Looking for five ways to save time at your brokerage without having to spend a lot of money or create an entirely new business plan to make them happen?
“Business leaders and managers are often looking for the next big thing when it comes to managing their staff – whether that is a program, an app or a product – when in fact the simplest ways to improve productivity may be right under their noses,” according to Michael Peiniger, founder and principal of the business consultant firm Kameleons Developing Leaders.
Peiniger lists five ways that brokers can become more productive using what they already have:
Prioritize your day into urgent versus important tasks
More than 20 year ago, Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, introduced the concept of ‘urgency’ versus ‘importance’ when managing the work day. And yet even today, many brokers lurch from one seemingly urgent task to the next, failing to focus on what is important.
“It is staggering how much time is wasted in a day by a lack of prioritising tasks,” Peiniger said. “Focus on the important tasks first and give them the time that is needed.”
Use people in your firm more collaboratively
People at the same level of a business often have to write similar reports, work in the same spaces and receive their marching orders from the same individuals, and yet they work individually to finish tasks.
Peiniger recently observed a group of supervisors as they managed their teams. Each supervisor had a major end-of-month report to write, but their direct reports constantly interrupted them with mundane tasks. A report that should have taken 20 minutes took four hours to complete.
A more efficient approach would have been to alternate the times that the supervisors wrote their individual reports. As each supervisor worked for a short block of time on his or her report, he or she would send direct reports to another supervisor for a short period of time. Such an arrangement might have saved hours, said Peiniger.
Develop and follow meeting protocols
Peiniger suggested the following six protocols for meeting effectiveness:
• Clearly identify and state the objective of the meeting.
• Only invite those people that can help in achieving the objective. Observers and ‘for information’ attendees waste time.
• Set a realistic time for the meeting and stick to it.
• Start and end the meeting on time. Don’t wait for stragglers and don’t repeat what has been covered.
• Control discussion so that it doesn’t deviate from the objective.
• Assign tasks to specific individuals with realistic timeframes – you don’t have to wait until the next meeting to follow up and complete things.
Develop and follow email protocols
Brokers most frequently rely on email for communication, but they can drown each other with overuse and poor practices. “Email is often used poorly in businesses but by teaching people to only send clear emails to those that need it can unclog inboxes quite quickly,” Peiniger.
Use your day-to-day computer programs more effectively
Most brokers are not using the Microsoft Office suite of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Mail, to their full potential. Because of the pace of work, people haven’t taken the time to work out many of the shortcuts that save time within these programs. Peiniger suggests a tool like KeyRocket to help. Once installed, it will passively instruct users on more efficient ways of using day-to-day programs, which in turn saves hours per week.
“None of these ideas are new or sexy, so they often get forgotten,” added Peiniger. “But businesses that apply rigour to these areas have dramatically greater productivity than those that don’t.
“I received feedback from a client who said that by implementing just the meeting protocols for his team, they were saving eight hours a week. Can you imagine creating an extra eight hours a week to focus on core tasks?”
