475: Proven Construction Business Processes When Creating Your To-Do List

Contractor Success Map with Randal DeHart | Contractor Bookkeeping And Accounting Services

This Podcast Is Episode Number 475, And It's About Proven Construction Business Processes When Creating Your To-Do List When you're a construction business owner, your to-do list is often long and constantly growing longer. You need to do many things, and it can feel like they're all urgent. In such cases, it's easy to push essential tasks to the side and focus on less-vital activities, but that often means you miss deadlines, make mistakes or always feel as though you're trying to catch up. Construction Companies have two basic leadership styles; wait until an urgent situation occurs and react like a firefighter or develop business processes that allow the company to respond calmly and natural resources and solutions to the issues like a traffic police officer on a sunny afternoon.

Firefighter Leaders - Operate in one of three mental states:

• Going into a crisis
• Coming out of crises
• Waiting for a crisis

Traffic Director - Leaders operate in one of four mental states:

• Preparing for new projects to appear
• Preventing projects from becoming an emergency
• Planning for implementation of current and future projects
• Empowering others and directing the flow of projects to completion and billing

The graph below - Is similar to the diagram shown in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Habit 3 Put First Things by Stephen R. Covey to demonstrate this principle.

We spend our time in one of four ways, as illustrated in the Time Management Matrix above. This matrix defines activities as Urgent / Not Urgent / Important / Not Important.

With this in mind, creating your business to-do list would be more straightforward.

Here are some ways for you to determine the most productive order to complete your tasks.

1. Know all of your tasks

It isn't enough to have a running list of tasks in your head; you need to write them out to see them at a glance. Take the time to list all your tasks, and break down large tasks into smaller steps.

Write a list of the activities you need to do for the week—or even the next two weeks—on Monday morning. Include information such as how urgent they are, how long they'll take to complete, and their deadlines.

Now you know what you need to complete and when things need to be done.

2. Determine what tasks are vital

There are many methods for determining which tasks are the most vital. We'll go into the Eisenhower Decision Matrix and the ABCDE Method.

In the Eisenhower Decision Matrix (similar to the graph above), you classify each task into one of four quadrants. These quadrants are based on whether the task is important, urgent, both, or neither. Tasks that are both important and urgent should be done first, followed by those that are either important but not urgent or urgent but not important, and finally, those that are neither important nor urgent. If possible, delegate tasks that aren't both important and urgent to someone else.

Another method is the ABCDE method, in which you assign each task on your list a letter from A through E based on its level of importance. Tasks with a level of A or B are the most important, while D and E are not at all critical. Anything from C down can likely be rescheduled or delegated to someone else.

3. Schedule your tasks

Now that you know which tasks are the most critical, schedule your to-do list in that order. Write yourself a daily checklist that puts the most important tasks at the start of your day. Don't overschedule yourself, however. After all, there's a good chance that a new activity that is both important and urgent will arise in the course of your week, and you'll need the space in your calendar to address it.

Give yourself deadlines in the day to get the work done based on a reasonable assessment of how long the activity should take you. You can also chunk your work, setting aside specific, uninterrupted periods to do focused work and then scheduling breaks around that.

Make sure you turn off distractions and let your colleagues know you aren't available during those times.

Final thoughts

Large, profitable construction companies have known and used some form of Business Process Management (B.P.M.) for hundreds of years. We've always used M.A.P. to help our clients find the treasure hidden inside their construction business. You can download our free toolkit here if you haven't done so.

By determining which of your tasks are the most important to you and your construction business and scheduling your day based on that criteria, you can ease the pressure caused when you have a long list of activities to take care of.

About The Author:

Sharie DeHart, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood, Washington. She is the leading expert in managing outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services companies and cash management accounting for small construction companies across the USA. She encourages Contractors and Construction Company Owners to stay current on their tax obligations and offers insights on how to manage the remaining cash flow to operate and grow their construction company sales and profits so they can put more money in the bank. Call 1-800-361-1770 or [e-mail]