103. How to Optimize Your Team’s Performance, Productivity, and Profitability
Do you ever feel like your team members aren't being utilized to their full potential? Are you struggling to pinpoint whether or not your hires are paying off for your business? How do you create a high-performing team who love the work they’re doing, and at the same time, ensure you feel fully supported as the CEO?
Whether you have part-time or full-time team members, it's crucial to ensure that their roles and responsibilities align with your company's goals. If you want to feel confident knowing that the investment you’ve made in your team members will optimize payback for you and your design business, it’s time to consider conducting a time audit, and I walk you through this process in this episode.
Join me this week to learn how you can optimize your team’s performance to increase productivity, profitability, and overall satisfaction. You’ll hear the importance of conducting a time audit to identify gaps, redundancies, and inefficiencies in your team’s workflow. I also share a step-by-step process for gathering data, reviewing it, and implementing solutions that will create more value for your business as a whole.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why it's essential to view your team members as investments that create value for your business.
How to conduct a time audit to identify gaps, redundancies, and inefficiencies in your team's workflow.
The importance of approaching a time audit with a spirit of curiosity and collaboration.
3 steps to reviewing the data collected from conducting a time audit.
How optimizing your team's performance can improve the overall health of your interior design business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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101. Growing a Successful Design Business: Lessons from Campbell Minister
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you’re listening to episode 103. In this one we’re going to be talking about how to create a high-performing team to increase productivity and profitability so that your team has satisfaction in the work they’re doing, knowing it’s contributing to the business. And also ensure that you feel really supported as the owner that your investment that you make in hires is well worth it, whether you’ve got part-time team members, full-time team members, or a combination of the both. Let’s dive in.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad to have you here today. We are really headed into the fall season. I don’t know about you, but that means family photo season for us. That’s kind of when I like to get them done. But I tell you, I was thinking about this as I was pulling together outfits and that kind of thing. I feel like putting together the family outfits is almost this little microcosm of a design project.
As I was looking at the different fabrics, the different patterns, the colors, making sure that they all blend together when it’s the four of us. What about the different combinations of my sons in front of my husband in the photo or my daughters with my husband, or it’s three of us or four of us. And then you have to take into account everyone’s preferences.
As I shared on the episode with Campbell, I mean, everyone in my family is way particular, especially my husband. And it’s really hard to find clothes that fit him because he’s very tall. He’s lean, but he’s got broad shoulders. And he is very particular about how everything fits. So I ordered a bunch of button down shirts for him. And I’ve got different outfit options for me and the kids and we’re trying to figure it all out.
It’s fun and it’s so worth the effort, but I was kind of laughing. It’s like trying to meet everyone’s needs, making sure the end aesthetic is properly aligned with different uses and variations. And then, of course, I have this thing about how I really don’t like to purchase things that we only use or wear once. So trying to balance that as well, knowing that my kids, especially my son, definitely doesn’t want to be running around in button down shirts. So anyways, I’ll probably share our photos at some point, but you’ll know the behind the scenes.
What we’re going to be talking about today is how to better utilize your team members. And when I’m talking about this, definitely for those full-time team members that you have, this is going to be really impactful. It’s also going to be really helpful though if you have part-time team members or 1099 contractor type support. Just apply what I’m sharing to the level of buy-in and investment that these individuals have in your business.
As we start this conversation about how to optimize the support that you have in your business for everyone’s benefit, I really want to first remind you that team members and support staff are really investments. They’re not just people that you hire to be an extra set of hands. I mean, it is kind of that where they are doing things for you.
I think it’s critical to remember that when we pay our team members, we are paying them to create value in our businesses, whether that’s for you as the owner and the benefit that you receive from being supported is something along of creating mental space, but also there’s the production services that they help you create for your clients, which comes back to you in monetary value.
There’s all sorts of ways that we can think about value in the business, but what I want you to remember is that your staff members or your employees are there to help you create value. They create value for you in the business and then you use their support to create even more value in the overall ecosystem and health of the interior design business.
The other thing that I want to point out is I said, let’s optimize the team. And I definitely don’t want you to look at your team members as cogs in a machine. I struggled to figure out how I want to use that term because certainly it’s never helpful to think of your team member as somebody you need to squeeze every last little drop out of.
