The Personally Productive Leader

You’re smart.  You’re hard-working.  You have a good business model.  You have the necessary resources and good employees.  Yet, you feel as though you get nothing done during the day.  Most of the time, you feel off balance and pulled in a hundred different directions.   Your business isn’t necessarily in trouble, yet you spend more time than you’re comfortable with, feeling unfocused and wondering if you will get everything done.

When looking to increase business productivity, many leaders often look at the structure of their business, employee performance and engagement, and work processes.   And these are excellent places to tweak to make sure the business is hitting on all cylinders.  However, an often-overlooked productivity leak can be the leader’s own personal productivity. You typically aren’t taught that in school.

Leaders underestimate the impact they have on their employees, not realizing that their personalities, habits, values, and focus radiate throughout their businesses or areas of responsibility.  For this reason, any productivity gains from improving company-wide work processes and employee performance can be hampered by a leader who hasn’t examined his own ability to be more personally productive.

Being personally productive doesn’t mean you need to be pitching in and doing the work that is assigned to and more appropriately done by others.  Rather, it requires you to do your own work as leader effectively.  To maximize your personal leadership productivity, start with these three ideas:

1.            Design your calendar to reflect business priorities.  Your business purpose and current goals should be reflected in the strategic plan.  In turn, the strategic goals and priorities must be intentionally reflected in your weekly calendar.  If your company is aiming to increase revenues by 10% over at 24-month period, you must schedule appropriate weekly activities for yourself to make sure you are doing your part to achieve that goal.  Do you need to recognize employees who are going the extra mile toward the company goals?  Do you need to meet with management to monitor progress toward the overall goal?  Do you need to work with a team to help them determine how work processes can be improved to help achieve the goal? 

It seems such a simple concept.  Yet most leaders get caught up in the daily swirl of “administrivia”, losing track of the next steps they must do or follow up on to keep the larger goals and initiatives moving forward.

Be sure to consciously carve out 10-12 hours per week for activities that further important business goals.  The remaining hours of your weekly calendar will reflect the routine activities that normally consume your time – meetings, phone calls, email, keeping up on industry trends, reviewing financials, board business, meeting with key customers, processing through the information that lands in your office, etc.

2.            Create a personal workflow system.  Consciously and intentionally dedicate time everyday to process through the information coming into your office via your physical inbox and email.  Prioritize items to do, again, based on your strategic plan. 

3.            Delegate more.  Many leaders fail to fully utilize their administrative assistants and other professionals in their businesses.  Delegating to others will free up time for you and give those who have the skills and expertise opportunities to take on work that can help them develop.  Delegate it’s not critical that you do it and if it’s appropriate work and responsibility level for the position you want to delegate it to.

Many leaders find that putting these simple steps in place keeps their minds clearer and more focused and reduces stress by creating a support structure that helps them keep their most important work activities in perspective.