EntreLeadership - How to Use To-Do Lists to Be More Productive with Charles Duhigg

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the bestselling author of Smarter Faster Better and The Power of Habit. Charles explains his process for writing a successful to-do list and how this method can help you focus on your priorities and accomplish your goals. Later in the episode, George sits down with Kassidy Slamer, the senior director of service operations at Ramsey Solutions, to talk about how to find efficiencies on your team to be more productive. You’ll also learn Kassidy’s tips for helping your team get quick wins.   You’ll learn: A tip to get more done on your to-do list If your to-do list is killing your goals How to stop people from stealing your time How to boost your team’s efficiency   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre Exodus 90: https://bit.ly/Exodus90Entre Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital   Links mentioned in this episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast Charles Duhigg’s website: https://bit.ly/3CPczGF Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg: https://amzn.to/3hZCUYH The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: https://amzn.to/3w7qJBg Zendesk: https://bit.ly/37q4oov Download the EntreLeadership Goal Tracker: https://bit.ly/3pYdmQb Share your feedback with Tim, our producer: https://bit.ly/3bJOSmi   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Weekly Report Tool: https://bit.ly/WeeklyReportTool   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, some people say nothing is impossible. But I'll tell you, some people do nothing every day. So I can tell you with great assurance, it is possible. But seriously, you can't get everything done on your to-do list. And when you do try to get everything done, you tend to drop the ball on the things that matter most. So the question is, is it even possible to get to the end of the day and know that you were effective and not just busy?

From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and today's episode is all about how to be more productive. Our first guest is Charles Duhigg. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of Smarter, Faster, Better, about the science of productivity and the power of habit, about the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and societies. Today I'm going to talk to Charles about how to build a better to-do list.

He's going to lay out his process for writing a successful to-do list, and show you why this method can help you focus on your priorities and help you accomplish those big goals. In our second conversation, I talk with Ramsey Leader Cassidy Slammer. She's going to share her process for working with teams to find efficiencies to become more productive. Up first, my conversation with Charles Duhigg. Charles, it's great to have you with us on the Entree Leadership Podcast.

How are you? I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. So this is a fun topic that I know you're passionate about, and it's something that I'm terrible at. So this episode is mostly for you to help me. But I hope listeners out there are helped by it as well. We're talking about the dreaded or exciting to-do list. There's nothing like a to-do list to make me feel like I'm a productive human being.

And I've got thousands in my phone, I feel like. I make a new one every day. Right. Where do people go wrong? Where do we go wrong, Charles? There's two things to understand here. The first of which is that there should be in your life a to-do list and a memory list. list. We as humans are very, very bad at carrying around the 10 or 15 or 20 things that we want to get

done in our head. So what you should do is you should use paper as an external memory aid, right, or your phone. And you have a long list of the things you want to get done eventually. But that is not your to-do list. The problem with that is that if you use that as your to-do list, it's overwhelming, right? You don't know where to start. In fact, there's been a bunch of studies that show that when people create to-do lists that have too many things on them, they will often, about 30% of people will often include something they have already done. Because it feels so good to cross that off, right? It feels like you're productive and you're getting stuff out of the way.

And that is actually a negative thing. That's a drawback. Because what it does is it gives into your brain's need for cognitive closure. If you have a list of 15 or 20 things, your instinct will be to look for the easiest thing to get done, the easiest thing to cross off that list. But that might not be the most important thing. That might not be the thing that you'd actually need to get done today.

So in addition to having a memory list, what you should also have is a to-do list. And you should write this to-do list fresh every single morning, and there should only be two or three things on this to-do list. Wow. At the top of the to-do list should be the most important, impactful thing to get done today. The one thing that you absolutely want to get done today, must get done today, that if you do it, it's going to change the course of your life. And then after that, you might put one more thing. You don't have to do that second thing, right? Like, all you have to do is get that one big thing done today.

