It's great to be multi-skilled?be able to type your own correspondence, do your bookkeeping, answer all phone calls, prepare your PowerPoint presentations, organise your own travel, seminars, pick up and send your mail, pack orders, do your own marketing, do all the photocopying, ring your clients and prospects. However it may not leave you with enough time to focus on what really matters.

When you first start out in business, you will no doubt do most things yourself, yet to continue trying to keep control of every task that needs doing by handling everything yourself, you'll never be able to grow your business successfully. You'll run out of time and also be limited by your own skillset.

The same applies when you commence a new management role, you want to make a good impression and show that you are capable of handling all your responsibilities without asking for any assistance. That's fine if you can manage doing that effectively and maintain your sanity. However, if you are having difficulty and suffer in silence, other people?your team, colleagues and clients will eventually notice anyhow.

If you are a business owner or manager with a team of people, you'll go crazy trying to do everything yourself without some form of assistance?and being a good manager, your role is to manage and develop your people. Together you will achieve more? more productivity and profit or whatever your purpose is.

When you have people working for you, you'll find that managing your people will take up a lot of your time.

When you're at this level you do need some form of assistance whether it be a Virtual Assistant (personal assistants who work off-site in their own business and whom you can hire on as 'as needs' basis (see www.asecretary.com.au) or hire a person to assist you on-site whether it's part-time or full-time.

You may also have a suitable candidate in your office right now who is ready to step in?just make sure they have the skills you require. It's no good recruiting within your organisation unless the person has the attributes needed unless you are prepared to invest additional time and money to get them up to speed... and even after all that effort, they may still be unsuitable.

One of my clients decided to utilise their company's receptionist to help him with his workload as she had spare time at certain parts of the day. This lady was a typical sanguine personality which meant she was bubbly, full of life and excellent 'people person'? perfect for her role. This type of person is generally allergic to details and can be disorganised?the opposite of what my client required.

I knew it wasn't going to work but he was adamant to give it a go as he didn't want to invest in additional staff. It didn't take long for him to realise he had made a big mistake and that no amount of further training would bring her skill level to where he needed it to be. Within 4 weeks he hired a trained personal assistant who was highly organised and could easily undertake the tasks required.

Gary's Story

Gary is the Sales Manager of a building company. He manages a team of 15 people. Gary began coaching with me last year. One of his key goals was to finish work by 5.30 p.m. each day. At that stage he was commencing work at 7.00 a.m. and going home at 7.30 p.m. at night. Not much fun right? He had no time for his life. Working these hours he was overstressed, overweight, unwell and the long hours took their toll on his family life.

There were a range of other issues affecting Gary's productivity?the key ones were his poor time management skills, his inability to say 'no' and not having competent staff to delegate to. The staff issue was directly related to Gary's time management skills. When new people joined his department they were left to their own devices with no on-going training. The staff turnover was a direct reflection of his management skills. His regular team's performance wasn't monitored and they never experienced any further development. In other words, Gary wasn't an effective leader.

He had no dedicated personal assistant to delegate basic administrative tasks to and to assist him directly with his role. Gary had to look after clients and suppliers as well as his own team. The 'people' issues took up much of Gary's time, therefore he extended his working hours to catch up on his own tasks? many of which could have been delegated to a competent personal assistant.

Through using our Weekly Planner to record where he was spending his time, Gary discovered he was wasting a minimum of 15 hours a week on administrative tasks which could easily be handled by an assistant. Gary's time was worth $200 an hour and here he was wasting $3000 worth of his time minimum per week which could easily be delegated to a personal assistant who would cost his company $800 - $1000 per week.

The crazy thing about this was he procrastinated for weeks about hiring a support person. Once he saw the real truth, he quickly got off his butt and took action.

The Final Word

If you want to have more time to focus on what really counts in your business/organisation, then consider letting go and find an assistant who has the skills you need to help you be the best you can be.

Lorraine Pirihi, principal of The Office Organiser is Australia's Personal Productivity Coach. She specialises in working with businesspeople showing them how to dramatically boost their productivity, reduce the stress and the mess in their lives and have more time for enjoying their life.