Few managers would disagree with that statement, which we found on the website of PPD Consultants. The engineering-services organisation asks four questions to address the “to meet or not to meet” dilemma:

1. Is there a clear purpose for the meeting?

Strong examples: (a) to reach a decision; (b) to brainstorm for solutions to a problem; and (c) to promote a sense of accountability (by creating a public forum where one’s work is on display for all to see, so people push harder to deliver).
Weak example: to gather status-only reports for areas of little activity.

2. Should we meet now?

It may be logical to postpone the meeting if required information is missing or a critical team member is unavailable. Don’t be too quick on this trigger, however; you don’t want to cancel necessary meetings.

3. Is there a better alternative?

Information-only debriefs, such as status updates, can be done through e-mail or other means. If the topics only involve two or three members, then an informal subgroup session may be wiser than an all-hands-on-deck meeting.

4. What if the meeting is not held?

Before postponing a meeting, consider: What would not be accomplished? How would team members react? How would senior managers react? If people are telling you that nothing would be missed (or implying as much by their absence or lack of interest), then you have your answer, which should lead you to either cancel the meeting or find ways to improve it.

New interns, with their expectations and beliefs that they have all this superior knowledge gained by earning a 1st in their degree. Or perhaps you have more technical interns that have earned A*’s in their engineering classes. Either way, interns are great, and I highly recommend that you hire one or two or three.

But do you know what is even better? An apprentice.

What’s the difference? Well, the Dictionary.com definition of intern includes the word “apprentice,” so on the surface it seems like they are very similar. They are both people, usually young, who want to learn a career. But the big difference is the amount of time involved.

If you remember from your history classes, young boys (and occasionally girls) were apprenticed to experts in everything from barrel making to medicine. The apprentice stayed with his “master” (not a term I’d like to resurrect) for years. How long does the average intern stay around these days? Three months? Four? or one summer.  Often, University students try to gather as many internships as they can during their time in higher education. But, what about the apprenticeship model?

Did you learn the ins and outs of your job and your business in three months? Probably not. In fact, we generally tell managers to give new hires a good six months to settle in and add benefits to the company. (It’s one of the reasons the cost of turnover is so much greater than just head-hunter fees. Hitting the ground running is very unusual.) But we expect interns to gain great understanding in a short period of time.

An apprenticeship is different. With that, there’s an understanding that the relationship between apprentice and mentor (better word!) will go on for years. The apprentice learns to do what the mentor does, not just general things about being in business.

This seems clear cut when it comes to plumbing (a profession that still has apprenticeships), but instead of using this system for other areas, we rely on universities to train people. This is utterly illogical, as many professors haven’t spent much time in the actual business world. Why would we expect them to train our future employees? I’m not knocking education, by the way. Logical thinking, technical knowledge, and the ability to write are all valuable things. And some stuff just requires lots of memorisation. (I don’t want my doctor stopping to Google if I’m having a heart attack).

But, what if you started hiring apprentices? (And yes, you have to pay them.) The reality is, even if you’re not benefiting at the beginning, you’d be benefiting by the end. What if you brought on a college student with the understanding that he or she would work for you for 10 hours a week for the next four years? And that this person would not be in an entry level job sorting mail and filing excess paper, but would sit beside you in meetings, and learn to do what you do. Not just general knowledge about your business, but what it takes to do what you do?

Think of how that apprentice could be light years ahead of his or her counterparts when graduation comes about? The knowledge of how to handle a problem, how to put together a proposal, what goes into finding a manufacturer, and what a pain it is to find good insurance for your company, would be invaluable to the apprentice.

And it would be invaluable to your company. The apprentice’s ability to contribute will become greater than any string of interns, all at a reasonable price. And when your apprentice finishes the apprenticeship, you can either offer a permanent job or another company will be happy to snap up a new grad with four years of real experience.

We’re often told it is better to do something now, anything rather than nothing at all. Really? If it were as easy as that, there would be no bad decisions, which we all know isn’t true.

It may be counter-intuitive, but here’s why you need to slow down, maybe even stop, before your next big decision.

We make decisions every day. And, if you’re like most people, you’ve probably grown accustomed to the idea that decisiveness is about making choices quickly, confidently, and consistently.

