“Coach’s Forum” is a place in which you can ask your questions, tell your stories or give your opinions on any aspect of practice management. For each column, George selects the most interesting and relevant comments from readers and offers his advice. Our objective is to build a community of people with a common interest in making their financial advisory practices as effective as possible.



> Getting Yourself Organized

Advisor: It is just after 9 p.m. as I am writing this. What prompted me to do so is the simple fact that I am still at the office, trying to catch up on the never-ending stream of things I have to do to keep my practice functioning. I read with interest your recent column about hiring an intern, and was thinking that may be the answer.

However, when you indicated that one of the first steps was to figure out what I might want such an individual to do for me, I was stopped in my tracks. I have so many things on my desk already — not to mention the new ones that I know will show up tomorrow — that I wouldn’t know where to start to delegate.

Every day, I make a list of the things I need to work on; but I never get to the end of it. So, stuff gets carried forward to the next day, and the next day, and the next day. I feel like I am running in circles. How can I organize someone else if I can’t seem to organize myself? Help!

Coach says: There is an old colloquialism that goes: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” It has been attributed to many people, but I believe it originated with the White Rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It somehow seems to fit what exists in many advisors’ practices — some sort of fairy-tale belief that, from a time-management perspective, if we just keep doing more of what got us into trouble in the first place, things will work out better.

Being stressed for time is the most common and pervasive source of pressure I have encountered among all the advisors with whom I have worked. As your practice grows, it inevitably becomes more complex and the demands on your time escalate — often exponentially. Couple that with a patent desire or need to stay “hands on” in your business and the result is predictable: anxiety, an inability to concentrate, distraction and procrastination until, finally, you crack and find yourself in your office late one night reaching out for help.

There are literally thousands of theories on how to manage time effectively. For example, you mention that you use a day planner and a “to do” list to organize your activities. Although these tools are certainly helpful, before you put anything into your planner you must first decide whether an activity belongs there at all and, if so, where it ranks in priority among all other activities. That means distinguishing between what is important and what is urgent. Both are present every day in the life of a financial advisor and require attention.

However, to be effective as well as efficient, you must spend a good part of your time on things that are important and not just those “squeaky wheel” items that appear so urgent. Here is a simplified way to differentiate between the two:

> Important activities lead to the achievement of your goals.

> Urgent activities are often more about achieving someone else’s goals.

Another useful tool for thinking about this is the Urgent/Important Matrix, which has been credited to former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower and was then popularized by Stephen Covey in his landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. Eisenhower’s quote — “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important” — sums up the concept of the matrix perfectly.

The Urgent/Important Matrix is a powerful tool for setting priorities. Using it helps you to overcome the natural tendency to focus on urgent activities, so that you can clear enough time to focus on what’s really important. This is how you move from “firefighting” to taking control of your time, allowing you to grow your practice while simultaneously reducing your stress.@page_break@The matrix can be drawn as illustrated above, with “importance” on the horizontal axis and “urgency” on the vertical axis. The four corners each represent a different combination of urgency and importance. (Some representations reverse the axes, but it doesn’t matter because you will still end up with the same four quadrants, albeit in different but corresponding placement.)

At the top left of the matrix, write “urgent but not important.” Write “not urgent and not important” at the bottom left. At the top right, write “important and urgent”; and at the bottom right, write “important but not urgent.”

To use the matrix to prioritize your activities, list all the activities and projects you feel you have to do. Include everything that takes up your time at work, however unimportant. Next, assign importance to each of the activities. You can do this on a scale of low to high. Remember, this is a measure of how important the activity is in helping you meet your goals and objectives. Try not to worry about urgency at this stage — get to the true level of importance.

Then, score each listed item on your matrix according to its combined importance and urgency, and schedule your priorities according to the following strategies for each quadrant of the matrix :

> Urgent And Important

Activities that are both urgent and important fall into what I refer to as the “Nike category” — that is, “Just do it!” These items have deadlines and are in support of you achieving your personal goals. An example might be generating revenue to meet your annual production objective.

For most advisors, that means not letting a day go by without having one or more revenue-producing activities scheduled. To be sure, there will be last-minute issues and crises that you could not foresee and which are important enough that they cannot be avoided. So, leave some flexibility in your schedule to be able to handle them. If you feel you have to reschedule something to deal with a crisis, at least you will be able to decide what takes precedence in terms of both urgency and importance.

> Urgent But Not Important

These are the activities that get in the way of you achieving your personal goals. The overall strategy here is to delegate as much of these matters as you can. If you don’t have anyone to whom you can delegate, schedule a block of time to clear these items off your desk all at once.

Also bear in mind that what you deem urgent and important may not fit with other people’s views. The most common example is people dropping into your office to get your help meeting their needs, not yours. Of course, you want to be available to your team, but it’s quite OK to say no to people or to encourage them to solve the problem themselves. Alternatively, try allocating certain periods when you are open to assist others with their goals so that people learn to interrupt you only at certain times.

> Important But Not Urgent

These are the activities that help you achieve your personal and professional goals and complete your important work in an orderly fashion. The basic strategy is to plan when you are going to address these issues and to schedule time exclusively to work on them.

Make sure you allocate sufficient time far enough in advance to do these things properly, so they do not become urgent.

> Not Urgent And Not Important

These activities are just a distraction and should be avoided if at all possible. Some can simply be ignored, like those two-week-old emails you haven’t read. Others are activities that other people may want you to do, but do not contribute to your own desired outcomes. Again, say no politely and firmly, if you can. If people see you are clear about your objectives and boundaries, they will often not ask you to do “not important” activities in the future.

Do you have a time-management system that is working well for you? IE



George Hartman is president and CEO of Market Logics Inc. and a senior coach and facilitator with the Covenant Group. Send questions, comments and opinions to george@marketlogics.ca.