If you are looking at your team members that way, you’re probably kind of looking at yourself that way as well, like I need to squeeze every last little ounce of productivity out of me. And that of course leaves everyone very depleted. So of course, that’s not what I’m talking about today.
But what I am talking about is really ensuring that you’re setting your team members up so that your investment in them can optimize the payback for you and the company, which of course then is going to benefit everyone. You’re going to be able to compensate yourself appropriately as the owner.
And then you’re also ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of staff members are aligned with the company goals so that they can continue to grow and be supported by you, both as the leader who has emotional capacity and time capacity to support them, and from a financial perspective as well. Because if the business is not running efficiently and with a proper profit margin, you can’t continue to sustain those staff members. Or sometimes what I’ll see is you’re sustaining the staff members, but not sustaining you. Everyone needs to be supported in the ecosystem.
A lot of times when we bring on team members, especially at that initial start of the business or the earlier years of the business, it’s from this place of, I just need some hands. Like you need to hire someone who can do a lot of different things, very versatile. And as the business grows, as you bring on more team members, the roles become more specific. The responsibilities for that team member become very much more in support of specific needs, goals, desires, and outcomes for the future of the business. So there is that evolution of the team members.
But either way, wherever you are on that spectrum, I think we want to remember that you need to be clear on the results or outcomes the role is responsible for within the company. Even if you have someone who is just kind of like all hands on deck, you have them do a variety of tasks, we still need to make sure that their day-to-day operation is making the intended contribution to the business that you set out.
And if you didn’t have an intended contribution to the business, then now’s a great time to kind of revisit that and create some intentionality that maybe wasn’t there at the beginning. That is something that you’re always going to want to keep front and center, that you hire help in the business to help you create results and value, not just to have people hang out.
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re making an effective use of your team’s time or finding where there’s gaps, redundancies, or inefficiencies is through a time audit. That’s what we’re going to focus on today in really helping you better utilize your team members that you already have and ensure that you’re getting what you need as the business owner, and also making sure that your staff members are getting what they need too, to do a good job and feel great about how they bring their own value to the overall company and projects.
I’m often thinking about, okay, so what are my listeners, what are you all thinking when I present something in one of these episodes? And you might’ve had a big screech in your brain of like, wait a second, a time audit? No, thanks. I get it. It might not sound like the most appealing thing to do for you or your team members, but I really, really want you to stick with me.
And maybe you could even give it a fun name. Maybe you call it a deep dive or a study or a review. Whatever you call it, it is of utmost importance how you present this idea to the team, because we don’t want them to have the same reaction that you maybe just had to me. Your team needs to understand that this is a collaborative effort so that all of you can work smarter and make the business better. Something that is going to help everyone win.
This isn’t you trying to micromanage the team. It’s helping them so that when they’re doing something, it doesn’t take longer than is needed. It’s going to help them eliminate frustration due to disorganization or inefficiencies. And it’s going to help them understand how they can better contribute to the business, which is only going to help their growth, especially if they’re looking to get promoted and to grow into different roles.
We all want to feel valued and it feels good to know when your efforts are contributing to a greater outcome. And this time study, time audit, again, whatever we’re calling it, is going to help your team members understand that. And it’s going to help you understand that as well.
Truly work to approach this with a spirit of curiosity and collaboration and collaborative support so that they know you’re all on the same side and all have the same goal of making the business better.
I highly recommend that you do this audit for yourself too. This is an opportunity for you to lead by example. Plus I am sure you will come across tasks that your team could be doing for you, which is a very nice little treat, freeing up your time to do more of what you do best.
Now I’m going to get into the nitty gritty of how you do this time audit once you’re all on board with how this is going to happen. So the very first thing you need to do is get a list of every single task each team member, or you, is spending time on each week. And as I’m saying that, I should say that even if you don’t have a team member, you could do this on yourself.
You need to know what tasks are being completed and how long those tasks are taking. Honestly, this one thing in and of itself is so simple and can be so profound. If your team is already working in a project management system like ClickUp or Asana and using a time tracking software such as Harvest or Toggle, you can easily ask the team member or contractor to pull this information for you. Of course, you can pull it for yourself if you’ve got this all set up.
And, and, and, this is really important here, if you don’t already have this set up, if you don’t have the project management system or the time tracking software, you can absolutely still do this. You could just have the team member list out the tasks in a Google document along with the time spent. Again, here’s typically where I get pushback. Yes, it takes a moment to write down or record the time that something takes, but it’s really not that long.
