One of the very first tasks I get every client to do is a time audit. Because universally, my clients tell me they are busy. And I do not doubt that for a second.
Yet, I know from my own experience and the results of over 100 comparable audits at this time, that none of us is being fully effective with our time.
In fact, when the light is shone on the activities each of us undertakes each week, it’s often clear to see where our priorities are and how, in their current weighting, we’re actually working against our goals and not for them.
A few weeks ago, I had one business owner note they spent 2 full days in one week on payroll, chasing debtors and reconciling accounts. While I will admit that this is an incredibly important function, some of these tasks should be automated, and others can be outsourced at a much cheaper rate than your hourly rate.
But what is the opportunity cost of this?
Two days on admin, focused on tasks that contribute a low value to the growth of the business, to the profitability of their agency. They spent less time supporting their team, less time meeting with clients and less time looking at the processes because they were in the middle of them.
When we sold the agency, I had a meeting with the group’s financial director. A heap of the tasks I “just did” as the MD were taken off me. Looking for insurance quotes, gone, HR, gone, supplier payments, no longer my responsibility. Payroll…..see ya.
And yet, these were the tasks I’d busied myself with for years prior. Why? Because I was one of only 2 people in the business who could do them. The reality is, my time is some of the most expensive in the business, and I was spending too much time on low-value tasks.
And I respect that some of you don’t want others in Xero, others keep full control of your bank account and that’s fine. I would do the same, but there are tasks you do each week that, while once a necessity, should be passed over to someone else or to a 3rd party.
And the time audit shines a light on these.
So how do we conduct a time audit?
I’m confident you could make this as convoluted a process as you want, but I prefer simple. Because simple usually gets done.
I’ve created a Google sheet, which is linked below the video, but please feel free to create your own. The Google sheet has 5 tabs, Monday to Friday. And in each of those tabs is a timeline from 8am to 6pm. Besides the time, the second column is reserved for the task you have completed and the 3rd column is to identify if this is an essential task to you or one that’s discretionary.
Finally, there’s a column for notes.
Now what I ask all of my clients to do is to take next week and be mindful to document the time audit. Write this in your diary, prompt yourself with tasks or calendar notifications. Whatever it takes to ensure you complete this for all of the tasks you complete in a week.
You can go as granular as you want, but general topic areas work just fine.
- Client meetings
- Staff Meetings
- Admin (HR, Payroll, Finances)
- Service Delivery
- Personal time
- Sales & Marketing
- Business Growth Activities
The tasks you complete will, of course, be unique to your situation and the needs of your business. But the next element starts to identify whether or not they should be your tasks, or you just do them, because you always have.
Besides each task recorded, I want you to consider if this was essential to you or it was not. Why are you doing this task? What would happen if you passed it to someone else? Does this bring you closer to your goals or would your time be better spent on something else? Was this wasted time?
If it’s essential, are all elements relevant to you? Are you holding on to parts of this because it’s easier or quicker just to do it yourself? Of course there will be tasks like this that you must keep as a director, but be completely ruthless here. Should this be your responsibility?
And then we have those tasks that are the ones you are just doing. These discretionary tasks are ones you should:
- Eliminate
- Automate
- Delegate
And that is easy for me to say, but the opportunity cost of retaining the ownership of these tasks is that you’re not working on higher value projects in your business, you’re doing busy-work rather than being productive. In short, it’s taking you away from where you need to be.
After you determine what should happen with each task, it’s time to build the plan to pass them over. Some of these will require handover docs. Others will require systems built and others will need SOPs directed. Build the plan to do this and focus on freeing up time.
What do we do with our free time?
There’s no agency owner I’ve spoken to who doesn’t want either more money or more freedom. And many want both. We need to critically review our priorities and identify which tasks have the greatest likelihood of getting us towards our goals.
- If it’s increased revenue, dedicating this time to selling is key.
- Freedom – you might need to focus acutely on systems.
Whatever it is you want to achieve, figuring out your new non-negotiable tasks and dedicating time to them daily is key. And this isn’t something you set and forget. It can be revisited at any time and it can be amended based on your goals. But the constant awareness of productive time that delivers your goals is the key.