Robby Slaughter Interview–Workflow and Productivity Expert

Robby Slaughter is a workflow and productivity expert, and you know how important I think having workflows and being productive are to the success of your business. His consulting practice assists a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, regional non-profits, small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to help increase productivity, simplify workflow and optimize business processes. He discovered that to become more effective and efficient at work, we need to empower individuals with authority and responsibility, and I couldn’t agree more. Here are some questions I asked Robby that you will benefit from by listening to his answers: 1. What is the #1 reason people struggle with being productive at work? Inability to understand the emotional impact of tasks and the people around those tasks. Please elaborate on this for us. 2. When asked, most business professionals tell me they waste about 2-3 hours a day. How can the average business professional become better at time management, so they aren’t wasting so much time each day? Step one is self-forgiveness. Accept that you’re going to have bad days, and forgive yourself. Step two is to identify and manage the distractions and interruptions that impact you. Turn off email notifications. Set your phone to do-not-disturb for 30-minute stretches. Ignore social media. Ask people who call you if they can send you an email instead. Anne: To download my complimentary Time Log Exercise and help you and your team members be even more time efficient, so you are in a higher probability position to achieve your goals, go to: https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/time-log/. Simple instructions come with the sample document to help you know how to complete the time log. 3. What do you recommend people to help them reduce interruptions and distractions that plague most offices? Get out of the office. Go to a conference room or a coffee shop. Work from an empty cubicle for a while. Close your door if you have one, or wear big headphones (even if they aren’t playing any music.) Put up a sign to let people know you are focusing for blocks of time, and put that on your calendar as well. Anne: To claim your free audio training, Focus on Your High Pay-off Activities and Achieve Your Goals Using Effective Time Management, go to https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/landing/. 4. How do you suggested people create their To-Do List, so they make the most progress on their activities? At the very least, try adding a face next to each item, indicating how you feel about the task. Most people can quickly sketch a face with a smile, sadness, anger, boredom, etc. That way you can quickly scan the list for something you’re willing to tackle, keeping the balance of high energy and low energy tasks. Beyond that, asking what tasks can be delegated is especially powerful. Anne: I recommend to my clients that they use, what I call, a Prioritized Action List (PAL) which is like a glorified To-do List. It is simply your To-Do List in priority order and with the highest payoff activities on it that will you to make progress on the achievement of your goals. These are activities that only the business owner or business professional can do and can’t be delegated. Anne: To download my Free Sample Prioritized Action List (PAL) that everyone in your office can use, go to https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/pal-sample/. You can of course use this format to customize your To Do List that may reside online in your contact management system. I consider the PAL a glorified To Do List. 5. What does it mean to have a “workflow?” How can you design and improve on a workflow? It means to have a larger meta-pattern for how you operate. A good example is batching: do you turn on your computer, then go get some coffee, and by the time you return the computer is ready? Do you reply to emails during certain times of day? How do you decide when to call someone and when to send them a text? Anne: To help you be even more effective and efficient, so you can achieve your goals at an accelerated rate, you can delegate more to your team members than you have or might think possible. Stop holding on to things that can be done by someone else and do only those activities that you can do and can’t be done by anyone else. Stop doing revenue generation / business development avoidance activities and delegate more! You should be doing only those activities that only you can do and nobody else can. Successful people are excellent delegators, so work at being an even better delegator and be even more successful. Download my Free Delegation List Sample Exercise to help you identify more activities to delegate, by going to https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/delegation-list-sample/. 6. What are some basic examples of business processes? A business process is a defined (and hopefully documented) sequence of steps that enable a business to get something done. How you pay your bills, how you approach a new cu...