I encourage you, if you have this piece of resistance popping up for you, just even try for the next 30 minutes of saying, oh, this is what I did. This is how long it took. It literally will take you 10 seconds.
I was coaching a client on this recently and she was resisting this idea of the time tracking because she was feeling like it was going to take too much time. And she was saying, well, I go back to all of my emails and records and all of those things at the end of the month. And then I kind of pull and guess and dah, dah, dah, dah. And she also sometimes uses a time tracking software.
So what we did was I was like, I want to see you pull up the time tracking software and just click the button and see how long that takes. Because it really doesn’t take long. The thing that takes long is trying to backpedal and make up for avoiding using those few seconds of time on the time that you’re actually doing the thing. So that’s a little tangent, but I mean, really, truly, this can be very simple and very quick.
As you’re listing out the tasks and tracking the time, whether this is you doing it yourself or your team members doing it, you can of course consider what might come up of like weekly recurring tasks, client-based work that’s billable, backend projects, unbillable admin time, all of it counts. We just want to know what’s happening during the day for a period of time. But just truly keep this simple so it actually gets done.
I recommend that you do at least a week’s worth of tracking to get yourself a solid set of data, and possibly extend this time tracking to a further duration of time depending on how much variability your team members experience in the types of tasks that they do or the cadence of activities within the business.
Once you have the list of everything that’s being done and the time it’s taking to complete those things, step number two is to review the data with neutrality and curiosity. With this review, you’re going to want to go through the data you collect and look for a few specific items and keep a few things in mind. And of course, you can always come back to this episode after you’ve collected the data to re-listen to some of these things that I want you to be looking at during the review.
So, often, let me just say from personal experience, you’re going to see this collection of data that we’re just looking at neutrally, and you’re going to go, “Seriously, it took that long?” There’s going to be some surprise for some of these things. Now that’s okay, and that’s where we have to go back to neutrality and curiosity.
One of the first questions you can ask as you’re looking through whatever information you receive is this, is what they are doing something you asked them to do or something that is included in their role?
Sometimes team members will go off and do things that they think are really helpful, or they decide to create some kind of system. And sometimes that is amazing. You’re like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I didn’t know I needed that. Please go do more of that. And it’s great. But sometimes we’re like, why are you doing that? Why did you think you should do that? Okay, going back to neutrality.
So if that’s the case, if you’re like, “Why is this happening?” We stay in that curiosity. The why we ask is not accusatory, of course. And this starts in just your own review. You don’t walk over to their desk and be like, “Why are you doing this?” Get curious first for yourself so you’re not bringing that emotion into the conversation.
But if they are doing something that you didn’t ask them to do that’s really not included in the role and you really don’t understand why it’s happening, ask why. Think through what they might have been thinking. Why are they doing that thing? Is it because maybe I gave unclear instructions? Is it because they’re not clear what they’re supposed to be doing during the day? Kind of try and see where they’re coming from before you dive into it with them. You will probably need to ask, but we just want to make sure we’re asking in a really kind way so that we don’t put them on the defense.
The second question I want you to be asking yourself is, are the tasks being completed related to a desired result in the business? Can you see a correlation between the task and the result? Meaning is someone taking time to do something on a regular basis that you thought would contribute to some result you’re creating in the business, and is it hitting the mark or is it not hitting the mark?
There might be entire tasks that someone is doing within their role that you could eliminate. And if you’re not getting the desired result from the action they’re taking, and you don’t want to eliminate the desire for that result, then you can look at adjusting or experimenting with the approach that they are taking.
You’re going to use a process of curious evaluation to decide how they move forward so they don’t just keep doing the same thing over and over expecting something different to happen. Or perhaps not even being clear on why they’re doing the thing and what is supposed to happen from their doing.
The third thing you’ll do in looking at this data is compare what you think the amount of time spent should be versus the actual time spent recorded by the staff member. This is a really, really interesting thing to look at. There are going to be times when the gaps between your expectation and the reality of what they’ve recorded, it’s going to be much larger than you expected.
So there are some things that I want you to consider here because there can be a variety of things going on. So the first thing is, do you have the knowledge or experience to genuinely understand the time certain things take? Or are you just not aware of the nuances and steps required and your assumptions of what it should take is the thing that’s creating the gap?
