A bit of a departure today. An insider view of things that I’m doing with my work. I hope it creates business value in yours.
Recently, I embraced giving a value to the things I spend time on in my work.
Something that was a take-away from the last lesson in the Consulting Success Momentum course. They borrowed it from Perry Marshall, who put a dollar value to four buckets of things consultants spend time on.
I’m giving my buckets the labels – very high, high, medium, and low.
The point is to focus be spending your time on higher work. And delegate or outsource the medium and low.
Instead a lot of us spend time on the medium and low. And don’t get around to the very high and high.
Yet, its the higher stuff that creates business value.
Strategic activities. Planning. Retrospectives where we glean learnings. Transformational changes. Visionary things.
As a consultant, it’s also the things that generate new business. Meetings with qualified prospects. Negotiations. Creating thought leadership. The things that move my sales and marketing forward.
The idea is that if you are focusing your time on higher work, then you generate the means to pay people to do the medium and low stuff. Which frees you to focus even more on the very high and high stuff.
A positive re-investment in your role as a senior leader in your business. A cycle that feeds itself.
I agree we should focus our time on these activities. But that’s that should word. Good in theory, not always doable in practice. Certainly, offload low. Though I think medium creeps into your time too.
(The geek in me also believes some medium and low stuff can be delegated to technology. In truth, that’s the best use for technology. But I digress.)
I use a Kanban board and backlog to manage the work I do on my business. A little overhead that has a big payoff for me.
It let’s me manage how many balls I have in the air at one time. The backlog let’s me park things I want to do. Freeing up energy spent on thinking about them in the present. Finally, I do a regular reflection on where I am spending my time.
So, it was easy for me to add to my tracking a new flag for value. And see how much time I am spending on the buckets.
A new way of looking at my work. As a result, it’s moving me towards doing more higher value things.
It’s also got me thinking of what might work needs to be done to support the high value work.
Is there learning that needs to be done. Tools you need. Delegation to manage. Hmmm.
A lot of those activities are of medium value. Yet, considering what medium value things move the higher value items forward provides insight. Hence you manage medium time better too.
It justifies the exception to also do this lower level work. And encourages you to simply say no to things that don’t support your higher level work.
I believe taking the time to consider this is a high activity. Lol. Not very high. Definitely a planning and retrospective task!
What work creates business value for you? Do you know how much time you are spending on it?
