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The Key to “Doing More With Less”: How to Work Smarter

Posted on 09/07/2011 at 08:00 am

While doing more with less isn’t always easy, it actually can be healthy as it forces us to take a look at ourselves and our teams and clean up sloppy processes and behaviors.  Here are a few things to do as you work smarter individually and on your team.  “Working smarter” really is the secret to “doing more with less.”

Increase Your Personal Productivity
Let’s all be honest with ourselves: none of us is as efficient as we think we are. We “work hard,” but we don’t always “work smart.” By implementing a few practices to “work smarter” you can dramatically increase your productivity (and well-being). You can find many wonderful time management systems out there (I like Getting Things Done by David Allen, Stephen Covey’s work, and the Power of Full Engagement), but here are my five top tips to work smarter and improve your personal productivity:

• Do the Most Important Thing First:  Each night before you leave, identify the most important thing you have to do the next day. When you get to the office, do that first. Don’t open your email, don’t make calls, don’t chat. Sit down and do it first. If you accomplish nothing else all day, at least you will have accomplished what’s most important.

• Do NOT Open Your Email First Thing in the Morning:  Similar to above, but it bears repeating. Opening email before you accomplish anything is a guaranteed recipe for sucking you into whatever work crisis is going on that day.  Delay opening your email until you accomplish your most important priority for the day.

• Plan a Week at a Time: If you try to manage your calendar a day at a time you’re toast. It’s like driving while looking at your hood ornament. Instead, plan out a week at a time. Put your highest priority items on the calendar and protect them (even if it’s just you alone at your desk). Then, take a scalpel to your week and eliminate unimportant activities. Each day, take 5 minutes to refresh your plan and adjust accordingly. Keep your calendar at weekly view so you can always have a sense of what’s coming up.

• Batch Your Email: Leaving your email on all day and even (gasp!) with a “ping!” sound each time you receive email is a recipe for distraction and burn-out. Employees who do this frequently report feeling like “I worked hard all day but I accomplished nothing.” Studies show that each time you’re interrupted it takes 15-30 minutes to return to what you’re doing. So, instead, turn your email off at times and focus. You can check it every 2 hours and still respond extremely promptly.

• Plan for the Crisis du Jour: As coaches, we frequently hear: “Every day there’s some new crisis that throws a wrench in my plans!” So, if that’s the case, what’s the one thing you can expect…?  The crisis du jour! So plan for it. Consider setting aside (and protecting) an hour or two each day to deal with urgent matters. That way, when “urgent” things interrupt you, you can triage them and plan to do them during your “Crisis du Jour” time and confidently return to focusing on the important task at hand.

Look at Your Business Processes
Just as you look at your personal productivity processes, take a look at your team and organization processes for ways you could “work smarter.” (If your team or organization processes aren’t clear, clarifying them is a great first step on the way to doing more with less.) As you do that, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my process clear? (Unclear processes add time, money, and resources to every endeavor. First seek to clarify.)
• Which steps in the process add the most value to the customer/client/result?
• Which steps in the process add the least value?
• Which steps can be combined?
• Which steps can be eliminated?
• And finally, how will we deal with things that fall in no-man’s land between our processes? (These often cause resource draining fire-drills and inefficiency.)

By first clarifying and then tightening your processes, you can work smarter and can effectively “do more with less.”

Pareto’s Law
Vilfredo Pareto was a 19^th century Italian economist and from his work economists have extrapolated Pareto’s Law, which states that, in general, 20% of inputs generally cause 80% of outputs. Translated to the world of work, 20% of customers bring 80% of revenue, 20% of employees produce 80% of the results, 20% of employees cause 80% of the problems, etc, etc.

As you seek to “work smarter” by improving your personal processes as well as your team or organization processes, use the Pareto principle to guide yourself. Ask yourself these two main questions:

• What 20% of my priorities cause 80% of my results?

• What 20% of my issues cause 80% of my problems?

Focus and invest in the 20% of your priorities that bring the most results.

Stop or mitigate the 20% of issues that cause 80% of your problems.

In sum, if you’re already working hard, step back and look at ways to “work smarter.” Stepping back requires constant vigilance since the world of emails, blackberries, and seemingly urgent demands can suck you in, steal your focus, and zap your productivity quickly. If you can do it deliberately, however, the pain of having to “do more with less” can be minimized and, counter-intuitively, you and your organization might be better for it.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

Tags: Doing More With Less  Leadership Development