Too many roles - not enough time
Running a business is a full-time job. In fact, it’s several full-time jobs!
As the business owner, it’s pretty standard to be involved in many different areas of the business and to have a strain on your time and capacity to fulfil everything. That is why time management tips for small business owners can make such a big difference!
In a previous blog, we wrote about how prioritising your time on the strategic direction of the business, rather than the day-to-day running of your business, is the most valuable use of your time in both the medium and longer term. Understanding that is one thing – doing it is a different matter.
There are many articles on self-discipline, setting goals, setting timeframes for tasks, and other very relevant and helpful pointers for time management as a topic for everyone, but almost nothing really specific to business ownership.
Beat procrastination with our time management tips for small business owners
In addition to the day-to-day demands of the operation of your business on your time, there is also your own personal demon of procrastination!
By linking goals and urgency, you can more effectively prioritise and overcome human nature to procrastinate. There are some really useful tips in that blog as well as some important points to reflect on.
But there are other time management tips for business owners we can share focused specifically on your unique position as an owner.
The first step to understanding how a business can improve time management
Having worked with hundreds of business owners over more than a decade, I feel well qualified to offer some advice on the topic… especially as I own and run three businesses personally, too.
So what makes business ownership such a challenge when it comes to time management?
Well, the real sticking point is the fact that you have to have a bit of a multiple-personality disorder to manage it well.
This is because, unless you adopt the mindset of each ‘stakeholder’ in the business and represent the requirements and goals they each have, you’ll fall foul of the most common error; listening exclusively to the operations person.
What I mean by this is that before you try and manage your time and tasks requirements, you need to review your organisational chart for the business.
Therefore the first step to improving your business’ time management is to understand all the roles/functions you perform and the amount of time allocated to each of those roles.
This is more than a list of people that work here. It is a breakdown of the roles and important tasks that exist inside the company.
What does this look like in a real world scenario?
In my case, I am the Managing Director, Head of HR, Head of Sales, Head of Coaching, and also one of the coaching staff.
Each of those roles has requirements in terms of outputs for the business and inputs required to make them happen.
If I break my target working week into a number of hours, I can then assign the correct ratio of hours to the right roles more efficiently, e.g. 12 for the MD, 15 for the sales role, etc.
By segmenting the different roles in this way, it’s easier to develop a disciplined mindset around which to manage the tasks and actions, and stops you from spending too much time on tasks that aren’t your own.
If you, for example, were to walk into the Managing Directors’ office and demand that they stop what they are doing because they need to come and coach a client, they’d likely ask why you were underperforming in your own department.
The fact that this conversation is notional (because you are, in fact, both people) doesn’t matter… you should still adopt that form of thinking.
That is a really important first step in our time management advice for small business owners.
What are the steps for doing this yourself?
So the process goes as follows:
- First, create your organisational business chart by ROLES.
- Then, assign the roles to yourself as needed.
- Define the core responsibilities under each role, and add the MINIMUM time requirements to not drop the ball on any of them.
- Map these time blocks into your diary, and book them as appointments on a ‘repeat basis’ for each week, month, quarter, or year as relevant, e.g. phone calls for sales will be weekly, business planning might be quarterly or annually.
- Once these are mapped into your diary (your diary looks full before you have any ‘client appointments’ and so on, then you book in the real world tasks to the appropriate area, and DON’T overwrite another role unless it truly is critical and costly to not do so.)
What are the benefits of this approach to managing your time as a business owner?
By taking this approach, your time is more efficiently planned, your task management falls into pre-defined periods of activity that naturally align, and you limit the ability for one of your multiple personalities to ‘over-ride’ others just because they speak louder.
Good time management is key to staying focused and keeping on top of your responsibilities as a business owner.
If you’d like to see and hear from real business owners who have used this approach to time manage for their small businesses, visit here.
Time management for small business owners is just one way a coach can help
Time management is just one area a business coach empowers SMEs to grow, thrive and scale. There are a range of 121 coaching programmes available, so do check them out and explore what other areas of your business a coach could help you with.
If you would like other time management tips for small business owners, take a look at the blog as we regularly share lots of useful advice and tools to help SMEs.