This has definitely happened to me with some of the technology pieces of my business where I go to myself like, this should take like two seconds. And then my assistant kindly informs me that, oh no, there’s multiple steps involved and that’s why it takes this long. So sometimes we just need a little bit more information and it all makes sense.
The other thing here that can show up is our own time distortions can be then placed upon whoever is doing the work for us. Meaning if you’re in the habit of underestimating how long something should take for yourself, or you have kind of that hopeful planning habit of knowing something really is going to take three hours, but you put it on your calendar for an hour because you’re like, I hope maybe this will work. It looks good on paper. And then you layer that mindset onto your team members. So that can cause a gap and a lot of frustration when you’re looking at this data. So check out if one of those things is present.
And then the other piece of this is for the tasks and outcomes that you highly value in the business, how could you and the team work together to reduce time and eliminate any bloat or gaps that you’re finding? This is essentially using what you find in that study to help you understand, do we need to create a system around something? Does there need to be an organizational process that happens? Do we need to adjust a communication workflow? Or maybe it’s providing education and support around focused work habits.
After you’ve gone through the data that’s been produced with this time study, we want to decide then how you want to proceed. This is going to include having conversations with your team or contractors, getting their input on what was discovered through their own study.
I think a great question you can ask is what surprised you about this? What did you notice? Were there any themes that emerged as you were tracking your own time to help them really build that skill of self-awareness, which is also going to help you in creating a better team member. So you might need to adjust their roles if needed.
And you’re also going to need to decide how you’re going to take whatever it is that you’ve learned to improve your own use of time in the business. This is part of the planning process. What do we do now that we have this information? Where do we go from here?
This might be more regular check-ins with your team members on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and the time it takes so you can solve for challenges more quickly. It could be that you implement a new filtering process for taking on or assigning tasks. It could be having dedicated focus hours in the office where you all work for a block of time without interruptions.
There’s so many possibilities and this exploration of time and what you learn from it will then ultimately help you understand what those next steps should be for your unique business.
One thing I really want to call out here because as the owner, after you do this, you might have this sense of overwhelm of, oh my gosh, there’s so much we could do. Where do I start? I have to do this all, right? But you don’t have to do this all on your own. The creating of solutions and adjusting the team’s approach to tasks and workflows and time, that does not need to sit on your shoulders alone. You can absolutely ask for help.
Now, that could be a whole nother episode in and of itself. Today we really covered a lot of strategy, but then there’s also the mindset and emotional work of being open to asking for help. And then, of course, being open and receptive to receiving support. I get that that can be a challenge as well for a lot of us, right? You are used to being in the driver’s seat, go, go, go, type A, high achiever.
It can be hard for us to ask for help and receive support, but it’s very, very essential and I’ll have to do another podcast on that at some point. But also know that your team really wants to help you. They want the business to succeed. Remember, going back to that piece, we're all on the same side, we all want the same outcome. That’s the best thing for everybody.
You can also, of course, hire someone like myself to support you through this, both in the strategy and the mindset. I really do encourage you to ask your team to present solutions that they come up with as a result of this time audit. And then you can work together to really refine the plan and how the plan is going to be executed because the plan doesn’t need to be executed all at once. There will be some prioritization of where we are going to get the most bang for our buck and deciding how you want to proceed from there.
The other thing I want to point out as we wrap this up is I do know that this process of studying time can feel a little confronting and kind of vulnerable. I mean, it requires you to look at your own habits and some of them you’re probably going to say, oh, I wish that was not a habit. I should be doing better.
And it also is probably going to require you to have some tough conversations with your team. Again, that open communication, honesty, vulnerability, that is a skill that you develop as a leader. And those tough conversations also might be with yourself as well. And that’s where it can be really, really helpful to have someone like myself in your corner to support you as you work through that.
Although these time studies can be very, very eye opening and something that you might initially want to avoid, the return on your investment in looking at this wide-eyed will pay you back in time, energy, and money, I guarantee it.
At the end of this, you are going to be able to understand what is happening in the business and the impact created by those that you hire. And that’s going to allow you to be better able to optimize the results you’re getting from the investment that you already are making, which is then going to improve the overall health of the business.
With the team members you have that are high performers and that are dedicated to supporting you as the CEO, even if the conversation feels hard to have, it will bring you closer and deepen your relationships if you approach this process with that collaborative curiosity that I mentioned at the start of the episode.
