How can we get executives to create and share content for the company? To do this, we have to take some of the above ideas into account, and we have to find ways to measure those ideas. In short, we need to find ways to be more efficient.
But how do we do that? You can answer that question by looking at how teams get things done and how they structure themselves. But let’s be realistic. To really get to the bottom of the problem, you’re going to need to find out what makes a good team and what makes a good CEO. It may take a while, but we need to start thinking about that now in order to actually implement it.
1. Measure the Value of Being on Time
A great CEO is one who doesn’t get distracted by the problems of the day. If you keep up with the business, you’re going to miss things, but you’ll keep up with the business because you’re on time. This is a great way to get to the root of the problem.
In addition to being on time, great CEOs are also very good at procrastination. A CEO who makes it a priority to get things done will almost always find the time to do it, and he or she will make sure that it’s done in one fell swoop. They’ll know when to pull the trigger, and they’ll often do it very quickly.
For example, let’s say that you’re a marketing executive. You’re in your office in the morning, checking emails. You’re waiting for your day to end, when you see that there’s something important to take care of. You decide to go out on the town and see what it is.
You walk out and you find the research report on a company you wanted to work for. You get to work on it, and it’s finished in a few hours. What do you do?
You go home, and you sit down with your wife. You tell her what you did, and she says, “What happened?”
You say, “Well, I went out on the town today and found the research report. It’s so important to me that I had to get it done today. And I found it!”
She says, “That’s great! But that’s the same thing that happened to everyone else: you had to get it done today.”
What she means is that the CEO was getting distracted by his responsibilities and following through with the tasks on his agenda. We don’t want that. That’s a bad thing. But it’s not actually a bad thing if you do it on time.
The trick is creating a system that makes it easy to do things on time. It’s much easier to say, “I’m going to do this thing this morning,” than it is to say, “I’m going to do that thing this afternoon.”
2. Measure Your Time
The way you measure your time is by asking yourself, “Am I spending enough time at my desk?” This is a great way to find out if you’re making decent progress toward improving the company.
If you’ve been spending a lot of time on your desk, then you’re not doing it in a way that’s leading to great results. If you’re spending a lot of time at your desk, but you’re not getting productive, then that’s not a good sign.
3. Measure Your Compliance
The next thing that you can do is measure your compliance with your company’s internal policies. By this, I mean that you need to be able to tell that you’re meeting all of your own standards.
I don’t want to get into too many details to get to the point. The end goal of all of these measures is to make sure that you’re meeting your internal standards when it comes to following through and executing on your plan.
Here’s an example of a good way to start measuring compliance:
You say, “I want to get the phone number for our sales representative.”
You set up your Excel spreadsheet and go to Pivot Table. Here, you have a tick box for “Company Compliance.” You can see that you’re getting good results from this.
4. Measure Your Integrity
You’re going to need to measure your integrity. Integrity is not a word that you hear very often, and it’s not a word that everyone is talking about. But if you’re like most people, you have a really hard time feeling good about your own work.