How would you invest an extra working day each week?

It’s the option we’d all love to have, and with some purposeful changes it is within your grasp.

What’s the ideal productivity improvement goal for you? It is a personal thing, and for the bold and adventurous 20%+ is achievable (translated to an extra working day each week).

Six months ago I started measuring my daily Productive Time Investment, or 'PTI' to create a fancy acronym. This is the time invested in truly productive activity (not 'stuff'), and there was a 21% increase over the period, measured just on invested time (PTI) and not outputs, which naturally vary for me.

The posted photo is my PTI scoreboard for this week (so I was bad at art...). I have a goal to invest 40+ true productive hours, from 8 February, with daily hours noted in different colours. At 32 hours now I’ll look to hit my target on Saturday morning, which is okay by me. Sunday Valentine’s Day lunch with my wife is the downtime zero score day :)

Some quick pointers:

- have a visual scoreboard

- employ the carrot and stick approach

- use techniques to focus, and manage distractions

- keep improving your tech and how you use it

- savour your precious downtime

If you’d like to really work on increasing your ‘PTI’ in 2021 we’d love to help.

Climb the Productivity Staircase

At stages in our lives we’ve looked at something and thought ‘that’s a huge task, am I up to it?’. Yet once we started, overcame the shock of the change and new habits required, and then got into a rhythm we were suddenly looking back from a successful completion stage feeling ‘wow, I’m so glad I did this!’. I remember many years ago climbing sections of the Great Wall of China, looking across at the final destination point thinking ‘that’s miles away, how long is this going to take, I should have trained more!’. Amazingly several hours later I was there feeling very satisfied, and fortunately they had a toboggan ride back down to the car park :) .

The Productivity Staircase represents a journey you can take to perform much closer to your full potential and surprise yourself when you reach higher levels. Getting started can be a challenge, along with effectively implementing the changes, and invariably you’ll have some ‘wobbles’ with the need to refocus.

The rewards of attaining productivity grand master status are immense. You will feel like a different person: in control, work and lifestyle harmonious and in balance, satisfied with your progress. Your business can then realise accelerated growth levels, wider profit margins, and scalable operations with quality standards and efficiency levels that are the envy of all. This is for you to achieve, not someone else.

Each step in the Productivity Staircase model combines to propel you on the course to greater productivity. Planning and organisation is the foundation, process design and improvement is a significant enabler, then add smart technology to exponentially increase the speed and quality of operations. Once beyond these 3 key steps you can work smarter with better deployment of resources, actively identify and remove any anchors, and focus on yourself and team members to excel in adopting and driving your operations. A thriving culture of positive energy and continuous innovation will keep the momentum going.

Talk with You Exponential now about how you can start climbing the Productivity Staircase. It has been a very challenging year, however you can be one of the first to start gaining ground and taking back the control and satisfaction of achieving more success with your business.

Are you confident about your technology decisions?

In assessing the investment in advice technology, a recent netwealth AdviceTech report indicated that over 50% of the financial advisory profession feel they ‘don’t have the time to understand and explore their options’, while over 20% also feel they ‘don’t have the processes in place in their business’. [1] After adapting to COVID-19, being there for your clients, and with so many technology solutions in the marketplace, it’s understandable that you’re wondering where and how to start.

Start by taking a short amount of time out to sit down and think about what would make the biggest difference to you and your business. Remove distractions like your smartphone (silent mode) and let the analytical, problem-solving part of your mind think unimpeded. You want to produce a list of the activities and their underlying processes that you and your team spend the most time on. Some criteria you might consider to start your list includes:

● Can you source any system data to help identify time spent?

● Which processes do you feel waste the most amount of your time?

● Have you received any client surveys or feedback on their experience?

● Which processes would benefit the most with new technology / better process definition?

Then follow a 4 step process:

Step 1 List the main activities that occupy your time

Step 2 Note how and where you conduct them

Step 3 Flag key underlying processes for improvement

Step 4 Prioritise the improvements

Use a table structure that might look like the example below.

You now have a ranked list that helps you focus on developing your technology roadmap.

A technology roadmap is a visual plan that illustrates your intended technology adoption now and in the future. Creating your own technology roadmap gives you the ability to:

● Have a clear picture of your company’s IT infrastructure abilities and how they align with business outcomes

● Address any current IT issues

● Implement technologies that facilitate a better client experience, such as the discovery process for new and existing clients.

● Cut costs by removing any unnecessary technologies and applications

● Increase productivity by implementing technology that serves your immediate needs

● Improve IT and cybersecurity

● Avoid or mitigate against system failures by learning any weaknesses in your IT infrastructure

● Resolve any conflicts around business priorities

● Prepare for digital transformation [2]

A key tip is to ensure that the voice of your clients is considered just as much as your personal productivity endeavours. For example, a client portal or digitally capturing your client conversations can achieve superior quality and efficiency outcomes for you and your clients.

Preparing and effectively implementing a technology roadmap can make a significant difference to your business performance. It will make your clients happier, your working life easier, and your business more profitable over time.

Given the demands on your time and continuous distractions, it is recommended to engage a partner with the expertise and experience to help you compose your roadmap and overcome inertia. You also want to plan and implement change in bite-sized chunks to ensure things are done at quality and the sought benefits are achieved. It is also a dynamic process that should be embedded in your team’s skill set and culture.

If you would like to understand more or start this process, talk to You Exponential today about what you’d like to achieve in your business. You can have a short, no obligation, no cost conversation before commencing your program. You Exponential brings over 24 years experience in running and improving leading advice businesses, with a flexible approach to partnering that enables you to get on with advising clients whilst also capitalising on smart technology and enhanced processes. Send an email to charles@youexponential.com.au.

Ultimately you’ll get more done and enjoy doing more of the things you do best.

[1] netwealth AdviceTech report 2020, p9 [2] Lucidchart.com content team blog, What is a Technology Roadmap?