But are those the right qualities for really good decision-making?

Why You Should Wait

Big science projects like CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, approach decision-making differently. Because they’re engaged in work that has never been done before, the scientists are acutely aware of just how much they don’t know. As a consequence, they often delay design decisions as late as they can. Why? Because every day that they wait brings new data, new mistakes, new learning. They’re keen not to box themselves into choices based on information that rapidly becomes out-of-date.

This is a big challenge for any group working in research, design, and innovation. It prompts a critical question: How much do you have to know today to decide how much today? How much can you afford to delay until you know more?

What to Do in the Meantime

This seems unproductive in business, considering you’ve got used to speed, despite the mounting evidence against the first-is-always-best, fast-is-always-good phenomenon.

In a fast-moving environment, often the smartest thing to do is to stop and watch. Keep collecting data. Keep asking questions. Make a decision, yes, but leave it until the last moment you can. Take time to absorb uncertainty and learn from it.

An example of this would be Morrisons, the supermarket chain who have waited and watch the online grocery market for two years while all their main competitors jumped into the fray, they now hope to benefit from the mistakes that have been learnt over the last two years.

They won’t even have to create the costly and time consuming infrastructure their competitors had to, Morrisons are going to use the existing infrastructure of Ocado, an online grocery company which has been in partnership with the up-market Waitrose supermarket chain, and has failed to make a profit so far. This repositioning with a new partnership may be just what both Morrisons and Ocado need to effectively gain market share and profit in this fast growing area.

So while many saw Morrisons procrastinating, they were all the time gaining more information to make the best decision on how to make the most of online shopping.

Procrastination may be seen by many as the thief of time, but if you’ve got the time it may pay dividends to just wait.

Don’t worry. Your day is not a total disaster. In fact, you can save your sanity and salvage the day. You just need to re-focus and just maybe the mishaps are an opportunity  Here are some easy ways to rescue your day when mishaps threaten to ruin it:

1. Keep quick tasks close at hand.
When time opens up in your schedule, like your lunch appointment not showing up, you suddenly have time to handle other opportunities if you’re prepared. For example, carry notecards, envelopes and stamps in your bag. When you find “lost time” in short unexpected moments throughout your busy day, this allows you to write a few thank you notes, birthday cards and other hand-written messages to clients, staff and others in your network. Getting something done in place of what fell through will keep you feeling productive and the unexpected gesture makes you stand out from the crowd.

2. Avoid technology blips with practice.
Have you ever spent the first 20 minutes of a video meeting working out all the technology kinks? When I think of how many cumulative hours have been wasted, I go crazy. If you have an upcoming meeting or presentation in which you’ll be using technology that’s new to you, schedule rehearsal time. Book the conference room, have all the audio-visual equipment set up, and go through the exact procedure ahead of time. Practice using the microphone, pointing the clicker and seeing what your PowerPoint looks like on the presentation screen.

Don’t practice on key clients. Help your clients look good too by sending an agenda with the exact instructions and any audio-visual materials they’ll need. If you’re familiar with the gear, you’ll be able to better handle anything unexpected that comes your way.

3. Revive your confidence with a deep breath.
Sometimes we get so caught up in what’s happening in the moment we forget to breathe deeply. When unanticipated situations crop up, stress is a natural reaction. However, remembering to breathe deeply can calm the hectic moments and allow you to re-focus on where you want your day to go. Deep breathing improves your concentration and increases your energy. Relaxed bodies also have greater self-confidence, exactly what you need when things seem to be spinning out of control. So breathe. Deeply.

4. Anticipate emergencies.
Repeat what works and eliminate what doesn’t. This ensures you won’t have another day filled with mishaps beyond your control. For example, keep an extra shirt in your car or office, so that a coffee spill becomes a nuisance and not a disaster. Buy phone chargers for your home, office and carry-on bag to stay charged wherever you are.

