Changing business focus — from time to output

Last week was a week of sick children for me.

Three kids, all ill with trips to doctors, days off school and the lack of sleep that goes with poorly children.

So I changed my hours and worked from home more.

Life doesn’t go to plan. It doesn’t consult your calendar. It doesn’t give you notice.

We have to find a way for work to fit.

We’ve all worked in jobs where time is clearly valued above all else. It creates two types of inefficient employee. The clock-watcher and the over-over-time monster.

The clock watcher spends valuable minutes and hours of their life waiting for their contracted finish time to arrive. Wasted time that would be better spent getting inspired and fired up for the next day.

The over-over-time monster never leaves at the contracted time — showing their value by being the last to go home. Only, experience shows they are probably no more productive than any other employee.

I don’t want to be either. I don’t want any of our team to be either.

One change we’ve made at 572 is to have very defined two-week plans. We know what needs to be done, and by whom, in any two-week period.

So should time matter if the work is being done?

Remote working is obviously really challenging these traditional working practices. This is an extremely healthy thing for both employees and employers.

Although we’re not a fully remote business, we have adapted elements of our business based on this. Working hours is one of them. Supporting team members on personal goals is another.

Operating on two-week sprints has given us clarity on the tasks that need focus to really move our business closer to our vision and it’s made it easier to filter the jobs that can wait.

The two week plans clearly work for the business.

They keep us aligned with the vision for the business. They prioritise the tasks that really shift the needle. And they help us identify obstacles and roadblocks early.

But they also really work for individual team members.

We all know exactly what's expected of us over the next two weeks. We know which of our tasks are going to make the biggest difference to the business. We can plan and schedule our own time to get these done.

The plans also make it possible to evaluate our own performance on a regular basis and have become a way for us to be accountable to ourselves.

It’s a great feeling to get to the end of a week of unexpected events and know that you’ve made good progress on jobs that really matter.

For me, it helped make a bad week, good.

#betterfutures.