The effective employee – Can it be you?

Effectiveness at work is becoming more essential year after year. With all these disturbing factors from the environment, where everyone loses time, how to become effective has become an alarming topic and a mission for many people. According to a BCG article on effectiveness, we lose more than sixty percent of our time at work. Disturbing factors are everywhere around us, costing us and our employers a lot of missed opportunities.

While for the employer, being ineffective means mainly lost money, for the person itself, this may be contented in missed goals and lack of development and career prospects.

Organizations often create development programs to change that situation, hire experts to “lean” their structures and processes, and help them be more efficient.

But many people get formal training from these strategies, repeating the old mantra of being more productive at the workplace. Yes, you read this correctly – not how to be more efficient, but how to be more effective. Take the multitasking rule, for example. Multitasking is seen as a way to be more productive. At the same time, it is the most wasteful tactic you can implement. Doing several things simultaneously, with average to low quality, is not equal to doing one with the highest quality and impact.

What counts is not the amount of work done but the impact this work is creating on the structure it is executed in.

I have been teaching people for many years how to be more effective and have built my path through effectiveness. This path allows me to balance regular work responsibilities, hobbies, and free time with my family and friends. But in the beginning, I wasn’t much different than all the people I have thought about improving effectiveness for themselves and their organizations.

The proven and working agenda to achieve higher efficiency includes several steps. I hope by sharing them with you, they may also change your view of how things have to be done and help you move from being more productive to be more efficient at work and in life.

Set clear goals

So simple to do, right? According to Talent Bizz 360, sixty-four percent of people fail in this step. And that is not because people do not want to succeed, but because they misunderstand a goal. And in ninety-one percent of the cases, people mistake plans for tasks. So, to move from this wrong approach, you first must understand what a goal is and how it is separated from the daily tasks we all have on our agenda. Start by defining your goals and prioritizing tasks to help you achieve them. Ensure each objective aligns with your team’s or organization’s vision, mission, and dreams. Moving from working harder to working more brilliantly is the first step to redefining your effectiveness path.

Improve Time Management

There is no need to go into details because time management is a topic that is set to be number two in cases on how to improve your efficiency. “Distribute your time wisely to ensure great results, “

Effective time management is essential for increased productivity at work. Starting with analyzing tasks, every employee must prioritize tasks and develop a schedule where all those tasks can be added, tracked, and completed effectively and efficiently. Thus, creating a schedule can allow individual employees to have another look over the whole agenda and focus on essential tasks. At the same time, eliminate those who do not create value or park them for a more appropriate moment.

Learn to Delegate

This magical skill has evolved over the years as something that separates leaders from their followers. But it is still a simple skill with a very complex and emotionally driven nature. Learning to delegate is essential for everyone who wants to move out from the dead end called “overwhelming work.” Learning this skill allows the individual to move tasks from their agenda to other people and focus on those, allowing them to maximize value. No matter the level in the organizational layers and how the person is positioned, even those on lower grids in the organization can plan their agenda by handling some tasks that may not be interesting or value-creating from them to others who love doing such work. That distribution of functions allows for a more excellent time distribution and maximized value added. Adding to all this is the proper communication, and there you have it – completed on time, with no overburn or disturbance.

Focus on results

Sounds obvious – Right? Then ask yourself and answer honestly how often in the last year you have taken over a task, to realize at some time that you did not intend to achieve a result with this task, but to demonstrate that you are energetic, proactive, can take responsibility and can invest time in doing something that is not even familiar for you as a result. What many people miss is that they focus on the final result. They do not imagine the absolute condition they want to achieve but start walking the path, hoping there will be an explanation of what is happening at the end of the road. In contrast, there are highly focused groups of people who structure their energy grid toward a final goal. An excellent example of such a group is the Yoga masters, who know what they need to achieve and focus on it for as long as they need. Moving from just doing things to doing things with purpose and a final framework in the head creates a safer path for increasing efficiency and effectiveness at work and in life. So, why be the group that moves forward instead of building high value with fewer resources spent?

Stay organized

We all start with good intentions, clear agenda, and memorable statements of how things will be done. And all this, to realize soon that we have been lost on the path of success and our agenda has become messy, unstructured, pushy, demotivating, and disengaging.

And manage stress: Finally, getting organized is critical to being effective and productive at work. Create routines, prioritize tasks, and aim to manage your workload efficiently. Doing so lets you be confident that you are working effectively and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

In summary, being more effective at work requires a commitment to prioritize, delegate, stay focused, and manage stress productively. By following these five steps, you can immediately improve your professional performance and the quality of your work.