5. Use cancellations as time to think about the big picture.
What’s the first thing you do when you’re notified that a meeting has been cancelled? Check email or go for coffee, right? Most people go back to what they were working on. What if you didn’t? Instead of chipping away at your never-ending mountain of emails, take that one-hour time slot that you were scheduled to be away from your desk to actually move a big, long term project forward. When was the last time you had a fully uninterrupted hour to think? Now is your time to take the opportunity and make significant progress on something big.

Short of simply working fewer hours and running the risk of tanking your business how do entrepreneurs achieve a better work-life balance while increasing their bottom-line?

In a word: Focus

The late Steve Jobs said focus isn’t deciding what to do, it is deciding what not to do. People rarely disagree that narrowing one’s focus can be helpful, but few actually do it. That’s because it’s often unclear how to focus at a practical level.

Here are six simple steps to help you strategically focus on what’s most critical in your business life so that you can earn more while working less:

1. Monetise your to-do list. Determine the financial value of completing every task on your list, then write those amounts next to the corresponding items.

For example, if the task is to prepare a proposal to land a £150,000 contract, write “Finish Proposal (£150,000).” If the task is to return a phone call from your number-one customer, who generates £1 million in annual sales, write: “Return Mary’s phone call (£1 million).”

2. Sort your list in descending order. Start with the highest amount at the top and the lowest amount at the bottom.

3. Draw a line through the middle of your list. Split your list in half with the top most important tasks at the top and the least important 50% on the bottom.

4. Spend four days a week working on the top 50% of your list. Focus on the number-one item on the list and finish it completely before you begin the next item. If you find that you can’t finish this item until someone else does something first, move on to the next item on your list.

5. Spend one day a week on the bottom 50% of your list. By forcing yourself to work on the less important (but seemingly urgent) tasks only one day a week, you won’t be able to complete them all. You’ll find that some tasks remain on the bottom 50% for many weeks at a time. You should expect this to happen and realise it’s a deliberate by product of this approach.

6. Re-evaluate the bottom 50% of your list weekly. Drop the tasks that become obsolete. If you’re forced to procrastinate on the unimportant tasks, they’ll stay on your list week after week, and you’ll quickly realise just how unimportant they are. It would be better to leave these items off your list in the first place, but sometimes people have a major aversion to dropping things from their to-do list. Using this approach, the items just become obsolete on their own, which makes them easier to ignore.

For example, if you have several £100,000+ opportunities at the top of your to do list, it makes sense to have the bottom of the list include items like reworking your company logo, scheduling lunch with someone who wants to pick your brain for free advice or price shopping to lower your insurance rates by £750 a year. Focus is not free. To get extreme results from less work, you need to be willing to sacrifice good opportunities to focus intensely on great ones.

You want to dedicate the majority of your time and energy at work to your most important, highest impact activities. When you follow these steps repeatedly for a long enough period of time, your sales and income will increase substantially. With more money in your pocket, you’ll be able to outsource and hire people to work on the bottom 75% of your to-do list, while you shift even more of your time to the top 25% of your tasks.

The key to focus is to ignore trivial tasks while doubling the time spent on the things that make a big difference. Only by doing so will you start to like your new boss a little more.

Like Henry Ford understood the relationship between the Ford Motor Car and the Ford Motor Company (which manufactures, sells and services the car), you must understand the connection between all the parts in your business and how your company relates to the world.

Here are the essential parts of your business:

1. Consumer

Perhaps you’ve spent your life working in an industry. You know all about that industry from the inside. But building a business requires going outside. You must consider your customer’s needs first and foremost. No room for ego-centric thought, you must be client-centric.

2. Competition

Every customer is being pursued by your competitors. They are all making offers to solve the same problem your business solves. Your job is to analyse those solutions, and know why yours is better. What’s different or unique about your solution?

3. Distribution Channels

There are numerous channels of distribution available to you, but you need to know which ones are most effective for your business. The channels you ultimately choose will determine your reach, your cost and ultimately your bottom line profit.

4. Marketing

How will you get the word out about your business? You could get on the news by doing something newsworthy, or by buying advertising. Get yourself out there and shout as often as you can.

5. Financial

This involves funding your new business. Likely, your first steps will be financing through your savings, your family and those you know. Down the road, investors may be a possibility, but all the pieces of your business must be running smoothly together.

