Six Proven Strategies for Boosting Productivity in Your Business

Set specific measurable goals and focus your energy on high-impact activities. Comb each task for urgency and importance and set aside time to address and complete important tasks. Leverage technology for efficiency and never be afraid to delegate and outsource. All of those are critical pieces of a broad but focused approach to raising productivity – both for yourself and your business.

Steve Strauss, author of the “The Small Business Bible” and a longtime columnist for USA Today, shares proven, workable, and easy-to-install strategies in our new eBook, The Very Best Productivity Workarounds for Small Business. It draws on Strauss’s extensive experience and uses stories and other examples to demonstrate how the tips can be put into practice, enabling you to gain productivity in both the short and long term, even as you contend with day-to-day challenges.

 

Want to raise productivity? Here's how to Work Around It

Learn how to gain productivity through six time-tested strategies from Small Business Expert, Steve Strauss

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Get Smart, Get SMART 

A tried-and-true strategy involves setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, if your goal is to boost sales in Ireland, set monthly and yearly revenue targets. By having something specific to focus upon and measure, your productivity push has clarity and purpose, instead of you just generally trying to make progress on many fronts. Always remember that, as Author Tim Ferriss says, “Being busy is not the same as being productive.”

Apply the 80-20 Rule 

The longtime rule that 80% of results come from 20% of one’s efforts is all about focus and intentionality. It applies both to sales, and to people – as one in five sales representatives, deliver four out of five sales. So, look hard at the outliers delivering outsized results, whether they’re coming from customers, employees, or web-page clicks fueling leads or revenue. And then give those producers your energy, trying to understand why they are so productive, and teasing out lessons to apply elsewhere.

Adopt the Eisenhower Box 

This is about setting priorities, so apply your limited time to important tasks instead of trivial ones that distract. Popularised by Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander doing World War II and later U.S. president, it’s a box (or matrix) with four self-explanatory quadrants to separate your work into:

Do it now: Urgent and important tasks go here.

Delegate: Urgent but not important can be farmed out.

Decide: Important but not urgent, set a time to do these.

Delete: Not urgent and not important, just skip these.

Time Blocking

Despite what we think, few of us are entirely effective at multitasking. So, take those top tasks from the urgent and important container of the Eisenhower box, determine how much time each requires, and set aside blocks of 30, 60, 90, or whatever minutes to complete them. Don’t allow interruptions or attempt anything else during those blocks. As a result, you’ll find more lines going through the items on the to-do list.

Leveraging Technology 

If a task or process consumes an inordinate amount of time, there’s likely an app, technology solution, or platform out there designed to increase efficiency. Take a close look at paper-based, manual processes – or the tools you now use – to identify opportunities to automate, increase productivity, and save money. Those opportunities return results and give back time you and your team can put to work elsewhere. With Concur Expense, for example, SMBs save 13 hours per finance/accounting employee weekly.

Outsource and Delegate 

It’s a mistake to believe that only your team can handle certain tasks or roles or that no one but you will do the job right. Recognise that you cannot do everything, nor should you try. One solution is to hire independent contractors to do research, marketing, manage social media, take care of one-off projects, or perform other tasks that you don’t have the time for or do well. You’ll not only be outsourcing but also be learning to delegate more, a valuable skill.

Learn More About the Tips 

To discover more about the six strategies Steve Strauss recommends to gain productivity and be ready for the future, get the eBook.