Finding the Time

Where do we find the time to manage our businesses? During my years of HME consulting, it has been apparent that some companies struggle with this question. In searching for an answer, the repeated conclusion has been that the management and supervisory roles at these companies had evolved to be more complex than they needed to be. The answer is that the time is in the management process.

There are three things that managers and supervisors can do to reduce the time it takes to foster more effective management.

• First, compartmentalize the management process and the way it is described. All of the tasks associated with management can be put into one of four compartments: (1) monitoring results, (2) allocating skills, (3) allocating resources, and (4) developing strategies. These four compartments represent the four responsibilities of a manager.

  1. Monitoring results is about getting the right information at the right time. The information that is “right” is pertinent to the other three compartments. It should help the manager determine whether his allocation of skills, resources and strategies is producing the desired result.

     Timeliness makes a difference in how efficient a manager may be. If information is slow, there is a greater likelihood that small problems will have become large problems before they are identified — and correcting large problems generally takes more time than correcting small problems.

  2. The objective of allocating skills is to put the right person in the right seat for the right amount of time and, conversely, to remove the wrong person — that's the hard part. Being delinquent in removing the wrong person is a big time-waster. With the wrong person is in the seat, mistakes are made, interpersonal conflicts occur, and managers have to deal with them.

  3. Resources to be allocated are the company's assets, i.e., cash, vehicles, equipment. The objective of allocating resources is to create as much profit per dollar of assets as is practical.

  4. Strategies are the collection of actions that must be taken to achieve a goal. For example, a billing supervisor might set strategies to achieve a certain DSO, while a CEO might set strategies to achieve a certain return on assets.

  By compartmentalizing tasks and focusing on these four responsibilities, a manager can eliminate less productive efforts from his schedule.

• Second, eliminate useless information. There are two relevant thoughts here. One is that there are only two sources of efficiency for every process in a business: throughput (output per unit of time, such as deliveries per day) and quality (meeting the customer's expectation, such as on-time deliveries). Focus on a throughput and quality measure for each process for which you are responsible. Most other information is likely irrelevant, so you can eliminate it.

  The second thought involves Pareto's Rule (the 80/20 rule). The rule is that 20 percent of the causes account for 80 percent of the effect. Examples include income statements where 20 percent of the general ledger accounts record 80 percent of the expenses; 20 percent of the products account for 80 percent of the revenue; 20 percent of the payers are responsible for 80 percent of the past due accounts, and so on. Identify the 20 percent and focus on it.

  In the home care companies that suffer because management has become too complex, there is often a pile of useless information on managers' desks. Perhaps the management team gets a monthly packet of information that includes a profit-and-loss statement, balance sheet, accounts receivable aging, accounts payable aging, sales by representative, sales by product and whatever else goes into a one-inch stack. This packet arrives on the 15th of the following month.

  What managers need is less than one page per week. They can give attention to that between phone calls. Condense information to be only that which helps the manager make a difference.

• Third, think forward. We learn by looking back; we manage by looking forward. When a manager gives effort to fixing what went wrong, he ceases to manage. When he gives effort to preventing unintended consequences, he is managing.

Make thinking forward the mindset for your home care company.

Wallace Weeks is founder and president of Weeks Group Inc., a Melbourne, Fla.-based strategy consulting firm. He can be reached at 321/752-4514 or by e-mail at wweeks@weeksgroup.com.