The One Question That Leads To Productivity

Now, today, want to talk about this particular question. It came about for a couple of reasons.

I was on a call with one of our VIP clients. Everything is going well with their organisation. They are the go-for-it type of people.

Our client was talking about how there are so many ideas, just where does he start?

Then, later that day, we had our Superfast Circle call. We always have a call with our Superfast Circle members on a Tuesday.

[If you want to know more about Superfast Circle, then email Denise@superfastrecruitment, and I can let you know a more about it.]

Everyone jumps online, and they can ask all of their marketing questions. If they are working on a campaign, then Sharon and I are there to help them. We share screens, etc.

Anyway, one of the companies, their marketeer asked a question. When they asked the question, Sharon and I, with our true coaching head on, asked another question back.

We said, “What’s your outcome for doing that?”

There was a pregnant pause. That pregnant pause was around, “Yeah. Why am I doing this?” Because that is a vital question that can completely change your perspective, your priorities, where your focus should be.

It is a simple question.

What is my outcome for doing this;  in other words, what’s in it for me? Why am I doing this? What is the outcome that doing this particular action will gain for me?

It is a question that not many people ask themselves. I think we find this in the recruitment sector because as a general rule, recruiters are very go-for-it type of people. They are action-takers.

You tell them something, and they jump on it, and they are off doing it, before they stand back and say, “Well, hang on a minute here. What am I trying to achieve with what I am doing here?”

Taking that one stage further, it is about this particular thing that I want to spend my precious time on, is this going to help with my business goals?

Is it going to help with my short-term goals?

Alternatively, is this going to help with my longer-term goals? Which, we will come on to explain a little bit more how that works.

I think you need to put anything that comes your way or any idea that comes your way through that lens/filter of, okay, these are my business goals, this is what I want to do. Is this going to take me towards them, or is this a bit of a distraction?

Is it going to take me away from them? Let me give you a couple of examples of this.

Goal Alignment

Is this task or action I am doing going to take me closer to my goals?

We are working with somebody at the moment in Superfast Circle. They are reintroducing themselves to a market. They appreciate that their current messaging could be better.

When it comes to outcomes. It is a good use of their time to get their messaging right because this is key to attracting clients and candidates.

This is where many people fall down. They do not get the messaging right, so, therefore, they do not appeal to the right candidates and clients.

That’s why they struggle.

The good news is that in less than a week, by jumping in he is managed to:

  • Get his value proposition crafted
  • He is managed to get his About Us page
  • He now even has a few blogs on his website
  • He is in the process of creating his lead magnet and getting that all ready to go out

This piece of work was very much in alignment with his goals.

Now, I’ve talked to another one of our clients the other day. We write content for him. He was very chuffed. For our American, Australian friends, that means pleased!

He was very chuffed that someone had emailed him and asked if they could do a bit of a content swap. Now, obviously, it does flatter our ego.

However, is that really going to take you any further forward? No, it isn’t. Primarily because this content was nothing to do with careers. It wasn’t exactly aligned, as in, it was nothing to do with careers.

Now, the time that our client would have had to take on interacting and liaising, it was probably going to be a couple of hours. You could do an awful lot more in that period.

Alignment with your goals exceptionally important.

Where Am I Now?

Number two is, where am I now? Ask yourself, “Where am I now?”

Depending on your organisation, it may be that you are doing well and you want to take things to the next level. Therefore, spending time on a rebrand or looking at the content that you have on your site or the way your recruiters are interacting with people, how they are getting that brand message out, that is in alignment with your goals.

That makes a huge difference.

Now, conversely, we had someone else that we were working with some time ago now. This particular individual was researching complicated software and looking at various other things. Yet, the guy did not have enough leads coming in even to get him to six figures a year.

What he needed to do was jump on to LinkedIn, and start accessing LinkedIn and using his network, and the 200 or 300 people that had requested to connect with him that he was not even accepting their connection. Rather than looking at a sophisticated piece of software, that was not going to help him go further towards achieving what he wanted.

Short, Medium and Long Term Goals

You can see how these questions can be powerful for you. Now, the other important aspect is your short, medium, and long-term goals.

What do I want to achieve now versus later?

Because it may be that you’ve got different priorities. Giving an example from ourselves, we had something drop into our email inbox. As I mentioned earlier, we were heading off on holiday soon. It was a request about, would we like to present at the Recruitment Expo in Birmingham this year.

It isn’t a given you can get a slot you still have to fill out an application form.

Now, you could say that in the next ten days, is that a priority for us? Probably not in the next ten days when we have specific client projects to deliver.