But let's say you get it done by 2 o'clock in the afternoon. There should be a second thing on your list that tells you what to do next. And maybe, maybe a third thing that you're going to want to do tomorrow morning. And that's it. To-do lists should be a way for you to prioritize, not to remember. Oh, that's good. I just read this sigh of relief, as you were telling me, I only need two things, because mine often look like, well, there's seven things I need to do, and there's 4,000 decisions that need to be made. How do you balance all of the things that actually happen in your day-to-day versus a to-do?

Because a lot of leaders listening may go, well, Charles, that would be nice if I only had two things to do today, but they're 17. And if I don't get them all done, it's going to create fires for the rest of the week. How do you grapple with that? Absolutely. Well, that's where your schedule comes in, right? because you're going to sit down with your calendar and you know that you've got a call for your favorite podcast at 9 o'clock in the morning

and then you've got a meeting, you've got to be at 10.30. And by the way, your kid has to get picked up at 2 in the afternoon. You have a list of things you need to do that day. But the question is, when you're not doing something on your calendar, how are you going to spend your time? Are you going to spend it canceling that magazine subscription

because you know you really should cancel the magazine subscription? I mean, it's going to save you like $12 a year. or are you going to write the memo that's going to tell your company what direction it should take for the next five years? I know which one is more important, right? You know which one is more important. And if that memo is at the top of your list, instead of 13 things, one of which is cancel magazine subscriptions, you're going to write that memo in between the meetings,

in between the podcast recordings, in between picking up your kids. Now, the real question is, you just brought up is there's a thousand decisions inherent in each item. Even if you just write one thing at the top of your to-do list, there's a lot of decisions there. And oftentimes it's making the decision that's the hard part. So next to that one top thing on your to-do list, what you should write is you should write the first step,

whether that means I need to decide whether I'm going to bring Jim and Susie into this discussion or not, write that down. Because as soon as you write it down, you're going to start thinking of the answer. And then, right, the first, not only the first decision you need to make, but also the first step you want to take. Right. you're basically trying at a moment of calmness, at a moment of planning, you're trying to trick your brain into start processing the hardest initial steps. Because once you start writing that memo, once you make that first decision, it's going to be pretty easy. It's all downhill from there. It's the resistance to that first step that we have to get over.

And the easiest way to do that is to just plan it ahead of time and then let it unfold. Wow. That's powerful. in most leaders, like you mentioned, they want to do the small tasks, the easy ones, really fast, and then they feel really good and productive, and they procrastinate on the big one. How do you get those priorities done when it feels overwhelming? You know, you've got an actionable step, but it still feels like, well, I don't want to do the big one first, Charles. That's not how my day is going to go. So I'll tell you how I do it.

So every night before I leave my office, before I go home, I take out an index card, and I write down for the next day the number one thing that I want to get done, and then the second thing that I want to do if I get number one done, but there's no pressure to do it. And then I write down a third thing that I think the next day is going to be my top priority, just in case the day goes amazingly well

and I have time for three things. And then next to that first top priority, I write down the first choice I need to make and the first step I've got to take. It could be something as simple as I've got to write a chapter tomorrow. And so the first step that I'm going to make when I come in is I'm going to close every single thing on my computer except for the word processor,

and the first choice I have to make is I have to figure what the lead's going to be. And it's literally just sitting there. Now, I write that the night before, and I come and I sit down. At the end of the day, I know how the next day is going to be most impactful. I know how to prioritize.

I know that it would feel awesome to cancel all of those magazine subscriptions, right? I would save $12, maybe $24, amazing. But I know what's going to be most impactful. Everyone listening to this, they know what's going to change the game.

