Episode 45: Practical Powerful Habit Changes that Improve Efficiency

In Episode 45, Sam dives into some practical and powerful habit changes that you can make to improve efficiency as a person and as a professional. This episode follows on from Episode 41 about the false beliefs we have, Episode 42 about our relationship with time, Episode 43 about our relationship with change, and Episode 44 about where you want to go, so if you haven’t listened to the previous episodes go and do that first.

Sam covers why conversations are such a potential place for inefficiencies in our day and a simple framework to follow to have more effective and efficient conversations. Plus, where to start if you’re at the beginning of building this conversation muscle.

Sam then explores the mindset we need to have to set up our day or week for success, the power of getting clear and realistic on what you can achieve in curdy, as well as the steps to take and how you can theme your days each week to be more effective and efficient.

Finally, Sam explains the decisions framework that you can use to make fast decisions that stick, and the questions you must ask and answer in order to make better decisions.

Listen to an excerpt

What we cover in this episode

• The five things we’ll be covering in this series of episodes

• Why conversations are such a potential place for inefficiencies in our day

• Tips to avoid inefficiencies in conversations

• A simple framework to follow to have more effective and efficient conversations

• Where to start if you are at the beginning of building this conversation muscle

• The mindset we need to have to set up our day or week for success

• The power of getting clear and realistic on what you want to achieve in your day

• The steps to take to set your day or week up for success

• One way you can theme your days each week to be more effective and efficient

• The decision framework that you can use to make fast decisions that stick

• The questions you must answer in order to make better decisions

Quotes

“Building relationship businesses—which I truly believe the accounting firms of the future will be—and being people, it's all about relationships. Conversations are the underlying pin to that. But I do think we spend a lot of times as experts in very inefficient and ineffective [conversations] so it actually takes a lot of time away from us.”

“We’re finding either conversations are breaking down [with online work] completely, and firms aren't having conversations or team meetings at all, or they're going the other way and having lots. It’s really important online even more, and I think online is actually giving us a little bit more efficiency around that, to say, What is the purpose of these meetings? A meeting is a conversation, at the end of the day, it just has more than two people in it.”

“I know I used to be very guilty of having 20 minute meetings and they'll go an hour, or a 1 hour meeting and they'll go 2 hours. It’s very ineffective! Remember as we move more to the advisory, relationship-building style products, meetings are sometimes our products. So we want to be able to get very strong in actually keeping them to time and to purpose.”

“When you enter a conversation, whether you're [initiating] it or someone's coming to you, ask ‘Why are we having this conversation? What do we want to get out [of it]? What does success look like? How long do you think is going to take? And then ask permission, so can we actually have it?’”

“We do a lot one-on-one so we can get people to their ideal day because if people are [having] their ideal day, they're going to be at their most efficient and happiest. And most accountants or professional services people say, ‘Well, I would like to just get to the end of the day and feel that I've achieved what I set out to do.’ So it sounds to me like most people go into a day, think on what we want to do, but we don't necessarily put a framework around it, and then interruptions get in the way. So this is obviously highly inefficient.”

“The idea is to set your day up with one thing that you can achieve, and that would be your biggest ‘bang for your buck’ activity.”

“The first decision to make is should you actually be involved in this decision? Or is there even a decision to be made?”

“Most of the time, the wrong thing to do is not to make a decision. [Make a decision] either way. Most decisions can be undone too, but you do need to give each decision time.”

Bonus material

Mock Agenda for conversations - download the Client Conversation Framework

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