Why You Must Automate to Grow Your Business

Picture this: you own a bustling boutique, and keeping track of inventory across multiple locations is a logistical nightmare. Enter advanced inventory management software like TradeGecko or Zoho Inventory. These platforms offer features such as automated stock level tracking, real-time updates, and predictive analytics. With automation handling the heavy lifting, you can optimize inventory levels, minimize stockouts, and focus on strategic decisions to enhance your product offerings and customer experience.

Make Work Easier with Automation

Do you ever feel like there just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done? Well, what if I told you there's a magical way to make your work easier and save time? It's called automation, and it's like having a little helper that takes care of repetitive tasks for you!

Automation might sound like a big, fancy word, but it's pretty simple. Imagine you have a bakery, and every day you must send out emails to remind customers about your delicious pastries. Instead of typing out each email by hand, you can set up a tool that automatically sends them for you at the same time every day. That's automation in action!

How (and why) to organize your workspace

Research is clear that we get more done when we know where things are. This is true with our physical things (papers, files, gadgets, etc.) as well as our digital ones. Not only can things be found more easily when they are systematically organized, but there is also a significant psychological benefit of keeping our things in order.

Our external order creates internal sense of orderliness and allows us to do more while handling challenges in stride. It makes us feel in control of our situation and allows us to clearly focus and identify areas that need attention

In contrast, a messy workspace sends a subliminal message that our work lacks importance or that the processes we are involved in are not meaningful. It also increases distractibility and can promote both negative energy and anxiety.

Doing For Maximal Productivity

It is critical that you go all in on specific tasks and avoid multitasking like the plague. Multitasking has become popular with those who see it as a way to kill multiple birds simultaneously. For example, we try to return calls or listen to messages while reviewing and editing reports. Research has clearly shown that not only do you get less done than you might think, the divergence of mental focus will often lead to poorer job performance and a feeling from others that you’re not sufficiently focused.

To help my clients address this important issue, I have divided the path to increased productivity into 5 steps:

Sharing For Maximal Productivity

Workplace productivity is a huge challenge for nearly every company, business and organization. Leaders struggle to get their own work done (and do the RIGHT work,) while also guiding, empowering and motivating their people to achieve maximal productivity. While the projections vary, estimates suggest that businesses worldwide lose hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars annually due to underproduction.

To help my clients address this important issue, I have divided the path to increased productivity into 5 steps:

A Long, Overdue Cleanup

We haven’t celebrated Pesach (Passover) at home in 4 Years

For the past 3 Passovers (and for 5 of the past 6), I have served as a scholar-in-residence at different hotel programs. As a result, our family did just a token amount of pre-holiday cleaning at our residence. We did the cars and basic surfaces, but by comparison to the amount of time spent shopping, packing and traveling, our cleaning time was but a pittance.

(For the uninitiated, the Torah demands that a home be leaven-free on Passover. This means that it must be cleaned from all items that contain leaven (foods derived from grains such as wheat and barley), a stringency that is far more involved than standard kosher requirements. The amount of effort needed to achieve this level of cleanliness is significant.)

This year, we decided that we were going to stay home for the holiday. With a son studying in Israel for the past seven months and an upcoming bar mitzvah, we felt that we would do well to enjoy the holiday together at home.

Why I Set Goals This Morning (and Why You Should Too)

As I see it, the benefits of goal setting are many, including:

They help you organize your thoughts – You probably have many things on your unofficial to-do list. Setting goals allows you to select from that list and set some direction. (Note: Daily goals are even more effective when they are developed in the broader context of monthly or long-term goals, such as the need to complete a client project or write a book. When you do this exercise in that context, it produces a broader sense of clarity and direction and can better inform what each individual day should look like.)
They help you prioritize – Along the same lines, goal setting allows you to look at the list that you’re created and determine what the priorities are within the list. What are your must-haves and what are the things that would be nice to achieve but are less imperative?
They allow you to better organize your day – Based on what needs to get done and the available time slots (45 before lunch, 20 minutes until carpool, etc.) you can slot things in where they have the best chance of getting done while also factoring in the rest of your agenda.

Naphtali HoffJuly 19, 2017goals, goal setting, organization, purpose, executive coaching, leader, leadershipComment

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