6. Strategic

The strategic part of your business is what happens inside it. They include Strategy, Marketing, Operations and Finance, the four essential functions in your business.

7. Tactical

The tactical aspect of your business overlaps into Marketing, Operations and Finance. This is the execution of the strategy that you have created.

8. Incremental

All the work done by the workers in your business falls into this category. The tactical part lays out the tactics, the incremental part performs them.

Each of these parts must collaborate with the other parts to form a whole. Unless they fit together in a collaborative, highly systematic way, your business will be in chaos. And when it comes to building the most successful small business in the world, chaos simply will not do. That business, the successful one, must grow out of order.

All the parts of your business must integrate together, and work together, seamlessly and consistently. Anything less and you’ll spend so much time running around between the parts, that’ll you’ll never give any part the focus it deserves and requires.

There is more to stock control than simply buying new products. You have to know what to buy, when to buy it and how much to buy. You also need to track your stock, whether manually or by computer, and use that knowledge to hone your purchasing process.

Maintaining Enough Stock
Your business’s basic stock should provide a reasonable assortment of products and should be big enough to cover the normal sales demands of your business. Since you won’t have actual sales and stocking figures from previous years to guide you during start-up, you must project your first year’s sales based on your business plan.

When calculating basic stock, you must also factor in lead time, the length of time between reordering and receiving a product. For instance, if your lead time is four weeks and a particular product line sells 10 units a week, then you must reorder before the basic Stock level falls below 40 units. If you do not reorder until you actually need the stock, you’ll have to wait four weeks without the product.

Insufficient stock means lost sales and costly, time-consuming back orders. Running out of raw materials or parts that are crucial to your production process means increased operating costs, too.

One way to protect yourself from such shortfalls is by building a safety margin into basic stock figures.

Avoiding Excess Stock
Avoiding excess stock is especially important for owners of companies seasonal product lines, such as clothing, home accessories, and holiday and gift items. No matter what your business, however, excess stock should be avoided.

It costs money in extra overhead, debt service on loans to purchase the excess stock, additional personal property tax on unsold stock and increased insurance costs. Buying excess stock also reduces your liquidity, something to be avoided.

When you find yourself with excess stock, your natural reaction will probably be to reduce the price and sell it quickly. Although this solves the overstocking problem, it also reduces your return on investment.

Some novice entrepreneurs react to excess stock by being overly cautious the next time they order stock. However, this puts you at risk of having a stock shortage. To avoid accumulating excess stock, set a realistic safety margin and order only what you’re sure you can sell.

Stock and Cash Flow
Cash-flow problems are some of the most common difficulties small businesses encounter, and they are usually the first signs of serious financial trouble ahead. Tying up money in stock can severely damage a small company’s cash flow.

To control stock effectively, prioritise your stock needs. It might seem at first glance that the most expensive items in your stock should receive the most attention. But in reality, less expensive items with higher turnover ratios have a greater effect on your business than more costly items.

Divide materials into groups A, B and C, depending on the monetary impact they have on the company (not their actual price). You can then stock more of the vital A items while keeping the B and C items at more manageable levels. This is known as the ABC approach.

Often, as much as 80 percent of a company’s revenues come from only 20 percent of the products. Companies that respect this “80-20 rule” concentrate their efforts on that key 20 percent of items.

Once you understand which items are most important, you’ll be able to balance needs with costs, carrying only as much as you need of a given item.

Tracking Stock
Good stock tracking systems will tell you what products are in stock, what’s on order, when it will arrive and what you’ve sold.

While manual methods may have their place, most entrepreneurs these days find that computerising gives them a far wider range of information with far less effort. You can even control stock right at the cash register with point-of-sale (POS) software systems. POS software records each sale when it happens, so your stock records are always up-to-date.

Features to consider in a POS system include the following:

· Ease of use. Look for software with a user-friendly graphical interface.

· Entry of sales information. Most systems allow you to enter stock codes either manually or automatically via a bar code scanner.

· Pricing. POS systems generally offer a variety of ways to keep track of pricing, including add-on amounts, percentage of cost, margin percentage and custom formulas. For example, if you provide volume discounts, you can set up multiple prices for each item.

