There is never a reason to panic [Part 2]
Yesterday, I wrote about not ‘sweating the small stuff.
Today I want to give you a strategy that we use to make sure we are doing two critical things:
Identifying problems.
Solving problems.
Week over week and month over month, we systematically obliterate the issues that arise in our business.
We pound down the nails that are sticking up.
We optimize, optimize, optimize.
You can use this strategy whether you have a team of employees, a team of freelancers, or if it is just you pulling all the levers.
The concept is the Level 10 Meeting.
Here’s how it works:
Throughout the week, build a list of problems that you encounter, things that need to get done, new ideas or tools that you come across, etc.
Resist the urge to tackle them as you encounter them.
We use Monday.com as our project management tool. I don’t believe there is a free plan, but there are tons of free PM tools out there. Use one!
Pick a time each week (90 minutes is recommended) where you discuss each issue and create a plan to solve each one of them.
Give yourself the week to bang out as many of these to-do’s as you can.
A lot of them tend to be quick fixes that can have a huge impact (see: ruined sock email).
If you are not able to solve an issue because you ran out of time, or it’s ongoing, keep it on the list.
Pro-tip: Your issues list MUST be outside of your regularly scheduled high-impact activities.
The reasons this works so well are plenty.
It holds you and your team accountable.
It’s organized and methodical.
Week after week, your To-Done list will grow and you’ll be sitting there a year from now going, “holy smokes, I did all that?”
It forces you to take care of important issues and ditch the ones that aren’t.
It keeps your eye on the ball.
This is the trimmed-down version of a system created by Gino Wickman in the book Traction, which I highly recommend, especially if your business is doing over $2mil/year.
Finally, I’ll leave you with possibly my favourite quote of all time:
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming task into small manageable tasks and starting on the first one.”
Mark Twain