They know how to move the needs. needle. And so because I don't have to spend the time and effort to do it right away, if I do it the day before, the evening before I leave my office, then I have this chance to kind of plan out the next day. And my brain starts working on it overnight. So by the time I get to my desk the next morning, and I know that that index card is sitting there right on top of my keyboard, I've already been thinking about that choice. I've already been thinking about that first step. I've been asking myself, is this the most important way to spend my day? Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is yes. Now, sometimes I I get to my desk and I think to myself, you know, yesterday I thought that I should write that memo, but actually what's much more important is to have a conversation with Ben about how he needs to improve his productivity. And so I'll change it on the fly. I'll cross off that one thing. I'll write a new thing and put a new number one on the list. But the point is, we have this amazing ability to get things done. Every single person has 24 hours in a day. Every single person has the exact same amount of energy and ability to focus.

There is no one with a magical brain that does this better than anyone else. The difference, the difference between you and the president of the United States and the president of so huge corporation is the ability to prioritize. How much time are you spending looking at that memory list, that list of all those 10, 20, 30 tasks you want to get done, looking at that list and saying, what is the number one most important thing on this list that if I did it tomorrow would change things for the better for me. That should become the top item on your to-do list. Yeah, that's a powerful question to ask.

It sounds like all of this is about simplicity and clarity because our brains just get too overwhelmed with 10, 20, 30 things, and we go, here's the one thing you need to do, here's the choice you need to make, here's the action that you need to take. Man, it's almost mindless. We just go, okay, you go on autopilot and you start doing the thing and the catalyst starts

and you've got a chapter done, right? You got the task done. It's amazing. Exactly. Exactly. And it's important because our brain loves to go on autopilot, right? There's a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia that exists just to help us go onto autopilot to build habits.

That's what the power of habit is all about. But what's important here is to recognize that the most powerful thing, that the number one productivity app throughout history, has been deeper thinking. If you look at everyone who's been successful, they're not successful because they somehow get more done during the day or they find extra hours. They're more successful because they think more deeply

about the choices that they're making, particularly when thinking is hard, particularly when you've got phone calls coming in and your kid needs to get picked up and you've got 10 things you ought to be thinking about. There are people who have trained themselves in mental habits to stop and say, what is most important?

what ought I to focus on right now? How should I slow down to make the right decision rather than just a decision? And everything we're talking about is about teaching yourself to think more deeply about the choice you're making, not filling up a to-do list, but rather looking at a memory list and saying, what is the number one most important thing? How can I get myself to think more deeply about how to spend tomorrow in the most impactful way rather than just spend tomorrow doing as much as I can. Yeah, it all comes down to that mental discipline.

And that can be very difficult in an increasingly distracted culture when it can be hard to focus on any one task for more than 30 seconds. And we're seeing content is everything, everything is getting shorter. We want our email shorter. We just can't get deep into any one thing. It can be very difficult. So that's something that leaders listening, they need to work on that. Well, and if you think about it, what's interesting is there's a lot of ways to say

it's too bad that our society is getting more short attention span and more focused on quick changes. But it also means that those of you who can think more deeply, it's a competitive advantage. It's more of a competitive advantage. If you want to win, your secret superpower is the ability to focus. And the more we train ourselves to focus,

the more that focus becomes automatic, right? Because instead of having a list of 30 things I want to get done, I create a list of only one or two or three things. I want to get done each day, that's a superpower that puts you at an advantage to everyone else. Yeah, that's a good reminder. So you wrote The Power of Habit, and you also wrote Smarter, Faster, Better. And I'm curious as to what you found the relationship of goals and habits into do-lis. Do they work together?

They can. So there's a couple of different things you mentioned there, right? Habits. Habits is when our brain goes on autopilot. That's when we stop making decisions and we just do things. And for a lot of things, that's really, really useful. If you're plowing through emails, it's great to be in that habit where you can just, like, hit boom, boom, boom, reply, reply. Because you know you've got to like get those things out the door.

You don't want to think too hard about any one of them. It's just going to slow you down. But then there's also these questions of productivity, these questions of making deeper choices and better choices. And that gets to goals. You know, one of the things that's really interesting about goals is that we tend to use this word goal to mean all kinds of different things. My goal in getting in my car is to get to work, but also my goal in going and exercising is to run a half marathon. And also, my goal is to eventually become president of the company, right?

