Dallas Executive Association 18208 Preston Road, Suite D-9317 Dallas Texas 75252 www.deatx.org (214)528-1082 The Executive Connection magazine is a publication of the Dallas Executive Association and is published monthly. Materials published in the Executive Connection magazine become the property of the Executive Connection and may not be published, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission from the publisher. All articles should be submitted to mark@dallasexecutives.com. By submitting an article, you acknowledge you are legally entitled to submit and distribute this material. If you are using material you did not create yourself, you must secure written permission from the owner of the material and submit it along with your article. All references must be listed with author's name at the bottom of the article. The Executive Connection uses The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition for formatting guidelines. The Executive Connection editorial staff reserves the right to review, edit, rewrite, and condense all article for space and clarity. All unprinted articles will be placed on file for future consideration and discarded at the end of the year.
President Monis Zaidi Vice President Pam Lewis Treasurer Lance Lane Executive Administrator Mark Hill Past President Michael Bosco Board President Edgar Esparza Board Members Phil Webb Ken Teagle Patrick Walker Editor in Chief Mark Hill
5 Ways to Not Lose All Your Money (and Clients) In the New Year The first quarter can be a timely opportunity to change how you do things with ample time to assess, test, and adjust throughout the year. Your future success starts now. BY PETER COPPINGER • JAN 8, 2024 Strong start, stronger finish. It can be tempting to want to ease into the new year, but as a business owner, there's a lot to be said about starting the year "on the right foot" to set you up for success. For agencies in particular, there's no doubt that the past year was tough due to several factors, including economic and geopolitical uncertainty and changing client and consumer behavior. New research from The State of Agency Operations report found that agencies are even more vulnerable at the beginning of the year. 75% of agencies lost clients, and about a quarter of them lost more than 10% of their staff — all in the first half of 2023. Losses are always tough but are especially challenging when they happen in Q1. If challenges aren't addressed immediately, you risk continuing with bad patterns and practices for yet another year. So, how can you avoid the losses and set your team up for success in the new year? Start with these five things: 1. Invest in your team The profitability of your business depends on your ability to retain customers and your team. You might be surprised to learn that investing in your team is one of the best ways to combat both. The most successful leaders I work with think of investing in their team like they would any other part of their business - and measure success! Conduct quarterly employee surveys and zero in on the gaps. It could be ensuring your team has access to ongoing education, competitive salaries, growth opportunities, and a work-life balance. Studies show that businesses who invest in their team's well-being see happier, more productive employees who produce higher quality work – plus happier clients and an improved bottom line. Why? Because clients are less likely to churn and more likely to sign on for more work and recommend you. 2. Stop overservicing Overserving is a serious risk to short-term profits and long-term stability (read: burnt-out staff), yet too many agency leaders continue to let it slide year after year. 1 in 10 agency leaders say their projects never or rarely come in over budget. This means most agencies are losing money at the end of projects. To put things into perspective, overservicing even by as little as 10% can translate to working an entire month for free - it adds up! With the new year ahead, take time to reassess and build a process around how your team proactively manages client expectations. Be clear about the scope of work in contracts and fees for work outside of scope. This, paired with clear and consistent documented communication
during milestone check-ins like onboarding mid and end-of-campaign check-ins, can save you and your clients from a ton of surprises down the road. 3. Clear-cut time tracking We all know the old saying: "Time is money," and if your team isn't tracking time, it's time to start! Time tracking software like Harvest, Timely or a project management tool with time tracking built in, like Teamwork.com, will make tracking a whole lot easier for your team. If your team already tracks hours, tracking accurately is another story. It might not seem like a deal breaker. Still, inaccurate data can lead to under-budgeted proposals, unrealistic timelines, insufficient resourcing, and overestimated profitability, which can result in overworked teams, unhappy customers, and unprofitable projects. From working closely with hundreds of agencies every year, I've seen that everyone tracks time differently, but what really matters is setting clear expectations for how often your team should track time, how much detail to add to submissions, and what other metadata should be included. 4. Adopt a billable hours first mindset The billable vs. non-billable debate is nothing new for anyone who does client work. Yet too many agencies struggle to stay profitable because of it: 1 in 2 agencies don't achieve billable utilization benchmarks over 50%. Agencies are struggling to manage their billable hours, and it comes down to a number of issues, like poor processes and communication breakdowns between managers and team members. The best rule of thumb is to aim for a ratio of 70:30 billable vs. non-billable hours and 1:5 for non-billable and billable employees. This will ensure that the billable staff cover the costs of those who are non-billable and give you a safeguard to stay on track through the ups and downs of agency life. A big part of this is creating a "billable hours first" culture with your team. Train them to prioritize this work, track their time, and set expectations with this in mind, i.e., "We can only spend 8 hours creating this report for X client." 5. Balance leader burnout Employee burnout is a hot topic, but not nearly enough is said about leaders being burnt out. 71% of agency leaders struggle with burnout, and operational challenges are the worst culprit. If you're running on fumes, you can't show up and be your best self for your employees and customers, plain and simple. Some of the best advice for this comes from Tim Ferris' book The 4-Hour Workweek: "Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined." Following this process is a great way to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Start by creating a list of tasks and ask yourself which can be eliminated, automated, and delegated. This will free you up to focus on work that fulfills you and gets you closer to your goals…like making 2024 your best yet!
