Many people will have read the trilogy or seen the iconic Lord of the Rings movies. As the story draws to a close, Aragorn, the King of Gondor, leads the protagonist’s into a seemingly hopeless attack on Mordor, all to distract The Eye of Sauron from the hobbits trying to get to Mount Doom.
If you’ve never read or watched the events that unfold in Middle Earth, then you might be confused right now… Probably best to read on to get a better grasp of what’s going on.
Why is this poignant to business leaders?
There is a danger for us all, including business leaders and owners, of being like the Eye of Sauron, focusing on one point only.
Giving all your attention to just one area of the business and casting a blind eye to everything else that is going on around you, can cause some real issues. This can quite easily happen when people in power focus entirely on profit and not people. Sales and not service.
How can you avoid this?
Often, it’s down to time management, and one of the best strategies for managing time is to block off time to complete specific tasks.
Be realistic with the time you give yourself though. Don’t try and fit a task that you know usually takes you an hour into 10 minutes. This will only cause you more stress and result in less productivity thant usual.
However, setting yourself achievable mini targets throughout day is what I believe is absolutely key to getting things done effectively.
Treat each block time as if it were a meeting with another person. Remove distractions and keep yourself focused on the task at hand.
If you achieve your task by the time given, reward yourself by taking a quick break. Another effective strategy for time management when it comes to someone who has a lot of different tasks, causing confusion on what to tackle first, is the Eisenhower Matrix.
The famous prioritization framework helps to organise someone’s jobs into 4 segments.
Image credits: Luxafor.co.uk
Figuring out what needs to be done, delegated, decided, and deleted will significantly reduce the time you spend trying to do everything yourself. It will also free up time for you to ensure you’re focusing on all areas of the businesses.
Other tips for productivity and avoiding tunnel vision
Is time management not an issue for you? Try these for maximizing your businesses productivity and helping keep your attention evenly distributed across the company.
• KPI’s – Keep them SMART. This way you can concentrate on the targets that are important, rather than having too many that don’t really carry much weight to them. Good KPI’s can also create a great early warning system for when things might be heading south.
• One-to-ones - Have regular catch ups with key members of your team. Book 15-minute meetings where you the “chew the fat” on what’s going on in and around the business. This way you know what their main priorities are at that moment in time, and they are aligned with what you want from them.
• Formal meetings – Including minuted meetings into your schedule with your senior team is also a must for getting the business as a whole caught up on the most important topics. Inviting heads of departments from across the business is an absolute must in order to make sure the message is delivered to everyone across the company.
• Appraisals – Until recently, I would have argued that appraisals aren’t necessary if you are working closely with your team. However, as we have emerged from the pandemic, we have readopted formalised appraisals. They do provide a really useful way to track the objectives colleagues have in terms of their progress over time, as well as measure and celebrate their success.
By making sure you effectively communicate with your team, even if you fall back into focusing on one area for too long, like the Eye of Sauron, hopefully one of your colleagues will bring to your attention where issues are arising in other areas and help you to fix the problem at hand!
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