⏱ Time-Tested Efficiency Hacks ⏳

Organizational efficiency, regardless of the size your organization is, absolutely critical. And in fact, it's the stumbling point for so many business owners. They are plate spinning. We're going to fix it today using a model called AC/DC, nothing to do with the band. I would argue it is just as awesome as the band. And I think you're going to find a way to approach efficiency and addressing efficiency in your business that isn't what you typically do. So let's restate the problem. The problem is business owners often get overwhelmed. We do the work, particularly in the early stages of the business, because we have to. There there is no alternative source. And then over time, very quickly, we start to bring on more resources to get the work done, but only we have the expertise that are necessary. Therefore, we run from element to element of our business and becomes this plate spinning. There are sometimes these momentary breakthroughs, and that's actually part of the problem. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you come in one day and things are clicking, you feel you finally made a breakthrough, and you return the next day and it's a total disaster again. Those momentary breakthroughs are more just anomalies. It's not that systemic systemization. Is that redundant saying that? I remember myself going through a period of 5 days where I didn't see the light. I was coming to the office before the sun would rise. I was working till after it would set, deep into the evening, pushing the business through. And the manifestation was workaholism. I thought that was a badge of honor, and honestly, it should be a badge of shame. It is the antithesis of building an efficient, self-sustaining operation. Workaholism is an addiction. And therefore, if you have a sense that workaholism's good, if you are working relentlessly for your business 7 days a week, if the business is fully dependent upon you, you are the antithesis of efficiency and you're setting your business up for big problems and it's not sustainable. And I, I don't even think it's healthy for us. Let's talk about the common approach. The common approach is to address whatever is in front of you right now. We prioritize what we see. And for folks that have that quick start approach to business, That's actually who I am. I can get very enthusiastic about an idea about addressing a problem. In fact, yesterday I was very frustrated about email and thought that I could start automating process to resolve this. I started digging into AI tools that could do it. I was looking at scripts and saying, oh, maybe I can start learning JavaScript. I used to program back in the day and then I caught myself after an hour saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not bringing the right resources. I'm inappropriately using my time. I'm actually harming my business in this process. I'm gonna give you tools that I used yesterday and regularly use, but have the propensity, apparently, clearly, to skip. Now, why do we prioritize what we see? Well, there's a few things. First, there's what's called a present bias. And present bias is we put a bias or significance in something that's immediately in front of us. Often, like I said, with a quick start, it's easy to get enthusiastic about it. There's also this concept called cognitive load theory. And what it is, is that our mind can only handle so much at a given time. We only have so much available memory and capacity at any given moment. So to reduce the cognitive load, we pay attention to what's in front of us now. The last element I wanna talk about is hyperbolic discounting. This is human nature. We put more significance in what's immediately in front of us if it offers a small reward, even though we may logically know of something in the future that can offer a much bigger reward, but it's delayed gratification. So we'll put this emphasis on the immediate now. So hyperbolic discounting keeps us going into these immediate quick things, often start things very quickly and then abandon early on. That's common with many entrepreneurs. So what's the solution for this? I want to introduce you to a theory called the theory of constraints. This was produced or documented by Eliyahu Goldratt. There's a book called The Goal. If you've not read it, please read this book. Now you may have hesitancy because it was written for a manufacturing business, and you may say, I'm not a manufacturer. Let me dispel this right now. Every single business is a manufacturer. I don't care what you create, but you're creating something. So if it's a physical product or physical item, that's traditional manufacturing. But if you are manufacturing or creating a report, you are going through a sequence of events to get that final output. You actually follow manufacturing principles. There's raw input, raw materials, maybe questions, demands, surveys, whatever. You go through a sequence of events to take that and produce a final product. That's what all manufacturers do. In the end summary, we're all manufacturers. We all go through a flow. Once you realize this, then it opens up this concept of the theory of constraints. So quick history lesson in this. This was written or studied by Eli Goldratt, and he documents it in his book. And what he explained is that we go through a sequence of steps in the manufacturing process. And at a certain point, there will be inventory piles where inventory is moving along, the product is being created, and it's waiting for the next step to happen. Wherever you see inventory piles is where you want to clean up the efficiency, or open up that bottleneck is probably a better explanation. And now those items will flow through much faster because that bottleneck's open, and the next bottleneck will present itself. At any given time, There can only be one biggest bottleneck, and that's when you look for your time pile. But let's just say you go through a sequence of steps, and here is inventory that's going through. It then goes to this next step, and when it gets to this next step, it gets forwarded on to step 3. So there's raw inventory, so forth. If right here there's stuff piling up, this step will be void of anything, and this step maybe sending stuff through and just keeps on causing the pile to get bigger. But the second I fix this bottleneck, I make this bigger, this process. Now we'll see that maybe stuff