S12E03: How to free up hours each week for more strategic activity

Davina Stanley
Hi there. Welcome back to the Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. I'm here today, Davina Stanley, here with Richard Medcalf and we're here to talk to you about some new parts from his new book, making time for strategy. Hi Richard, how are you?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Hi Davina, I'm doing well and looking forward to getting to this one today, because it's all about tactics, and where the rubber can hit the road, right in the short term, to make some changes in how we work.

Davina Stanley
Now, I love that and I think we spoke very recently about this idea that tactics are often where people start, but they often go no further than that really essential set of things to do when we're freeing up hours each week. So we can be more strategic, but so foundational for a lot of people?

Richard Medcalf
Well, it's interesting is that because some people are super disciplined and organized by nature, and so some of the things they might already have got in place. Other leaders, however, actually rise up for all sorts of different skill sets, the ability to work with people, their their ability to cast vision, and so forth and possibly even more for those people, often, they haven't necessarily got some of the basic blocking and tackling in place to provide a foundation from which they can actually free up more of their time for more of their magic. So I find often for those people, it can be more of an issue but actually, for everybody, there's normally great value in just slowing down for a minute and looking at how we're using our time, and what practical things can we do to just to get through what we have to get through a bit more effectively.

Davina Stanley
So perhaps, for some of those more disciplined folks, it's good just to quickly check through the things and you know, be sure that they're doing well enough or as well as they can, whereas for some others, they should spend more time here.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think so. It's bit like living sports, right? Like, you know, if you're already really, really good at a sport, then just a slight modification to your, you know, your, your stroke, or your you know, your game or whatever you're doing might actually create a big improvement in performance, right? Because you can if you've got all the bases in place, so even a small tune up can really help. Yes, but likewise, if you're early in that journey, then there's also plenty of things that you're going to learn as well that it's going to make a big difference for you. So I think everyone can definitely get benefit from just reviewing, you know, how do I deal with email messages, meetings, inbound tasks, requests on my time? Yeah, how am I using my week, all those kinds of things, which is really what the technical challenges about.

Davina Stanley
And I think, think to our environment changes constantly, doesn't it? If you think of the world of work two or three years ago, before the pandemic, it looks very different for a lot of people than it does now and so, you know, I think even if you must did the, you know, the tactics a couple of years before, before COVID, or in a different role, your circumstances are going to be just because different just because life moves on and face. So it's definitely worth viewing given the people you're working with, if you're if you're going to go for a sporting analogy, or playing a high performance sport. So the notion of a few little optimizations, I think, can be very, very powerful. So where do you recommend these people start?

Richard Medcalf
Well, first of all, want to build a bit of a plan and same with any plan. As I mentioned last time, we need to know the current situation, what's the starting point? Do what do we have time for strategy right now? How much do we have? How do we use our free time while our strategic time? And then when he's now our endpoint? What are we actually trying to create? Do? Are we looking to create an hour a week? Are we planning for eight a day a week? What is it that we feel that we need given the impact that we're trying to make? And then we need a bit of a timeline to get from A to B as I described in the book, you know, when a company perhaps is going through a downturn, and suddenly realize it's it's no longer cashflow positive, it's actually losing money. Often, the leaders have to make big dramatic changes urgently, to write the ship right just to stop hemorrhaging money and to put the business back on the firm fitting and it's a bit like us with time, you know, we need to be bold because if we're not bold, then we're just making incremental minor changes in our use of time, we're gonna get incremental minor results in terms of our output and so I just need to be more like this be bold when it comes to tactics but let's actually get really clear about what would be a significant transformational shift in how we use our time, and then there's the aim of that.

Davina Stanley
Yes, and I think that's, that's really good news and, you know, the very fact that we forget that time is our only finite resource, I think that very thought should remind us to really focus on it, shouldn't it? You know, to make very much.

Richard Medcalf
Exactly. So what I'd say is, there's really three key things to do. I mean, the first one is to, is to define your starting point and so what I recommend people do is what I call a commitment inventory and there's a bonus tool in the book for this, to help you do this and you can download the you can download a spreadsheet for this but you can also just do it on a piece of paper, which is to look at, what are the recurring tar? How do you spend your time? What do you do every day? What do you do every week? Every month, every quarter, every year? What do you do every time you get a new customer sign up? For example, and just start to actually understand where do you use your time, people think this is a boring, pointless exercise sometimes, but it doesn't take very long. Actually just looking at images, looking at where you actually put your time speaks volumes as you can just by looking at it, you start to get a sense of what's what might be possible and the second thing is to actually look at that, and then start to identify, you know, what am I? What are my top most valuable activities? What are my neutral activities, and what are the ones which are really a waste of time, or really a time to think or really dilute? In terms of you there might be a, you might be a three hour meeting you go to and you add five minutes of value in that meeting, right? So perhaps that five minutes is valuable, but three hours, really. So that's the first point getting this the commitment inventory, I think is what I'd recommend people start.

