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My Performance | Conflicting Goals | So Much To Do | Do Less, Get More

Doing Less as a Strategy for Getting More Done

By Douglas R. Rosensteel, CMC

As a manager, it is your responsibility to focus your organization’s efforts on achieving significant business results. The bad news is that your only resources are time, money, and knowledge. The good news is that you are not limited to only your own time, money, and knowledge. The nice thing about being an executive is that you have access to the time, money, and knowledge of the entire organization. Yet many of us act as though we only have access to our own.

Your job is to “get things done.” There is an enormous difference between “doing things” and “getting things done.” Billions of dollars are wasted each year by managers who fail to distinguish between the two. The difference is far more than a matter of semantics; it is a way of thinking, a mindset about your responsibility as a manager. “Doing things” is a way of thinking that focuses on your own individual time, money, and knowledge. “Getting things done,” is a way of thinking that focuses on your entire organization’s time, money, and knowledge. Your job as a manager is to get everything done, not to do everything. Odd as it may seem, getting everything done actually requires a strategy that forces you to do less.

There are three methods at a manager’s disposal for getting things done:

1. Do it yourself.

2. Delegate it internally.

3. Outsource it (delegate it externally.)

Individually, each of these methods has its pros and cons, but when used as a system for getting things done, they make a powerful combination. Truly enlightened managers use this system to direct resources for optimal effectiveness in achieving organizational goals. This combination of methods focuses the organization’s strengths where they will have the biggest impact.

Do It Yourself

The usual method for getting things done is to do them yourself. However, with as many things as most of us have to get done, the least effective way is to do them yourself. We tend to do things ourselves rather than delegating for one of four reasons:

“No one else can do it.”

“No one else can do it as well as I can.”

“It is quicker and easier to do it myself.”

“I like to do it.”

You will notice that these are not necessarily all good reasons. If your main approach to getting things done is to do them yourself, you instantly become a significant organizational bottleneck. Why? First, you are only one person, and you have only so many hours in a day. In short, you are human. You were not born on Krypton. Second, you are wasting a significant portion of your organization’s time, money, and knowledge by doing it yourself. If your employees have to wait for you to make all the decisions, if your boss has to wait for you to produce the report, if your department personnel have to wait for you to improve their work process, you are quite simply holding up the entire organization. And worse yet, you are not allowing anyone to develop. Doing it yourself in an attempt to get things done quicker or more accurately or more efficiently will backfire.

However, there are times to “do it yourself.” Those times are when:

It is one of the activities that you do brilliantly

AND you will produce extraordinary business results

Your focus as a manager should be on doing those things you are brilliant at doing. Take advantage of your strengths, and supplement your weaknesses by other people’s strengths. This is a concept known as teamwork. You cannot produce breathtaking business results by focusing on doing things you are simply not good at just because they need to be done. That’s why you have a staff.

Delegate It Internally

Effective delegation is one of the most powerful tools of the modern manager. As noted above, doing things yourself just because they need to be done is not an effective way to consistently achieve significant business results. Reports will need to be written, but if writing reports is not your strength, you will not write a good report. Budgets will need to be created, but if creating budgets is not your strength, you will not create a good budget. Your staff will require coaching if they are to develop, but if coaching is not your strength, you will be ineffective at staff development. These things should be self-evident, but managers seem always to become caught up in doing things they do not enjoy, and consequently are not good at, just because they need to be done. Here is a simple trick for you to try the next time you feel a burning need to do something just because it needs to be done. First, convince yourself that it is important and does indeed need to be done well. Second, convince yourself that you have someone on your staff who is better qualified than you to do it. That is why you hired them. Third, find that person and delegate.

To delegate, you need someone to delegate to. The delegatee must possess the following attributes:

Must be talented at the task (if you know your people, this is an easy one.)

Must have time to properly complete the task (you can make sure this happens by setting priorities and providing focus.)

Must have the necessary authority to complete the task (depending on the structure and culture of the organization, you may or may not have control over this.)

Outsource It

Outsourcing is often thought of as a last resort. High Performance Executives, however, use outsourcing as an integral part of the strategy of getting things done. When the question “Can we do it internally?” is answered by “no,” outsourcing is usually a reasonable method for getting it done. But when the answer is “yes,” the knee-jerk reaction is to assume that the only question we need to answer is “Can we do it internally?” We often forget the following, and equally important, questions:

Are we focused enough to do it internally with the current workload?

Using our past history of project completion as a guide, will we actually get it done in a reasonable timeframe?

If the answers to 1 and 2 are "no,” can we get an acceptable ROI by successful outsourcing?

Questions 1 and 2 are seldom asked, although they are critical to the achievement of the objective under consideration. The ROI question is sometimes asked, but usually poorly defined. What is an acceptable ROI? The answer depends on many things and is different for each organization. But general guidelines for what constitutes acceptable are:

It will be done significantly faster by outsourcing, thus providing a quicker return.

The cost of outsourcing is reasonable for the ROI provided.

The outsourcing partner provides a reasonable guarantee of success.

Conclusion

You have a full plate. And that is a terrible understatement. If you focus on “doing things,” you will inescapably become a roadblock to your entire organization, wasting an enormous amount of organizational energy in the form of time, money, and knowledge. If you focus on “getting things done,” you can more completely utilize the full resources at your disposal. But to do that, you have to reduce the amount of energy you spend on doing things, and increase the amount of energy you spend on getting things done. Your chief tools for getting things done are delegation and outsourcing, and you apply them systematically. Any energy you spend on doing things should be spent on doing things where you excel and can produce amazing results that can not be produced by anyone else in your organization. Use these simple principles, and you will be amazed at how much you can get done by doing less.

You may actually find yourself with some free time.

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