3 Major Time Wasters for Leaders — and How to Overcome Them Here's how you can reclaim your time and maximize your value as a leader. BY BRANDY FERRER • JAN 8, 2024 Share
Key Takeaways • •
The three greatest time wasters for leaders Strategies to combat these time wasters
You've made it to the end of yet another 12-hour day, and as you think about all the scrambling, hustling, and fire-fighting you did, you wonder — what exactly did I accomplish? You're not alone, many of us hustle all day, every day. We run from meeting to meeting, fire to fire, only to get to the end of the day feeling like a hamster on a wheel, exhausted and wondering where the time went. There is a better way, and it starts by understanding how you're spending your time and why you're spending it that way. Here are the three greatest time killers for leaders and how to overcome them.
How are you adding value? Chris is the CEO of a successful company. Chris's vision, ingenuity and tireless work are the heart of the company's success. As the company celebrates 10 years in business, there's just one problem. Somewhere in the mix, Chris has moved away from focusing on the vision and has been swept up in the day-to-day, task-level minutia. Instead of focusing on strategy, planning or building the right relationships, he's wrapped up in hiring the receptionist, weighing in on trivial decisions and attending every. single. meeting. This is not the highest and best use of Chris's time. In focusing on task-level work instead of vision, Chris is no longer maximizing his value to the company. In fact, his desire to be actively involved in everything has become a detriment in the form of bottlenecks and dropped balls.
Letting go of task-level work isn't easy. It feels good because it's familiar and because it's easy to see progress. When you busy yourself with easily accomplished tasks, you get that dopamine hit. But being busy isn't the same as adding value. If you are the visionary for the company, your value is in strategy, planning and relationship building, so that's where you should be spending your time. So the question is, how are you adding value? Here are some things to consider: •
Does the way you spend your time align with your role? Are you spending your time doing $17/hour work or $200/hour work?
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Does the way you spend your time play to your strengths and allow your team to play to theirs?
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Are you doing the work that is expected of you (from your team, your company, your board, investors, etc.) in your position?
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How are you moving the needle?
Once you recognize where you're spending your time and the value you're adding (or not), you can make the necessary adjustments. Chances are, your team is comprised of smart, capable people. Trust in them to get the work done. Evaluate any task-level things on your plate. Is there an opportunity to delegate or cut back on your involvement? This allows you to offload meetings and projects in which your value isn't maximized. Revisit how your day is structured so that you're working on the things that move the needle first and doing the things that suck the life out of your day later.
Delayed gratification and the to-do list I love to-do lists. More importantly, I love crossing things off my to-do list. Before starting my consultancy company, I lived and breathed that list, and I craved that feeling of accomplishment and pride when I could cross something off. As a leader, crossing 100 things off your list every day doesn't matter if they're not the right things. And I've learned the hard way that the things I'm responsible for simply cannot be successfully accomplished in a single day, a week, a month or longer. Most of a leader's work is not task-level. Projects, planning and managing people are nuanced, continuous activities — not tasks to be crossed off a list.
However, many leaders, as a means of showing their value and chasing the satisfaction of immediate accomplishment, hold on to task-level things way longer than they should. And those task-level things clog up the calendar and draw attention away from your most important work. It's time to rethink the to-do list. This requires a shift in mindset, from chasing the dopamine hit of crossing menial tasks off a list to embracing delayed gratification. Revisit how you make your to-do list. Make sure you're capturing the tasks or milestones that move projects forward. Break your projects down into weekly bites — that way you can see the incremental progress you're making and you get the dopamine hit of crossing things off. Play with the time frame of your task list. Instead of a daily to-do list, make a weekly, monthly and quarterly list. Stop including never-ending, time-sucking tasks like "catch up on email" on your to-do list. You will never get caught up on email, Slack or team messages. Instead, be intentional about how and when you check messages. Designate specific times during the day when you will review emails, and set a timer for 30-45 minutes so you don't accidentally fall down the rabbit hole. Embrace the delayed gratification of completing bigger, more strategic projects. Make sure you celebrate those wins!
Problem solver to the rescue Leaders tend to be great problem solvers. We love to swoop in with our creativity and vision to fix things or add perspective. Sounds great on paper, but in doing the swoop, leaders can miss details or context, delay decision-making, take on more than they can manage or make a bigger mess of things — all of which wastes precious time for you and your team. Avoid jumping in to fix problems, especially those things you just don't have the bandwidth or expertise to see through. Remember those smart, capable people on your team? They're probably good problem solvers, too. Support and coach them when needed, and empower them to make decisions in their areas of expertise. Leaders who are clear on their value and understand the importance of maximizing their time and effectiveness as well as the effectiveness of their teams, drive efficiency and team engagement. Just as importantly, leaders with an eye on leveraging their value are able to get off the 12-hour-a-day hamster wheel and do the strategic, needle-moving work that matters.
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