For years, I had an inability to get things done in my business. It seemed that every event, webinar and training class had a cool new way to do things, and I bought into them all! As the CEO of a company, I had to learn that using systems and programs in your business is great, but you want to make sure that you are not overloading yourself with unnecessary tools. Use the systems that work best for you and cut the rest.
When team leaders and CEOs think strategically, there needs to be a way to compile all of our great ideas and projects in one place so that we can prioritize these tasks and set achievable deadlines for each item. The question is, how do you create an agile system that allows you and your team to understand these goals and achieve them?
First, we want to compile all of the great ideas that you want to implement and put them into an “idea backlog.” Then, prioritize them. I suggest using a digital platform, so your backlog is easy to edit and send. But, how do you decide as a business owner, team leader or broker all the things that you should work on? These ideas usually include everything that we as business owners just don’t get around to. We have a tendency to deal with the noisiest task rather than the most important task.
Here’s how to start your idea backlog:
1. First create a title like, “Order of Importance.” This allows us to look at the goals we’d like to accomplish and prioritize them. Then, you will need to create a scoring system that will help you give tasks on your list more or less importance. For example, a high-priority task might be worth 500 points, a secondary task might be worth 350, leaving room for tasks in between.
2. Organize the tasks to be automatically reordered so the most important task (highest score) is at the top of your list. There are plenty of systems out there that are capable of this, but we just use Excel. As a business owner, you should only be working on two or three tasks at a time. It’s not physically possible to do them all at a high level unless you have a dedicated team assisting you.
3. Decide what you are going to work on first, then create a sprint date: the date that you will actually start working on a project, who the owner of that project is, the details of the project and the due date or deadline.
This scoring system is the best way to prioritize your projects and ensure that you are producing quality work on time. This simple system has the power to alleviate your stress and make you more productive than ever!
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems (385-282-7112), an international speaking, consulting, and coaching company that specializes in performance coaching and building successful power agents and teams. Contact him at Verl@WorkmanSuccessSystems.com. For more information, please visit www.WorkmanSuccess.com.