Goal is a word that can encapsulate so many different things. The same way that our brain has this instinct to go on autopilot, we also have an instinct to look at short-term goals. We know this. It's an evolutionary trait, which, thank goodness it exists because it helps us become successful folks, but it also blocks our success at some point. And so the other question I think to ask yourself is how much time are you spending thinking about your long-term goals?

So one of the other things I do, I mention that I create a brand new to-do list for the next day every single day before I leave the office. I put it on an index card. It takes like, you know, 25 seconds. Then at the end of the week, I look at all those index cards and I try and figure out, if I look at the top goal on each card, how much does that correspond to what I actually want to get done? How much does that number one to-do list item correspond to my long-term goals? Now, if you do this, what you'll find is that actually, it only corresponds like 50% of the time. Right? You can fill up that to-do list with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with where you want to be a month from now or a year from now or five years from now.

The other thing that I do is on the back of that index card, I write my done list. So if I have a meeting and it's not on my to-do list, when I'm done with that, I just write down had meeting with X and I cross it through. Because at the end of the week, I also look at the back of those cards, what I actually got done. And from that, I evaluate how many of those items had to do with my long-term goals and how many of them didn't. And if less than 60 or 70% of how you're spending your time does not correspond to your long-term goals, then it needs that you need to think more deeply about the choices you're making. Because it is really easy to get stuck in this trap of short-term goals

and never get closer to the things that really matter to us the most. Yeah, man, that's brilliant. So there's an interesting relationship there. If you look at your habits, kind of post-mortem, you go, is this really leading me towards those bigger goals that I have? And if not, I've got to make some hard decisions and have better to-do lists. That's exactly right. That's exactly.

And it's a feedback loop, right? Everything that we know about productivity, about success is it does not matter what choice you make today. It matters what choice you make every day, right? You can have one bad day where you waste your time going after those magazine subscriptions and setting up the new 401K or whatever it is you need to get done. That's fine. But it's what you're doing every day on average that determines whether you're going to get to where you want to be success-wise or not.

And so the only way to do that is to have some type of feedback loop where you're actually looking at the choices you made. You're letting yourself analyze whether those choices were smart or not smart, and you're changing as a result. And the only way to create that feedback loop is to actually write things down, is to actually give yourself some time on a Sunday afternoon to look at the five index cards from that week and figure out, did I use my time wisely? I mean, it only takes like 10 minutes. Like this isn't a big assignment, but it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. Is there power to writing it down physically on an index card versus me pulling up an iPhone note? What is the value in that physical version? I mean, look, the truth of the matter is everyone's different, right?

And you should figure out what works for you. For me, writing it down is really powerful. Like, I literally have like a little pile of index cards. And that makes it easier for me. It makes it feel more visceral. It feels like something I can pick up. I can put in my pocket. I can take it out when I get home.

Now, there's plenty of folks who have never. really used paper, right? They use their phones for everything. And so perhaps phones are integrated into this. The point is, how do you make this something you can't let yourself ignore? It is easier than anything on earth to go watch the football game on Sunday, well, not anymore, but previously to watch the football games on Sunday, rather than pull out those note cards and look at them, right? Or rather than look at that list on your phone. And you don't want to do both at the same time. We know that the human brain cannot multitask. It is a complete myth that this is possible. All you can do, is task switch and there's a cognitive cost every single time you task switch.

So how can you put yourself in a place where it's easy to pull out those cards or look at that list while you're not distracted by something else and just spend 10 minutes thinking about them? For me, that's a matter of having something physical, like an index card that I've scribbled on. For others, it might be different. But the point is, experiment with it with the goal of creating a system that forces you to think more deeply just for those 10 minutes, and it can have enormous consequences for your life. Yeah, that's incredible. I'm going to try switching over to the index card

because I've noticed, you know, you get lost in all the apps and the notifications, and all of a sudden my to-do list is not in front of me, and that's the power of it, it was having in front of you all day long right there on the desk, staring back at you going, are you doing this? Are you doing the most important task right now?

