Richard Lannon

I just spend 2 hours responding to all my emails. Started at 9 AM and finished at 11 AM. Did you know that if you want to accomplish anything in life or work it generally breaks down into 2 hours time slots? Don’t believe me — that’s all right. But here’s the insight.

Normal Life (going to work all day)

• Get up, get ready, go to work (2 hours)
• At work, there are four – 2 – productivity hour slots through the day.
• Leave work, get home, have dinner, clean up (2 hours)
• Workout, watch TV, play with kids (various 2 hours)
• Go to bed and crash, repeat.

In essence, you have seven or eight 2-hour productivity timeslots throughout the day. Now that you are working at home you just need to use your time differently. Make a few adjustments.

Here are the rules (adjust as you need too):

Anything you want to accomplish breakdown into 2-hour time slots. Each 2-hour slot has two 1-hour power slots and each 1-hour power slot has a 5 to 10-minute break to allow you to re-focus.

6 am to 8 am: Get up, have coffee and breakfast (instead of getting ready for work), read something, play guitar, workout, play with the kids, or plan your day. Point is, instead of rushing to work, take time for you.

8:00 am to 10:00 am Focus on intense tasks – writing or whatever

10:00 am to 12:00 pm: Focus on intense tasks – writing or whatever

Break for lunch – walk, do something.

1. 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm – Attend meetings, respond to phone calls
2.  3:00 pm to 5:00 pm – Adm, prepare, etc
3. 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm – Get dinner, play with kids, go for a walk
4. 7 pm to 9:00 pm – work out, read, play, work
5. 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm – get ready for bed, read, watch TV, etc

This does not need to be perfect. A bit of time-setting and structure development will help you work from home. Adjust as you need too.

I will get up at 7 am and start working around 9 am. I don’t have a commute, so I have chilled out a little over time, but I do have a work start time. Lots of times I will work out at 3 pm to 5 pm with a long walk, bike ride, and a workout at home. The trade-off is I use my evening from 7 pm to 9 pm times-slot for work. Generally, I focus on administration tasks that add up to 2 hours to complete. The difference is, you should have control over your time. Really, you won’t miss anything from work, and you can stay connected with your smartphone.

Remember every 2-hours has two 1-hour time slots. Each 1-hours slots has a 5 or 10-minute breather or break to help re-focus. During the power-slot-time focus intentionally at the task at hand. That means shut off distractions. For example, looking at how many likes you got on Facebook. If you need to check out FB, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, schedule it. Could be part of your break or another timeslot. You 5 to 10 minutes re-focus could simply be a bathroom break, go up and down-stairs, etc. I just had WASA with Peanut Butter snack. Took me 5 to 10 minutes. Done and back to work.

Structure your day accordingly and use your time wisely. It will help you be set for success.

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Watch for edits and changes to this post/article. It was written in a power-slot not a Work-slot. There will be changes.

Most importantly, you make it a great day!

Richard

Be prepared to make difficult business decisions. Every business owner must do that. But there are things to consider for both the owner and the employee.

It’s important that we all do our part to ensure the safe lives of others. As a business owner, one of the toughest things to do is to make decisions that impact lives. Ask any business owner and they will have a story of the first time the decision they made impacted employees negatively. You may be surprised but it literally broke their heart. Especially when their business and employee are like family. This is the challenge of a small and mid-range business.

As hard as this is, as business owners and leaders you need to go back to basics. Using facts, calculating your actions and plan a recovery now. Once this passes there will be pent up demand. People will want to get out and be with other people, jobs postponed that needed to be done will start up again, and people will appreciate what everyone did and what needed to be done.

This does not mean we don’t have a rocky road ahead.  We just need to ensure that we consider the following now with plans to move on once it is time to do so. Our history shows everything passes and there is a burst of grown afterwards.

For the right now you should be considering the following actions for your business.

