Focus On The Things That Drive Your Company

TRANSCRIPT

We had the leadership team, we only had about twelve people in there and the CFO got to talking about their expense report process. And he was explaining how they’ve got this all automated, and they can scan the receipts and they file their own expense reports and he was talking about how he was very proud of the fact that he did his expense reports and how efficiently he had his travel and I’m thinking. You’re the CFO, they’re paying you how much? This guy was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and he’s filing his expense reports and booking his own travel. So he realized after that “you know that’s probably a fifteen or twenty dollar type of activity isn’t it?” and there’s been a kind of a throw back. I have seen a resurgence, a resurrection of the administrative professional who not just, maybe, everybody gets one, but I’ve seen one admin perhaps with five people that can support them in those types of tasks. Does the expense report need to be done? Sure. Does it need to be done by the CFO? I was working with a non profit association a CEO and a twelve staff members had a board of directors, eighteen people on a volunteer board. The CEO was in the room at the board meeting they did the minutes. They came out from the CEO. The president was telling me this story to a colleague of mine and asked the CEO who did these minutes? And the CEO proudly said, I did. So, the CEO not handling, was handling the calendar, was typing board meeting minutes, distributing board minutes. What? And we’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for this position and oh, guess what the association was losing membership. It was one hundred thousand dollars in the hole. I have in my office a beautiful Xerox machine. It’s a great client, its a machine that does all this copies and postage and stapling and binding and all of that. I have no idea how to use the machine. And it’s not because I can’t figure it out, I’m not smart enough, or it’s not my job, it’s because I shouldn’t be using that. If I am putting postage on something in my business that means I’m either a control freak, I don’t have the right staff in place, I don’t trust people, and I think it is a disservice to your organization and to your employees, if you are spending time on things like that it keeps you from spending time on the things that are actually driving revenue to your organization and growing your business.

Share:

Comments

  1. Robin Banks says:

    Not surprising. Some CEOs don’t like to give up their mundane tasks. I think they like it. It gives them a rush.

  2. Great words Laura! In the effort of so many business people to save money their waste of minds is the real loss. Knowing how to sell something beats the heck out of posting postage.

  3. Karen Rich says:

    Hello Laura and staff,
    Thank you for the transcript of this video. It isn’t always convenient for me to watch a video, so this allows me to read your words of wisdom and still get your message. Great words of wisdom this time by the way. Now, how do I (a one-woman show) figure out how to make this happen for me?

    • Hi Karen! I’m a one-woman show but have about 15 contractors working with me on various tasks. Everything can be outsourced! Check http://www.upwork.com for ideas. The transcript of the spoken word doesn’t always come out well or even grammatically correct, but I’m glad you caught the gist of it!

  4. This is a great advice.
    You make me thinking how much do my tasks cost and how should I tackle them. Spend time doing things that truly matters. 🙂

    • If you calculate how much you earn down to the hour or half-hour or 15 minutes, it’s startling how much time we waste on tasks that aren’t worth near that much!