This is probably one you’re going to want to go back to and listen to again as you decide how you’re going to implement this for yourself, for your team members, how you want to present it and how you want to structure it for yourself. And again, if you want an outside neutral perspective, I’m also here to guide and support you.
If you are looking for a high-touch, intimate, and really holistic approach to being supported in your business, I highly recommend that you get on the waitlist for one-on-one coaching so that way you’re the first to know when spots become available so that we have the opportunity to connect and I can get to know you better and help you know if moving forward with private coaching is the best fit for you.
That is what I have for you today. I know it was a meaty topic. I really encourage you though, to take this one and not leave it as a, “that sounds like something I should do” kind of topic and actually do it. You’re not going to regret it, I promise. I’ll of course be back next week with a brand new episode. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
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Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad to have you here today. We are really headed into the fall season. I don’t know about you, but that means family photo season for us. That’s kind of when I like to get them done. But I tell you, I was thinking about this as I was pulling together outfits and that kind of thing. I feel like putting together the family outfits is almost this little microcosm of a design project.
As I was looking at the different fabrics, the different patterns, the colors, making sure that they all blend together when it’s the four of us. What about the different combinations of my sons in front of my husband in the photo or my daughters with my husband, or it’s three of us or four of us. And then you have to take into account everyone’s preferences.
As I shared on the episode with Campbell, I mean, everyone in my family is way particular, especially my husband. And it’s really hard to find clothes that fit him because he’s very tall. He’s lean, but he’s got broad shoulders. And he is very particular about how everything fits. So I ordered a bunch of button down shirts for him. And I’ve got different outfit options for me and the kids and we’re trying to figure it all out.
It’s fun and it’s so worth the effort, but I was kind of laughing. It’s like trying to meet everyone’s needs, making sure the end aesthetic is properly aligned with different uses and variations. And then, of course, I have this thing about how I really don’t like to purchase things that we only use or wear once. So trying to balance that as well, knowing that my kids, especially my son, definitely doesn’t want to be running around in button down shirts. So anyways, I’ll probably share our photos at some point, but you’ll know the behind the scenes.
What we’re going to be talking about today is how to better utilize your team members. And when I’m talking about this, definitely for those full-time team members that you have, this is going to be really impactful. It’s also going to be really helpful though if you have part-time team members or 1099 contractor type support. Just apply what I’m sharing to the level of buy-in and investment that these individuals have in your business.
As we start this conversation about how to optimize the support that you have in your business for everyone’s benefit, I really want to first remind you that team members and support staff are really investments. They’re not just people that you hire to be an extra set of hands. I mean, it is kind of that where they are doing things for you.
I think it’s critical to remember that when we pay our team members, we are paying them to create value in our businesses, whether that’s for you as the owner and the benefit that you receive from being supported is something along of creating mental space, but also there’s the production services that they help you create for your clients, which comes back to you in monetary value.
There’s all sorts of ways that we can think about value in the business, but what I want you to remember is that your staff members or your employees are there to help you create value. They create value for you in the business and then you use their support to create even more value in the overall ecosystem and health of the interior design business.
The other thing that I want to point out is I said, let’s optimize the team. And I definitely don’t want you to look at your team members as cogs in a machine. I struggled to figure out how I want to use that term because certainly it’s never helpful to think of your team member as somebody you need to squeeze every last little drop out of.
If you are looking at your team members that way, you’re probably kind of looking at yourself that way as well, like I need to squeeze every last little ounce of productivity out of me. And that of course leaves everyone very depleted. So of course, that’s not what I’m talking about today.
But what I am talking about is really ensuring that you’re setting your team members up so that your investment in them can optimize the payback for you and the company, which of course then is going to benefit everyone. You’re going to be able to compensate yourself appropriately as the owner.
And then you’re also ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of staff members are aligned with the company goals so that they can continue to grow and be supported by you, both as the leader who has emotional capacity and time capacity to support them, and from a financial perspective as well. Because if the business is not running efficiently and with a proper profit margin, you can’t continue to sustain those staff members. Or sometimes what I’ll see is you’re sustaining the staff members, but not sustaining you. Everyone needs to be supported in the ecosystem.
