How To Create Capacity For Rapid Growth

You are the single greatest barrier to spending your time as you want to.
 
Of course you can blame your boss, your board, your new product release, or one of a plethora of other reasons. But you are far more in control than many people realize or take advantage of.
 
You control your time, how and when you expend your energy, and you control decisions about the resources around you. 
 
I met an executive while I was launching my book in England. She shook my hand and told me she saved twenty hours a week after implementing some of the thoughtfully ruthless principles. It gave her capacity. Capacity to focus on decisions that affect the future success of the company, capacity to remove roadblocks for her team, and capacity to spend her weekends with people and activities that energized and inspired her. 
 
A number of my executive clients have recently been promoted, doubling and tripling the size of their responsibilities. They are all now creating capacity in their newly expanded roles. By following these three steps:

1. Hire your future team now. What is the size, scale, and complexity of your future business? Can your existing team lead that future business? If not, it is time to make some changes fast.

2. Ruthlessly cull your calendar. Rapid growth occurs when you have silence and space to consider the future possibilities of your business, your industry, and your life. You can’t do that when you are triple booked and in back-to-back meetings.

3. Remove roadblocks for your team. Ask your team how you can help them most effectively deliver results. The greatest gift you can give them is to get out of their way and focus your energy on making decisions and influencing what is slowing them down.

We all have choices, how are you making yours?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

How To Make Your Words Really Count

I was speaking at an Evanta CIO Summit in Denver two weeks ago and a CIO asked what was the best way to talk to a board member he is flying to see next week. He told me some of the questions he was going to ask and my response was one I say several times daily with my clients:

“Instead of saying that, try this...”

Purpose, preparation, and practice matters, these are the three Principles of Words That Just Work:

First, this executive had to understand the purpose of this conversation - I asked him “what do you want to get out of this?” Stating your intent or purpose at the start of conversations helps everyone. “I want to understand how and when you prefer to be kept informed” was the intent for this CIO. 

Next, you have to prepare, many executives run from one meeting, product launch, customer conversation to the next without taking a moment to plan what you are going to say and how you will say it. 

Finally, what this CIO got to do was practice exactly what he was going to say. This gives you a chance to not stumble, consider if your intent is clear, and to hear alternative ways of saying it. One client got to practice a conversation in preparation for a 1-1 with her divisional president. She was frustrated that the promises during her hiring for promotion were not being fulfilled as fast as she hoped. She practiced, had the conversation, and the next week was told she was doubling the size of her team. Why this mattered most was her President was going on sabbatical, had she not had the conversation, it would never have happened for at least six months. 

My favorite part of speaking is the audience conversation. It’s why I’m not on the stage. I’m in the audience with my talks. I want to hear the reactions and questions and most of them are around how to approach conversations and situations. 

After my two talks with Evanta this week, the overwhelming feedback I heard was it was powerful to take time to stop and think using approaches that can rapidly impact your business. 

Are you ready for what you really want to say and how you will say it?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

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How To Boost Your Productivity When You Leave For Vacation

If you have ever been in a store just as it is closing you will see customers frantically running around trying to grab their last minute items, which often leads to them forgetting the one vital item that they had to purchase. Don't let your last day at work be just as chaotic.

As you count down the hours left in the office before vacation, are you wandering the hallways wishing your employees season's greetings and asking them about their holiday plans, or are you locked away in your office scrambling to complete your to-do list and achieve that elusive inbox zero?

Follow these five ways to guaranteed to allow you to smoothly sail into your vacation:

1. Stop trying to achieve the impossible
While inbox zero may look visually appealing for a few seconds, does anyone really care? Decide what is time sensitive and what you have to address before you switch into holiday-mode.

2. Check for false deadlines
You may be working against a false or flexible deadline, check and renegotiate your project deadline, suggest an alternative that takes the pressure off you. Communicate your new date of delivery.

3. Be clear if it is shutdown time
When I worked for British car manufacturer Land Rover, vacations were simple, the factory shutdown, nobody worked and vacations were clearly defined. Now it is down to each company and leader to set what is expected during vacation time. Let your team know if you will be on the ski slopes out of cell phone range and who makes decisions in your absence.

4. Don't just run out of the door
Don't frantically work right up until you run out of the door. Complete an end of work ritual: wrap up your projects, send those last few emails and review your calendar for your first week back.

5. Schedule your first day back now
Instead of frantically trying to achieve everything today, plan your first day back from vacation now and schedule in your outstanding tasks to the day you return. I recommend to the leaders I work with that your last day at work before vacation is most productive if it is meeting free By being ruthless, in a thoughtful way about not booking meetings, it gives you space to wrap up your work, talk with your team and plan your return.

Schedule in now a pre-vacation meeting free days for all of your future vacations and watch how your productivity soars.

If you want to hear more productivity tips on how to accelerate the growth of your company by magically creating more time, boosting your energy, and maximizing your resources, you can learn more in my book Thoughtfully Ruthless: The Key to Exponential Growth Wiley.

This article originally appeared on my Inc Magazine Column. 

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

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