There are only so many hours in one day, as you no doubt likely know. This is an obvious sentiment, but it doesn’t exactly help when you’re spinning a thousand commercial plates at once and you need twenty projects complete by tonight’s deadline.
Ultimately, you can’t do everything, even if you’re a highly effective business leader and capable manager. This is why we hire people, of course. But even then, hiring people isn’t a panacea, that is, if their schedules aren’t correctly pointed and if they don’t have the developmental capacities properly managed alongside others, it can be a problem.
Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about how many man hours you might have available, but how those are used. Let’s explore some ways to get the best of them, even if in a small business.
Empower Through Software
The software you utilize does have an important effect on how your business operates, that much is clear. However, the kind of software you use and how they integrates with others can matter . There’s no point putting in three different systems if they don’t talk to each other properly or your employees spend more time managing their systems than anything else.
Invoicing software can be a good idea for example, as it helps someone sign off the final stage with a client in moments without them having to draft everything up by scratch. Constantly review if the software is working for you or not.
Allow For Personal Development & Initiative
You’ll get the absolute best out of your team when you allow some space for them to learn, grow, and take ownership of certain projects. Even if they shadow others it can help, so start by offering access to training, such as some online courses or seminars related to their roles.
You might also open the floor in any meetings or have a “no stupid questions” period where someone gets to ask the exact thought they’ve had but may have felt embarrassed to ask. This might sound like a time waster, but if it resolves a mistake made later on, it might save you both time and money.
Outsource Where Needed
It’s completely fine to say that some functions of your business are handled better by outside experts. Trying to manage absolutely everything with your existing staff can spread them way too thin and often results in average performance in areas that aren’t your main expertise – if you have a marketing guy but not a web dev, you can’t expect them to perfect a brand new website for you after all, even if the two seem related.
The secret is to have effective measures to properly discuss your needs and to find freelancers or companies that can take care of it with a reasonable quote, like determining your copywriting by the price per word, or how much an entire project will cost. It’ll help you plug the gaps where you need to so you can focus on “core competencies,” as many say.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily avoid wasting too many man-hours in one day.