Set the hares running

Once you’ve got your to do list put in an order based on ROI, the tempting thing to do at this point would be to just get going on the top thing on the list. But that would be a mistake.

The first thing you need to do is to set some hares running.

Before I explain, let’s go back to how you got where you are today.

In terms of your workload, you will have busier days and quieter days. Or you should. If you only have quiet days, then you aren’t stretching yourself enough. Go and get some more work!

If you’re good and you get the message out, the work will find you. Eventually you will have the perfect level of work.

And then you get a bit more. That bit more is one bit too much.

Some people’s solution to that is to work more hours. And then you get a bit more work. Uh-oh. There are only so many hours in the day.

At some point, some of the people you are doing the work for start to realise that you haven’t done what you were going to do and start chasing you. You spend a little bit of time reassuring them that all is well. Now you have a bit less time to do the work and all the other things you have to do.

It’s a slippery slope.

In the case of an old boss of mine (I’ll call him Fred although that wasn’t his name), the amount of time spent fending people off, apologising and organising everything he needed to do kept growing until eventually it was taking up a huge chunk of his available time. The clients he was dealing with started to go from mildly impatient to really upset.

In Fred’s case, one client actually had him by the lapels of his jacket pinned up against the wall before the other partner at the firm calmed things down.

We also had an incident where he went on holiday and one of his clients called up. This chap was standing in his house with his family when his solicitor told him that the building society weren’t releasing funds for his mortgage because his accountant (Fred) still hadn’t provided the reference that they’d asked for five times. All the family’s possessions were on a removal van ready to move house.

Cue panic as we all went through piles of paperwork in Fred’s office trying to find enough information about this client’s affairs to get the reference done. It was probably the beginning of the end for Fred. Within a year, the other partners had forced him out.

Hopefully you haven’t got to the point where you haven’t even got time to update your to do list once a week.

Otherwise, as you finish each urgent and important task another urgent and important task will take its place.

Everything on your to do list has a date by which it needs to be done. As you work your way through the things at the top of the list, things further down the list will be slowly getting closer to their own deadlines. That means that when you finally get to them you might be very close to their deadline.

The task concerned will need to be done first time and correctly.

And there’s only one person who can do that. That’s right – you!

So you will end up permanently drowning in urgent tasks.

But lots of the things on the list can be delegated if you’re happy to accept something that’s not perfect that you can then finish off.

Email is the perfect way of doing this. Pick one of the tasks further down the list, get a good Dictaphone app and start explaining what you need doing. Then ping it out.

That’s you setting a hare running.

And then do another one.

Some of those hares you’ve set running, won’t get done correctly.

Accept it.

Don’t use it as an excuse to not delegate in future. At the very least, you will find out which of your team are keen to learn, which need to be trained a bit better, which need more detailed instructions and how you can improve your learning skills.

You’re either winning or you’re learning right?

Some of your team might actually surprise you. They’ll get a lot of the work done for you and if you find a bit of time to teach them the things they didn’t get right, bit by bit, they will get better at those tasks and maybe take more work off you.

If I have a deadline which is weeks away, I set the hares running early. I have a look at what needs to be done and I consider who else needs to be involved. I also think about who else might be able to help me. Maybe a junior member of staff who didn’t seem particularly busy and could actually give me some help on this.

For example, I might send an email out to somebody asking them to dig out a particular PowerPoint presentation that I did two or three years ago. I tell them what to call it and where to save it.

Two days later I get a reply. I then have a quick look at it to remind myself what was in it in the first place. Then I send another email asking if they can do some research on a particular issue and include some of that content in the PowerPoint.

A couple of days later it’s back again.

What I am doing is reducing the amount of work that I am going to have to do and reducing the time pressure on getting it done.

Bit by bit, the project starts to take shape and with several days to go before the deadline it is pretty much all done. Just the finishing touches left.

For this to work, you have to be “slightly over-staffed”. This a concept I referred to in my book Accidental Millionaires – the secret mindset successful business owners share with sporting legends.

If you’re not, then you won’t have capacity to take on any more work. And you won’t be able to cope with the inevitable peaks that occur from time to time.

My experience working for Fred taught me a few things. The first was that no matter how busy I am, I need to ensure that on Monday morning my to do list is bang up to date. This often requires me to find a quiet hour or two on a Saturday morning to delegate as many things as possible.

Back in the 90s this involved a trip to the office and a pad of post-it notes on which I would scribble my instructions before attaching them to whatever the relevant documents were and leaving them on the desk of the person who I knew could do the work.

At my accountancy practice, we have tried to ensure we are slightly over-staffed by taking on new trainees each year and also by taking on staff offshore.

Most firms do neither. They think they don’t need those staff and if they can’t see beyond the end of their nose they are probably right. And their lack of growth will (in their eyes) prove them right.

But to set the hares running requires good staff. And good staff are hard to find…