It's summertime! Time to put on some sunscreen, let your hair down and get relaxed, right? Wrong! People, you need to plan what you are doing in business because everyone else has that summer mentality. Let me tell you, summer will be over before you know it. But with a little planning, you will be ready for the most productive weeks that come after summer.
Summer, Summer, Summertime…
Why does summer go so fast? I'll tell you why…because in May/beginning of June it's almost like we exhale from the school year in anticipation of all the summer fun. And the Bermuda Triangle we call July. The first week everyone basically has off or takes off mentally anyway. It's hot and our energy is zapped. August comes around with back to school. If you have school age children just be forewarned, life will not return to some normalcy until September. Summer is when we take advantage of our PTO and making memories with our families.
Be Purposeful
With everyone here and there, you'll be lucky to have a full meeting. It's a hard time of year for hiring and/or growing your team in skills and mindset. Just reserve yourself to the fact that summer is a good time to work on YOU! If you are a business owner (but also applicable to your position in your company), I would suggest for all summer production to be planned and accounted for by June 1st. We do offer a Friday Workbox® Planning Day on June 7th so it's not too late to get a plan in place if this is the first time you are considering this. This way you have peace of mind that projects will get done at work so you can get projects done at home; and this will apply to your staff, too. If you are organized in the summer, the pay off is profitability and productivity in the fall.
Don't forget the Friday Workbox®. I did a quick rundown of the colors and what you could be planning within each slash pocket. Pink is for all your ideas, personal development, and research and development. We'll focus on the pink work for Friday Workbox® Planning Day. Purple is for your projects. Projects have dollar amounts and deadlines attached to them like client work or new products that will be launching. I strongly caution you to only pick one to two projects in summer. Blue is for people such as your employees, contractors, vendors, excluding the end user or your customers. And green is for finances and your admin tasks. This is also where you would have your checklists.
The Value of a Checklist
The good ole checklist. A little tough love here, make sure you are putting tasks on it that are important and that you would not already complete on auto pilot. Checklists are what you are doing and a good indication of what could be handed off. As your company grows, you can use those checklists like job descriptions. Your checklists will point towards the position you need to hire next and what they will be doing. And as people resign, and as business changes and evolves, you will need to evaluate if that checklist still needs to be done or can some tasks be eliminated and the rest handed off to another employee/contractor. When it comes to your checklists, I want you to ask yourself two questions.
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If this checklist didn't get done, what would happen?
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If someone else does this checklist, what would I do with all the time that would move the company forward?
Now that we know work will be taken care of, join me next week as I discuss how to choose this meaty summer project you have been waiting to sink your teeth into!
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