Being Proactive when your in charge

Posted on: 15 Mar, 2017

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Being Proactive when your in charge
Proactive PAs and Secretaries are organised and efficient

Planning your day to be proactive

When you think of a Business Owner, you immediately think of someone organised, who is ultra-efficient and is the master of all business matters and interests. In effect, being proactive. Being Proactive is management speech stating that ‘a person is creating or controlling a situation rather than just responding to it after it has happened’.

 

A small business owner has to master a number of skills quickly, efficiently and effectively, they also need to be able to turn their hand to anything at any moment. To see what happened in the past few weeks, months or years.  Understand the consequences of that event and more importantly create business strategies based on those events to ensure business security in the future. This is a fantastic skill and great philosophy to live by if you understand how to become Proactive.

 

The opposite of being proactive is reactive. This is often a state people find themselves when life and a workload can get too much to do, and you end up firefighting. This may then result in opening emails first thing in the morning and spending the entire day replying, auctioning and planning. This is when accidents, mistakes and business opportunities can be missed or lost. Being reactive does not lead to your inbox reducing, but your workload increasing.  Furthermore, the working week extends into the weekend, family and holiday time.

 

To move from being reactive to proactive can take some time. However, anything that is worthwhile will always take time. Here are our seven steps to becoming proactive:

 

  • Schedule your work at the beginning of the day. Anyone that attends one of our training course will know, that I recommend that you schedule a maximum of 5 tasks a day. Any more than this would result in tasks being left off a list and forgotten.
  • Any task that has been buffeted on to a different day more than three times is a task that needs to be examined and determined if the task is a task you should be doing. Can it be delegated to someone else, or should it be done?
  • Ensure you have a realistic time frame to complete your five There is no point in scheduling five tasks if you know that task 1 will take 12 hours. You need to be realistic with yourself and your workload. If you have too much to do, ask for help or guidance on which task needs to be completed and by when.
  • Let your family, clients and business colleagues know that you have scheduled certain tasks at certain times in your day. Start to train them to stop disturbing you when you are working.
  • Discuss your proactive tasks with your family, clients and colleagues. Ensure that they understand you are working on and for your clients at these times to meet everyone’s requirements.
  • Write your tasks down daily to ensure that you know which tasks should complete that day. If you need to schedule a task for a weeks’ time, then get a diary or notebook and schedule it. See below. Notice that I have only scheduled part of my day. An ideal aim would be to have 60% of your day to be proactive with 40% reactive.
Planning to be Proactive for the small business owner

Proactive Planning for the small business owner

 

  • Create a mind dump list. List every single job you need to undertake; from ordering the milk to contacting the marketing department. Every task you have to do. This will clear your mind of all the tasks that need completing. It will help you to chunk all tasks together. Finally, it will give your head time to rest and concentrate on your five

 

In conclusion, being proactive ensures that your workload is organised, up to date and you would never miss an important meeting, date or business goal. Therefore, organising your day in this manner demonstrates your understanding of role as a small business owner and the needs of your clients and family.

 

Personal Reflection on being Proactive

 

I have been organising my day and tasks in the way for many years and have found the system to be very efficient and easy to maintain. I have incorporated this system into a diary function. An example can be found here. However, I would recommend that you create a system that works for you in your company and daily life. If a diary, like the one attached, is not suitable, then take an A4 notebook and use that as your task list. If you have any questions or would like some further help, then please contact me.