The Five Elements Of Business Success - Element 2: Time

There are many ways in which time affects a business. I am going to examine four facets of time; cycles in the economy, short term sub-cycles, the management of your own time, and the management of the business’s time.

1. The Economic Cycles

Ever since money was invented there have been economic cycles, each of which usually lasts for several years. Each market may have its own cycle that is different to other markets, for example the stock market cycle and the property market cycle.

The importance of cycles is that they have some degree of predictability and their effects also have some degree of predictability, although economists notoriously disagree as to what these effects will be and when they will occur.

Each cycle brings with it a mixture of opportunities and difficulties that your business can capitalize on.

The media tends to portray the down cycle as doom and gloom but it is in the down cycle, and particularly at the bottom itself, that many of the best business opportunities occur. I’ve always said that the down cycle takes from the ill informed and gives to the well informed.

The down cycle is a time when much of your opposition is running scared and provides a great opportunity for you to grab some of their market share for yourself.

2. Short Term Sub-Cycles

Within each economic cycle there will be any number of smaller cycles that may be inline with, or counter to, the larger cycle. A simple example for the retail sector is Christmas which provides an temporary increase in sales even if the overall cycle is trending down. The most profitable short term cycles however are the ones that don’t come along as regularly as Christmas and hence much of your opposition won’t even know they’ve happened until they are over.

Developing the skill of recognizing these short term counter-trends, and of asking how you can use them to your advantage, can be very profitable indeed.

3. Personal Time management

Daily time is a truly limited personal resource. You have 24 hours and you can’t get any more, (you can’t even get any less), and once it’s gone it’s gone forever. For this reason, how you utilize your own time is of critical importance.

Much has been written on time management but I’ll give you a simple strategy that I have found to be invaluable in my businesses.

Spend the last 5 minutes at the end of your day reviewing that day. Then write down the six most important things you have to do tomorrow. Start the next day by spending 5 minutes reading that six point to-do list and organize your day around them.

4. Business Time Management

Business time is less limited than personal time in that it is measured in man-hours (or more politically correct; person-hours). For this reason you can increase the number of business hours in a day by increasing the number of people you have working for the business. However it still has the limitation that once a day is over it is gone forever. No matter how much money your business has it cannot hire today more staff to work yesterday.

Here are the two most valuable strategies I have found for managing business time.

The first is exactly the same as the six point to-do list strategy outlined above for personal time management except that each team leader in the business writes the six most important things his team has to do the next day. At the start of each day he holds a 5 minute meeting with the team members and outlines those six key objectives for the day.

The second strategy is for each person to keep a simple log of their time, sorting each 5 minute period into the productive category or non-productive category. If those 5 minutes were spent entirely on a business objective focused activity it is logged as productive. If it included activities such as getting a coffee, talking about non-objective related matters or any other activity not focused on your six daily objectives then it goes into the non-productive category.

If you get your staff to do this you will discover that even your best workers are unlikely to have more than 20 focused minutes each hour. The aim of the exercise is to increase your number of focused minutes each hour.

A Question For You

How does your business score of the four aspects of time and what can you do to improve on each aspect?

This article is number two in a series on the five elements of a successful business. If you wish to read the full set they are published on my blog at www.successblog.jamesdelrojo.com in the December 2006 postings.

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James Delrojo would like to help you by giving you his ebook "Unleash the Success Power of Your Mind" (valued at $27) completely FREE. Go to www.YourSuccessMind.com

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