However, longer-term, it is; because we do tend to fly under the radar a lot with people. Now we have a goal to accelerate our growth. We have been growing steadily for years and years and years, and now we have had a step change. We want to do things slightly differently. Therefore this is now in alignment.

I know one of our other clients had to fill out a tender document. Because she works in a particular, a not-for-profit sector, then, she needed to be on the frameworks. Because if you’re not on the frameworks, you’re going to really struggle.

That was interesting. “I’m doing this. I’m doing that.” I said, “Forget it. Do it. The outcome for doing this is longer-term. If you don’t do this now, then you’re going to have challenges as you move further forward.” Sometimes you have to stand back and say, “Okay.” Because deciding on the outcome can work both ways. Because it’s very easy for ourselves to actually say, “Well, I’ll not bother doing this,” or, “Well, I’ll leave that to later.” [inaudible 00:10:40] stand back. Okay. Why am I doing this? What’s my outcome for doing this? Well, okay, I want to be on a preferred supplier list for A, B, and C. Therefore, the fact that I am prioritising this rather than picking the phone or making 30 cold-calls because that’s going to bring me a bigger profit, that is important.

Now, the next thing I want to talk about is using the D word. Not delegation. It’s the discernment word. Because I always say to people, when someone says, “Somebody has given me this feedback that I shouldn’t do this and do this,” whatever. I’ll say to them, “Sometimes this happens with my nieces when they come to me and they want a bit of my advice or whatever,” [inaudible 00:11:23] and I say, “Okay. Stand back, think about this situation, let’s practise some discernment here. You have done A, B, C, D, and E. Therefore, this person, their comment isn’t valid. A, they have no experience. B, they don’t know you. C, they don’t know whatever else.”

I think that’s important as well that as a business owner, sometimes it’s important to practise discernment. That tends to hit us when we’re thinking about, “I’ve got a long list of to-dos.” You start saying, “Well, okay. What’s my outcome for doing this?” We were talking to one particular person. Their cash flow, they needed to get a handle on the cash flow. Because I’d said … Challenged them. I said, “Why are you doing all your invoicing?” This particular [inaudible 00:12:15] said, “Well, a year or so ago, I got into a bit of a problem. I didn’t quite know what was coming in. I’d like to be on top of it.” For me, that was fine. Their outcome was that they needed to have a real handle on their business and to be able to do that. Because it’s very easy to justify things in our minds and say, “Well, yeah. I need to be doing that,” or, “This is important.” When you stand back and say, “Bigger picture, is it important?”

We have a client who actually isn’t in the recruitment sector. Now, that particular client has a lot going on at the moment. They’ve done a complete rebrand. One of the things that they want to do is they want to change every single image on every single blog post. Now, they’ve got blog posts that stretch back many, many years. Now, I totally get that they want to do that. But we’ve deprioritized it for them. “Okay. Let’s be honest. People may not be visiting one of your older blog posts. We can look at all the blog posts that Google Analytics is telling us lots of people are visiting consistently. We can change the images around there.” However, it’s not a major priority. The outcome obviously is around the brand. Let’s just think about, does this need to be done in the next month? Probably not. It’s these tougher questions that are really, really important to ask yourself.

It’s the one question that even if you just go and grab, ideally … Please don’t be in the car when I say this. But, when you get away from here, write this question down. What is my outcome for investing this time in this activity? It’s something that I always look at. Okay, what’s my goal to do here? Because it’s about prioritisation. It’s about, what do I actually need to get done today? We’ve had an example of it this last week. We’re going away on holiday. Our main priority, my outcome for doing X, Y, Z is to make sure that all our clients, all their content, all the social media is created, it’s approved, it’s validated, it’s up on the websites, it’s out there helping generate lead. It’s thinking about that big question. That big question, I’m going to say it slowly so you can write it down, is, what is my outcome for investing this time in this activity?

Then practise some discernment. Okay. Is this really important? Yes, it is. Is this going to contribute to my short-term, medium, longer-term goals? Because when you do that, then you can say, “Okay. Do I really need to do this? Then, do I need to do it now or do I need to do it in the future?” Big question for today, what is my outcome? For those of you who, as I said, who are new here, head over to Superfast Recruitment. Go and have a look at all those different things that are there. I’ve mentioned Superfast Circle a lot to people. If you want to know more about Superfast Circle, if you’re looking for clarity, you want some direction, you want some real hands-on help in a very supportive group environment, then do get in contact. Just email me personally, Denise@superfastrecruitnment, and just put circle. Because I get lots and lots of emails as you might imagine. Just put circle and we can jump on a call maybe and have a conversation.

This is Denise, from Superfast Recruitment, saying, bye for now.

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