“For every minute spent organizing an hour is earned” – Benjamin Franklin
One of the biggest challenges faced by employees is accurately prioritizing the work that matters. Often most of employees get caught up in work that may be necessary at that point of time but lose sight of critical long-term assignments and projects. The demands on the time of employees are many and constantly increasing. In this environment, it has become crucial to plan and organize time effectively.
Planning and organizing are the crucial skills in corporate life today. It is essential for people to plan well in advance to be able to coordinate their activities well and bring about effective and efficient results. It is not important to just be busy but to be busy doing the right thing. So, the management should aim at keeping their employees occupied rightly and gainfully occupied in the most productive tasks. Failing to plan and organize properly proportions to lost money and time.
In order to achieve increased productivity, there are multiple aspects that need to be considered
- Planning
- Organizing
- Prioritizing
- Setting Goals
- Delegating
Planning or task management is the process of managing a task through its life cycle. Effective task management requires managing all aspects of a task, which includes multiple factors to be considered like priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrence, dependency, notifications and so on. Planning can begin with the review of the current situation, identifying what can be improved and breaking them into steps to arrive at the intended state of affair.
Organizing skills are critical as it helps organizations save a lot of time. They help in bringing in structure to all the workload. Developing this skill allows people to keep track of the daily tasks thereby contributing to prioritizing. Employees who organize better can balance work efficiently.
Setting SMART Goals and delegation are two strategies that can help people in planning and organizing more effectively.
Setting goals at large means framing goals that are attainable. A commonly used acronym, i.e. SMART should be adopted. This help in clearly articulating the goals at hand, breaking them down into smaller tasks and assigning timelines to achieving them. SMART goals make aspirations actionable.
Delegation is the assignment of authority to any other person. Effective delegation enhances employee, productivity and organizational success. Delegation is the most crucial leadership skill. By sharing responsibilities, managers can focus on doing a few tasks well, rather than many things less effectively. There are two types of delegating – one for results and another for employee development.
Another practical tool to better planning and organizing is the Urgent and Important matrix. If a task is both urgent and important, it should be taken up at the earliest. A task that is important but urgent needs to be planned, the third quadrant represents delegation when the task is urgent but not important, in the fourth quadrant, the task can be eliminated if task is not urgent and not important.
Here are a few advantages that employees can leverage once they have successfully implemented the steps
- Helps you to achieve important goals and get the desired results
- Prepares you to deal more efficiently change in the workplace
- Organizing your work and planning helps you be more efficient and productive.
There are many tools and techniques available for better planning and organizing, from traditional urgent/important matrix to planning apps on mobile devices. However, what effective planning and organizing really needs is the right mindset. If one can cultivate the mindset of thoroughness and planning, then planning and organizing can be effective.
