The Conference Coach™

Carolyn Bradfield

You all have people in your lives that are always in a hurry, are “slammed,” and can’t seem to find the time to fit you in.  They love to talk about just how busy they are, how overwhelmed they are and how their schedules are completely full.   This can be particularly true in business.  But are very busy people really producing something of value for their business?

At Copper Conferencing, we have a practice of holding monthly strategy sessions with our employees.  This gives us a short-term time horizon to set goals and review our progress on the prior month’s achievements.  A year or so ago, I took responsibility for an employee that scurried around the office constantly stressed out over having too much to do.   We would mutually agree on 4-5 goals for the month that were measurable and achievable.

At our strategy sessions, none of the goals would be achieved.  We reduced the number of goals until we finally got down to 1 per month, but the result was always the same – she seemed super busy, always stressed out, and had no time to get things done.  A number of people freaked out when she resigned thinking that world would fall apart when she was gone.  The truth was that we didn’t even need to replace her.  There was a flurry of activity and no results.

Sometimes our young sales people can be notorious for measuring themselves by the activity they generate.  They dutifully log tasks into salesforce.com and we spend countless hours looking at their opportunities and tasks.   At the end of the month, when there are few new accounts and no revenue growth, we all have to ask ourselves what the point was for all that activity?

Everyone should understand the concept of “valuable final product”.  The VFP is the result that you are looking for from all that activity.  It’s not enough to spend hours writing down plans and processes if you never produce the manual for your employees.  All the research in the world is meaningless unless you can translate that into a paper that you will submit to the professor.  All the tasks in salesforce.com are irrelevant unless they translate into closed business.

Some of the most successful people I know are not necessarily the busiest.  They know how to set priorities, get things done in the fewest steps possible, and that the result, not the activity is what really counts.  Before you get busy, ask yourself what is the valuable final product that you are trying to produce.  Then figure out how to get to the VFP in the fewest steps possible.

From now on, talk to me about how productive, not how busy you are.  That will get my attention and respect.

Carolyn Bradfield is the CEO of Copper Conferencing, a provider of easy-to-use audio conferencing and web conferencing communication tools. Copper also provides wrap-around services including online account, invoice and recording management. You can try Copper’s great web and audio conferencing services — no obligation. Just sign up now.