I was recently at an agency that is in need of a culture change. We popped open the management system to see how “busy” people were. What we found were tasks that were due in 2014 still in people’s open activity list. So either we are screwed or people enjoy being busy. Now, no doubt this happened because no one was watching and people were allowed to hoard tasks. But there is NO WAY you can feel organized with activities from 2014 still open and looking at you.
Here is the other problem. No matter what, no one can help you because it will easily take an hour to organize priorities. We need to get everything into the agency management system and bump out dates as well as clear out old tasks. Bottom line is if someone is “busy” with tasks from 2 years ago you need to translate that into DISORGANIZED.
What happens if someone calls out sick? What the heck is the team suppose to do? They can’t figure out what’s important that day and, more importantly, your customer suffers. We all need to commit to the agency management system being at zero every night in order to work efficiently and effectively.
So how do we tackle this problem? Have a management system Spring Cleaning week!
- Run an activity report by person of overdue tasks (you will find some people are worse offenders)
- Hold an agency management system Spring Cleaning Week and set the expectation that we will be at zero by the end of the week
- Have prizes and bring in lunch to make it fun
- Anyone who does not participate you know loves looking busy… it needs to be addressed
- Run reports weekly to keep an eye that it’s under control
We all can keep tasks open too long but if you are using the system we can effectively manage it.