And you kind of have that built-in, you know, checkpoint. I absolutely agree. I'm in my helm right now. If I was at my office, you would see I have a pile of 100 index cards next to my computer at every single moment. And I probably go through 20 in a day, right? I'm having a conversation with someone and they mentioned something and I write it down on the card and I put it to the side.

And the thing is, it's just sitting there on my desk. Eventually, I look at it again and I do whatever task it told me to do or I put it on my memory list so that I can think about it and figure out whether it's important enough to put onto my to-do list, my priority list. There's something about taking advantage of our weaknesses and using them for good. And one of our weaknesses is that it's really easy to ignore something on your phone because it's out of sight, out of mind. And it's a lot harder to ignore something that's sitting on your desk. It's a little piece of paper with some scribbles on it. Yeah, that's so true. So for people

who maybe let their schedule dictate their day instead of their to-do list, how can they begin to make that shift? Is it just blocking time on the schedule for that to do? How do you navigate that? Absolutely. You plan the work and then you work the plan, right? If you fill up your schedule, with things, you're just going to do those things, right? If you let other people schedule meetings for you, willy-nilly, then you're going to live by other people's priorities and other people's agendas. So what I used to do was when I was a reporter at the New York Times is that on every single day of my calendar, I would create a three-hour block that said, Charles is busy. And there was nothing happening during that time, except for me sitting at my desk,

either thinking about what my priority for that day or the next day should be, and then doing that priority for that day or the next day. And that's really important because nobody else could schedule anything during that three-hour block. They could schedule outside of that. You need to think about how to protect your mind and your time. And both of them are equally important because protecting your time, obviously, is the only way that you're going to get anything that you want to get done, done. But also protecting your mind is really important.

When you're thinking about how you're letting other people influence your priorities, are you creating space where you are choosing whether to follow up on their plans or whether you're automatically reacting to them? There's so many people who setting schedules aside, they use their inbox or their Slack account as their to-do list, right? I wake up and I've got 30 new emails and I'm going to go through those emails and I'm going to do whatever the emails ask me to do. Well, that's just a to-do list that's set by someone else. worst of all, you're letting literally anyone with your email address decide what your to do list ought to be. That's a terrible idea. And so one of the first things that I do is I only check email for about an hour and a half each day. The rest of the time, I don't do anything that comes in over email, although I might glance at them.

And then when I do those, the first thing that I do before I start hitting Respond is I decide which ones I want to respond to and follow up on and which ones I just want to delete or give to someone else to take care of. because the fact that you managed to email me does not mean that I now have an obligation to fulfill your to-do list. Oh, that was a mic drop there, Charles. A lot of leaders, they had a gut check there, and it felt like a personal attack. But that's good, because a lot of people feel productive

if they can get to inbox zero and they just responded to all the fires, and they go, wow, what a day. And you realize I didn't get any closer to my goal. I just helped other people accomplish theirs. Inbox zero is the worst idea on the base of planet, I think. Like, if a stranger came to you and they were like, I'd really like you to go wash my car and clean my house, would you feel good about yourself simply because you washed their car and

clean their house? No. No, but that's what inbox zero is. The best inbox zero is just to hit delete, delete, delete, or to put it into some folder. I have a special folder on my email called A-A-a-to-do. And if something comes up and I feel bad hitting delete a note from someone that I met 20 years ago, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend asking for a favor. I take it and I look at it and I put it in that folder A to Do.