A lot of times when we bring on team members, especially at that initial start of the business or the earlier years of the business, it’s from this place of, I just need some hands. Like you need to hire someone who can do a lot of different things, very versatile. And as the business grows, as you bring on more team members, the roles become more specific. The responsibilities for that team member become very much more in support of specific needs, goals, desires, and outcomes for the future of the business. So there is that evolution of the team members.
But either way, wherever you are on that spectrum, I think we want to remember that you need to be clear on the results or outcomes the role is responsible for within the company. Even if you have someone who is just kind of like all hands on deck, you have them do a variety of tasks, we still need to make sure that their day-to-day operation is making the intended contribution to the business that you set out.
And if you didn’t have an intended contribution to the business, then now’s a great time to kind of revisit that and create some intentionality that maybe wasn’t there at the beginning. That is something that you’re always going to want to keep front and center, that you hire help in the business to help you create results and value, not just to have people hang out.
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re making an effective use of your team’s time or finding where there’s gaps, redundancies, or inefficiencies is through a time audit. That’s what we’re going to focus on today in really helping you better utilize your team members that you already have and ensure that you’re getting what you need as the business owner, and also making sure that your staff members are getting what they need too, to do a good job and feel great about how they bring their own value to the overall company and projects.
I’m often thinking about, okay, so what are my listeners, what are you all thinking when I present something in one of these episodes? And you might’ve had a big screech in your brain of like, wait a second, a time audit? No, thanks. I get it. It might not sound like the most appealing thing to do for you or your team members, but I really, really want you to stick with me.
And maybe you could even give it a fun name. Maybe you call it a deep dive or a study or a review. Whatever you call it, it is of utmost importance how you present this idea to the team, because we don’t want them to have the same reaction that you maybe just had to me. Your team needs to understand that this is a collaborative effort so that all of you can work smarter and make the business better. Something that is going to help everyone win.
This isn’t you trying to micromanage the team. It’s helping them so that when they’re doing something, it doesn’t take longer than is needed. It’s going to help them eliminate frustration due to disorganization or inefficiencies. And it’s going to help them understand how they can better contribute to the business, which is only going to help their growth, especially if they’re looking to get promoted and to grow into different roles.
We all want to feel valued and it feels good to know when your efforts are contributing to a greater outcome. And this time study, time audit, again, whatever we’re calling it, is going to help your team members understand that. And it’s going to help you understand that as well.
Truly work to approach this with a spirit of curiosity and collaboration and collaborative support so that they know you’re all on the same side and all have the same goal of making the business better.
I highly recommend that you do this audit for yourself too. This is an opportunity for you to lead by example. Plus I am sure you will come across tasks that your team could be doing for you, which is a very nice little treat, freeing up your time to do more of what you do best.
Now I’m going to get into the nitty gritty of how you do this time audit once you’re all on board with how this is going to happen. So the very first thing you need to do is get a list of every single task each team member, or you, is spending time on each week. And as I’m saying that, I should say that even if you don’t have a team member, you could do this on yourself.
You need to know what tasks are being completed and how long those tasks are taking. Honestly, this one thing in and of itself is so simple and can be so profound. If your team is already working in a project management system like ClickUp or Asana and using a time tracking software such as Harvest or Toggle, you can easily ask the team member or contractor to pull this information for you. Of course, you can pull it for yourself if you’ve got this all set up.
And, and, and, this is really important here, if you don’t already have this set up, if you don’t have the project management system or the time tracking software, you can absolutely still do this. You could just have the team member list out the tasks in a Google document along with the time spent. Again, here’s typically where I get pushback. Yes, it takes a moment to write down or record the time that something takes, but it’s really not that long.
I encourage you, if you have this piece of resistance popping up for you, just even try for the next 30 minutes of saying, oh, this is what I did. This is how long it took. It literally will take you 10 seconds.
I was coaching a client on this recently and she was resisting this idea of the time tracking because she was feeling like it was going to take too much time. And she was saying, well, I go back to all of my emails and records and all of those things at the end of the month. And then I kind of pull and guess and dah, dah, dah, dah. And she also sometimes uses a time tracking software.
So what we did was I was like, I want to see you pull up the time tracking software and just click the button and see how long that takes. Because it really doesn’t take long. The thing that takes long is trying to backpedal and make up for avoiding using those few seconds of time on the time that you’re actually doing the thing. So that’s a little tangent, but I mean, really, truly, this can be very simple and very quick.
