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I tend to organize things that I have to do into categories: things to buy, posts to write, projects to develop, trips to plan, etc. Personally, I believe that it’s a good way to organize my work and accomplish a lot. If I don’t do so, I feel overwhelmed and have no clue where to start.
If you are developing an online business or a blog, chances are you also have structured your to-do list the exact same way: product planning, marketing, customers service, administration, content creation.
We structure our work like that because that’s what people do. That’s what we were taught. That’s the way we’re “supposed” to manage our businesses.
When you look at larger businesses, the story is the same:
- Finance does the counting
- Communication does the talking
- HR does the recruiting
This creates an unfortunate consequence: it forces our mind to think in silos.
I know you know that silos are bad. Silos have become an inherently pejorative term. Silos are so 1980s. Silos break creativity and effective communication. We all know that a silo is genuinely a bad concept, unless you’re in the grain business.
And since most of us are not in the grain business, we gotta watch ourselves!
This so-called time-management technique can quickly become a double-edged sword. It can screw up our plans and prevent us from making strategic decisions. Here’s how.
Your To-Do List Achilles’ Heel
Let’s take marketing for instance. We usually market to sell. We don’t market thinking about after-sales service. The same happens with communications. We develop a communication plan and try to get our key messages across. We position ourselves to get a contract or establish new relationships. But we do it without thinking about how to improve our cashflow.
We build nice little columns (we sometimes even add colors to them. I like colors.) and line up all the important and not-so-important tasks that we want to get done.
And then what? We do complete our tasks. We do them individually. We may even do them well. But we miss on something.
Getting Beyond the Sum of Their Parts
What if instead we asked ourselves how to build products that would speak for themselves? What if we used our marketing budget to invest in the community? Wouldn’t that be more powerful than any fancy and expensive marketing campaign? Wouldn’t that bridge the gap between our marketing claims and who we want to be?
Our to-do list takes us away from the right mindset. We stop looking at the big picture. We become obsessed with the next item on the list. We stop thinking strategically. We build a silo and forget to sow the grain.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Absolutely spot on Analogy man!!
Wow.
The last line of this post is probably one of the best ‘last lines’ of any post I have read.
Really really summarised EXACTLY what the problem is in that little line.
GENIUS! And can I say TIMELY too, just going through my processes and realising that I spend so much time doing the little things, that I forget what the whole picture looks like!
Hi Alex,
That’s a major compliment. Thanks a lot. It’s so easy to get lost in that list and forget about the rest.