Are you focussed?

In my last catch up with Ilan Kogas (my mentor) he ran me through a simple exercise that I also saw at the Verne Harnish growth workshop back in Feb and it is very powerful.

Basically depending on whether your role is in the business of revenue generating or service delivering or even cost saving, the exercise is to list the 10 things you did say yesterday and determine how many them helped you deliver on your role/KPI's.

So if you are in the business of sales, and you listed the 10 things you did yesterday I wonder how many of them are revenue generating. Most people I have found have about half.

If you are in the business of service delivery, again, list the 10 things you did yesterday and determine how many of them are service delivery focussed.

My list was as follows (based on an ordinary day) - judged by business growth

1. Event Marketing (YES)
2. Sales Meeting with sales execs (YES)
3. Executive Meeting (NO)
4. Project Analysis (NO)
5. Meeting with Finance (NO)
6. Said no to new business (YES) :)
7. Called 3 customers to ensure they were happy with things (YES)
8. Met with staff member around some external client concerns (YES)
9. Meeting with external partner (YES)
10. Worked on some budget analysis (NO)

As you can see I had around 60% alignment - what this raises is - are you spending the time in the right places and is your team and/or peers.

I know you canargue that some can go one way or the other, but that is where your disgression comes into play in the context of the specific meeting/task you completed.

Try it out for yourself - you will be amazed.