Davina Stanley
Yes, yes and then I have an inkling that this is moving us forward to what another one of your wonderful acronyms that is again, really, it's not just useful, but it's sums up the meaning of what you're trying to achieve your crush plan, not just your you know, I'm trying to think of a word that is a softer version of crash.

Richard Medcalf
Your diet, right? What Yeah, you tried to. So again, my point is, once you are you starting to make your starting point, your commitment inventory, and then you can kind of go okay, heck, I'm working 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week, whatever it is, and actually looking at this. Yeah, I'm gonna give myself the challenge of freeing up five hours a week, or 10 hours a week or two hours a week, whatever it is and, and then then you pick your timeline. Again, most people convince themselves that it's better to do this next quarter when they've got a bit more time. Reality is that will never happen is any feels that next quarter. It's gonna get quieter next quarter. It's just, it just you don't know about all the things that's going to happen yet. So get yourself a timeline and then yeah, we work through the crash acronym, the crash plan and so the idea here is, as I said, it's to make a big dent in how you use your time fairly quickly and so there's five areas to go through. The first one is cut. So be bold. What are things you just want to say no to one of the meetings you want to take out your diary, what are the projects you want to extract yourself from? What are the processes which no longer need you at the center and then reduce. Sometimes you can't cut something completely, but you might better reduce, reduce the frequency and reduce the quality or reduce the time involved. That's reduced the scope of what you're doing. There are many ways that you can reduce things. For example, if you're in a meeting that the weekly meeting, perhaps you can decide just to attend to every two weeks or every month. Or perhaps you can decide you can say I'm just gonna attend the first half hour and not the full two hours of that meeting. The various ways you can reduce it's looking at how do you actually shrink the scope of what you're doing. The next one is a sign assigning something is really delegating it, right? It's giving somebody else getting them to do it, or perhaps they should have been doing it anyway. Right? So assigning is really extracting yourself out of that task and then you've got systematize. So those things that you haven't been able to cut, reduce or assign, it's still on your plate at this point and so systematizing is really looking at have I actually structured this task or process in a system that allows me a to perhaps automated or bring some tools to help me get through it. But also, perhaps if I actually systematize it and break it down into different components, then I can actually even assign some of those components rather than the whole task. When I was at Cisco, were involved in a consulting unit and the view was, you know, this is highly expert, bespoke work, there's no way that we can outsource any of this or improve the efficiency of what we do, because it requires so much on the expert consultants. Well, we thought, well, is that actually true? And we looked at one of the key processes, and that was that we saw one of the key outcomes around building, for example, financial plan and then we realized, you know, what, there are clearly describable steps that happen and short in some of those steps, you need very much the expertise of the particular industry experts to do what needs to be done, but not in every step and actually, the expertise is really needed here in step two, and here in step four and actually, if we can build a process around the rest of it, we can actually bring more junior team members on to support them, we can scale it, they become more valuable, they can spend their time in their genius zone and we managed to increase productivity by about 40%. So that's about systematizing. Right? That was systematizing because we assigned, you know, we figured it out, we realized that we don't need this super high level, expensive consultant doing everything and there are some tasks to be done very well with junior people and working and building that process, or was a game changer.

Davina Stanley
And I think there's something that I'm seeing that this acronym looks sequential, but you've just gone back as well. So there's a sense of iteration with it as well. Once you when you are systematizing. Something there might be ways to go back to a thein reduce and cut for yourself.

Davina Stanley
If you even, yeah...

Richard Medcalf
That's why, generally I'd say go through sequentially because the earlier ones in this acronym are more powerful. It's better to cut them to reduce. It's been introduced into assign, etc. but it is it is there is a sequential, there is a iterative part to this as well and as is the last one, the last part of the crash acronym is hold and so hold is really just deferring. Like you know what I know mentally doing this meeting with you every month but right now I've got a real, I've got a real jam on and so can we just postpone our next meeting a couple of months. So even as you push that back into the future, I once had a boss who basically would never say no to anybody. But he would just say, yeah, we'll do that but we can't get to it for two months and of course in two months time. He was probably not no longer required anyway. So I don't ever say No, it did work for him and so holding putting into the future, again, that might just be a temporary relief but also it might then help you realize, you know what, I could just cut this. I've deferred it for two or three months, is that actually adding any value? Let's get rid of it. Or reduce you know what? A check in every two or three months works perfectly. Let's actually renegotiate our agreements around that and it's making a monthly check in and make it a quarterly check in and not a monthly check in. So this is how although there is definitely a sequential way of using this and it makes it simpler just to work through in that order. There's no reason why once you've done that conflict once you can then go through it again and see what new things have emerged.