is piling up here in step 3 because now stuff can go through very quickly. Or perhaps the bottleneck jumps before that. This system is always waiting for inventory to get through here to through step 2. So once you clear up a bottleneck, it bumps us to the next bottleneck, if you will, or the next spot we need to look at? Well, in every business we have what's called an AC/DC, and that's why I referenced that term early on. It stands for the 4 distinct elements, and it's not always in the same sequence that business goes through. A stands for attract. This is attracting prospects and customers. So this includes marketing and so forth. C stands for convert. This is where we convert prospect into an active paying client. D is the deliverable. This is kind of explaining a deliverable perhaps. As a final step, we have collections, and that's the collection of money. Now, I am not saying that we always go through the AC/DC in that order. You may actually deliver a product before you even attract a prospect or at least convert them to a customer. You may be a DACC or an ADCC. This is when you do spec work. So you want some logos designed, you go on 99designs or something like that, and all these people spec out there are designs for your logo and you pick the one you want. So they're actually delivering the product before they convert you to a customer. Collections, you know, that could come first. You probably could attract, collect, convert. So ACCD, where you have prospects, you say before we get started you must put down deposit, then they put down deposit, interview them, they become a customer or not, fund it or not. But in that process you're collecting earlier. So the letters are what matter. That sequence isn't always the same thing. What we're going to look for is time piles. These are the elements of what I call the one step back method. To find where your time piles are, write down your final product. So for me, it's a published book on entrepreneurship, but prior to publishing a book, what happens immediately prior to that? Well, immediately prior to that is the printing. My publisher handles that of inventory. The print book, they get ready for Kindle and so forth. What happens prior to that? There is the final pass manuscript that my publishing team and I will work on. Prior to that, there will be prior scripts, maybe we'll say a draft manuscript, and then there could be substantive editing and so forth. And prior to this is concept and theory. Prior to this is initial inquiry and demand for a subject. So then what I do is now by reverse engineering this, by going one step back at a time, You'll have clarity on your process. So I invite you to do this, especially for small businesses, hard to identify all the steps we go through. Ask yourself, what's the final step and what is the immediate prior major step? I don't want you to go too narrow here, but the, what's the immediate prior major step? And go back 6 or 12 or whatever it is, but go back quite a few steps. We have all the major ones. Then as you go back, then review, 'cause now you have the sequence from inquiry to concept and so forth. Where time piles are. And for me, maybe a lot of stuff piles up in the draft manuscript stage. Well, this means I'm getting tons of ideas, which is the reality. Tons of stuff is getting stored away here, but getting the manuscript out, and then these all have to wait for the inventory. So the question is, how do I do this? And now I can address it by asking, do I need to get, uh, co-writers? Is there AI applications? But my focus becomes resolving this part of the process. So this is a deliverable phase again, but if you look at the AC/DC model, a chain of events, if you think about theory of constraints like Eli Goldratt wrote about, this is the way you identify where your biggest challenge is, and that is what you need to focus in to bring speed or efficiency to your organization. Once this is resolved, the next bottleneck will present itself. So this is the deliverable, or the D. But I also have to attract prospects. So I could do this whole thing, one step back method for attracting and converting, and then you'll see how it all links together into one master document or one master flowchart. Okay, now let's talk about this concept called the Eisenhower Method. This was by Dwight Eisenhower, 34th president, former 5-star general in World War II. And he said famously, I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. And this is a translation of the Eisenhower Matrix. While it has his name, it may not be attributed exclusively to him, but there are 4 stages in this matrix. I'll make sure we make a PDF around this. You have the not urgent and not important. You have the urgent and not important. You have the urgent and important and you have the not urgent but important. These are the 4 in the matrix. And what we wanna do is we don't wanna focus, do not do, stuff in this arena, which is not urgent, not important. We want to move the business to focusing on the stuff that's not urgent, meaning it requires immediate demand. You can put thought into it. It does not require that. I mean, it requires thought, but not immediate demand, but it's important to move your business forward. That delayed gratification. Remember the hyperbolic reference I made earlier where we had the propensity to actually start going back here? It's this hyperbolic discounting because we want to constantly move to the urgent. And stuff that's not important. So there's a propensity to go here. We need to have the discipline of going here. So don't do the not urgent, not important. Reduce the frequency of urgent, not important where most entrepreneurs live. Take care of the urgent, important stuff, which is critical to your organization. And let's focus on doing the not urgent, important. This is where you as an owner become very strategic for your business. Now I'll give you an example. Say someone is rushed to the hospital and there's these elements they're considering. The first thing is, uh, this This guy had a heart attack and he also has a bad muffler on his car. It's so loud and annoying. Not urgent, not important, right? It's so clear. Don't worry about the muffler. That is not the issue at hand. The next thing though is he has a nagging cough. So that may be urgent. He can't stop coughing, but it's not important. The guy's having a heart attack. So that shifts us