Do you have 3 minutes? 

Maybe you don’t because you’re so busy with urgent work. But I think I have something that might help you, so if you give me 3 minutes, I will give you back more than that in return.

Many of us feel busier than ever. And it’s also true that time management is hard – you’re always thinking about what to work on and how to keep all the balls in the air.  And there’s always new things flowing into the funnel. And you probably have some bold goals you’re trying to accomplish. 

And that’s what I want to address – how we can achieve our bold goals while working smartly.

I read a fascinating book called The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. The book itself is over 500 pages long, so let me highlight my two key takeaways.

First, look at what works well and repeat it. Second, and maybe even more importantly – look at mistakes, understand why they happened, and commit to not repeat those same mistakes again.

Just imagine all the things that didn’t go right last year or even in the last quarter.  Things where we say – if we could do it again, we’d do it differently. What if these same mistakes didn’t happen that year? Or the next?

I see at least two great outcomes:

• Faster growth. We’d be able to retain business more easily and we’d create happier customers that give us more of their business.
• Freeing up time. Think of all the time spent cleaning up mistakes. All the time soothing customers, reworking projects, dealing with quality problems… you get the idea. If we did it right the first time, you would free up a tremendous amount of time.

Simply stopping past mistakes is a great thing to focus on. This will actually reduce workload while also helping to grow the business.