4 Essential Steps To Get More Done In Less Time With Leveraged Tasks
I've always wished my business was full of robots.
Hiring and holding people accountable for silly, redundant activities is rarely a good investment in human capital. It siphons away crucial resources — time, money, and potential.
When I became the Vice President of Acquisitions (buying commercial aircraft parts, planes, and technology), my days were riddled with endless administrative work; it was exhausting.
I was very frugal, so I forced myself to have a misallocated budget, which made me the sole owner of hundreds of repetitive tasks.
If I had invested better in the right areas, I would have created the leverage of time to improve my performance.
Instead, I made an excuse for many years that "only I can do it the right way." It was exhausting, and it cost me time, money, and a lot of frustration. However, everything changed once I realized that my time and potential were better invested in higher-value activities.
I started to see things from an automate, then delegate mentality.
It's now why every pillar of my business is required to build a SWAT team of standard operating procedures, automation, and templates.
Years ago, automation was only possible if you had a ton of capital; now, it's essentially free based on the returns you can create with it.
Automate Everything
You'll hear many people claim "automation" kills jobs.
They're wrong.
For small businesses, automation doesn't kill jobs; it creates them. For example, I can leverage automation to perform the duties of three entry-level positions that I don't have the budget for and wouldn't have hired anyway. In that case, that's my responsibility as the CEO. It's my job to provide the right resources and investments for my team to deliver the best results for our clients.
Investing in automation allows companies to automate redundant work, freeing up resources to hire, promote, and retain incredible people at higher levels, which requires human potential.
No machine can perform leadership responsibilities and navigate complex human psychology.
Automation takes the wasteful workload off crucial people, so they can excel in what matters. But this doesn't mean you never hire entry-level positions. I have several of these positions that are the starting point to coach and mentor future grow and role employees.
But hundreds of activities in every company deserve to be automated.
Turn Your Tasks Into Leverage
Many tasks are wasteful.
They're often a once-and-done activity. Once it's completed, it's completed. They create no long-term, repeat value without your input of time and attention.
They're a time liability.
Instead, think of your tasks as a way to build time leverage — the ultimate investment.
You can often re-acquire money, people, and technology, but time, once it's gone, it's gone. A leverage list is actions that will continue to work for you after completion.
They're time assets.
To do this, look at your past or upcoming task list and ask yourself:
Is this a time liability or a time asset?
If it's a liability, run it through the 6 Ds to massive productivity:
Delete
Defer
Document (Standard Operating Procedure)
Design Out (Automate)
Delegate
Do
The Once & Leveraged Framework
It takes some practice, but once you start to label your tasks as a liability or asset and run them through the 6 Ds, your productivity will skyrocket.
Imagine the results when you layer this on top of your team and coach them to adopt this strategy — you'll build leverage everywhere.
This framework is like building a SWAT team for every function, team, and department in your company.
Here's how it works:
Step 1: When you teach something more than once, record a video.
You never want to conduct the same training more than once.
Record everything, which is then built into future steps — like adding them to onboarding, procedures, or responses to questions. If you need to answer text-based questions, compile all the questions in a Frequently Asked Questions resource (see step 2).
Some examples:
Task: Train a sales rep.
Leverage: Record the training so the sales rep can re-watch it, and you can use it to train future sales reps.
Task: Train a new hire on a procedure.
Leverage: Record the training (only one section at a time) and add the recording to the appropriate section of your Standard Operating Procedure.
Step 2: When you write something more than once, create a template.
You should never write the same thing more than once.
Whether it's a response to a team member or a client request, if you write it often, create a template, and if you have a template, automate it.
Templates are best used for project outlines, documents, and email responses; the options are limitless.
For example:
Task: Reply to a customer request.
Leverage: Create a customer request procedure and response templates for various questions that anybody can use. Then, store these responses in a tool like TextExpander, and with a couple of keystrokes, will populate the template.
Step 3: When you do something more than once, create a procedure.
There's rarely anything new about your business.
If it's been around for some time, you conduct the same activities repeatedly. But, most activities aren't well documented. If you do something more than once a year, you must create a standard operating procedure.
You waste time and money when you don't have a well-documented system. It also becomes problematic when hiring and onboarding new employees. Procedures get people developed much faster than them trying to figure out everything on their own.
If you do something more than once a year, it's time to organize and create a standard operating procedure that everyone can follow.
Documenting processes is essential for ensuring things remain consistent, safeguarding quality output, and preventing surprises.
Stop reinventing the wheel with your activities!
Every great Standard Operating Procedure has five key sections.
Step 4: When you have a scheduled task more than once, create an automation.
Automating repetitive tasks is a great way to free you and your team up to focus on other things.
It's even more powerful when you pair automation with your standard operating procedures, which can execute critical functions of a particular activity. It may seem daunting to set up automation (depending on the complexity), but once it's in place, it will save you a ton of time and energy in the long run.
It can also reduce costs associated with manual processes since automated systems are more efficient.
An example of automation:
Task: Manually enter a new customer sales order and send it to finance for approval
Leverage: Create a Sales Order approval automation where when you click "Approve Sales Order," the automation looks at the client's terms, available credit and takes various actions based on certain factors. For clients who have to prepay, the automation auto-rejects the sales order and requests payment. Or a client with open credit available, the automation notifies the operations team to process the sales order.
Amazing things happen when you start to think about what you do and how you can convert it into long-term leverage.
Start small.
Today, look for one task you can turn into a leveraged asset.