1. Review Strategic/business plans: This is an essential action to take. You need to look at your strategic plan and make adjustments. If you don’t have a strategic plan, you might want to create one. You will need to address the business fundamentals — sales and marketing, finance and administration, operations, technology and human resources.
2. Cutback operating expenses: You need to get your numbers in line, both fixed and variable expenses. Connect with your supply chain and have those discussions now. Use real numbers from your financial reports to guide this process.
3. Delay capital expenditures: I hate to say it but now might not be the time to invest in your capital projects. You need to see how everything settles.
4. Reduce staff: I have never liked recommending to a company to reduce staff. But unfortunately, it is a reality of business. You will need to look at this carefully as it is a balance between keeping your intellectual capital (knowledge, experience), current work and future work requirements, and people fit and performance.
5. Consolidate operations: If you can, find ways to restructure now. Don’t wait. Business consolidation is used to improve operational efficiency by reducing redundant personnel and processes. Often small to mid ranges business has a lot of structural and operational inefficiencies. Look at your business and remove the bottle-necks, bring departments together, and re-look at your organizational chart.
6. Develop a Contingency Plan: If you don’t have one, you should. A contingency plan is a plan devised for an outcome other than in the usual plan. It is often used for risk management for an exceptional risk that, though unlikely, would have catastrophic consequences. Business owners miss the opportunity to develop these plans early on. Understandably as effort is placed on business growth and development. But every business should have a contingency plan.
7. Plan for the future now: There is no point in doing all this work unless you are not only going to tighten-up for the short-haul. You need to have a bigger picture in mind. Even with the unknown, you need to have a plan. In this case, I like to use a little risk management planning, business analysis and strategic planning approaches to set the stage for the future.

This is an unfortunate world event. One that we should not be taken lightly. History has taught us, events like these are incredible opportunities for the future of your business, peoples lives and the world as a whole. As a business owner, you have a responsibility to be candid about your business, where it is, what needs to be done, why, and the actions you need to take now to make sure you have a tomorrow.

I wish you and your business all the best on your journey ahead.

For fifteen years I have been working from home. Here are some of my success tips.

1) Treat it like a regular workday and create a routine.

2) Dress like you are going to work. You can keep it business casual but create a division between the different clothes you wear throughout the day.

3) Create a different workspace if you don’t have one. Hopefully away from daily home life activities.

4) Take breaks every 50 minutes. Go to the washroom, go up and down the stairs, or whatever for 5 or 10 minutes.

5) Connect with clients, vendors, or friends via WebEx, Zoom, or any other video system to allow you to see other people.

6) Keep a routine of regular hours. Start at 9 am and stop at 4 pm. If you need to make adjustments, do so but don’t spend all your time online.

7) Feed your head with motivating information. Find a source that gives you positive thinking.

8) Start the day by counting your blessings or what you appreciate in life. Focus on listing 10 items first thing in the morning. It helps with your inner thinking.

9) Set a learning plan. I mean it. There are lots of YouTube videos on how to do something.

10) Drink lots of water, be physically active, and take time for you.

I hope this helps. I know it works for me.

I was at another industry event wondering if I should be a wallflower and stay to the fringes. Maybe I should engage people in meaningful conversation. As luck would have it, the organization’s CEO spotted me. They decided they wanted to chat. I was their target.  Awesome!

We discussed the association member’s challenge. The CEO stated, 50 per cent of their business members does not have a strategic plan. I thought this strange and asked why. They admitted they were unsure but felt a portion of their members never took the time to look at their business. As I probe deeper the CEO said maybe they did not understand the importance of strategic planning. Besides we’re all busy, who has time to plan, anyway.

Strategic planning helps you look at your business, make decisions and create actions to take the business to the next level. A point that I believe is sometimes missed. There are many moving parts to consider in strategic planning. Often requiring more than a single day to put a plan together.

While I was thinking about strategic planning, I wondered what additional wisdom can I share to help you expand your knowledge on the strategic planning process and the need for a clear strategy for your business.

Here are three things I noted when working with clients over this last 30 years.

