How much of your productivity is wasted in meetings and email? We’re at the point in our technology-dependent society to recognize that “just a few minutes” on email devolves into an hour, and that meetings often result in more meetings. How do you break the cycle and make more time to your money-making tasks?
The easiest answer is to delegate these responsibilities to an assistant, but we understand if staff is too small to handle another task. Remember that this is your business and you wield the power: take it back!
Start but putting email in its place. It is a tool, not a sentient being. One of the most lauded secrets to email-for-business success is to designate a time of day to deal with your email. It could be first thing in the morning and right after lunch, or maybe an hour before lunch and you’re done with it for the day. It’s acceptable to allow an email to sit without a reply for at least 1 business day. If you open an email that can reasonably be handled by another team member, delegate that with a simple note that you’ve forwarded on the message to the appropriate party who will be happy to help. Or not! Just forward it on and let the person responding explain why they’re the best person for the task. Adjust the amount of time you spend on email 
daily to suit the size of your staff and your business needs. If you need to spend half a day each week on email, so be it. Jelly Triangle uses Boomerang to keep our email interaction productive, and it’s a dream to work with. If your email time continues to eat into your productivity, it’s time to adjust your internal processes and hire a part-time assistant, but regardless it’s time to recognize when email is stifling the growth of your business.
Now that you’ve sorted out your email problem, you may think you can take on more meetings. No! You’re working towards freeing up your time to make money, not to sit trapped at a coffee shop buying another round of donuts. Eliminate meetings that won’t get anything done, particularly meetings that lack something with the authority to make decisions. Schmoozing isn’t a good use of anyone’s time, let alone your potential client; if you’re going to book a meeting with them it must have purpose. Set an agenda and send it to everyone attending the meeting beforehand to reduce the chance of going off-topic – or worse, missing something and having to book another meeting. Here’s a fun challenge: Book meetings only 1 day a week. The Jelly Triangle team put a Thursdays-only meeting policy in place and our productivity skyrocketed! It means we aren’t available to soothe our clients 24/7 anymore, but it also means our turnaround time on their projects is faster, which makes everyone happy. Keep this mantra at the forefront of your mind: don’t book a meeting when a phone call will do!
When you’re not sure how to tailor your meeting and email habits to support your business, analyze the situation and answer the question, “How will this make the company money?” Once you have that answer you can competently delegate emails, turn meetings into phone calls or not-at-alls, and give you and your team more time to focus on expanding your client reach with that marketing campaign, trade show, government grant, training, or new product testing that you’ve had your eye on since last year.
Jelly Triangle can take the stress off of your website redesign so you can stay focused on your business. Contact us to book your commitment-free consultation by sending us an email or calling us at (519) 624-8888.
