What Does Working Smart Mean For You & Your Team?
To work smart means to maximize the value of your work by selecting a few activities and applying intense targeted effort.
from the book: Great At Work by Morten Hansen
Key Takeaway: Select the tasks, actions, activities that add the maximum value to your work/job role and supercharge your efforts.
Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?
The more items we attend to, the less time we can allot to each, and the less well we will perform any one of them.
Any hospitality manager or service leader will attest to the fact that a hundred things require your attention, all at the same time.
Actionable Insights
One could look at this from Pareto Principle or 80\20 Rule view as well. What are the 20% of your activities that create 80% of the value for your job?
Make a list of everything you do in a day, week, month, quarterly & annually.
Ascribe a score of 1 - 10, where 1 goes to the activity that adds very less value and 10 to an activity that adds a lot of value.
Once you have done this sort the list from 10 to 1.
If you have more than 20% of your total activities showing up with a score of 10, you need to re-assess the list.
Real-World Example
For an In-Room Dining Manager who wants to increase revenue.
There are multiple ways to do this: better IRD menu/app, a welcome call from the team, small tasting menu, an IRD cart, displays in the room, Front Office suggesting IRD, Concierge mentioning the dining experience to guests, and more.
If you focus on each every day, you will only dissipate your energy.
On the contrary, set up small experiments to gather data or look at the top 2 activities in the past.
Focus on making those activities better.
So, if for example, you find that a lot of your guests, order if you call around dinner time, then work on making that call better and better. If that activity has not resulted in any major gains in the past, maybe it is time to look at something new.
Want to make this WOW?
Along with taking one activity from the top of your list, take a random activity from anywhere in the list and give it a quick, sharp, focused experiment and maybe you will surprise yourself.
Get your team to rate the activities that they think you should be focusing on. You will be amazed at the things they are willing to do if you just let them.
Do this right now
Start recording how much time you spend doing what. You can use a pen & paper or an app. Just recording it will give you a fabulous insight into where your time goes.
As they say, where your time goes, your attention goes. Reclaim it and focus it on things that matter.