If You Want To Get Bigger -- Think Smaller
Stephanie Denton is president of Denton and Company. She's also a professional organizer. Did you know there were such people? I didn't until I met Stephanie. Truth is, it's a relatively new discipline. Stephanie has joined me on the show many times to try to help me get more organized (a daunting task), and help my audience in the process. One of the most important areas Stephanie focuses on is time.Ever think about time as a commodity? A commodity is typically something that is in common use, virtually the same wherever you find it, and readily available. Time fits that definition, right? But here's how time differs from all other commodities: We have learned how to synthesize, or have developed substitutes, for most of the commodities of our lives. Until someone develops a time machine (I want to take the first ride), time will be unique among commodities, and our most valuable one. This is so completely intuitive that you are probably asking yourself why I'm dwelling on it. Well, simply because there is no other commodity that we waste more of; as if it were worth nothing, which is completely counter-intuitive.
What's the solution? Stephanie says it's organization. Organization is the nexus between our productivity and the time that we have.
We commit so much of our resources acquiring information, capability, brain power, etc., with the intention of making something happen: A bid, a project, an experiment, whatever. And typically, that "something" needs to happen within a predetermined period of time. Whether it does or doesn't happen as planned will usually depend more on how organized we are rather than how capable we are, or how good our information is.
If I came to your office and told you I was going to throw your new $2000 computer in the dumpster you would have me arrested. But how often do you lose three days of productivity because you are unorganized, resulting in an unsuccessful bid, loss of a contract, or an opportunity. How much did that cost? Probably a lot more than $2000. Now who should be arrested?
Don't get me wrong. In the justice system of the marketplace I've been accused, arrested, tried, and convicted of being unorganized. What does your record look like? Well, I'm going to cut us a little slack. It's not easy to be organized when you've got 1 person doing the work of 4, or 3 doing the work of 6, or 25 doing the work of 40. Such ratios are one of the markers of a small business; more with less.
Stephanie has a solution for us. She says one of the ways we waste time is not recognizing that large projects are really an assembly of many little projects. To get organized we should break down our larger projects into "bite size" pieces and knock them out one at a time. Looking at a large uncompleted project is intimidating, and actually can create the dread disease of small business, procrastination. What an ugly word. In the world of small business, you don't have large blocks of time you can set aside to tackle a big project. But you do have little pieces of time that can be used to polish off small jobs. Just recognizing this fact is a major step toward getting organized.
Here's a challenge: contemplate a large project as simply the name of a goal. Don't think of it as work. Then see how many small pieces you can split that project into. Some so small that you can literally do one while you are on hold on the phone.
Write this on a rock... In small business, if you don't learn how to work in little increments you probably won't make it. And the more successful you become, the more this skill becomes essential, regardless of how many people and how many resources you have available. If you want to get bigger, think smaller. Now go bust up a project and kick some assets.
