While these short weeks with public holidays are great breaks, from a business perspective, they provide less days to do the work that still needs to get done. If anyone is feeling like I am….that just means 2 less days in already busy weeks.

When I feel like that, it’s time to look at what to stop, start, keep and fix. Here are some potential starting things to think about if you get any quiet time over your Easter break!

Things to Stop

– Looking at emails before 10am (this includes on the phone).

– Accepting coffee meetings without a clear agenda/purpose.

Things to Start

– Always define your top 3 things to start the day with.

– Leave the office by 6pm.

– Take a 10 minute short break every 2 hours to continually prioritise focus.

Things to Keep

– Know what your ‘key economic denominators are’ – what are those things that you need to do every week that most significantly impact your bottom line results / targets.

– Getting back to people within 48 hours.

Things to Fix

– Resourcing requirements (either whether you have enough or the quality of them).

– Office layout/set up to ensure set up and stocked up with all requirements closeby.

 What are some things that would you add?

This is also a great exercise to do with your team with 4 pieces of butchers paper topped Stop, Start, Keep and Fix and invite staff to place sticky notes to look at what you do well as a team/business and what you may need to look at developing to maximise team performance and satisfaction. You can also ask team members to identify the benefit/s associated with each idea and turn the exercise into an action plan making sure that you are not the only person doing everything and get all staff to hold everyone accountable to the ‘stop doings’.

Happy and Safe long weekend!