You may have heard of the approach ‘Divide and Conquer’ to get the job done, a way to separate out individual elements to make a large challenge more manageable.
I take a different approach and its one that our early days in school probably haven’t encouraged. So, go back in time, for me a long way back in time, and remember your very early school days and how you were taught maths.
First you were taught to Add simple numbers and only when you were comfortable with these were you allowed to move on to Subtraction. Similarly, with Multiplication, you learnt your times tables over and over again until you could recite them before you learnt to Divide.
Because of this in built, pre-programmed approach, we always look to Add and Multiply before we ever thing about Dividing and Subtracting.
OK, so at this point you are about to stop reading as you wonder ‘what the hell I’m going on about’! I’m talking about time management and how, as a Manager, you handle your growing to do list.
My point is that our tendency is to always take on more things ourselves. We think it is easier/quicker/less hassle to just do it ourselves. We add things to our to do list and fear subtracting them. So how do you subtract them?
The 101 in time management - ranking by Urgency (I must do it and I must do it now) and Important (actions that move your business towards its goals). I read a great description of these in Damian Hughes’ ‘Unlocking the DNA of a Winning Culture’, where the author describes four states
Firefighting –Things happen and you have to react, drop everything and sort them out. Urgent and Important.
Fire prevention – The more time you spend on these tasks the less Firefighting you do. Important.
False alarms – These are the ones that seem like Firefighting, but this is because of the noise and alarm around them. The alarm is often raised by someone who has different priorities to the business and although they see them as urgent, they are only urgent to them. Problem is that you get to realise this only once to get to them! These are the real time wasters. You have to stop them from happening.
Fire escapes - This is your procrastination, where you try to escape from a task that you dislike and do not see as Important or Urgent. Be careful they may be. If they are, just get on and do them, if they are not Subtract or Divide!
Come on, you must have worked out Divide, it’s my word for Delegate. Spread the load, downwards, sideways and if you are in strong functioning team, sometime upwards.
I find applying these descriptions really helps you decide what you can learn to drop.
One of the greatest skills of a business professional in any industry is the art of prioritising.
There is a Buddhist saying –
If you want to know your past, look at your present circumstance, If you want to know your future, look at you present actions.
So if you only make once new year’s resolution, make it to Subtract more than you Add and Divide more than you multiply!
by Richard Wright
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