Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Readers,
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on strategies to become more time efficient. Since that time, I have been inundated with advisors asking questions such as:
- How can I be more time efficient when we are down three staff members, and I am picking up extra work?
- What if my boss thinks there are 30 hours in a day and just keeps piling things on to me?
- Our firm is undergoing significant change, and some days I don’t remember everything I am supposed to do, never mind have the time to do it.
- I don’t think your article addressed how firms like mine are cutting people, but not cutting responsibilities. We are expected to do the work of three people instead of the one person we are.
- I could set goals and review my to-do list throughout the day, but it wouldn’t change the number of client calls I am getting to address what’s happening in the market. No one knows what the outcome will be for inflation, war and a potential change in political leadership in November in Congress. I keep telling clients this (in a nicer way, of course), but they keep calling. I cannot get other commitments off my desk as a result.
There is a trend in our industry, given the low unemployment numbers and abundance of open requisitions at firms large and small. In most industries employees are being asked to do more with less. I am hearing about it from most of my clients. But I remember saying something similar when I worked in a large organization a couple of decades ago. The concept of putting more and more and more on the shoulders of people who will take it is not new.
Things are not going to change at the firm level. While it would be nice to see senior leadership acknowledge the pressure their teams are under (and many good leaders do acknowledge this), the work doesn’t go away. In a client-servicing business like financial services, there will always be changes, unexpected questions from clients and new team members.
You might not be able to make wholesale changes to your environment, but you can make changes to your day-to-day routine and control your responses and work habits. Here are a few tips that can be game changers even when the work just keeps piling up:
- Get good at organization, especially email. I’m always surprised by the number of people who still struggle with volumes of email and don’t use the tools available in the email systems. Creating folders for different topics, having “needs response” and “waiting for response” folders and immediately deleting unnecessary information are all strategies that help with focus.
- Get clear about what does require your time and what you can ignore. You don’t have to read everything that comes across your computer. Look at something once – determine if it should be responded to (“needs response” folder), filed away (set up folders for this, too) or deleted. Don’t agonize over it. Once you open an email, decide right then and there. Don’t wait; just do it.
- Stretch, breathe and de-stress throughout the day. Just powering through things is not healthy and makes us less effective. Stand up – raise your arms to the sky, wiggle your body around to get the blood flowing. Several times throughout the day breathe – one deep breath to the count of five through your nose, a nice long exhale to the count of five through your mouth. Do this three times at every sitting. Focus on your breath. Do something that de-stresses you – have a funny video you like to play, read the comic section of the paper, schedule 10 minutes to call a friend who always cheers you. Of course, if you can get the time to take a walk, get a massage, or go to the gym, even better. But start small and do something!
- Become good at prioritizing. When overwhelmed, the tendency is to be paralyzed because there is so much to do. Many people will focus on what’s easy or what they are good at, leaving the more challenging and important thing for later. Every single day, set a list of three priorities you will accomplish. Keep the list somewhere you can reference it. Stick to it. Do what’s most important.
None of these will shift the abundance of commitments and responsibilities. We feel it in my small firm. If the day were 30 hours long, we’d easily fill it with more and more and more. Recognize it isn’t the volume of what you have to do, it’s how you do it. Incorporate one idea above for 21 days – get it to stick and then try another.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here. 
