And ‘capture time’ can you elaborate on that? Your concept of ‘capture time’?
The AutoVation process is a cyclical process and once you’ve gone through the steps of auditing your activities and applying the four steps: the don’t do, the outsourcing, the delegation and the automation, since you can’t manage time you still have the same amount of time in the week. So by doing those four steps you’ll end up with surplus activity; activities that you’re not doing and you can do, (that you couldn’t do in the past because you were doing other activities) they’ve now been outsourced, delegated, not done or automated. That is then a capture time that can be spent on new activities, and the AutoVation process says that those new activities should be innovative activities.
A 40-hour week is that the maximum one should aim for?
Our own experience and my own personal experience is that you can ask staff to work extra hours, maybe a ten hour day or work a Saturday, to put in that extra effort and that little spurt of energy - and you’ll get that. But if you ask staff to do that week in week out, over and over and over and they’re working a six day week, all that they end up doing is stretching five days worth of work into six. The capacity of the human machine gets exhausted and the batteries don’t get recharged, and they just work slower to conserve their energy because there’s a limit to what performance can occur out of an individual. While we can ask for a spurt of energy right at the end to get us over the line, to ask for continuously is unhealthy I think, both from a business point of view and from a personal point of view.
And that’s true obviously for the proprietor as well?
Absolutely, I think they need to get back to having life as well and go home and spend some time with their spouse and their children.
And that’s part of your capture time?
Absolutely, I think capture time in business needs to focus on probably three areas.
One that you’re very conscious of yourself, which is just your own health; lifestyle, health, nutrition, exercise, so that you can operate at peak performance for the 40 hours when you are there.
The other capture time needs to focus on two areas, I believe. One is back on your staff. You need to develop your staff and that requires a conscious effort of making time for direct and indirect training and leadership. And the second area is your customers. You need to go visit your customers in their place and see what their challenges are so that you can design your goods and services to meet their needs.
