“Hey, ya got a minute?” 

Can you stand to be asked this ONE more time? If you’re getting interference all day long, get ready for what I’m about to tell you. It’ll change your life!

How many times during the day do you hear the question, “You got a minute?” 

Five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred? Does it interfere with your ability to concentrate? Do you often wonder when the noise will stop so you can get something done? Knock knock… Your door is jammed with questions and questions. 

If that’s you, you’re what we call a “Got a Minute Entrepreneur.” In fact, this is indicative of how you run your whole life in the Got a Minute funk. Whatever comes up is what you do. Rather than plan for what you want, you live life with circumstance being the creative force, not YOU. 

This can be frustrating because it delays your ability to perform activities that serve your vision, but HLP has a tool to help clean it up: The Got a Minute Meeting. The primary payoff is helping you stay on track. The purpose is to remove the welcome mat for anyone breaking down your door at the wrong time.

Got a Minute Meeting 

The Got a Minute Meeting is a daily time frame that you schedule to expect interruptions. For example, your staff has questions that need answering… You let them know you’ve set up a 30-minute meeting to handle any concerns, questions, items, or consultation they need from you. This way, both you and the staff are expecting to handle items in a deliberate, planned way. You can begin with two Got a Minute Meetings per day, then move to one. This progression from two to one per day is a byproduct of working on systems your team can follow. Study the interruptions you’re getting and turn them into a system that allows the employee to answer the question for themselves.

If you live in reaction and response to circumstances, say goodbye to operating in favor of your vision, you won’t get to anything important!

Get the team involved in the systemization process. People tend to buy into systems they help create. Ask them to systemize anything that could be done better and with greater consistency. 

Ask the team to imagine the company is going to be franchised 500 times. How would X process be done? Explain what’s in it for the staff to systemize: money, more resources, opportunities for promotion, etc. Turn the team into a thirsty group of co-creative entrepreneurs who think for the organization and think for their own futures. Trust them to originate ideas even though they know nothing about “how.” 

The act of figuring it out will magnify your positive influence on the team because you’ve called upon a greater part of them to step up. They’re thirsty for you to give them a challenge, to call upon them for big things. That’s what makes them grow. That’s what keeps them with you forever. That’s what building a culture of responsibility, creativity, and organization is all about.

Once confidence is established in the team’s capability with new systems, move more authority down the line. Localize important decisions to staff members who’ve improved competencies and capabilities with your systems. Naturally, this process will require less and less stimulation, direction, and intervention from you, so you can keep on course with your daily gameplan. If you’re going to do this, your reason to reduce complexity must be more important than your fear of losing control. 

Pay close attention to what you just read.

The secondary payoff to the Got a Minute Meeting is that the team will become empowered. By you suddenly not being available, several things happen: 

  1. They’re forced to figure things out because of the wait time until they have a Got a Minute Meeting 
  2. They’re more prepared with their questions during the Got a Minute Meeting, which require less time to deal with
  3. You’re fully focused on what they need rather than diffused into other tasks, which also speeds up the process. 

Everyone wins. Everyone’s more focused.

Most importantly, the staff become bigger, better, faster, and stronger because you’ve given them the luxury of making mistakes… So they can learn. They become more autonomous by learning on their own.

Immediate Action Expedites Results

Please take out your calendar right now and schedule your daily Got a Minute Meetings for the next month. Call a meeting with your team and any other time bandits to discuss the purpose, process, and payoff of the Got a Minute Meeting. Test the process for 30 days and study the results. Make adjustments if warranted. Schedule a second collective meeting with the team about systems and how to get involved, and to explain the relationship between system optimization and the Got a Minute Meeting. 

Got A Minute by Phone

Block off time to return calls. You don’t need to be as accessible as you think. That’s your mind misinforming you out of fear of losing an opportunity. It costs your focus and makes you appear unprofessional when you take every call. If you’re available all the time, it appears that you’re not busy and must not have many clients. Plus, you’re not prepared. 

So STOP taking every call if you want to have a life, rather than a ball and chain that finds you at the movie theater talking business when you shouldn’t be! Schedule time during the day to return calls. Set your voicemail up to communicate this. Put your assistant on the alert so people go to voicemail. Let her have a VIP list of only those relationships that get access.

Got A Minute Email

Set up a special folder for items in your inbox that require more than 2 minutes to handle and move such items there. Schedule a return email time frame and respond when you plan to. The quality of your responses will be better. You’ll see your inbox clear for the first time. Whoopee!

Got a Minute Negotiation

We encourage our clients to say hello and goodbye to distractions. When they have Got a Minute Email lined up, return call blocks, and Got a Minute Meetings scheduled, they then have space to deal with things that pop up unexpectedly. Rather than lining up stacks of unfinished stuff, send it to the Got a Minute gathering spaces you’ve built. 

In other words: whatever comes at you, put it in the space you’ve made to handle it when you’ve planned (instead of instant reaction). Saying hello means “I’m prepared to handle that.” Saying goodbye means “I’ve planned to handle it at ___, is that going to be ok with you?” 

To encourage a yes on the last question, add a benefit to the delay, such as better quality or something the interrupter is thirsty for, and that they’ll get by waiting.

With this Got a Minute solution, you’re on your way… One step closer to simplifying your life so you can get to the actions and the personal gifts that serve your vision. 

Remember that your priorities are determined by where you choose to spend your time. When you work on your business, not just in it, you’re going to experience an enormous shift, like firing yourself from one job  and moving onto a better, more creative one that engenders the true nature of what you are and care most about.