Effectiveness Meets Efficiency: How Successful Leaders Manage Both

I participated in the webinar event “Effectiveness Meets Efficiency: How Successful Leaders Manage Both” sponsored by Salesforce. Laura Stack, an award-winning productivity speaker and bestselling author, was the speaker for this webinar. She talked about three main topics, strategic thinking (for business), teamwork (for employees), and tactics (for self.) These concepts are discussed in order to increase efficiency in the workplace. She says that some people are effective in their jobs, but they are not always efficient in getting the job done. A robot can be effective but when it lacks efficiency it might not be productive. Productivity and efficiency involve achieving maximum results in a minimum amount of time. When a business is looking to become more profitable, they can do so by cutting costs or letting go of employees, but the best way to save money is to increase productivity.  Doing this is good for both the company and the employee.

Remaining focused is always a challenge for a company and for an individual employee. Often times we are focused on the ROI from a dollar value, but not the return on investment of our time. A person who works for 8 hours in a day can be far more productive than someone who works a 12 hour day.  It’s not the number of hours you work, it’s the return on our personal investment of time. Everyone knows what key activities drive results, its other things that get in the way. As a seller, I need to spend the majority of my time selling or activities that will produce sales. Using salesforce will allow me to streamline the sales process and best utilize my time.

It is important that I write out my tasks for the day. It is not necessary to delegate certain time slots for different tasks because the problem with time is it is unpredictable. We don’t know if a customer is going to call, or if a coworker needs help with something.  The important thing is to block out time, meaning at some point during the day, I will complete a specified task. It’s ok to turn off electronics because many times technology is a distraction. The world is not going to blow up in the hour or two that I turn off my cell phone. Technology has a tendency to drive negative, unproductive behavior, instead of being used as a tool for efficiency. Irrelevant emails need to be filtered automatically. Predefine what is worth being interrupted for.