In his inspirational book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey suggests we have reached a fourth generation of time management. Where the focus is on enhancing relationships and accomplishing results. And on managing ourselves, not time per se.

To do this Stephen suggests listing each task you need to complete and then categorize the task into one of several categories: important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not important. The tasks that fall into the last category you leave until last or not do at all, while the ones in the urgent and important category are the ones you should focus your efforts on completing.

Important and Urgent Tasks

We all have a number of tasks each day to complete. When you create a “to do list” for the day, take note of any projects that have a tight deadline. If you have a customer waiting for you to complete the work on a project, this is both important and urgent. This project is urgent, because the customer is waiting for it, and it is important because the customer will pay you for your work, adding to your business profits.

Important and Not Urgent Tasks

Important and not urgent tasks are those that do not have an immediate deadline, but are still important for the successful running of the business. You could include marketing tasks in this category, as without a good marketing strategy you will quickly run out of customers. You need to spend some time each week working through the important but not immediately urgent tasks.

Urgent and Not Important Tasks

Urgent and not important tasks are tasks that have a strict deadline to meet, but do not add anything of value to your business. It is easy to get caught up in completing tasks that are urgent but not ultimately important. These tasks may be ones you can outsource to other people or not complete at all. If the task is not important or necessary for the running of your business, think carefully about why you are completing it at all. Don’t spend your valuable time stressing about meeting deadlines that add nothing to your business in the long run.

Not Urgent or Important

The final category of work tasks is those that are not urgent and not important. These are the ‘nice to haves”, rather than the essentials and these tasks should always be completed as a low priority. Reformatting your customer survey form to be “prettier” is one such task. If your current form is working and providing the information you need from your customers, you can only afford to spend time reformatting your form when you have nothing else of more importance to do. You certainly do not want to complete this task when you have paying customers waiting for essential projects to be finished.

Time management is an essential component of running a successful small business. Take time to look at your tasks and categorize what tasks are really your priorities. Spending time on tasks that are not important and not urgent when you have important and urgent tasks waiting is not smart.

I’ve just re-read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Amazon Affiliate link) and believe it’s just as relevant today as it was when it was first published.

You may or may not have it in writing however most of us of have a plan of the direction we want to take our business.

We’ve worked out our goals, looked at our marketing strategy, considered our competition, and worked out ways of reducing our business risks. We may hae even put down some actions in an action plan.

So, have you even looked at your plan lately?

Most small business owners find it’s very easy to get caught up in the day to day ‘busyness’ of running of a successful business. You can get so busy filling orders and providing customer service that you forget to plan for your business to grow.

Take a moment now. How is your business actually going?

Here are six reasons why you should give your business a ‘health check’ by reviewing your plan, whether it’s in a formal document or not.

1. See where you need to make changes

Reviewing your plans regularly instead just annually means that you have a chance to make changes or to correct your course if your business is going slightly off track.

2. Renew your focus

Just reading or thinking about your goals helps you to renew your focus on your business. You can see what your business strengths and weaknesses are and focus on the actions you need to take to ensure your business grows.

3. Inspire yourself with the big picture

Reviewing your plan gives you a chance to look again at the big picture. See where you are going and give yourself the inspiration to reach your destination.

4. Celebrate your achievements

It is good to take a breath away from the ‘busyness’ of the daily effort of running your business and celebrate what you’ve achieved so far.

5. Plan your actions for the coming months

Your plan has an actions to enable you to achieve your goals for the year. When you regularly review your  plan, you can clarify and define your actions coming months.

6. Stay on Track to Achieve Your BHAGs

Finally, reviewing your plans regularly helps you to stay on track to achieve your Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). Aim high and achieve your goals in your business.

Dust off your plans and refocus your energies by reviewing your plan at least every six months.  Book in a health check for your business and reap the benefits.

photo credit: cayobo

Many entrepreneurs or small business people know the value of providing excellent customer service. Most of us learn over time how to deal with issues or conflicts when they arise.

However, if you really want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need to know the art of communicating effectively with your customers and not only when the customer is unhappy and contacts the “customer service department”.

If you can get into the habit of conversing with your customers, you will discover many benefits that will help you to grow your business.

Your customers are the people who use your products and services. If you talk to the customers, you can discover what they like about the product and what they don’t like. You can gain ideas for improvements or even new products from conversations with your customers who may suggest other products that complement yours that they need.

Engaging your customers in conversation builds a rapport with them and helps them feel like an essential part of your business. This is not only offering excellent customer service, but builds customer loyalty and positively reinforces the benefits of dealing with your business.

