If people are looking to gain more time during their working day, they are chasing their tail because we all need to accept that we can’t get any more time, there is no more time, and we can’t create time. The only thing we can do it to make intelligent choices on what we do.
That’s what I wanted to talk about today. How important it is for us to really think about what are we going to do, rather than just doing what we have always been doing.
One thing that I have noticed with business is that it is changing so rapidly and this is increasing all the time, and if we don’t step back and look at what we are doing, we could be incredibly busy, we could be sitting back and saying, “Oh my god, I was so busy today, look how busy I was,” … but we may not have been effective.
So there are four areas that people need to look at when they are looking at what it is they need to do, and that is, which level are you going to be looking at your business.
The visionary view
So there’s the satellite looking down and that’s the visionary level. So if you have a look at Richard Branson he’s obviously a visionary, and he’s in satellite mode most of the time.
The helicopter view
Now that’s what you need to do when you are thinking about your business strategically. Think of yourself in a helicopter, looking down at your business and your competition, and thinking strategically. What are the opportunities, what are the threats, where do we go from here, what tweaks do we need to change?
The street view
Almost like Google Street View which is operational. And the operational level is, now that we’ve got our strategy, in terms of what opportunities and threats there are, how are we going to roll this out? What tweaks do we need to make, what changes to we need to make day to day?
The under the hood view
The under the hood view is the technical view which is just really drilling down and thinking, OK, if we look at what we are doing from a technical perspective, when we really zoom into things, how much time do we need to be zooming in, and how much time do we need to be stepping back and being more operational and more strategic?
So, I don’t think we can gain more time during the day, which is the bad news, but the good news is that we can think strategically about how and what we focus on and how we use that time.
By Sharon Ferrier, Persuasive Presentations in Adelaide, South Australia