As you’re listing out the tasks and tracking the time, whether this is you doing it yourself or your team members doing it, you can of course consider what might come up of like weekly recurring tasks, client-based work that’s billable, backend projects, unbillable admin time, all of it counts. We just want to know what’s happening during the day for a period of time. But just truly keep this simple so it actually gets done.
I recommend that you do at least a week’s worth of tracking to get yourself a solid set of data, and possibly extend this time tracking to a further duration of time depending on how much variability your team members experience in the types of tasks that they do or the cadence of activities within the business.
Once you have the list of everything that’s being done and the time it’s taking to complete those things, step number two is to review the data with neutrality and curiosity. With this review, you’re going to want to go through the data you collect and look for a few specific items and keep a few things in mind. And of course, you can always come back to this episode after you’ve collected the data to re-listen to some of these things that I want you to be looking at during the review.
So, often, let me just say from personal experience, you’re going to see this collection of data that we’re just looking at neutrally, and you’re going to go, “Seriously, it took that long?” There’s going to be some surprise for some of these things. Now that’s okay, and that’s where we have to go back to neutrality and curiosity.
One of the first questions you can ask as you’re looking through whatever information you receive is this, is what they are doing something you asked them to do or something that is included in their role?
Sometimes team members will go off and do things that they think are really helpful, or they decide to create some kind of system. And sometimes that is amazing. You’re like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I didn’t know I needed that. Please go do more of that. And it’s great. But sometimes we’re like, why are you doing that? Why did you think you should do that? Okay, going back to neutrality.
So if that’s the case, if you’re like, “Why is this happening?” We stay in that curiosity. The why we ask is not accusatory, of course. And this starts in just your own review. You don’t walk over to their desk and be like, “Why are you doing this?” Get curious first for yourself so you’re not bringing that emotion into the conversation.
But if they are doing something that you didn’t ask them to do that’s really not included in the role and you really don’t understand why it’s happening, ask why. Think through what they might have been thinking. Why are they doing that thing? Is it because maybe I gave unclear instructions? Is it because they’re not clear what they’re supposed to be doing during the day? Kind of try and see where they’re coming from before you dive into it with them. You will probably need to ask, but we just want to make sure we’re asking in a really kind way so that we don’t put them on the defense.
The second question I want you to be asking yourself is, are the tasks being completed related to a desired result in the business? Can you see a correlation between the task and the result? Meaning is someone taking time to do something on a regular basis that you thought would contribute to some result you’re creating in the business, and is it hitting the mark or is it not hitting the mark?
There might be entire tasks that someone is doing within their role that you could eliminate. And if you’re not getting the desired result from the action they’re taking, and you don’t want to eliminate the desire for that result, then you can look at adjusting or experimenting with the approach that they are taking.
You’re going to use a process of curious evaluation to decide how they move forward so they don’t just keep doing the same thing over and over expecting something different to happen. Or perhaps not even being clear on why they’re doing the thing and what is supposed to happen from their doing.
The third thing you’ll do in looking at this data is compare what you think the amount of time spent should be versus the actual time spent recorded by the staff member. This is a really, really interesting thing to look at. There are going to be times when the gaps between your expectation and the reality of what they’ve recorded, it’s going to be much larger than you expected.
So there are some things that I want you to consider here because there can be a variety of things going on. So the first thing is, do you have the knowledge or experience to genuinely understand the time certain things take? Or are you just not aware of the nuances and steps required and your assumptions of what it should take is the thing that’s creating the gap?
This has definitely happened to me with some of the technology pieces of my business where I go to myself like, this should take like two seconds. And then my assistant kindly informs me that, oh no, there’s multiple steps involved and that’s why it takes this long. So sometimes we just need a little bit more information and it all makes sense.
The other thing here that can show up is our own time distortions can be then placed upon whoever is doing the work for us. Meaning if you’re in the habit of underestimating how long something should take for yourself, or you have kind of that hopeful planning habit of knowing something really is going to take three hours, but you put it on your calendar for an hour because you’re like, I hope maybe this will work. It looks good on paper. And then you layer that mindset onto your team members. So that can cause a gap and a lot of frustration when you’re looking at this data. So check out if one of those things is present.