1. One area business miss is recognizing it takes a team to create and build a proper strategic plan. The mistake companies make in thinking they can objectively meet, discuss issues and determine their strategy. Unfortunately, this does not always work. Teams naturally drift into the weeds, the details, and the operational. A strategic planning professional should focus your team on the strategic and later the tactical reality.
2. The other issue is the information needed for developing the strategic plan. When I say information, I mean existing external and internal information. The external information required includes the business environment, industry trends, customers, competitors, suppliers, and so on. Then there is the internal information from employees, managers and executives about the business. Information, that even if you are a small or mid-range business, may not be shared or discussed internally. Getting information helps you create a clear current and future state for your business. This does not need to be complex. There are simple approaches to get the appropriate information needed.
3. The final mistake includes not looking at your financials, be willing to discuss the financials, or not understanding your numbers. These are big mistakes, they happen often and need to be addressed. Every business should have a high-level assessment of their financial performance based on their last three years of financial statements. The information should be graphed against industry benchmarks, and specific key performance indicators to understand the business performance.

I find it surprises business owners when I say it takes a team to develop a strategic plan. Oh, don’t get me wrong, they understand team, but often they look at the internal team being a handful of senior people and not all the resources that can help them. Resources that help them make key business decisions and develop an implementation plan for their business success.

Book on Strategic Planning: SET for Success, A Roadmap to Transform Your Business by Richard Lannon

Often when I work with a client, I tell them, I don’t work in a vacuum. From a service providers perspective it takes an engaged client and a team of at least three professionals, someone to do the external and internal high-level research, another person to put the financial analysis of the current and future performance together and a strategic business planner and analyst to guide the process, work with their team, help them make key decisions and put it all together.

Final Thought: The three key issue (do-it-yourself, information benchmarks, performance indicators) mentioned in this blog are only a few challenges faced by business leaders when considering their strategic future. There are others that I will save for future blogs. What you do in your planning, whatever direction or approach you take, please consider your future needs and create your plans right the first time.

It will save you future grief.

Richard

Eight Strategic Planning Articles to Help You Kick Start 2019

Strategic planning is not something that is done in isolation. Many a company has tried, only to find they get sidetracked by the details of their business. When really they need to do is step back, take stock and then figure out the path to their success.

As you figure out your next 3 to 5 years consider these EIGHT articles to help you with your strategic planning efforts. These are my most read articles on the topic and can help you forge your future.

1 Model to Make it Work – Building a Strategic and Implementation Plan for Your Business

7 Steps to Kick-Start Your Strategic Planning Process

5 Terms in the Planning Process – Filling in the Strategic < blank >

7 Questions You Should ASK about Your Business [What and Why]

8 Tools & Techniques To Apply To Strategic Analysis & Planning 

8 Common Strategic Planning MistakesYou’re Making

19 Financial Analysis Approaches Business Leaders, Managers, and Professionals Should Know

2 Measurement Terms: Lagging vs. Leading Business Indicators – Do you know the difference? 

Having worked with hundreds of clients over 30 years in the consulting profession, I see having a systems approach to strategic planning to be one of the best ways of getting going with your planning.

I hope the information contained within these articles assists you in your strategic planning and implementation efforts.

If you would like to discuss strategic planning and your business please do not hesitate to contact me. I am open to the discussion.

I know it might sound a bit crazy for me to send you a holiday wish saying it is great to be alive this holiday season. But it is.

You see, I live with Cardiac Disease and had a quadruple bypass 3.5 years ago. Today, I am fit, happy and focused on working with business people like you. 

Something I have learned, no matter your business or personal situation, it is great to be alive. I share this message with you for a simple reason, the only thing we truly have in life is the life we live with the people around us. Everything else is just window dressing. 

I know for me, in previous holiday seasons, I was a bit of a humbug. Ask my wife, Jeannette; she’ll tell you that I didn’t enjoy it much. But something happened, I got in shape, I started to have great business clients where I could make a difference, I started to look at life more from a daily opportunity, I removed the material, and I started to embrace the opportunity to celebrate life daily. 

With that in mind, I want to thank you for being clients, for listening to my radio and podcast show, for buying and reading my book and reading my blog and for connecting when needed to work on your business success. 

I guess, in the end, it is all about your relationships; your significant other, friends and family and the life you lead. I realize in business this may not be your regular holiday note. What is life without stepping outside the norm?

Chances are your success this last year is because you stepped outside the norm. Maybe you did something new, made a change, are making a change or better yet, you received an invitation to a preferred future. 

With that in mind, for this holiday season, I wish you the best now and throughout the next year. Be well, as it’s great to be alive. 

Special regards and best wishes. 

Richard Lannon