your Business by Building Your Team

If you want to build your business you can only do it by building your team. So say after me:

I cannot grow my business without the help of other people who can do some work better, faster and more efficiently than me, allowing me to be doing what I should be doing!

Recruiting people onto your team is probably the most important management activity you undertake. It is also one of the riskiest. Get the right people onto your bus (as Jim Collins describes it in his book Good to Great) and you have a winning team. Get the wrong people and you have problems; big problems. This is our Six Step Process for building successful teams. Feel free to use it!

Step 1 – Hire a person for the job; don’t create the job for a person.

Before you do anything; before you talk to people, before you put the word out that you are looking for someone, define the job. Without a clear job profile there is a greater possibility that you will hire someone you like before you hire the right person for the job.

A typical job profile is organized into four components:

1. Purpose – the reason for the job. This gives you clarity as to why you need this position filled.
2. Specific Activities – the list of everything this job does. This is the detail; the heart of the job.
3. Job Requirement – this component outlines the knowledge, education special skills and qualifications required.
4. Work Context – this component covers authority (reporting structure, supervisory responsibility, decision making), relationships with others (contacts), environment (working conditions), and equipment used on the job.

Step 2 – Put it out there

Create a ‘short version’ of the job profile and put it out there. Send it:

• To your community – people know you and trust you – they know your personality.
• Craigslist and similar web sites
• Your networking groups

Step 3 – Shortlist

After reviewing resumes and shortlisting the candidates you will start the interview process with a phone interview. This is to further shortlist the candidates. These questions include the show stoppers. For example, if they will be working out of your home office is that a problem to them. If it is essential to have a car do they own one. This is also a good time to make sure the compensation is acceptable. No point in going further if the candidate wants more than you are willing to pay.

Important note: Interviewing is a 2 way street. The candidate wants to prove that they could work for you AND you must prove that your company is worth working for!

 Step 4 – Face to face interviews

Now is the time to meet the shortlisted candidates. Ideally you are down to no more than three candidates. Take lots of preparation time to develop the interview questions. Another important note – the questions are based on the job profile NOT the candidates.

Don’t be afraid of taking notes during the interview. Not only will this ensure you don’t forget important things but it also shows the candidates that what they are saying is important. If possible have another person interview them as well. And assume you will want to do second interviews with one or two of the candidates.

Step 5 – Reference checks

Never bypass the reference checks. Past performance is always an indication of future performance and the reality is some people just shine in interviews. You want to make sure they also shined in passed jobs. If you are uncomfortable checking references hire someone to do it for you.

Again, the questions when checking references should be around the job profile and not the candidate. Depending on the job profile here are some examples:

• Was he a good team member?
• What role did she play? Leader? Follower?
• What were her strengths? She told you what they were in the interview but what does her old boss think her strengths are.
• Ask if they would hire him back! The answer to this question usually tells you a lot!

Step 6 – Onboard the new team member

The first few weeks are the most critical. How you handle the onboarding of the new team member will tell her a lot. If she starts and all she gets is a desk in the corner and a 100 page policy manual to read because you are too busy to be with her she won’t stay around for long.

Here are some onboarding ideas:

• Cover the lay of the land – restaurants, washrooms
• Explain the history of the company – its mission
• Have lunch with the team
• Describe the plans for the future
• Meet a client
• Give them a space of their own; make sure they have everything they need!
• Have passwords, codes, contact names all arranged
• Review the job profile
• Get together at the end of the first week

Like anything in business there are no guarantees that following the Six Step Process will always be successful. But we do know if you follow these steps thoroughly you will minimize the possibility of making a mistake.

Remember; you can’t build a great business without building a great team. Happy team building!

If you would like a job profile template email me at nick@yourplanningpartners.com

Don’t Get Good At What You Don’t Want To Be Doing

As business owners we are very busy people. We try our best to get everything done and yet much of what we do we are not good at. We continue to do the things we are not good at despite the fact there are people out there who would love to be doing them! It is time to end this misery before we get really good at doing those things we don’t want to be doing!.

The activities you do as a business owner fall into one of three categories. Category 1 is for those activities you absolutely love doing. They are the ones you are extremely good at and are therefore fun and stimulating to do. They get your creative juices flowing and give you energy. You could work on these 24 hours a day and still not get bored. They are what you were born to do. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach calls them your Unique Ability.

The activities that fall into Category 2 are not as stimulating as those in Category 1. But you don’t mind doing them and you do them pretty well. While your ideal world would be a world filled with only Category 1 activities you recognize that this expectation is totally unreasonable. You find the time to do Category 2 activities so they never pile up and cause you stress.