And then the other piece of this is for the tasks and outcomes that you highly value in the business, how could you and the team work together to reduce time and eliminate any bloat or gaps that you’re finding? This is essentially using what you find in that study to help you understand, do we need to create a system around something? Does there need to be an organizational process that happens? Do we need to adjust a communication workflow? Or maybe it’s providing education and support around focused work habits.
After you’ve gone through the data that’s been produced with this time study, we want to decide then how you want to proceed. This is going to include having conversations with your team or contractors, getting their input on what was discovered through their own study.
I think a great question you can ask is what surprised you about this? What did you notice? Were there any themes that emerged as you were tracking your own time to help them really build that skill of self-awareness, which is also going to help you in creating a better team member. So you might need to adjust their roles if needed.
And you’re also going to need to decide how you’re going to take whatever it is that you’ve learned to improve your own use of time in the business. This is part of the planning process. What do we do now that we have this information? Where do we go from here?
This might be more regular check-ins with your team members on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and the time it takes so you can solve for challenges more quickly. It could be that you implement a new filtering process for taking on or assigning tasks. It could be having dedicated focus hours in the office where you all work for a block of time without interruptions.
There’s so many possibilities and this exploration of time and what you learn from it will then ultimately help you understand what those next steps should be for your unique business.
One thing I really want to call out here because as the owner, after you do this, you might have this sense of overwhelm of, oh my gosh, there’s so much we could do. Where do I start? I have to do this all, right? But you don’t have to do this all on your own. The creating of solutions and adjusting the team’s approach to tasks and workflows and time, that does not need to sit on your shoulders alone. You can absolutely ask for help.
Now, that could be a whole nother episode in and of itself. Today we really covered a lot of strategy, but then there’s also the mindset and emotional work of being open to asking for help. And then, of course, being open and receptive to receiving support. I get that that can be a challenge as well for a lot of us, right? You are used to being in the driver’s seat, go, go, go, type A, high achiever.
It can be hard for us to ask for help and receive support, but it’s very, very essential and I’ll have to do another podcast on that at some point. But also know that your team really wants to help you. They want the business to succeed. Remember, going back to that piece, we're all on the same side, we all want the same outcome. That’s the best thing for everybody.
You can also, of course, hire someone like myself to support you through this, both in the strategy and the mindset. I really do encourage you to ask your team to present solutions that they come up with as a result of this time audit. And then you can work together to really refine the plan and how the plan is going to be executed because the plan doesn’t need to be executed all at once. There will be some prioritization of where we are going to get the most bang for our buck and deciding how you want to proceed from there.
The other thing I want to point out as we wrap this up is I do know that this process of studying time can feel a little confronting and kind of vulnerable. I mean, it requires you to look at your own habits and some of them you’re probably going to say, oh, I wish that was not a habit. I should be doing better.
And it also is probably going to require you to have some tough conversations with your team. Again, that open communication, honesty, vulnerability, that is a skill that you develop as a leader. And those tough conversations also might be with yourself as well. And that’s where it can be really, really helpful to have someone like myself in your corner to support you as you work through that.
Although these time studies can be very, very eye opening and something that you might initially want to avoid, the return on your investment in looking at this wide-eyed will pay you back in time, energy, and money, I guarantee it.
At the end of this, you are going to be able to understand what is happening in the business and the impact created by those that you hire. And that’s going to allow you to be better able to optimize the results you’re getting from the investment that you already are making, which is then going to improve the overall health of the business.
With the team members you have that are high performers and that are dedicated to supporting you as the CEO, even if the conversation feels hard to have, it will bring you closer and deepen your relationships if you approach this process with that collaborative curiosity that I mentioned at the start of the episode.
This is probably one you’re going to want to go back to and listen to again as you decide how you’re going to implement this for yourself, for your team members, how you want to present it and how you want to structure it for yourself. And again, if you want an outside neutral perspective, I’m also here to guide and support you.
If you are looking for a high-touch, intimate, and really holistic approach to being supported in your business, I highly recommend that you get on the waitlist for one-on-one coaching so that way you’re the first to know when spots become available so that we have the opportunity to connect and I can get to know you better and help you know if moving forward with private coaching is the best fit for you.
That is what I have for you today. I know it was a meaty topic. I really encourage you though, to take this one and not leave it as a, “that sounds like something I should do” kind of topic and actually do it. You’re not going to regret it, I promise. I’ll of course be back next week with a brand new episode. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week.
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