All day everyday we are required to do different things, some of these things are work related some personal. Generally our personal tasks we don’t think so much about how they provide value to us. Sometimes they will provide us time savings other times we will waste time on them.
When it comes to business related tasks though there should be some thought given to how much a task provides in revenue or profit, compared to the time spent and the cost to the business. This really is how you differentiate what tasks are worth your time to complete, and which tasks are better to delegate to an employee. However there is no real specific path that will work for everyone, different businesses require different skills for different tasks and the value of a task for one business may be different for another business. So while i cannot provide a specific framework, i will give an example or two.
Firstly you need to consider the offset of one task against the other. First the task of sales. A sales person’s primary role is to sell the product or service of the business. Making sales generally should be the task that will give the most benefit for their time. If for example a sales person can generate on average $3,000 per hour in revenue when their only tasks is selling, then this is their maximum efficiency.
If however the sales person is required to also do ordering, take unqualified calls, and prepare marketing, this could easily take the sales persons productive time each day down to just 3 or 4 hours. So on an 8 hour work day the sales person would go from potentially creating $24,000 in revenue down to just $9,000-$12,000 in revenue. This is quite a substantial drop. The way to avoid this loss of productivity is where allocating other staff to fulfill the lower value roles can benefit. For example a staff member employed to place orders and answer the phone, may cost $200 for an 8 hour day, which would mean that the sales person now has the full focus to create sales to his full potential. An additional $12,000 in revenue or $200 for a staff member, big difference.
There is not going to be such a big difference for everyone, however for some it may be even greater. However it really all comes down to the fact that you will generally hire employees for one reason. To move the tasks that you are doing that take your time away from another task which provides more value. This value does not always have to be financial gain though. Lets have a look at another example.
You set up your new business a year ago, and you have been putting in some long hours sometimes60-70 hours a week plus more time at night when you get home. While you could continue like this and risk putting your family time at more risk, you look at the business and decide to hire two employee’s. One will be a receptionist, to answer the phone, prepare invoices, and any other mailings that may need to be done. This you figure should save yourself a good 10-15 hours a week and will allow for additional expansion.
The other hire that you decide to make is a sales person. While you do not want to take yourself out of the sales process entirely you see that there are a lot of sales that you do not have to be part of. Currently you see this could save you a further 15+ hours per week and will mean that there will be someone with spare time to look for more opportunities. While at first this may look like spending money, it is actually creating the ability to grow the business. at 60-70 hours a week there is little more time you could possibly give to the business, so adding employees is the only way to really grow or in this case to give you more time for your family.
In the first example you could see that by moving the unprofitable tasks from the sales person to another employee the sales person is able to spend more time on the tasks that are the most valuable for them. In the second example the most valuable time that you are looking for is the family time. By spending a little money on new employees you can regain some of this time, while also creating potential for the business to grow without adding extra hours yourself.
Finding what your most valuable task is and then finding a way how to focus on that task and move the other less valuable tasks away from you needing to do them, can provide a very valuable change to how you work. It really can give you a lot more time to create the value that you need to create to build a business that will last.
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