Bottlenecks to productivity …

Every quarter, we have a TEAM training session based on a theme, and for our second quarter it was based on the book “How Full is Your Bucket?” by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton (which you can get here … 800 CEO Read) …

For our third quarter, we will be reading Brian Tracy’s “Eat That Frog!” … in which Tracy systematically presents proven ways to boost productivity for yourself and your teams.

As a franchisor, ActionCOACH is by definition a business system that is licensed to our franchisees under our trademark … and working within a system and from a system is a great way to leverage your own productivity.

In fact, franchising is a great way for first-time business owners to start and run their own companies, simply because there is a proven system and methodology in place for a new owner to follow, rather than wasting time, effort and resources trying to figure things out on their own.

The “short-cut” to results (if you could call it that) … is in the system as a guide to getting an outcome.

And the more clear you are about what you need to do … the easier it is to do those things that will get you the results you want.

In fact, there are three areas you can start to work on today to improve your own personal and business productivity … and they involve getting or putting together:

1. Better systems (or starting the process of systemizing your activities and operations)
2. Better communication (both externally to others and internally to self)
3. Better training (meaning “learning” comes before “earning” … in any career and any business)

Bottlenecks in any or all of these areas negatively impacts productivity.

In turn, work on any or all of these areas will start to move you from being stuck in process to starting to produce good results … the type of results that can move you ahead miles when others are limping along.

In our business, we use the term “leverage” a lot … and all leverage means in this context is “getting more with less” or “dividing to multiply.”

Can you get more with less if you have better systems in place?

Could you do more with less if you communicated better with your team, your vendors … or yourself?

Could you divide activities and multiply results if you (or your team) had better training in technology or delegation?

Think about those questions in terms of where you are right now, and where you want to be … in a month, in three months or in a year.

Then start with better training … and start with the person you see every day in the mirror.

Because “things” will only change for the better if you do …

More on this in future posts …

Jodie Shaw