Focus Your Energies

By Deborah Rechnitz CMA CMC


Have you ever spent a lot of time on one business issue? Have you ever concentrated really hard and given 100% of your time, 100% of your actions, every waking moment it seems to just one item? If not, have you every wanted to be able to do this, even if for a short period of time?

Think for a moment on how you spent your time the last time you opened your first plant or your first new dry store, or installed a piece of equipment that you’d never had before. Did you find yourself spending what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time and energy on this project? And yet, when you did that, did you find that you were very successful in achieving your goals? Did you find that the other "stuff" still somehow got done when it needed to or you found that not getting that other "stuff" done didn’t seem to cause any great problems?

If you’ve had this type of moment, congratulations. If you haven’t, you’ve really missed out and it’s probably slowed your success. If it seems more and more difficult to have this type of moment, you’re not alone, but those who can capture them continue to prosper.

Keys to Success. One of the keys to success in business is to focus your energies. This focus allows you to implement programs thoroughly before moving on and to put your plans into motion in a thorough manner with all of the details taken care of. But there are many distractions that work against your ability to focus these energies.

These distractions range from the imperative day to day business operations to the no value energy consuming activities. On any given day you have to deal with figuring out fair compensation programs, designing effective marketing programs, recruiting warm bodies, deciding how many pay periods there should be for your employees, fighting workers compensation claims and EEOC lawsuits, spending time talking to your banker, and working on Y2K contingency plans, just to mention a few.

Some people may juggle all of these issues at the same time. My condolences. Other people will set some of these issues at bay for a while which allows them to concentrate on only one hot issue at a time. They concentrate on it with all their time and energy until they have taken it as far as they can for the moment before they move on to another issue. It is planned for, investigated, researched, acted upon, evaluated, and closed.

The drawback of trying to work all issues at once is most people’s inability to deal intensely with many complex issues at one time. It’s just too much and so we tend to deal with all of them moderately well, which just isn’t good enough today.

Perhaps you’ve never been able to allocate 100% of your time to any one task. But even at 80%, it would be much more than a normal day when you are able to concentrate on no single item longer than 5 or 10 minutes without being disturbed with something else taking your attention.

Unlocking the key. How do you "find the time" so to speak? The time is obviously there. Pick the assignment. Do you know the one single item you would like to accomplish this week? Do you know what you will have to do to address this single item? Do you know how much time you may need? It is usually more than you first imagine.

One item may require some time alone, some time on the phone, some time meeting with others and then more time following up on the meeting. This is the difference between doing many little things and just one bigger thing well. For instance, it’s not just meeting with a real estate broker, but it includes deciding which one to meet with, contacting them, and making an appointment. It may be a meeting with your banker after you’ve evaluated your financial results and put a proposal together for him to review. It may be time with your employees after you’ve reviewed their current pay and their current performance. The concept is closer to a project with a beginning and an end as compared to a very small piece of the puzzle yet never finishing the whole picture.

Time is still a big issue that can not be ignored. Decide if you are the right person to be doing this job. For instance, are you spending time on the payroll? Should you outsource this activity to a firm that specializes in processing payroll? Of course it’s more expensive than you doing it if you’re not going to do anything else with this time that will increase your sales or lower your costs to a greater extent that this expense.

Are you designing the ads that go into the newspaper? Should you outsource this activity to a firm that specializes in designing effective print advertising? Of course it’s more expensive than you doing it if you’re not going to do anything else with this time that will increase your sales or lower your costs to a greater extent than this expense.

Are you personally looking for new sites or have you hired site selection companies to handle much of the time consuming tasks? Of course it’s more expensive than you doing it if you’re not going to do anything else with this time that will increase your sales or lower your costs to a greater extent than this expense.

On the other hand, are there things that you know best? If you could concentrate on them and focus your time and energy, could they produce profitable results? Could they produce incredible results?

I believe one of the critical challenges for the new millenium will be our ability to focus. We all face an incredible number of visual inputs, alternative choices, and distractions to our primary goals. Children don’t choose today between a grape lollipop and a strawberry lollipop. They choose from an entire aisle at the grocery store and we find them pacing up and down the aisle attempting to make a choice. Adults have the same number of choices. It isn’t just a black Model T Ford or a black Model T Ford. We now choose from an array of cars with choices of how to equip a car and how to finance the car and how to insure the care and on and on. If we can not learn to focus our energies, we can not meet our goals. I hope you will read more on this critical issue in the next issue of the American Drycleaner.

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