As with any form of interpersonal communication, whether online or face or face, you need to actively listen to what your customer is saying. When you engage in conversation, you allow the customer to talk, offer opinions, and provide ideas.

Ensure you leave the conversation open, so that the customer is free to talk about an issue that is important to them.

Survey forms may elicit some useful information, but often the most important information comes from the “any other comments” section.

A great conversation with your customers is like opening an “any other comments” discussion that could go anywhere, but will give you important ideas for your business.

If you want to be successful it’s very important to develop essential skills like excellent communication and being able to build a rapport with many different types of people.

Every time you create a conversation opportunity with your customers, make sure the event is a positive experience for them.  Use the conversation to enhance the customer’s impression of your business, and to cement the relationship. A loyal, happy customer is one of the best marketing tools your business can have.

Develop the skills to engage your customers in open communication and easy conversation to build the rapport you need to build your business.

Often people working in a home-based business will communicate with their customers using online tools, but the essential elements of building rapport and engaging customers in conversation are still the keys to building successful business. Learn these skills and you will discover great benefits for your business.

How do you create conversations with your customers?

photo credit: John Althouse Cohen

“A person who can create ideas worthy of note is a person who has learned much from others” Konosuke Matsushita

As small business owners we are always looking for ways to create innovation and products that open up whole new markets or build on existing ones.

Brainstorming can be a very effective tool to use to harness the creativity of your biggest asset, you and if you have them, your employees. You can use brainstorming to:

• come up with innovative ideas for new products
• find creative solutions to problems that dog your business and to
• find ways to continuously improve efficiency by improving processes and procedures.

There is no end to the creative or innovative solutions you and your employees can come up with, if you have the tools to generate and harness ideas. And brainstorming can be a very helpful tool in idea generation.

What is Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a technique that focuses on gathering as many ideas as you can in a short space of time. If used correctly, the technique helps you bounce ideas around and to build on other’s ideas to end up with final solutions.

Brainstorming can also be used individually or in one on one sessions, as well as in small group sessions. It’s the art of focusing the mind on gathering many creative ideas, without analysis and judgement. The analysis and discussion of the ideas happen after the creative ‘storm’ has passed.

Why use Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is used by innovative small businesses for many reasons. Some of the best known advantages of using brainstorming as a technique include:

• it allows your employees to put forward their ideas in a safe place
• it allows you to gather the ideas that can really lead your business into an innovative future.
• brainstorming in a group allows people with different ideas to share, blend and expand their knowledge in ways that offer genuine solutions to real business problems.
• it can lead to increased teamwork and other benefits that are not possible from other idea generation techniques such as suggestion boxes.

If you are looking for a very effective method to use when you want to generate high quality ideas and creative, innovative solutions to your business issues, brainstorming is a technique you should add to your toolbox of creativity techniques.

Do you use brainstorming to generate ideas and to solve problems? Do you use variations of brainstorming and what are they?

photo credit: quinn.anya

“I’m not procrastinating, I’m just…..”

Sound familiar? Or am I the only person who goes into the ‘occasional’ denial about why I’m just not getting on with completing a task.

I was walking my dog the other morning at the local dog park and was chatting to a few of the regulars. I was explaining how I really must get on with a task as I needed to get it to a client in a few days. I just needed a bit more time..

There was a loud laugh and a “you’re procrastinating, just get on with it!” from one of them. To which I quickly replied “I’m not!” This was followed by more laughter and a sheepish agreement from me that it was probably true. Well not probably, it was. Sigh…

And this got me to thinking about why I was procrastinating. I actually knew deep down why I was, I just hadn’t admitted it to myself. It was because I wasn’t enjoying the work I was doing and found it an intrusion on my day.

What am I going to do to stop procrastinating? Well for one I’m going to be more mindful of the type of work that I accept and the reasons why. I’ll be asking myself:

1. is this work that I enjoy or love doing? If not, do I really want to accept it?
2. if I do accept work that’s not high on the enjoyment factor, what can I do to make it more fun for me?
3. what’s the impact if I don’t accept the work – financially and personally
4. what’s the impact if I do accept the work – personally and financially
5. am I fulfilling my expectations about work and life or others

What do you procrastinate about? And why? What are you doing to reclaim the time you lose procrastinating and delaying what you know will need to be done.

As the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw said “Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get”. Hmmm…

What other questions do you ask? What do you do to stop procrastinating?
photo credit: celesteh