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“Time is money” were three immortal words Benjamin Franklin wrote in his book, Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One. Ever since, they’ve formed the guiding principle behind many of the actions of today’s great business people. Time literally is money – and time wasted in money down the toilet.
But time, in a way, is actually a lot more important than money. Money can be lost and then earned back again. But once time has slipped away, it’s gone forever. It can never come back.
Business leaders, therefore, need to build a deep and complex relationship with time. Failing to do so means lost revenues, opportunities, revenues and, crucially, destinies. So how should entrepreneurs think about time?
Have Vision
Every entrepreneurial and business journey begins with a vision. Vision is an exercise of the imagination where you think about where your business will be in the future and what it will mean for your personal life. “Visioning” is the articulation of your desires for your goals, whether personal or professional. And it’s a tool you can use to prevent you from going off target and wasting time.
If you’re a CEO, your vision is the reason why the business exists in the first place. It was your desire for a product or service that propelled your business forwards, resulting in the enterprise that you now command. If you’re the head of a department, the same process applies. Departments need to be guided by their executives, otherwise, they risk stagnation.
Update Your Processes
The key to the successful use of time is flexibility, both in the short term and the long term. The former deals with things like your daily schedule, while the latter is concerned with the direction of your business as a whole. Though you might have a plan spelled out in exquisite detail for both the short and long term, it’s important to remember that things in business and life can “just happen.”
While life might be uncertain, you can save a lot of time by implementing processes, like 6 Sigma, to help improve the performance of your business as a whole. The idea is to use statistical tools which improve the performance of your company and help it avoid missing out on key opportunities.
Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize
Finally, leaders need to learn how to better prioritize their time. But with so many tasks involved in running a company, that can be a challenge. This is why it is so important to prioritize activities.
Top of the list of priorities should be “urgent and important activities,” like appeasing angry clients or completing a project by the deadline. Next on the list are customer value-added activities or activities which generate revenue. These include things like coaching clients, researching things for your customers, listening to their needs and so on. After that are the “business value-added activities” including things like improving your business systems and making investments which will ultimately result in the company making more money. And, finally, there are the non-value-added activities – things which don’t help your business progress.
The bottom line? Developing a solid relationship with time will help you meet not only your business goals, but your personal destiny too.
