Help Quantifying Productivity

[amac]

Hi Tim and Everyone Else,

I'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but there are lots of details to consider. Negotiating my remote working situation is complicated and I'm not sure how to do it.

My main problem is that I can't figure out how to quantify my productivity. I'm the V.P. of Marketing for a 20-employee CRM and internet services company. Like most execs in a small business, I'm a jack of all trades. I help with website design, manage large accounts, manage projects, and help decide the overall business strategy for the business.

My day consists of emails, phone calls, meetings, research, and thinking about how to grow the business. Since reading 4 Hr W.W. I've cut the number of emails, meetings, and phone calls in half. Yay! But I still have to be in the office for the same amount of time (9a-6p), so there's no gain in time yet.

For someone at my level in the company, my productivity can't be measured by how much of something I produce in a day. A lot of it is decision making and delegating. Also, sometimes it can take months to determine if something I did was productive at all. How do you measure productivity in a short period of time if most of what you do is just decide and delegate things? It would be nice to measure it by increase in sales, but that takes a long time to figure out and the owners don't give me the authority I'd need to really run with the company anyway. They shoot down most of my ideas, but theirs haven't grown the company in 5 years.

The owners, to whom I report directly, are 2 hard working 30/40-somethings. They believe that when you're done working on something, rather than go home, you should try to get as much done as possible while at work. Even though we're paid on salary, we're expected to work at least from 9-6, but no less. They try to squeeze as much out of each employee as possible.

We have some flexibility and I get a month of vacation per year. I can take long lunches, take days off on short notice, and come in late or leave early occasionally without problem. It's not total hell. It's "cushy." But it's not enough free time.

I want to surf or mountain bike every day; travel more; spend more time with family; and I'd like to start a jazz-funk band. Also, I'd like to write a book about my life travels and experiences. I'd like to help inner city kids stand a better chance at succeeding. I'd like to contribute something to science as well.

Any ideas on quantifying my productivity?

All the best,

Aaron

[Sven]

Sorry Aaron, I don't think it can...

It seems to me that having to be in the office is a key issue here. I've put myself on a diet of 3-4 results (not tasks) a day. A few days back I let myself be tempted to do something else instead of going home after they had been completed. Where the days before I came home relaxed and still being able to do a bit of stuff around the house I now was tired ad unable to do anything for the rest of the day. For the business that was more or less productive, for my life it wasn't at all.

So I think it is important to actually stop working when the tasks are done. But how to get that working in your situation? Tim Actually did describe it in the book, the guy who went to China. In short, move yourself out of the office, increase your productivity, ask for forgiveness afterwards.

Remember, Your productivity is in the perception of your bosses, regardless of where you work.

Good luck!
Sven

[bing42]

The previous poster has a good point - I think perception matters more than reality in the workplace. I'm not advocating that you deliberately deceive the owners of your company, but perhaps you can delegate some of your emails, phonecalls & decisions to one of your employees?

You can still have them circle back to you and review what they have done before committing to it to make sure no huge screw ups happen. You could even outsource some of that stuff to a virtual assistant..

Then you could focus your efforts on other tasks that do have more quantifiable results - and multiply your output for those tasks.


Another idea is to start quantifying the output of your employees - something you probably do already. If you can increase their output, you have increased yours - and that is probably easier to point to as a productivity measure.

[amac]

Those are some good responses. I wouldn't deceive my employer, but perhaps there's a way to start going remote and ask for forgiveness later like you said.

How would I do that though? What if I just took a week off and went to visit my parents, but worked during part of the day? Then I suppose I could come back to work and say "well, I was working the whole time I was away, in fact I actually got more done because there weren't distractions. Can we do a trial run of working 2 days per week remotely? If there's not an increase in results for me and my team, then we'll go back to the old way."

The issue is that the bosses will say that everyone will want that. Then I'll say, well if they can be productive, why not let them. And they'll say that they don't believe employees can be more productive from home. I'll say, well, let's try it with me and if it works, we can see if it works for other people. They might consider it or they might shoot it down.

The other issue is that I'm not paid enough to be traveling a lot. I can afford one overseas trip per year, which I've done since college, and 2-3 smaller trips back to the midwest to visit family and friends. So even if I got a remote arrangement, I wouldn't be able to travel as much as I like without a "muse."

I'm working on the "muse", but that seems to be the hardest part. I'm working on a social networking website and researching investments in cash flow positive real estate. They are both long term strategies though. I'd like to be remote and with my TMI by March 1, 2008. I'm tired of waiting.

Any more thoughts or advice?

[FreedomBuilder]

Hi Aaron (and everyone else),

You might want to consider integrating The Neo-Tech System into not only your personal work practices but perhaps your entire company structure.

Basically, the Neo-Tech System of personal and business management rests upon whats called the Mini-Day/Power-Thinking Team.

For example, you "power think" your projects on, say, a Sunday and spread them over the coming week into their attendant "mini-days'.

A "mini-day" is pretty much what it sounds like. You first track what you currently do to get your job done, and identify the essential physical movements you take to do it.

Make a phone call? You physically move to pick up the phone, so that's one. You do some web design? That could be one. Do some accounting? Thats distinct from other functions, so that's a physical movement. And so on, for all the distinct tasks you perform to (currently) do your work.

Then, when you have identified ALL the essential physical movements you perform in your work, each physical movement becomes it's own "mini-day".

Now, it's just a case of organising your day into mini-days where each mini-day is one of your essential physical movements, in which you only perform that physical movement for the time that you allocate to do it.

Out of 100% of your working day (which initially may be, as you say, 9 hours), you may allocate 10% to phone calls, 10% to meetings, 20% to web design, etc., etc.

Anyway, you may be able to find the original System explained in detail at the Neo-Tech website archive here:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://neo-tech.com

Otherwise, I know you can pick up a copy either through Amazon.com or Ebay.com

Hope that this may have been useful food for thought...

[amac]

That's an interesting concept. So it's kind of like "batching" as Tim describes it. I've implemented a lot of the strategies in the book and I'm more productive now. The challenge is that when I'm done with the few things I wanted to accomplish in the day, I'm still stuck there until 6pm.

I'm going to try to negotiate the two days off per week and see what happens. I don't think they're going to go for it though.

[bing42]

Two more thoughts for you..

You might be in a good position to prove the productivity benefits to your bosses. If you are managing employees, teach them the time saving techniques in the book. Maybe even let some of them do remote work trials (assuming you have the authority for that). When your team starts multiplying their results, the bosses will probably notice and you can make the case for remote work, having proven it already.

You might be selling your bosses short. Just ask for what you want and see what they say - you might be surprised. If they don't go for it, you can find out what their specific objections are and work on tackling them.

As for the travel income, muses aren't the only way to generate your TMI. You could use your newly freed time to consult for other companies (so long as they're not competitors). It's not as good as automated income, but it also doesn't require as much time to get going.

Now that you can do all your work in less time - who says you can't do more work for other companies? You might even be able to outsource the consulting work- then your time is just client management and managing your vendors.

Good Luck