That’s a weird way to say it. Here’s why.
If I’d asked, “WHAT are you working for?” I’d be inquiring about the results (the outputs) you intend to produce. If I’d asked, “When are you working?” I’d be inquiring about the time that you put in the effort to achieve those outputs. Instead, I’m asking you to think about the time frame demanded by the results of your effort. Let me explain.
You might be working for either the past, the present, or the future.
Working for the PAST
Working for the past means fixing something that should have happened already. Things like:
Dealing with a customer complaint
Following up on an unpaid invoice
Fixing a broken machine
Filling in for a tech who didn’t show up
Rework
If you find yourself working for the past a lot, you should probably invest time to prevent these problems, not just fix them. If you find yourself fixing the same types of things repeatedly, that’s an indication of where you should start. Of course, nothing will prevent all problems from occurring, but you can do a lot to minimize them, and when they do occur, minimize their impact.
Here are some ideas for solutions for the problems I’ve listed above:
Complaints? Categorize your customer complaints and prevent them by designing better features in your offering.
Unpaid Invoices? Implement a better system to have customers pay on time.
Broken Machines? Make sure machines are maintained on a schedule, not after they break.
Scheduling Problems? When people don’t show up, perhaps you need more responsible people, a better scheduling system or just some extra hands to cover for the inevitable snafus that happen.
Rework? That means a mistake was made; then it was caught (either by someone internally or the customer) and then re-done. The prevention is to build quality into your workflows from the start. Design workflows such that work can’t proceed unless it’s perfect. When that’s not possible, design inspections into earlier stages in the process when rework will be less costly.
Working for the PRESENT
Philosophically, either we’re always in the present moment (because the past is finished, and the future hasn’t happened yet) or we’re never working for the present because work takes time to produce results – and that’s the future. But let’s get real. Working for the present means working to produce outputs relatively quickly. I’ll leave it to the reader to define “relatively quickly”.
Generally I take it to mean things that will pay off in the next week or so; things like closing a deal, making a hire, training someone.
What do I mean by YOU?
In the first section (working for the past) when I said “you” I really meant your company. The work that could be done by any of your employees. In this section I mean you personally. If you’re working for the present, you’re likely producing outputs that fall into one of the two main buckets, or the supporting buckets. I’ve written about the buckets here.
The two main ones are Selling to customers, or Fulfilling what they paid for. The supporting buckets are People, Money, Information or C.A.F.E. But you’re likely not producing outputs in the Scaling or Growth bucket. That could mean your company is not robust enough to have talented people responsible to fill those buckets.
Here’s the key question for you then.
Is that by choice or because you don’t know how to get to the next level of operational maturity?
Working for the FUTURE
Much of the work done that pays off in the future falls into categories like:
Preparing (or changing) company strategy
Developing strategic relationships (with potential customers, partners, vendors, legislators)
Designing workflows
Making changes to the organizational structure
Consider the following when you think about future outputs.
When do you expect results from the work you’re doing? Six months? A year? Three years? Thinking or working beyond three years for most SMB companies is just fantasy. Nice, fun, and maybe motivating but the world is likely to change so much in three years, it’s more of a vision than anything you can plan for.
How will you measure success of that work? Usually that means what number will change? Therefore you must have a baseline of that number now to compare it to later. What is that baseline number?
How confident are you about your results? The further into the future you expect results, the less confident you’ll probably be. That’s to be expected. Don’t let it keep you from working for the future. But here’s a tip. Write down what must be true for you to get the results you want and then build in check-points to review if reality is cooperating.
Working for the future requires a more infrastructure so the daily work of the present continues to produce results. If you don’t have that infrastructure yet, then putting it in place might be the first thing you should work on. And that’s working for the future too.
And Speaking of the Future
CEO TIME Tool
I’m working on a tool I call CEO Time to help determine why you’re doing the work you’re doing. I’ll likely roll it out soon to a select few beta testers. If you’d like to be one, email me and tell me why.
Buy my book – It’s Half Price for the near future (depending on when you read this). From November 17-29, 2024, the price of the paperback will be 9.99 and the kindle version 4.99. Why? So you can buy copies as gifts for your employees, friends and family. And to encourage you to leave an honest review. Thanks if you’ve already done that.
As always, you can book a free coaching session HERE.
