Consulting

Successful Consulting: Be Efficient

By David North ⋅ May 5, 2009 ⋅

Filed Under consulting efficient success time

What is the old saying – “Waste not, want not”? Today, that means if you want to stay in business you must be efficient. I have spent a lot of time helping businesses run efficient operations. Business can’t afford to waste any resources. Neither can consultants! As a consultant you must be efficient to survive.

A consultant’s time is probably his most valuable resource. It is what he sells. The only way to get more time to sell is to waste less of it. It is also important to be efficient with the time you spend working for your clients. Even though you bill by the hour, if you can do the job faster and at a lower cost, your client with be happier with the result and use you again. Here are seven ideas for things you can do to use your time more efficiently:

Be organized. Keep a list of the things you need to do and have a plan for your day. Keep a good calendar. When you are not well organized, you don’t do your work in the best sequence and after every task you waste time trying to figure out what to do next. When you go to a meeting, make sure to have an agenda and a clear purpose for the meeting so you don’t waste time. Organization is key to managing your time.
Don’t put tasks off until later. If you can do something now then do it now. Putting it off means you will have to think about it again. If you do it now, you can remove it from your list and you won’t waste time going over it every time you review your list.
Use the right tools. I am amazed at how easy some jobs are when you have the right tools. I have had repairmen come to my house to fix something that I worked on but couldn’t get done. They pulled out their handy tool and presto, it was fixed. Find out what the right tools are, get them and learn to use them. You wouldn’t try to change a tire on a car without a hand jack (a hydraulic jack is even better), so don’t waste time trying to complete any task without the right tools. Sometimes the best tools are expensive and you have to balance of the cost of the tool against the time you will save, but at least you should think about and make that decision, not just jump in with whatever you have. Today we have lots of tools at our disposal; for me it is an iPhone and a laptop with the right software applications to help get my tasks done.
Remove distractions. Text messages. Email. Twitter. News readers. Every day we have something else to keep up with. Make time for those things, but don’t let anything consistently interrupt your work. Stopping and starting work is inefficient. If you work from home you have even more distractions (even if they are good distraction) to keep you from focusing on the task at hand. Some interruptions can’t or shouldn’t be avoided, but deal with the others by scheduling a time for them so they don’t interrupt the work you need to do now.
Write things down. How much time have you wasted trying to remember or find the answer to something from a discussion or a meeting? If you make a habit of writing things down as they are discussed or decided you will save time. Make sure you write down enough so that you can understand it later. I just hate it when I read my notes on something and they don’t make sense to me anymore. Make sure you have a plan on where to keep your notes. I always carried a notebook (yes paper, so low tech) that I wrote all my notes in each day. I never tore out pages. Each day I just dated the top of the page and recorded the notes for that day. Then I could go back and find them any time. Over the years, it saved me lots of time.
Think about what you are doing. Are you working in the most efficient way? If you feel like you are wasting time, you probably are. Change your approach. Ask for help. It is never wrong to ask for help when you need it. It is good to stop and think about the task you are working on and consider your options for approaching it. Just taking a minute to think about the most efficient way will often set you on the best course of action. Lots of times we act before we think – never a good plan.
Have Goals. Goals are like knowing the destination on a trip. Can you imagine starting out with no idea where you are going? You will never get there. It is the same way with your work or business. If you don’t know where you are going you will never get there. Knowing what you want to accomplish and evaluating all your tasks to make sure they move you toward your goal will help you determine what to do next. If a task is not moving you toward a goal, why are you doing it? Why is it on your list? Write your goals down so they will be clear to you.