What’s On Your Calendar

All that you have to sell is your time. That doesn’t only apply to those who sell, but to literally everyone in the business. What you know is based on a collection of your experiences, who you speak and meet with, what you read, and the tasks that you perform.

As a leader of an organization, your time is extremely valuable and should be focused on the areas that you are uniquely qualified to tackle and can make a meaningful impact on.

Getting Better Everyday

What are the three things that you’re working on that you want to see improvement in? What are you actually doing to get there? This can be applied universally to the person making deliveries all the way up to the person signing the checks.

It’s really about setting goals and creating the steps that you’ll need to reach success. Once you have identified the areas that you want to improve, make sure that you’ve allowed time in your calendar to work on those. If it’s not on the calendar, it probably won’t get done. 

Focus On Learning

In Capitalize on Your Experience, I brought up a discussion around having 15 years of cumulative experience versus having one year of experience that was repeated 15 times. There’s a huge difference between the two.

If you think about it, you’re learning every day. The people that you speak with, the problems that you solve, the things that you read, and the events that you attend (in person or virtually) all contribute to your learning bank.

Make sure that what you are learning is going to be meaningful to you and that it’s not just an exercise in how to stay out of the weeds. We see it all the time, maybe you do as well. You finish your day, your week, and you are exhausted. You’ve been slammed the entire time. But did you actually accomplish anything worthwhile or were you putting out the fires that either you or someone else had started?

Calculate Your ROI

Go back and take a hard look at your calendar for the last 30 or 60 days. Were you involved in scheduled events, meetings or tasks that you were uniquely qualified to contribute — that is, it couldn’t have been done without you and no one else could do it?

Now take a look at your hourly rate. Take what you earn (or strive to earn), divided by the hours that you work and calculate your hourly rate. Based on the activities in your calendar, you can begin the process of calculating the ROI on your time. All this is a way to say you should try to only get involved in the things that you really have to be involved in, and focus on the things that you can make the biggest impact on.

Make Time To Lead

There will be some things in your calendar that will be hard to quantify and may leave you wondering if they were truly worthwhile. These may turn out to be some of the most important things that you do.

As a leader, one of your roles is to mentor and provide direction to your team. While these activities may not always seem to have a direct impact on the business, the absence of them could be detrimental to your overall success.

While you strive to measure and quantify as much as you can, you should not lose sight that this is still a people business. It’s important that you create an environment where people feel safe, and are willing to contribute to the success of the organization. For many businesses, that truly becomes their secret sauce and is truly worthwhile of your time.

During times of transformation, all ideas should be on the table. Please reach out with any comments or questions. Also, make sure to ask me about my office hours — a time that I set aside each week for you!

Mike Philie can help validate what’s working and what may need to change in your business. Changing the trajectory of a business is difficult to do while simultaneously operating the core competencies. Mike provides strategy and insight to owners and CEOs in the Graphic Communications Industry by providing direct and realistic assessments, not being afraid to voice the unpopular opinion and helping leaders navigate change through a common sense and practical approach. Learn more at www.philiegroup.com, LinkedIn or email at mphilie@philiegroup.com.