Getting Employees to Work Smarter, not Harder

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

It seems to be an afflic­tion many entre­pre­neursshare — they think that by putting in long work weeks and think­ing about noth­ing but their bur­geon­ing busi­nesses, they will be able to make it grow more quickly and achieve their pro­fes­sional goals. That rea­son­ing is skewed, however.Consider your own work pat­terns. Even if you put in days that are 10 hours or longer, work on the week­ends and spend the rest of your free time think­ing about the com­pany, how much of that time are you actu­ally being effec­tive? Do you find your­self in the office, star­ing at a pile of work, and wast­ing min­utes or hours try­ing to make sense of what’s in front of you?

Through The Covenant Group, I’ve met a lot of finan­cial advi­sors who are too busy work­ing in their busi­nesses to work on them. Wrapped up in the minute details, they can­not deter­mine where their com­pa­nies are going or ever decide where they WANT them to go. Step­ping away from the daily grind, giv­ing your­self per­mis­sion to take a breath and think, is far more impor­tant than mak­ing sure you respond to five more emails before going home for the day.

I think a recent Har­vard Busi­ness Review blog post writ­ten by Robert C. Pozen casts more light on this per­cep­tion that work quan­tity super­sedes qual­ity, as well as the worko­holic cul­ture that has risen around it. As he points out, we log our pro­duc­tiv­ity in terms of hours, instead of results and the value that pro­fes­sion­als such as ana­lysts, con­sul­tants and lawyers “cre­ate through their knowledge.”

From a resource man­age­ment per­spec­tive, this atti­tude can cut down on your own and your employ­ees’ pro­duc­tiv­ity, because they are think­ing too much about how long they are at the office instead of “answer­ing the most crit­i­cal ques­tion: ‘Am I cur­rently using my time in the best pos­si­ble way?’” Pozen points out.

Many of the advi­sors I I’ve coached have said that they are already maxed out on how much time they can put into their busi­ness and feel stuck at a cer­tain income level or num­ber of clients. They feel that it would be impos­si­ble to grow their busi­nesses any fur­ther, since there are only so many hours in the day. The solu­tion is not to ded­i­cate addi­tional time to the com­pany, but to give a greater effort when you are there. Del­e­gate some of the more time-consuming, less-valuable tasks that con­sume your time to an employee. Think about whether your daily tasks are truly advanc­ing the firm, or whether they just con­sti­tute busy work. Being hon­est about your own pro­duc­tiv­ity is the first step to cut­ting down hours and improv­ing results.

As founder, pres­i­dent and CEO of The Covenant Group, Norm Trainor is often seen as the face of the com­pany and its’ lead­ing finan­cial advi­sor train­ing pro­grams. He has penned sev­eral best-selling books, arti­cles and other works with entre­pre­neurs and finan­cial advi­sors to show them how they can become more valu­able to their clients, boost pro­duc­tiv­ity and, ulti­mately, achieve the suc­cess they desire.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

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Tags: Affliction, Attitude, Covenant Group, Critical Question, Emails, Entrepreneurs Share, Financial Advisors, Free Time, Going Home, Harvard Business Review, Lawyers, Management Perspective, Minute Details, Perception, Productivity, Professional Goals, Resource Management, Robert C Pozen, Work Patterns
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