Creating the time to innovate -- Part II

I wanted to expand on my earlier post on creating more time. As I inherit or join new teams, the first deep-dive I do is an analysis on what people are spending their time on. The goal is to identify what can be eliminated, automated, or delegated to provide us time to do more impactful work.

Eliminate
I often tell folks, "Some parts of your role will be eliminated." I can sense fear in their eyes when I say that, so I quickly follow up with, "The goal is to eliminate the items which are not value-added work, so you have time to do more exciting and creative work."

The reaction I tend to get is no longer fear, but excitement, followed by a, "How...?"

The how is easier than you think. I propose taking an inventory of the work the team is doing, and assessing each item for its value and impact on the organization as compared to how much time is spent doing the task. It may become apparent some things which take a lot of time are not worth the value it is providing.

As an example, one team member told me each month for the past 2 years he worked on producing a set of reports for a particular group. It took him 2 days to compile the reports manually. I challenged him to identify if the reports are even being used or are still needed by that group. As it turns out, the reports were not being looked at any longer. He stopped creating the reports, and got 24 business days back each year.

Automate
Some things cannot be eliminated. Automate them.

Here are just a few items you should consider automating:

• Repetitive or common tasks
• Mindless items -- not requiring much human skill
• Anything considered a standard change (and if it is not standard, make it standard so it can be automated!)

The point is to let the machines do the work for you, so the team can focus on things which require more critical thinking and creativity.

Delegate

Having a single person be the sole holder of knowledge in a particular area can create bottlenecks. It means they may get pulled into urgent issues or other areas to help because no one else can. This is a time killer. They must spread their knowledge and delegate to others. 

Delegating can also occur in the reporting example I gave above. If those reports were still being used, perhaps the report creator could have devised a way for his business partners to view the details on their own. In other words, they can view or pull the reports whenever they needed without asking my team for help. An effective delegation.