From Surviving to Thriving: Four Productivity Hacks
In today’s competitive and dynamic business landscape, the phrase "innovate or die" is more relevant than ever before. Companies that fail to innovate risk becoming irrelevant, losing market share, and ultimately fading away. To thrive in this environment, organizations must continuously seek ways to increase productivity.
In pursuit of productivity, it's crucial to not chase the latest fads or frameworks blindly. Instead, focus on the core principles that underpin many of these methodologies. These principles can be effectively encapsulated within a simplified hierarchical framework: eliminate, automate, simplify, and delegate. First, we identify processes which can be eliminated entirely, as these represent high productivity gains and are typically minimal investment and easy to implement. Tasks we can’t eliminate should be automated and tasks we can’t fully automate should be simplified. Finally, the remaining tasks which don’t require your intervention to drive value should be delegated to employees or vendors.
1. Eliminate: Identify and eliminate non-value-added activities, processes, and tasks that don't contribute to your goals. By removing waste and unnecessary complexity, you streamline operations and optimize resource allocation. This can range from eliminating a meeting that could have been replaced with a short email to eliminating production steps through innovation in manufacturing.
2. Automate: Leverage technology and automation to reduce manual and repetitive tasks. By automating routine activities, you free up time and resources, allowing you to focus on more strategic and value-added endeavors. Automation can be achieved using a combination of code, software, and robotics and applied to data entry, email, social media management, manufacturing, reporting, customer service, accounting, inventory management, and other tasks. Automated solutions often necessitate the development of a control framework so that human can verify that automated processes continue to function as expected. When choosing tasks to automate, focus on your ROI, you don’t want to spend a month automating a task that currently takes only ten minutes to complete once per quarter.
3. Simplify: Reduce complexity and streamline workflows by simplifying processes and systems. By simplifying tasks, individuals and organizations can streamline workflows, eliminate unnecessary steps, and enhance clarity in processes. In project management, simplification can involve breaking down complex projects into manageable phases or tasks, allowing for better planning and execution. In customer service, simplification can be achieved by creating standardized response templates for common inquiries, ensuring consistent and efficient communication. Similarly, simplifying data entry processes through automation or utilizing intuitive user interfaces can speed up administrative tasks. By simplifying tasks, businesses can save time, minimize errors, and create a more streamlined and productive work environment.
4. Delegate: Empower and distribute responsibility among qualified individuals inside and outside of your organization. Delegation allows for effective resource allocation, ensuring that the right tasks are assigned to the most suitable individuals or external partners with the necessary expertise. Delegation also promotes a sense of empowerment and ownership among employees, fostering professional growth, motivation, and job satisfaction. By entrusting tasks to others, it frees up time for business owners and managers to focus on high-level strategic initiatives and decision-making. Delegation can also tap into the specialized skills and capabilities of vendors, enabling businesses to access external expertise, expand their capabilities, and achieve greater efficiency. Ultimately, effective delegation maximizes productivity, promotes collaboration, and creates a more agile and responsive organization.
This simple yet time-tested framework allows you to tackle waste, inefficiencies, and complexity systematically, while empowering your team to contribute and excel. Innovation requires us to be ruthless in pursuit of efficiency because we lose focus on our strategic priorities when mired in the details of running an organization. Freeing up time to focus on increasing value to stakeholders helps organizations get out of a reactionary survival mode so they can innovate and thrive.
