Episode 268 transcript
One of the biggest profit drainers I think in any business can be distraction in your team. I know we talk about distraction for ourselves, but distraction in your team. And this week’s episode tackles it all. Hi, it’s Emma Mills here, and welcome to episode two-six-eight of Mi TV. I help business owners to win the week, and that means getting exactly what they need to get done, just step by step, week by week, throughout the year, so they can leverage their time, focus on the fun stuff, and love their business. And part of this today is that I know lots of people who’s watching Mi TV will have team members, whether it’s one 3520 more. And I think that distraction time, like we focus so much on ourselves, of, I know certainly I have done throughout the past 16 years of running a business of okay, how do I keep myself in focus time? How do I make sure that I’m not reacting to everything? How do I make sure that my team members don’t just wander in on moment’s notice with a random question that’s not important to be asked right now and all of that jazz. But if you have team members, I think it’s really important to educate them as well and coach them on what that looks like, because you certainly don’t come out of school being coached on how to be productive in the day.
You know, you’re not really around. God, I could go off on a different topic here. You know, you’re not coached about Eisenhower’s matrix of what’s urgent, important, not important. You’re not coached on focused time, on minimizing interruptions, on when you’re productive in the day and all that kind of jazz. But I won’t go off and around about that. What I will talk about, I think, is three things that are just things you might overlook as a business owner and just to think about today to maximise your team in the office. So number one is interruption time. So in Mi PA, my leadership team, who report directly to me, and actually the whole company knows this, that I have interruption time planned into my diary, generally from 1130 till 12:00 p.m.
In the morning, obviously. And in that half an hour slot, I will take it to reply to, like, urgent teams messages or if I’ve been tagged in something in Asana or look at my emails and do any quick replies, if I’ve had any WhatsApps from team members. Do you know, like, the methods of comms that come in? I use this half an hour to go right now. I can go and reply to the questions that I’m being asked. So they’ll know that that is a time when they can expect me to come back to the Monet. And what that avoids is a message coming in now and me immediately going, oh, well, the answer is x. Or if I’m, you know, if I’ve planned in nine till 1030, I’m just going to focus on this marketing campaign. Nobody does really good work looking from one thing to another all of the time.
It’s just. It’s just not a thing. Even though my boyfriend tries to tell me differently because he seems to be a master at it, doing 10 million things at once and talking and having a conversation and I can’t do it like most people can’t. So having interruption time just gives you that like slot where your team know and manage expectations that that’s when you’ll come back to them. But similarly, I think it’s a really good thing for your team to have as well. So we have an open plan office in the main at MiPA and it’s really good for transfer of information and culture and all of that. Jaz. But also it’s really good for lots of questions being asked in opportune times.
And so coaching team members on you should also have an interruption time. Not every single question has to be answered right now or this minute. And all it is is a distraction to the person that was, that’s being asked the question and trying to do something. So my advice is whether, if you think it’s a problem within your business, how about implementing an interruption time with your team members as well and empowering them to be able to say, I can’t right now. This is important work. I just need to focus on this because we know that every time we get distracted, it takes like 25 minutes to get back into something. So empower your team to have interruption time as well for. And it also enables the people asking questions to kind of like save questions up.
So where you might get asked five times throughout the morning and then you’re like peppered all the time with questions just having in the interruption time. I’ve got five questions to answer here. Yeah, I can get them boshed out and it’s much more efficient, it’s much more, it’s less head foggy, if that’s a word. You know, it’s just like, oh, I’m now doing this and I’m answering it all. So I think if you empower your team to do the same, it will really help distraction time minimizing, because we already know that team members are productive for around about 3 hours a day. So we want to make that 3 hours as productive as possible and try and, you know, make the rest of the time as focused and grand, you know, as focused on really good things rather than just kind of being scattered everywhere. So interruption times, my number one focus time is another. Now, I totally get that lots of people have lots of team members that are reactive, so I do as well.
So our team that answer the phone, they are reactive and they need to be available to be reactive, to answer phone calls as they come in. But other team members who aren’t quite as reactive as that, I would really recommend training them and coaching them on having focused time as well. If they move projects forward, if they’re creating stuff for the business, you know, even if it’s just 60 minutes in the day that they know you’ve empowered them to have 60 minutes of focused time to work on projects, things, they want to move forward. I think that’s a really great thing to be, you know, suggesting communicating to your team that you also appreciate their time, you want to help them get the best done. So, yeah, interruption time, focus time, really big ones. And my third biggie, which I’ve talked about for so long, but it’s team members answering the phone. Honestly, I cannot tell you what a distraction it is to team members who answer the phone. Now, luckily, in my business, Mi PA team, as in my team in the office who are executive pas, they are not there to answer the phone coming in, they are there to get proactive work done for our clients.
Because if I had them answering the phone as well, and I’m using this example because I think this is how most offices exist. So our call team answered the calls because they’re doing like one thing reactively throughout the day. If our PA team were to, try to, excuse me, manage somebody’s inbox, like read the emails, understand reply, but at the same time going, oh, the phone’s going, needs to stop and answer it. Like me thinking about that happening over there is complete madness. And I know that we would make mistakes. The team would take longer to do things because they’re having to get back into tasks. I know that it would be that our team would be behind all the time because they would be getting stuck on calls they didn’t need to be on sales calls. People trying to pick their brains, long explanations of things from customers that maybe this person can’t help them with, but the customer feels better explaining it all.
And when I think about that scenario happening in my exec PA team, it seems completely bonkers to me that I would have them trying to do really good exec PA work, but also answering the phone at the same time. But what actually happens in most UK businesses is that the answering of the phone is considered such a kind of low task that it’s just like, well, we’ll all answer it. Well, I would just put to you that it distracts your team. You’ll get the wrong people answering the phone. If they don’t want to answer the phone, they’ll do it badly, like carving that out of an office and getting a call. Answering company like MiPA to answer the calls, or whoever it is, is such a bonus to people that are sat in at desks, in offices like do moving work forwards. The distraction of constantly answering the phone I think is okay. You may save the money on getting the call answered, but the money you lose in distraction, time loss, not moving things forward.
The hourly rate of the people that you’re paying, then to answer the calls, it probably comes a very, very, very expensive receptionist. So I just think that getting the whole office or just people that are not receptionist to answer the phone is a really false economy. And obviously, you know, if you would love to chat about that more, maybe you wouldn’t love to chat about it, but maybe you have some questions. You know, where you can find me or the team and just reply dm me wherever you see in this video. So, yes, those are my three things about keeping your team on track and hyper focused and high performing and enjoying what they’re doing, which is interruption time for everyone. Focus time. Help them plan that in and don’t just have them answering phone because you think it saves you on a call answering service or a receptionist because it doesn’t work out. I hope today’s episode helps you to get your head out of the dirt and into the clouds. And I will see you next week for episode 269. See you then. Bye.
