5 ways to streamline for the better
“I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
- Bill Gates
One of the most important skills an effective manager must posses is the ability to manage time efficiently - both their own and their team's - to ensure tasks are completed on time and to the best standard possible. The best way to do this is to optimise your working environment and design your processes and systems in order to:
Reduce the time it takes to complete tasks
Reduce the energy spent to complete tasks
Increase quality of outputs
triage standard of efficiency
One of the best examples of a streamlined environment for maximum efficiency is the operating room used by emergency doctors and nurses where just mere seconds can make the different in the overall outcome. Some of the actions they have implemented in order to create this environment are:
Relentless Triage - Prioritising patients, surgeries and tasks based on their importance and urgency to avoid ‘firefighting’ tasks as they appear. In most TV shows or movies where our character arrives at the hospital with a non-life threatening injury, what are they often told? ‘Take a seat…’ ‘You’ll have to wait…’ because they are not deemed a priority over some other patients.
Continuous Improvement - Constantly reviewing systems and processes to make improvements e.g. reducing waste, do we need one more/one less set of hands?
Group Equipment - For different cases, there is a specific set of equipment that is brought into the room so they are ready and available - it’s better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.
Remain Objective - In such an emotionally charged environment, the staff need to put their emotions aside and take an objective approach towards cases for the benefit of the patient.
5 Ways...to streamline for the better:
According to James Clear - Author of ‘Atomic Habits’, the 3rd law for creating a good habit is to ‘make it easy’. This is the approach you should have when looking to streamline…always ask yourself ‘is there an easier way to do this?’. To increase your time management efficiency, we have suggested the below development areas:
Reduce Friction - Decrease the number of steps is takes you to complete a task by removing any unnecessary steps, group items together…how do you get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ in the shortest possible time.
Optimise your Environment - A classic example of this is when people want to lose weight. One of the best methods is to remove temptation by not having snacks in the cupboards. Focus on making what you need more readily available and accessible and remove any waste or distractions. Here’s one to get you started - optimise your workspace.
Optimise the Small Choices - Consider what choices you have to make regularly throughout the day - how can you optimise these to deliver greater impact? An example of this is email templates - if a customer has emailed in to change an address or cancel their membership, have a template available which will reduce the response time, which then reduces the energy spent in responding and will increase the number of emails responded to, ultimately improving the level of service given.
Automate, Automate, Automate - Leading on from email templates, ask yourself what processes or systems can you put in place that will automate certain tasks? When ‘x’ happens, ‘y’ will then occur. Just to be clear, this doesn’t have to be software related. In his book, James Clear refers to this as ‘habit stacking’ where we use momentum from tasks to then propel us onto the next…think of your morning routine, you probably do things in a certain order without even realising.
Invest in People and Technology - Sometimes Managers can be so caught up in ‘firefighting’ tasks that they do not delegate tasks to their team members. It’s important to invest time in developing your team who can then help you with ‘firefighting’. In the short term, this might mean falling behind on a few deadlines but in the long-term will be for the better. Also consider what technology or software you could invest in to take the heavy lifting. Some software we would recommend is Monday.com and Google Workplace (formerly known as G-Suite), both of which will help keep you on top of managing several things at once.
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