And then I never, ever open that folder ever again. Because I understand that it's a priority for you, but it's not a priority for me. And it's not fair to expect it to be a priority for me. Now, that being said, for instance, I respond to every single email that I get from readers. So if a reader sends me an email with a question about habits or about anything else, I will respond to that. That doesn't go into A to-Do. That goes into something called reader emails. And once a week or once every 10 days, I sit down and I've scheduled an hour and a half,

then I go through those emails and I respond to readers' emails. But I don't respond to them when they come in. I don't respond to them according to the universe's scheduling. I respond to them based on my scheduling. So it doesn't interrupt me. It's something that I look forward to rather than being an inconvenience. Yeah, that's powerful. So as we wrap here, Charles, a lot of people are rethinking their to-do-do

list now and they're going, all right, I got to go buy some index cards. I got to do this thing right because I want to be more productive and I want to get to my vision and to my goals. What is the first thing that you would recommend as we begin to create that effective to-do list? So the first thing is just come up with a system, a daily practice of sitting down and asking yourself, what is the most impactful thing I can do today? And write that down on a list, on a piece of paper, on an index card. And then as you're going through the day and you're going into meetings and you're doing X and Y and Z every single time you have a spare moment. Ask yourself, how do I get closer to whatever is that one thing I want to get done today?

The most impactful thing. And then the second thing you can do is just create a practice for yourself. It can be once a week. It can be once a day of sitting down and trying to figure out what is the biggest goal I can think of? What is the biggest goal I can think of for today? What is the biggest goal I can think of for this week, for this month. If it's 30 days from now, or if it's seven days from now, and I've gotten X done, what would make me proudest? What should I fill in that X with that's going to make me feel like I am awesome? And then figure out how to make that happen. Don't congratulate yourself on simply getting through 30, 40 different tasks and, you know, knocking them off. Congratulate yourself and start rewarding yourself. Change your frame of reference.

to focus on the things that matter and on creating time for yourself to think about the things that matter. Most of us, when we make mistakes, it's not because we're dumb. It's not because we're lazy. We make a mistake in prioritization because we just haven't created enough time for ourselves to think about what we ought to prioritize. So just set aside five minutes, 10 minutes, to think about what's the best thing I can do this week that's going to make me happier, it's going to make my life better, it's going to get me closer to that goal that is my ultimate goal. And then put that at the top of your list. And even if you just chip away at it for 20 minutes a day,

at the end of the week, you're going to be closer than you were before. And at the end of the month, you're going to have it done. Man, some good stuff there, Charles. I have added a to-do item by index cards, and I can cross one off interview Charles Duhigg. So I feel pretty good, pretty productive already. Always love hearing your insights. I love the deep thought that you put into your work

and how you've helped our listeners today become more productive. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much, Charles, for a great conversation. Man, after just talking to that guy, I feel more productive already. I know Charles gave us some great tips on making our to-do list better and getting our most important work done. But the thing is, even the most productive leaders can waste their time

when they ignore the inefficiencies on their team. So how do we help our teams become more efficient and in turn become more productive? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right. In our second conversation, I talk with Cassidy Slammer, our senior director of service operations here at Ramsey Solutions. We're going to talk about how to find efficiencies on your team to become more productive. She's also going to give you some steps that you can take to help your team see some quick wins. Here's our conversation. Cassidy, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thanks, George. It's great to be here. First time, right? Yep.

This is big. Yeah, this is huge. Now, we've known each other for years now, and I've had the pleasure of watching you grow in your career. And we both have an affinity for two things, French Bulldogs and Efficiency, which you agree. Completely agree. Okay, good. We're on the same page then. So we're going to focus on efficiency today.

We'll save French Bulldogs for another episode. Fair. So let's get into this. You've got a new shiny title, Senior Director of Service Operations here at Ramsey. What the heck does that mean? What does your KRA look like? Yeah, that's a great question, George. Our operations team as a whole is constantly looking for ways for us to improve our efficiencies as a company.

In my department in particular, I'm looking at our internal service operations. So think leader operations, assistant operations, global operations, and then externally with our customers. So our Ramsey Concierge team and our customer success teams. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Now, before you step into this role, what were things like? Because I'm sure you were looking at all of this going, oh my gosh, there's some chaos,

there's some inefficiencies happening. Is that your heart? Absolutely. I am the puzzle solver. Like I like to see the big picture, put the pieces together, create the right puzzle. Sometimes that means taking pieces out and putting new pieces in and figuring out really what we need in order to create the right team, the right traction, and the right scalability. Nice.

