Are You Productive Enough?
Self-assess your work productivity and say hello to the corner office.
By Bridget McCrea
You come to work every day, finish projects on time, communicate well with your managers and co-workers, and participate in after-hours and weekend functions on a regular basis. Your performance reviews have been positive, which means you’ll be up for promotion soon.
Or will you?
Yes, the projects are coming in on time, but could they be finished ahead of schedule? And sure you answer email promptly and interact well with your colleagues, but what about strategic thinking that carries you outside of your cube’s four walls? In other words, could you be doing more to make an even stronger impression?
It’s a question a lot of employees ask at some point in their careers, particularly if they’ve been passed over for the next rung in the ladder. Let’s face it, your productivity reflects directly on your work image and, it then follows, affects the rate of your career climb.
So what’s an ambitious CPA to do in today’s competitive business environment? The first step is to assess your work productivity, looking for any “gaps” in performance. Then work to boost your productivity based on those findings, taking small, actionable steps to get you on track. Ultimately, you’ll want to channel those small improvements into a comprehensive strategy that gives your career the upward projectory you’re after.
Assess Your Contribution How do you gain the objectivity to see the gaps and then act to fill them? One option is to use a productivity self-assessment tool, a variety of which can be found online. Take a look at Halogen e360 [www.halogensoftware.com] and Success Factors [www.successfactors.com] for starters.
In addition, Gayle Lantz, president at Birmingham, Ala.-based WorkMatters Inc., an organizational development consulting firm, suggests that you “look in from the outside” by dissecting the goals and results of your past work week. First, make a list of what you intended to achieve, and compare it to what you actually accomplished. Consider how many of these achieved goals relate to overarching company objectives, as opposed to task items (such as file work papers, call client, etc.).
What you end up with is a clear picture of goals versus results. From there, you can evaluate where the gaps in productivity are. Ask yourself,
- What outcomes were achieved?
- Which were not achieved, and why?
- Which goals took more time than expected?
- Which took less time than expected?
- How critical were the outcomes left unfinished?
- What could I have done differently?
This is only half of the equation, however. You now need to brainstorm for effective ways to remove the barriers to achieving each goal. For example, outsourcing or delegating non-core tasks to free up your valuable time.
Boost Your Productivity Armed with this information, you can now develop a desired outcome and action list for the upcoming week. Prioritize the list items by asking, “What is the most important result that I need to achieve?” Map out your time to ensure that you can devote the resources necessary to achieving these essential company goals.
At the end of that week, assess your progress again, and work to constantly improve on the prior week’s performance. What you are doing is strategizing for heightened productivity, in order to achieve overarching company goals that management can’t fail to notice and appreciate.
Don’t get bogged down with the exercise, however, or expect it to stoke the fires of instant turnaround. “It’s very easy for accountants to get lost in the details,” Lantz warns. “Determine how you’ll know you’re on track to achieve your most important outcomes; those measures of success should guide your work.”
The majority of CPAs are wired to reconcile items precisely every time, without fail, says Chris McKee, managing partner at professional services firm Venturity Financial Partners. Their meticulous natures can work against them when it comes to getting things done ahead of schedule, and often leads to productivity levels that fall “below the bar,” so to speak.
“Sometimes, you just need to come up with a rough estimate, and not achieve the exact result,” says McKee. “If you’re not productive and not accomplishing tasks proficiently, your managers are going to be hesitant to entrust you with additional responsibility. That’s sure to hamper your chances of promotion.”
Lantz agrees, explaining that, “Accountants operate in an environment that values precision and accuracy, which means they have to work harder to step out of their comfort zones in order to grow and advance. Accountants always want to get it right, but when it comes to moving their careers forward, they must be willing to take some risks, make some mistakes and experiment along the way.”
Strategize for Promotion Being armed with a productivity boosting agenda is all important, as is having a clear vision of how you want to move up through the company ranks.
“The more you can identify specific goals, the more you can help not only your career climb, but also the firm,” says Lantz. “Think of it as creating mutual benefit through processes like performance reviews, which should focus both on past performance and the identification of future goals and how to achieve them.”
If you’re striving to move up the career ladder, then it goes without saying that focusing on business outcomes is a priority. While you may have been hired for a specific area of technical or analytical expertise, what will advance your career is seeing the big picture.
“Being personally productive is good,” says Lantz. “But being productive in the context of what the firm is trying to achieve is even better. Productivity isn’t simply about marking off items on your to do list. It’s about increasing the efficiency and profit potential of the organization as a whole.”
Realizing that CPAs tend to be compliance-oriented and used to following very specific instructions, Lantz says that a key way to tag yourself as highly productive, and therefore prime promotion material, is by getting involved with the problem-solving aspect of accounting—again, within the big picture context of business.
“If you can help to identify some problems and solutions early on in your career,” says Lantz, “you’ll be able to set yourself apart and demonstrate to others your ability to take initiatives that other accountants might steer clear of.” For example, express more interest in company strategy. “Many times accountants don’t have the opportunity to focus on some of the strategic issues that could help move the firm forward,” she explains. “So the more they can express interest or participate in meetings where strategic issues are being discussed, the more they’ll be able to position themselves for growth opportunities and leadership within the company.”
“Productivity is monitored very closely at larger firms, where, if the progress falls below a certain point your career can be in jeopardy,” adds McKee. “On the other hand, once it gets above a certain point, you become known as someone who is extremely productive and who is in touch with client needs.”
And, “When someone can work effectively and efficiently, and also communicate well with clients,” he says, “it will push them up the promotion list very quickly.”