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Use dull time to stay sharp

Posted: December 31, 2009

During this time of year, many businesses experience a bit of a slowdown. The holidays and their attendant travel and vacations can play a part, as can the end of a major client's fiscal year. It's not uncommon for the last half of December and the start of the year to have some downtime. And that can be a wonderful thing.

While your business might not have enough direct work to bill all hours, you can use the remaining time to improve your business's physical space and employee development and morale. Every business has an accounting category called "overhead," and there's no better time to use it.

There's no better reason to use it than to restore your business, either. Stephen Covey recognized this in his best-seller "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." Covey's seventh habit is the one that ensures all the other six work. He named it "sharpening the saw" after the parable of a lumberjack who exhausted himself trying to cut down a tree with a dull saw, wasting hours of backbreaking work rather than taking a few minutes to sharpen his blade.

After this past year in particular, your employees are probably feeling worn down and worn out. Downsizing means the average worker's workload has increased. Everyone in your office could probably use a bit of sharpening.

Consider some of the following suggestions:

  • Spend a day or so cleaning out old files and filing the papers that have piled up over the past year. Filing is one of those tasks that goes undone during busy times, so there's no better time to catch up on it. The result will be a safer, cleaner, more workable space that engenders a feeling of optimism and productivity. You can also do a file cleanout on your network servers, rotating old files into offsite archives and cleaning up your file directories will make work easier and faster in the coming year.
  • Inventory software, install updates or new programs. This could be done concurrently with cleaning out your business's physical files. Updating or installing software in a non-busy time has the additional benefit that any subsequent conflicts or crashes won't interrupt crucial, billable work.
  • Help your employees develop with training. Many businesses have a required amount of training to be done every year; doing it now means you'll make the most of downtime and ensure your business makes its deadline. Also, allowing employees to select and pursue nonrequired training not only improves the quality of their work, it increases their sense of loyalty to the company.
  • Strengthen your whole staff with team-building exercises. You don't have to do a ropes course or fall into each other's outstretched arms. The best type of team-building exercise involves all your staff members in solving a problem in a creative way. One great resource for possible team challenges is Destination Imagination (http://idodi.org), a nationwide initiative for problem-solving. Destination Imagination was designed for students, but their challenges work just as well for adult employees.

    In this economy, many managers might be reluctant to spend overhead dollars on activities that don't seem essential to the business. However, refreshing your business's physical, electronic and human resources is essential not only to the quality of your business's work but to its future functioning. In operations management, a line's maximum production is always greater than its optimal production. Similarly, your maximum heart rate is always larger than your training heart rate. The reasons for both are identical: A system can run at its maximum, but not for long before it breaks down.

    If your business is facing some downtime this holiday season, make the most of it. The overhead you invest in sharpening the saw now can yield rewards in the new year and a hopefully improved economy.

    Catherine Cantieri's business, Sorted, helps other businesses get organized. Visit the Sorted blog at www.get-sorted.net.