Okay. So every person listening to this, they want their teams to be more efficient. they want to use their time wisely to get the most done. But to become more efficient, you have to find the inefficiencies. Right. Is that right? Absolutely. Is that how it works?

Yeah. Okay. So what are some common inefficiencies you've seen over your career? Yeah. What is that low-hanging fruit where you go? If you look around the company, here's probably where you're going to find it. Yeah. I think that's a great question.

And honestly, you can look in several different places to find your inefficiencies. We say a lot to be unclear is to be unkind. If you're not setting clear expectations for what you're, winning looks like or for what you expect from your team, you're going to find a lot of redundancy. You're going to have team members who may have different titles, but their KRA may look the same. They may be chasing the same solve or the same problem. I'm big on leveraging technology where you can work smarter, not harder, find the technology and or system that can create a more efficient process or create more time for your team member. So for us, for example, we just adopted

Zendesk as a team a couple years ago, and we've been able to create some self-service options for our customers, which has allowed us to have our customer success agents focus on helping the right customers, while the customers who don't need to talk to a team member can also get the help that they need within the technology that we've adopted. So the stuff that's easy, low-hanging fruit for the customer to go, oh, okay, there's my answer. I don't need to talk to someone for 20 minutes to figure it out. It frees the team member up to focus on the ones that do need the deep dive. Exactly.

I love it. There's an efficiency right there. Yeah. A few years ago, when I was leading in project management, we had project managers across several different disciplines. So we had a creative project manager, a technology project manager, a marketing project manager, and we found that we had three project managers who are oftentimes, I like to use the softball analogy.

They were oftentimes in the outfield and the ball was in the air. and instead of calling, I've got it, the other person thinks they may have it, and they all just run into each other, and the ball falls to the ground. And so we streamlined our project managers and started aligning them with our business unit so that they could support the project from the beginning to the end. Every great episode has a sports analogy, so thank you for that. You're welcome. You hit the quota for the day. That's awesome. Great analogy.

So it's an active intentionality to find these efficiencies. Sometimes they fall on your lap and it's really clear, but sometimes you have to kind of be observant about where these inefficiencies are. And it can be even harder once you spot them to address them with the team, especially if the cause of the inefficiency is people. Yeah.

How have you done that with, as you've worked with different teams, what's the right way to go about that? Yeah, I think this goes back to like, to be unclear is to be unkind, making sure that you're being explicitly clear on what you want the outcome to be. And sometimes it's also identifying what the problem is.

What are you trying to solve? And if your team members are all clear on the problem that you guys are chasing, it'll be a lot easier to create the right key results that you can then divide and conquer on. It really is personal time management with team members is important. Being able to have the right level of focus and the right time to focus. That's going to eliminate some of those inefficiencies across the team. Yeah. And I've seen some of this in my time here where we go,

hey, are we meeting just to meet because we like to hang out with each other? a purpose here, what's the end goal, and even things like processes and systems and documentation, we've gotten really good at that in the past year. We've created this intranet called Ramsey Central. Our team members can go to find things. Instead of emailing, guessing, wasting a lot of time trying to find a word document somewhere, they know exactly where to go to find it. Or you as a leader go, oh, that's in Ramsey Central. You can go there. And you support them in their journey to find it. Yeah. Yeah, it's leveraging technology. It's making the information available to, whether it's your team member or your customer, making it available

to their fingertips, making it easier for them to access without adding more people to the team or really like without bogging down a system in particular. It's just creating the right system or adopting the right system. So what steps can you take if you've found the inefficiency, you've kind of addressed it with the team, what steps can you lay out so that the team starts to see small wins quickly? Yeah. Effective communication is going to lead to greater efficiency. The time management, personal time management is really important in that. The third thing that I would say is leveraging technology as you can. And the fourth piece of this would be allow your team to have fun along the way. If it's all business, all day, all the time,

