Ever wish you had more time in your day? You can’t add more minutes, but you can make more efficient use of the time you do have. A good place to start is by establishing or reviewing the three P’s: policies, processes and procedures. They’re the foundation of a well-run business.

In this podcast, Gail and Erin share their insights on the importance of establishing policies, processes and procedures for your business. When you put in place the right systems and codify best practices, you and every member of your team can work more efficiently, putting their creative effort and energy into achieving goals rather than thinking up new ways for how to do their jobs.

“You want to be running your company like an efficient machine,” said Gail. Once those systems are in place, you can spend less time managing tasks and people and have more time to work on the things that increase your revenue.

The same goes for how you use your own time. Developing useful rituals and good habits, such as a productive and healthy morning routine, will save you time, make your life easier, and make it easier for others around you to know what to expect of you. On the other hand, some unproductive rituals or bad habits may be holding you back. You want to replace those with positive ones.

Policies set down how you want your firm to operate and embody the firm culture you want to create. For example, what is your policy for how a client complaint gets handled? Without policies, everyone is doing things their own way—and not necessarily in a way that reflects well on your firm.

A process encompasses a series of actions and tasks. For instance, what is your firm’s client experience process, from the time a prospect makes contact through to landing a project, delivering on the project, closing out the project, and soliciting a referral?

A procedure is a step-by-step description and rationale for how a particular task gets done. You might have a procedure for posting content to your social media channels. Having clear procedures allows you to delegate tasks to others with confidence that they will be done correctly.

Make sure policies, processes and procedures are communicated clearly. Once in place, you need to instill a culture of discipline to ensure everyone follows them.

At the end of their conversation, Gail and Erin talked about ways to break out of the day-to-day minutiae of dealing with the latest crisis or deadline in order to refocus on what’s most important to move your business toward accomplishing the vision and goals. For those insights and more, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, read the full shownotes here: https://gaildoby.com/s6e1-shownotes

Erin referred to the book The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed To Transform Your Life by Hal Elrod. You can learn more about it and his other Morning Routine materials at his website at halelrod.com.