Davina Stanley
Perhaps a little bit of that 8020 rule in the sense that you go through certainly cut reduce a sign when you get into systematize and you're thinking, actually, now that I've systematized this, I can assign some pieces. It's like, you're sort of looking at the finer improvements, then aren't you, rather than necessarily the really big things cut reduces time that really big shift? You're making the beginning?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, exactly and so yeah, I mean, cursing reducer, the ones where you're going to really work on the periphery of what you, you know, the things that the noise that comes into your diary, probably systematize is probably you're going to work on when it's actually more core to what you do that you definitely can't just get rid of it but you can sharpen up for making more efficient how you actually do those activities.

Davina Stanley
And hold, it strikes me as being an opportunity to pack something, and come back later and see if it still matters, but also in a way to communicate to others that they need to do a whole lot more to make a priority for you and maybe they need to do some things, maybe they can solve it. You know, I think it's very tempting in a leadership role to take on too much because it's always been done that way. Because people ask you to and so on, and you want to be helpful and what have you. So I can see opportunities to say, look, you know, I'm going to come back to you about that next month and somebody says, Oh, that's just not okay. Well, okay. Well, let's talk about that. You know?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, definitely. I think it can, yeah, it creates a, it creates a moment where people have an opportunity to Yeah, they have to deal with something right, which equates to the potential in the system that can be really productive and I think often as I've worked with execs on this, that often is around, oh, you know, what is back to the mindset piece? Probably, which is, Do I really believe my team can handle this without me? Do I really prepared to let them have a go? Possibly, you know, have to learn a bit the hard way sometimes? Am I actually prepared to let them go on that on that curve? And so then we get into the mindset pieces, just say coming, kind of weaving in but I think you're right hold is a great opportunity to start those conversations.

Davina Stanley
No, I love that and it's constructive just to channel your old boss a little bit to say, you know, never say no, just delay or find another Yeah, find another way. So, you know, opens up the door for them to appreciate you and then have the conversation, doesn't it?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, exactly. So I think in the book, I give some pretty practical tactical advice on all of those areas, right? Well, like exactly how you might go about cutting or reducing, assigning systematizing or holding things and try to get into the details but it is at a high level. Even just listening to this podcast without the book, you can take that commitment inventory and you can just ask yourself, for each of these, what would be a good candidate to cut? What would be a good candidate to reduce, and so on and so forth and actually, once you've done that, you've got your list of activities, and you've got ticks underneath each of those areas. You've pretty much got the outlines of what I call your extraction plan, your crash diet.

Davina Stanley
Like that, like that. No, that's great. So we've got a plan then. Is that right?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, pretty much. We got the plan. However, the title challenge isn't quite done, right? Because there's two things probably that still need to happen. The first is we're going to have to build ongoing habits to keep and increase strategic focus. So in other words, the crash died is one thing, but building the ways of working that keep you strategic and focus going into the future, you know, is another part of the challenge. Now, we don't have time to cover that I think today, but I do deal with that part as well in the tactical challenge in the book, that question about the ongoing habits, but perhaps more relevantly, for us. Having a plan doesn't mean you've actually implemented, implemented the plan and so what stops people from implementing their plan tends to be influence and also mindset to some degree but actually, influence is often where the rubber hits the road, because now we know what we want to do. We've now got to go and have those critical conversations with our stakeholders to get them to buy in to get them to agree. Sure, I totally understand that you're not going to do this anymore. You're not gonna attend this meeting and that's fine and acceptable and so making sure that we get that we went over our stakeholders is going to be critical to actually getting our plan implemented. Often we miss it out, right? Often we just go, I've got my plan, I'm now going to try and do it. I'm getting pushed back. So I'm gonna throw bits of my plan out the window and very soon we end up with just a shell of what we originally wanted. So I think that's what we can focus on perhaps in the next episode, this question of influence.

Davina Stanley
That sounds fantastic. I think there's an awful lot to cover in that one. So I'm really looking forward to talking to you about that in the next episode. So if you would like the show notes from this episode, go and visit xquadrant.com/podcast and Richard and I look forward to talking to you again soon.