you're probably going to run into some burnout. Yes. As you implement maybe a new piece of technology, change can be scary. And so maybe you reward your team for going through the training about the and you have a happy hour or whatever, you know, finding ways to incentivize people to make it fun. Nobody wants to sit through a four-hour training for a software. I know I don't personally. Right. That's fair. But sometimes you've got to do it so that you're confident, you're comfortable using it, and we can all get over the hump of change and become more efficient. Yeah, exactly. And work on the right things.

And happy hour is important. Let's make that clear. That's very clear. That's important around here at least. Okay, so let's say a leader. They've got one hour this week. They say, Cassidy, I'm going to put aside one hour. to devote to finding these inefficiencies, where's the best place to start? Look across your team. Look what your team members are working on and try to find the redundancy or the roadblocks. Where are the bottlenecks?

And the more that you can identify where your roadblocks are or where your inefficiencies are, you can then start to peel back the layers to understand why is this inefficient. Do I have multiple people working on the same thing? Is one person waiting for something else? are we using 18 random spreadsheets when we could adopt one piece of software or technology that could create efficiency for us? Yeah, that's good. So a lot of people are going, hey, I'm in Microsoft or in Google, I'm in Evernote, I've got this over here. The team's all using different things, and it can slow things down.

Yes, bad communication and communication that exists in multiple places that you're asking people to go multiple places to find is completely inefficient. That's good. So can you give us a taste of something you're working on right now? that you're trying to make more efficient in the company? Yeah, absolutely. So our company is adopting a new HRIS, and I am coming alongside the amazing team that is starting to implement that

and looking at how we should be communicating that change management across the organization. And if we don't do it in the right way, you have to figure out who you need to collaborate communication with and then who you need to cascade information to. And if we don't cascade the right information to the right people at the right time, we're going to adopt a new piece of,

of software, and we're all going to be fumbling over each other. Yikes. Or worse, no one's even using it. Correct, which would be a huge miss. So for those that aren't hip to the lingo, I know I am, what is an HRIS? It's a human resource information system. Wow. Four words that somehow are just incredibly boring, but it's very important.

Yeah, it's really important. If you're in HR, you're like, whoa, whoa, this guy doesn't get it. It's amazing. And it really does encapsulate a lot of different things that we do with different pieces of technology, and it puts them all under one, simplified. roof. Yeah. Right. Yes. You're exactly right. It is the definition of leveraging technology to create efficiencies across your organization. I love it. Well, I'm really glad there's smart people like you who think this way, who live and breathe this stuff, who are super passionate about

finding those efficiencies, and I hope that our listeners can take this stuff to heart and become more productive. Awesome. Me too. Thanks for having me, George. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Cassidy, for an efficient and productive conversation. Now, Charles talked about how how you need a goal to go after to help prioritize your to-do list. And if you're listening to this, you're probably a goal-oriented person. You eat goals for breakfast, don't you? But how are you pacing? Are you on track?

How do you know? If you couldn't answer those questions confidently, it's okay. We are here to help. Our team created the Entree Leadership goal tracker. Not only will it give you a place to put all your goals, but it gives you a document to reference easily as you're making your to-do lists so that you're saying yes and no to the right thing. To download the free Entree Leadership Goaltracker, just use the link in the show notes.

Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, I want to challenge you to share this with three people on your team or in your circle. And if you really enjoyed it, leave us a review and tell us what you love about it. There's one guy in particular who would love to hear what you think about this podcast, and his name is Tim, and he produces this show. He wants to know what you like, what you don't like, and what improvements we could make. Your input helps shape what you hear on this podcast. I think that's pretty cool.

So go ahead and use the link in the show notes to connect with our fearless producer, Tim. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Rachel Cruz Show. Money should be fun, not stressful.

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