to the critical. We have to address the urgent important, which is addressing the heart attack. But then we want to start focusing on this, the not urgent important, which may be exercise. This person hasn't been exercising. He needs or she needs to get into the exercise regimen so that she starts bringing about permanent health. Delayed gratification, hyperbolic discounting may move back here to, I got this nagging cough. Let me, you know, start taking some cough medicine and ignoring this. So we need to keep moving here. Hope that gives some clarity on that subject. Now, when it comes to our business, back to the One Step Back Method, what I want to do in this chart is address some of the elements that Toyota uses when it finds a time pile. So this is a concept— there's a few— but around theory of constraints and lean manufacturing principles and so forth. It applies to all types of businesses. They use kaizen. Kaizen is a continual improvement model where the people involved at the different levels, if you will— if you have someone that is working on, in my case, inquiry demand, which often comes in via email. So I have someone vetting email. While our challenge is here, I do have a dedicated resource to this. What can they do at the hands-on level to improve this? So this is our big corporate goal is to fix this time pile, but individuals can work within other elements. That's the idea of kaizen. What are the small micro-improvements that can happen throughout the chain as you're working on the major blockage? We're not avoiding everything, but instead of plate spinning and running around, just jumping around, say we got to focus energy here, now focus here. We're going to concentrate our strategic planning and efforts efforts to resolve this permanently, bring about structure, technology, better systems, better process to get rid of this time pile. But at the— all the other levels where you have resources available executing, how do we continually improve? That is the concept of kaizen. There's another strategy that Toyota uses called jidoku, and jidoku is where you identify a problem and stop the line if it's causing a compounding effect. So literally when they're manufacturing a car, if the door hinges aren't fitting on properly, they stop the line instead of trying to figure out the door hinges. The line continues on. They're going to have a cascade effect of problems. They avoid that by stopping the line. That's, uh, Jidoka. What are the tools or what can you do for your business? Well, the first thing is understand the AC/DC model, but draw it out for your standard. How does things flow through your business? You can use the one step back method. Secondly, you can use the Eisenhower Matrix. And thirdly, and this is the bite-sized piece, I want you to consider what's called the 10-10-10 method. This was created by Suzy Welch. There's a book she wrote on the same subject. She says any consideration you're making now, so here's the consideration, any thought you have, whatever you're considering, what is the impact or how's it going to play out in the next 10 hours? And this is based on hyperbolic discounting where most people spend their time and say, oh, I'm going to feel relief. My email is going to be running more efficiently and next 10 hours, not to worry about email, but the next 10 months, what's the impact and what's the next 10 years? And it's these two areas that we often ignore. Well, when I thought about that email, it could take a lot of time to develop this and it may not do it correctly because I'll spend hours, probably days learning the basics and it won't work. So next 10 months I'll be distracted off of other project and the benefit may be minimal. Because we actually have someone that manages my email for me. The impact may be minimal. In 10 years, it may have been a bad move because I wasn't focusing on core elements that improve the business. So what I want you to do is look at anything you're considering and say, what's the 10-hour frame around this? What's the impact in the next 10 hours? What's the impact in the next 10 months? What's the impact in the next 10 years? We want to give equal balance to all the elements of this decision. And it's really looking at these two longer timeframes that make you more considerate and avoid that hyperbolic discounting. One other thing, well, it's attributed to Jeff Bezos. I don't know if it's a fable or the truth, but Jeff Bezos used this technique of analyzing decision-making. It's attributed to saying that he asked himself, is this a two-way door or a one-way door? Whatever decision he's making can't be reversed. If you're going to lay someone off from your company, that's a one-way door. Once they're laid off, it's kind of something you can't reverse, but maybe interviewing Considering people to hire someone may be a two-way door. You can consider people, but if they aren't doing well in the interviewing process— by the way, I'm not a fan of interviews. We're going to dedicate a video to this concept using workshops. It's way more effective. But say you're considering someone, you don't have to pull the trigger. So that's a two-way door. Or is it easily reversible? If you commit to building a new location, that's a big one-way door. You know, you've committed, committed, now you're stuck with the facility. But if you lease on a month-to-month basis, maybe that's a two-way door. Ask yourself, what is the degree of reversibility for a decision that you're making? And you can place it in these different time categories and make a much more balanced decision. So we talked about the desire to be efficient in our organization, and what most people do is hyperbolic discounting, present bias. They keep jumping from one idea to the other. Now you have the tools. I invite you to use the 10-10-10. That's the bite-sized piece action. Any consideration you're making, ask yourself the impact in 10 hours. That's where we focus our attention. But really the next 10 months and 10 years. I'm curious. It'll bring about more qualified decision-making. And if you want to dig in deeper, use the AC/DC method by doing the one step back. Now, you know, you reverse engineer your processes, identify where those time piles are, and see if you can resolve a time pile. Remember to consider the attraction, the conversion, the delivery, and the collections of money, because that's the full cycle of all business.