And then there are Category 3 activities. You hate them and you are hopeless at doing them and so all of your procrastination talents fire up. They are left to be done “when I have nothing else to do”. They pile up on your desk constantly reminding you that you can avoid them today but sooner or later you will have to do them. They drag you down; they suck every ounce of creativity out of you; they cause huge stress; they make your life a misery.

It is the Category 3 activities that you don’t want to “Get Good At”. These are the activities that you must delegate. You must get other people to do them; other people who love doing them. Because there are people out there who love doing the things you hate doing. People whose Unique Ability is doing just these things. They love it; they are stimulated by doing them; and so they are really really good at doing them.

In our July blogs we will deal with building your team. Finding those people who love doing the work you hate. So that we can avoid the awful syndrome of you getting good at what you don’t want to be doing!

www.yourplanningpartners.com

 

Don’t Get Good At What You Don’t Want To Be Doing

I was leaving the Gladstone Hotel recently when the title on a flyer caught my eye ~ Don’t Get Good At What You Don’t Want To Be Doing. The flyer was for a workshop put on by Morena Media to help artists get more clients. The title perfectly encapsulated what we are constantly telling our clients. Let me explain. The activities you do during the day fall into one of three categories.

Category 1 is for those activities you absolutely love doing. They are the ones you are extremely good at and are therefore fun and stimulating to do. They get your creative juices flowing and give you energy. You could work on these 24 hours a day and still not get bored. They are what you were born to do. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach calls them your Unique Ability.

The activities that fall into category 2 are not as stimulating as those in category 1. But you don’t mind doing them and you do them pretty well. While your ideal world would be a world filled with only category 1 activities you recognize that this expectation is totally unreasonable. You find the time to do category 2 activities so they never pile up and cause you stress.

And then there are category 3 activities. You hate them and you are hopeless at doing them and so all of your procrastination talents fire up. They are left to be done “when I have nothing else to do”. They pile up on your desk constantly reminding you that you can avoid them today but sooner or later you will have to do them. They drag you down; they suck every ounce of creativity out of you; they cause huge stress; they make your life a misery.

It is the category 3 activities that you “Don’t Get Good At”. These are the activities that you must delegate. You must get other people to do them; other people who love doing them. Because there are people out there who love doing the things you hate doing. People whose Unique Ability is doing just these things. They love it; they are stimulated by doing them; and so they are really really good at doing them. I think the title on the flyer I picked up that day at the Gladstone Hotel says it so perfectly. Don’t get good at what you don’t want to be doing ….. find someone else to do it!

What was I doing at the Gladstone Hotel? Well, other than having a beer I was also checking out a “must see” photo exhibit called Building Stories 2010. Check it out click here.

Delegate

The owner is often the barrier to achieving success with the business. One of the main causes is that she does not have enough time to do everything that needs to be done. The last post dealt with some tips on how to find more time. Now we are going to deal with the biggy ~ delegation.

If there is one thing business owners are really bad at it is delegation. They either refuse to delegate on the erroneous belief that they are the only ones who can do everything to the quality they want. Or they delegate badly and so it doesn’t work, which reinforces the belief that noone else can do it as well as them. So today we will cover Delegation 101.

The first step in successful delegation is to identify what should be delegated. For this we have the Strategic Focus Delegation Worksheet. It is a simple tool that works! Picture 4 columns. The first (and widest) is called Activity; next is one headed Me!, followed by a column headed Delegate? and finally one called To Whom. List the activities you do over a number of days so there is a good chance of capturing 90% of the things you do. When you think you have captured everything work through the list putting a tick mark in the Me! column next to the activities that only you can do. Then work back through the list and place a tick mark in the Delegate? column.

When this is complete you will have a few activities with no tick marks; they are probable ones that can be discarded. To those activities that you have decided to delegate assign a name of a person or a job title in the To Whom? column. You are now ready to delegate! For purposes of this blog, which is all about delegating successfully, we will bypassing the topic of recruitment and assume you have in place the person who will be the delegatee. This is what you:

1. Clearly identify and agree on your “expectations”
2. Show the person how to do the job
3. Watch the person do the job correcting where necessary
4. Let him do the job and you check the results
5. When you are satisfied that the job is being done to your expectations you have delegated!
6. From time to time check the results

Follow these simple steps and you will soon be delegating like an expert ~ and finding time to do the things you love to do ~ and achieving the success you want with your business.