As a business consultant, one of the first issues I address with clients is Time Management. Entrepreneurs typically don’t have good time management. Most of them are used to doing what they want, when they want, where they want, and how they want.

I’m not saying they lack discipline, after all they started a business and they built a business to some level or another. But and this is a big but, they generally don’t have a tight structure that they operate under. This structure is not necessarily a rigid and dogmatic structure, but structure nonetheless.

Somewhere along the way they lost an amount of the discipline that made them so effective in the start up and building stages of their business. So as a business consultant it is my job to help them rediscover that structure and discipline that will help them become effective time managers again.

Some of the pillars of good time management are
Be strategic first (working ON the business), tactical second (working IN the business)
Work on the most important things earlier, rather than later
Work on the same type of thing (strategies, tactics, sales, marketing – whatever) at a consistent time, on consistent days of the week
Measuring themselves as to their effectiveness

These pillars are there to put the entrepreneur in the right frame of mind, to give them a routine, to help them gain a sense of accomplishment and achievement and allow them to check themselves against their plan and course correct as necessary.

In my next post your humble correspondent will relate some personal observations on time managment.