They’re really struggling…
Hi all,
It’s Jenni here, from ICAP. For those of you who don’t know, alongside my ICAP work, I work with business owners helping them to systemise their businesses.
A couple of my clients are struggling with the same thing at the moment. And they’re struggling with it BIG TIME. It’s causing them lots of stress and sleepless nights.
They’ve got cash flow problems. Eugh, which is the worst kind of problem for business owners. We’ve all been there. Sales are the lifeblood of your business. Without sales, you don’t have a business.
However, when you dig under the surface, the problems are caused by staff. One client isn’t sure what their team is spending their time doing and fears a huge amount of time is being wasted. The other has a relatively big team. It’s a very busy business with lots going on, and each member of the team seems to get stuck into everything. There doesn’t seem to be much role clarity.
Due to their cash flow problems drastic action needs to be taken. And it got me thinking…the two activities that all business owners need to regularly do are:
Time Mapping
Role Mapping
Time Mapping:
This activity involves setting up a spreadsheet and splitting the week up into 30-minute blocks. For that week, make a note of what you do in each half-hour block. It can be very revealing to see how time is being spent in your business. Is time being wasted? Are jobs expanding to fill the time available? Are tasks being duplicated? Can any tasks be automated, streamlined, or even eradicated? ,
Role Mapping:
This activity is great to do before having staff and revisiting every two years. If you already have staff, do it now, and schedule it to be done again in a few years.
Sit down with a blank sheet of paper and list all of the individual tasks that are involved in your business. So instead of writing ‘admin’ on your list, write all the admin tasks e.g. ‘answer the phone, reply to emails, sort the post etc’. Take the current job roles you have in the business out of the equation and list all the tasks. From there, you can start grouping the tasks to create roles. Then you can assign the best people to those roles (from either inside or outside of your business).
In summary, always keep a tight reign on how time is spent in your business.
Time is our most valuable asset, after all.
And if it prevents the dreaded cash flow problems, it’s totally worth it, right?
Recommended reading:
Dan Kennedy’s Time Management book is an amazing wake-up call to the importance of being ruthless with your time. And has anyone read Bullsh*t Jobs? It’s a very interesting book around this very topic.
Speak soon,
Dr Jenni
Team ICAP