Good strategy–the kind that gives you the right to charge more or to more easily attract the customers you desire–is hard to develop when juggling the time-consuming urgencies that make up a large part of your day.
We become good at the urgent. It becomes automatic. Even comforting. And, it can make us blind to seeing better or different strategies to serve our customers better, to make our marketing more effective, or to change our business model to better compete. To find better, we need to think slower, more strategic, and less automatic.
And, to find better, we need to create the time to do so.
This Week:
In order to create more time to create better, try the following:
- Track your time for a couple of days. Write down the times were you were interrupted to solve a problem that someone else could solve. Or attended a meeting where real work was not done, problems were not solved, or your participation was not needed.
- Look at your list and ask, “What will I do when something urgent comes to my attention?” Or better yet, “Why is this issue so urgent? How can I keep it from coming to me in the first place?”
- As your time begins to free up, protect it by putting it on your calendar. It might be only 2 to 3 hours a week at first, but that’s a good start.
- During this free time, ask yourself good questions to slow down your thinking. Write your answers down. This recent blog post might help.
Do you have a Big Strategy?
Take a 5-minute Big Strategy Assessment to get a better idea how your company is positioned for profitable growth.
~Tony