If you run a B2B business, you might wish you had more time to be your own client. Here at OpsElevate, we specialize in helping businesses define, optimize, and document their processes. The challenge is that we also have a business that we are running every day, so we have to find the time to work on our internal processes and keep our documentation up-to-date.
In this article, I want to share one of the strategies we use to be our own client: the internal workday.
Once every two or three months, we block out an entire day. We do not take client calls, check our emails, or anything else. We block everything out and we just work on our own business on that one day.
With all hands on deck, we get so much done in just one day. Here is how we do it:
1. Plan Ahead
Start to plan your workday a couple of months in advance. For us, as soon as we finish one workday, we build the agenda for the next one. As ideas come up for processes or products that we need to think through or will take time to develop, we add them to our workday agenda.
2. Prioritize the Work
As the day gets closer, we establish the big goals for the next two or three months and use those goals to prioritize the agenda items. We figure out what we want to address and what will have the biggest impact on helping us accomplish our goals.
3. Hold the Workday
On the workday, everyone should be committed and ready to dig in and get the work done. Make sure that you have someone to take really good notes. It can be hard to come up with great ideas and take notes at the same time.
Before moving from one agenda item to the next, stop and ask, “How I am going to fulfill on this?” Think through who is going to be doing the tasks. Decide on a deadline for those tasks to be done and where it fits in priority-wise. You want to be sure that anything new you take on fits in with the goals of the company and also does not take away from delivering work to your clients.
The internal workday is also a great opportunity to work on team culture. For our team, we like to go to lunch together and talk about our book club. Our team is always reading a business or leadership book, so this allows us to have a little bit of fun together and talk about what we have learned from reading the latest book.
Finally, before the end of the day, plan what you are going to be looking at next. Take time to review your goals and start the plan for the next internal workday.
Being your client is not always easy, but an internal workday is a great way to make sure you can take care of your own business.
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