Throughout the past several weeks we’ve discussed how to maximize your most valuable resources (Time, Technology and Talent) to achieve optimal productivity. Week seven is a good point in the game to ask some key questions to see if you’re on the right track. If you’re struggling with any of the previous topics, it’s time for you to Get Help, which is this week’s topic.

Week 7: Get Help

I recently had a client tell me that he knows if his boss had time to spend with him he could teach him all these great tricks. However, most busy professionals barely have time to get their own work done. This means employees are missing out on critical development areas like assessing their issues, providing detailed instructions and how to be accountable. For this reason, outside coaching is often the best option. Also for many managers and executives, even if they had the time, they realize that mentoring would not be a strength or interest of theirs. Could you benefit from executive coaching?  Take this short quiz to find out.

Do I Need Help?

If you’re not sure whether or not it’s time to hire a Productivity Consultant, here are some key questions to consider:

1. Could your work-life balance be better?
2. Do you have to work evenings or weekends to get your work done?
3. Do you encounter a lot of inconsistencies and mistakes?
4. Are you spending more time putting out fires than working on your top priorities?
5. Do you find yourself doing someone else’s job to prevent errors?
6. Do you spend more time in meetings than doing your actual work?
7. Are you (or your colleagues/employees) feeling a lack of engagement?
8. Do you know you could be producing better results?
9. Do you know you could get more done if you spent less time on mundane tasks?
10. Do you know you need help, but you don’t know where to start?

Add up how many times your answered yes, and follow the code below to find out what type of Productivity Rockstar you are. Just Kidding! This isn’t an edition of Glamour. This is real life…your life. If you answered yes to any of the above, you could greatly benefit from working with a Productivity Consultant. To alleviate some of the anxiety, here’s a glance at what to expect throughout the process.

What To Expect

The purpose of productivity coaching is enhancing workplace efficiency while helping to create a better work-life balance. Results include improved productivity, employee engagement, job satisfaction and more efficient systems and processes for your business. You can look forward to spending less time on “busy work” and more time on revenue-generating activities. Here’s a quick walk through a typical coaching relationship:

Questions and Concerns

We will help you evaluate how you do your work and where you spend your time. We’re going to ask a lot of questions, and we hope you do the same. The goal is to assess your current work situation, find out what resources are available to you to leverage more fully. Our goal is to help maximize your time, talent and technology to make your business boom!

Let’s Talk About Change

After discovering your soft spots and your muscle, we’ll discuss what changes can be made to improve personal and team productivity. We’ll work with you to devise a realistic, maintainable plan of action. We will share an array of ideas to help address your current issues. You pick action items you are passionate about and know you can accomplish. As much as we’d sometimes like to, we can’t force you to change. You have to believe in the solutions, which is why each situation is individually customized. If you know change is a current struggle in your business, revisit Week 2: Change.

Speaking of Maintenance

No offense, but we don’t want this relationship to last forever. In fact, that’s how we know we’re doing our job right! We will coach to your unique processes and people, and give you homework to complete between our meetings. Not only is the ultimate goal to make your work as efficient as possible, but also to create lasting habits.  It takes about four weeks to learn a new habit.  That’s why we schedule our accountability appointments about four weeks apart. Our favorite part of working with you is coming back in a month, seeing all of the positive impacts you have made, and hearing about all of the extra time you now have to focus on the important things in your life that aren’t work.

Stay Tuned!

When managers don’t have the time to coach individual team members, it’s likely that no one has the time to share best practices with each other within a company, as well. Sharing best practices can be a huge efficiency goldmine.  Next week’s topic is all about how to share best practices and make the best use of your time, talent and technology – company wide!

Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.