Business matters
Are you too busy to be successful?
By Bill Eveleth, Action International

Don't you love the holiday cards - "We have been so busy this year..."

Ever receive one that started, "We have been so unorganized and utterly unfocused this year…?? Of course not!

What's with our obsession with busy?

It's a badge of honor - I'm busy. It shows you are important - too busy to look at that right now. It's how many Americans measure their worth - if I have a lot to do, people must be relying on me.

Let's look at busy in business. How is that word spelled? Busyness?

Is it the curse of every business owner to be too busy to, as Mac Davis said, "Stop and smell the roses?" Doesn't have to be, but it is for most. How do we business owners keep our business robust while reducing our busy quotient? Three simple tools:

1. The Pareto Principle -- the 80/20 rule. Keep in mind that you will get 80 percent of your output from 20 percent of your effort. Sales - 20 percent of the customers generate 80 percent of the revenue. Employees - 20 percent of the work is done by 80 percent of the people. Picnic - 80 percent of the food is eaten by 20 percent of the people.

Take some time to think about what you are working on. Keep a list of how many hours you work and the tasks you perform during those hours. Categorize those tasks based on your skill level, low to high, and how effective those tasks are to driving the business towards achievement of its goals. Get rid of the low/low tasks.

2. Improve your focus by having a written weekly plan of your principal objectives. In Lee Iacocca's book, he tells of working a five-day week while guiding Chrysler Corporation through one of the toughest corporate challenges of that time period. How did he do it? He says that he started every week with a written list of the most critical tasks that he needed to accomplish that week - then he spent his work time through the course of the week completing those tasks.

3. Delegate, don't abdicate, delegate. It is the responsibility of the business owner to set the vision and be the guardian of the culture for her company; it is the job of the business owner to derive, implement, monitor and continuously improve the systems that the employees in the business use to service the customers. Most business owners don't delegate because they do not have systems to monitor the business's performance. Build those systems.

Is busy always bad?

Absolutely not! What happens to the manager who gives her employees too much time? "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Those employees who are not busy enough will begin to cause problems. Might have been Ben Franklin that said, "Those who complain least about the trip are the ones that are busy rowing."

Steven Covey tells a story of a guy who had been working diligently on cutting down a tree for a whole day with a dull saw, when someone asks him why he didn't sharpen his saw he replied - no time for that, too busy.

Contact Bill at BillEveleth@BellSouth.net.