There are several things that you can do every day to simplify
your business and your personal life. Any one of these actions
can reduce the number of steps and increase the likelihood
that you will achieve your goal faster and more cheaply than
you might have thought possible.
- Focus.
The more time you take to develop absolute clarity
about what you want and the very best way to achieve it,
the faster and more easily you will accomplish that goal. Success
is almost always the result of complete clarity.
Failure is almost always the result of fuzziness and confusion.
There is a 90/10 rule that you can apply to improve your
focus.
This rule says that the first 10 percent of time that you
take to think through the task or goal will save you 90 percent
of the time and effort required to complete that task or accomplish
that goal. Resolve to invest the necessary time in advance
of beginning. This will save you an enormous amount of time
repairing or redoing the task later.
- Improve:
Get better at your key tasks. The more knowledgeable
and skilled you are at what you are doing, the faster
and more easily you will get the job done. Hiring a skilled pro-
The Principle of Simplicity—Take the Direct Approach
fessional with years of experience at a particular job can be one
of the smartest and cheapest things you do. Many companies
have dramatically improved their results by adding one key person
to their staff.
In your work life, identify the one task that, if you were to
do it extremely well, would contribute the most to the quality
and quantity of your results. Make the development of this skill
a project or a goal. Write it down, make a plan, and work on
getting a little better in that key area every single day. This decision
alone can change your life.
- Delegate
When you start off in your career, or when
you start a new business, you have to do everything yourself. If
you are not careful, you will develop the habit of doing things
yourself. One of the main reasons for failure in a new job is the
tendency to continue doing what you were doing before you
were promoted.
These tasks and activities keep you in your comfort zone.
Under the pressure of deadlines or when you have too much
to do and too little time, you naturally fall back into your comfort
zone and get busy doing the job yourself, rather than delegating
it to others. This can really complicate your life.
However, delegation moves you from operating to managing.
It takes you from what you can do personally to what you
can control in the activities of others. Delegation is a key result
area in management. It is an absolutely essential skill if you want
to both reduce the complexity of your work and get more done
at the same time.
Instead of thinking about how you can get the job done
personally, think continually about how you can delegate it to
someone else.
Make a habit of delegating everything you possibly can so
that you can free up your time to do the few things that only
you can do that can make a real difference to your company.
- Outsource:
Outsource every job and function in your
business that can be done by another company that specializes
in that area. Many companies outsource their payroll, their
personnel, and their human resources administration. They
outsource their hiring, their health care, their office maintenance,
printing, mailing, advertising, and even travel.
If a particular department or function does not add sales,
cash flow, or profits to your business, it is a perfect candidate for
outsourcing. Another company that specializes in a particular service
or activity can usually perform that function faster, better,
and cheaper than you can while saving you the time and expense
of doing it yourself.
- Eliminate:
In your home, you have cupboards full of
things that you have accumulated over the years. For many reasons,
many people develop a “pack rat” mentality. No matter
how old or useless an item may be, they hold onto it “just in
case.”
In every business, there is an accumulation of tasks and
activities that have gathered over the years. Many of them have
no more value or use today. But they continue to take up time
and space and cause expense. You must continually ask yourself,
“What are they?” and “Why are we doing this?”
A new vice president of finance was hired into the accounting
department of a Fortune 500 company. As he familiarized
himself with the operations, he was introduced to a department
with twelve full-time, highly paid employees. Their job
was to assemble the worldwide sales results of the business?