Tip For Cutting Down On Extra Work

Are you feeling like you are spinning your wheels a lot? You are working longer and seem to be getting less done. Sometimes the fault lies in extra, created traffic through your office. Traffic that needs attention seems urgent and necessary. Let me ask you to take a little test. Do you find people calling you or stopping by your office to follow up on an email or other communication they sent you? Do you get several people a day doing this? Do you find it difficult to finish what you are working on because of interruptions? Do you have so much unfinished work you feel you are going a little crazy?

There is a simple solution you can do that will cut down on 90% of this unnecessary traffic giving you time and momentum in your day. What is it you ask?

Well, have you noticed that leaving out the simplest things can sometimes cause the most overwork? One little detail left out and the whole world seems to feel like they need to camp out in your office. One of these simple details, which left undone, that will cause quite a bit of extra work for you is an acknowledgement.

By acknowledgement I mean in the sense of letting someone know you received that person’s communication. We get so busy these days that we sometimes forget or neglect to acknowledge our incoming communication. The biggest source is the communication sent via email from employees, associates, customers or vendors. How this causes extra work for you is, once someone sends a communication out via email, they don’t know for sure if you received it or if it was routed to a spam folder or is simply making its 900th trip around the planet.

The person who sent you the communication has attention on the fact, “Did he get it or not”, “maybe I should call and make sure, after all I have not heard from him”. Or worse yet, if it was someone in your office, they get up and walk into your office and ask you if you received their email. Now you have body traffic (a person) that is demanding your attention. You have to stop what you are doing to tell them you will get back to them, and then remember where you left off on what you were working on.

Simple lack of acknowledgements cost business people thousands of dollars a year in wasted time and effort. The higher up you are in the company, the more expensive this can be for your company. You have also created extra work for your employee, as they have to stop what they are doing and follow up to see if you received the message.

The simplest reason to always acknowledge email communication is money. Time is money and because income, in and out of your business, flows on the communication lines between you, your employees, your customers, associates and vendors; if these flows get blocked and do not move, your company’s income will get blocked. The faster and more efficient communication flows in and out and through your business the more money your business will make. If you don’t believe me try not answering your phone for a few days and see how quick your company’s income dries up.

One of the tricks to better efficiency is to be able to control your traffic. An acknowledgement is a way to control your traffic and get more done each day. Try it.

Mark Hale
CEO