· Updating product information. Once a sale is entered, these systems automatically update stock and accounts receivable records.

· Sales tracking options. Different businesses get paid in different ways. For example, repair or service shops often keep invoices open until the work is completed, so they need a system that allows them to put sales on hold.

· Security. In retail, it’s important to keep tight control over cash receipts to prevent theft. Most of these systems provide audit trails so you can trace any problems.

Every business is unique; you may find that none of the off-the-shelf systems meets your requirements. Industry-specific POS packages are available. In addition, some POS system manufacturers will tailor their software to your needs.

Be the business.
Treating your business as your “baby”, identifying with it personally can help you stay motivated. “Self-identity can provide the passion that keeps the venture sustained over time, it provides a sense of meaning,” Little explains. However, be prepared to cut the emotional cords if the situation calls for a more practical approach. “If the core project is attacked or it starts to become problematic, then you do need to be able to shift to a more pragmatic focus,” he says.

Get up.
Your environment can either stimulate or prohibit motivation. If your location can’t support your goals, consider packing up the laptop and finding a new place to work, either for the day or more long-term. “Find a way in which you can be supple and flexible enough to go to different places rather than abandoning a project,” Little says.

Hang in there.
As an entrepreneur or small-business owner, you are forced to wear many hats, and some may not suit your personality or style (say, when an introvert needs to hobnob with potential investors). To stay motivated while acting out of character, Little suggests planning a retreat afterward to a “restorative niche”, an environment or behaviour that makes you feel comfortable.

How do you stay motivated? Share your tips with us in the comments below.

There are things you want to do and things you have to do. Eventually everyone finds there is very little time to do both. The only way out of this fix is to delegate the Have To tasks to someone else. This is harder than it sounds as most people, whether they want to admit it or not, are at heart control freaks!

Whether you’re trying to pass on a task to an employee, colleague, or even a family member, there are two basic reasons you don’t delegate tasks you dislike.

A. You don’t trust other people to do the task “right”.

B. You can’t or won’t take the time to teach someone to do it “right”.

“right” being the way in which you think it should be done.

In either case, most people choose the path of least resistance, which is to simply do the task themselves. Unfortunately, this approach perpetuates poor productivity and overload. Don’t fret! Here are some simple (not necessarily easy) tips to help you break the job-hogging cycle.

1. Keep a Process Diary

If you are ever going to fully trust someone else to do the job, you first must extract the detailed information from your brain. Keep notes in a file on your computer or on a little pad every time you work on a Have To task. Just jot down a few inside tips about getting the job done your way. A few minutes of writing each time you do the task will create a complete insider’s guide in no time. These little guides help potential delegates get tasks close to right the first time. Ultimately, these guidance manuals and a little tolerance on your part for slight imperfections will help your team grow more confident and efficient when taking on tasks from you.

2. Dedicate Lunch to Learning

Assuming the people around you are ready, willing, and able to take on new tasks, they probably lack the information and training. If you keep waiting to teach them until the task is upon you, they’ll never be capable of freeing you from the task. Be proactive by using casual time to educate new people on your Have To tasks. Whether it’s one person or 20, buy lunch for anyone who wants to learn. A few meals later, you’ll have plenty of alternative resources when you are ready to focus your time and energy back on Love To tasks.

3. Encourage Self-Delegation

One person’s dreaded task may be another person’s dream job. Create a physical or electronic message board in an easily seen place in your work place where people can list tasks they are anxious to pass along. Offer desirable rewards to those who will learn, take on, and perform these tasks to acceptable standards. You’ll encourage a culture of empowerment by saying any job is here for the taking and simply pointing to the board when someone asks: Hey! How does a person get bonuses or promotions around here?

In case you’re still struggling to delegate, here is a dramatic measure from Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea. Several years ago, at a conference of the Entrepreneur’s Organisation, he relayed this critical and effective advice regarding delegation:

If you go on holiday for one week, you’ll come back to two weeks of work.
If you go on holiday for two weeks, you’ll come back to four weeks of work.
If you go on holiday for three weeks, people seem to figure it out for themselves.

Go enjoy a three-week holiday so you can come back to just the tasks you love to do. It really works!