How To Create More Time
The universal complaint among leaders in the construction industry is that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done! Construction can be a relentless, demanding industry; in fact, a contractor once told Wayne “It’s like being a baseball umpire. You have to be perfect on your first day and then get better every day thereafter!” If we’re all constrained by the same 24 hour per day, 168 hour work week, how can we cope? How can we conjure up more of that which is ruthlessly limited?
Please watch this week as Wayne gives you a three step process (courtesy of the Chief Executive newsletter and Marshall Goldsmith) for finding more time to do the high impact, long term things you know you ought to be doing. What has worked well for you in determining your highest and best use (HABU)? Please share with us in the comments.
And if you want a copy of the time log Wayne mentions – you’ll be doing yourself a real favor! – CLICK HERE.
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Hi, this is Wayne Rivers at FBI, where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about how to create more time. So, when I'm talking to contractor groups, what's your biggest
constraint these days? And it's time is for every contractor. It's a universal answer. I bet 99% of you watching this video
wish you had more time. Maybe not necessarily at work, but more time to spend with the family, more time to go to the
gym, more time to, just me time, whatever it happens to be. So, if you want more time, it ain't going to materialize, my
friends. You're going to have to create it. And this idea came from an article I read in the Chief Executive Newsletter, which
is a great newsletter by the way. And it's from author Marshall Goldsmith who wrote What Got You Here Won't Get You
There, which is also a great business book from 15 years ago or something like that. So, what about this is important to
you? We could all use more time.
So, here's the first tip, only three tips here. Pretend for a minute. Let's just have this game that we're playing. If you were
given an additional two hours a week, just two hours a week to do whatever is in the best long-term interest of your
company, how would you invest that time? So, this is a great thought exercise. If you had two extra hours and you really
wanted it to benefit the company over the long-term, how would you invest that two hours? And most people are going
to come back and they're going to say, "Well, I'd be thinking about the people I need to help me advance the mission. I'd
want to be creating the org chart of the future. Where do I need, where do I have gaps? Where do I need more people?
Where do I need more systems?" Et cetera, et cetera.
And then how do I work myself out of a job? Especially if you're the senior leader. How do you work yourself out of a job?
How do you get to a point at age 65 or whatever works for you where you can retire confident that your successor leaders
are going to run the company capably in your absence? All right, you've got two hours.
Now, here's the key part in my mind, if you were forced to eliminate two hours of your existing workload, what would you
get rid of? What would you stop doing? And if you think about it makes sense, okay, I'm working. Let's just say 60 hours a
week. I'm frustrated. I don't have the time that I want to spend on high payoff activities, creating the organization of the
future, developing my future leaders, et cetera.
Well, you're not going to get more minutes and hours in the day, are you? The only way to create that two hours is to stop
doing something. So, be ruthless and look at your calendar and figure out what are you doing? How are you investing your
time in areas that are low payoff? What do you hate doing? In your business, what do you hate doing? Stop it. Delegate
that. Push it off to somebody else. We have a time log. If you really, really, really want to get serious about how you're
spending your time during the work week, send me an email, [email protected]. We'll send you a time
log and you'll be shocked. It is a fascinating, also a troubling exercise. I'm not going to lie to you. When you figure out how
much of your time is low payoff or wasted time, it is just, I mean, I've done this. It is mind-blowing. Okay?
The third thing, sit down with your team and have them help you figure out what to stop doing and how you could add
more value in the company with the new two hours you have in a week. You'll find that they're very creative.
Crowdsourcing works better than just being the biggest brain in the room. They want to support you. They want you as a
senior leader to be working at your highest and best use, your HABU, H-A-B-U, highest and best use.
And I'll tell you a story about that. Years ago, I would leave at lunchtime, and I would go play tennis. And it ended up being,
instead of a lunch hour, it became a lunch two hours. And I came back, and I spoke to my assistant. I said, "Karen," who's
also a tennis player, so she didn't mind. But anyway, "God, I kind of feel guilty. I'm taking probably four hours a week,
maybe more to go off and play tennis in the middle of the workday." And she said, "No, no, Wayne, we want you to play
tennis. When you don't play tennis, you're tense and you fly off the handle. That's a great way. We know you need to
relieve stress. We want you to play tennis." And I felt really good about that because she was kind of taking care of me
and by taking care of me, she was taking care of the entire team because otherwise I might not have been the most fun
guy to work with.
So, three things, two hours a week. Find that two hours, what are you going to stop doing? And then sit down with your
team and have this discussion and crowdsource ideas about how you can be working towards your highest and best use
for the long term of your business. So, what works for you? Tell us in the comments what works for you in terms of getting
to that highest and best use. And this is Wayne Rivers at FBI, where We Build Better Contractors.
