Save your team 5,000 hours in 2024

Welcome to the first edition of Digital Peace.

This is a weekly blog to help busy leaders and their teams streamline their digital workspace and reduce mental stress, so they can focus on what matters most.

Today, I want to share how you can save your team 5,000 hours in 2024.

This week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is ripe with opportunity. Opportunity to rest. Opportunity to reflect. Opportunity to set goals for the year ahead.

As we set goals for 2024, it’s natural to look back and think about the goals we set this time last year.

Remember that feeling when you wrote down your goals at the beginning of the year and you were brimming with excitement?

Where are those goals now?

Are they still serving as a north star for your day-to-day activities, or have they gotten lost and forgotten in the digital depths of emails, project management tools, and notes apps?

Even if you know exactly where to find them, does your team?

According to a survey conducted by IDC, the average employee spends 2.5 hours per day searching for information, which amounts to 30% of their workweek.

That’s why, one of the highest-leverage steps you can take as you plan for 2024 is creating a clear file system, so no one on your team has to waste time searching for the information they need to do their job.

Look, I get it. “Digital Organization” might not sound like the most exciting topic on the planet right now.

As leaders, it’s more fun to think about achieving big visions, audacious goals, and record revenue targets.

But here’s the truth:

You will never cross the finish line of your most important goals if you have to wade through a Digital Mess, every single day, to get there.

You simply will not get a maximum ROI on the investment you’re making in your team if each employee spends 2.5 hours per day searching for information they need to do their job.

But what if you created a system that gave your employees 2 hours of their day back?

Imagine what you could achieve if every member of your team was able to reclaim 10 hours of productive work per week.

Even if you have a small team of 10, that amounts to roughly:

• 100 hours per week.
• 400 hours per month.
• 5,000 hours per year.

Do you think you’d have a better shot at achieving the vision you’ve set out for 2024 with an additional 5,000 hours of productive work?

I believe you’ll be able to accomplish immeasurably more than you have planned.

This is where Digital Organization gets exciting.

However, it probably sounds daunting to completely overhaul your entire digital file system on your own, so I’m going to leave you with one simple step you can take this week.

Start with the most important digital files in your organization.

Start by creating a Strategic Planning folder

Your Strategic Plan is the guiding force for every employee across every team in your organization.

It should be easy to find so everyone can stay focused on what matters.

I talk with so many leaders who can’t remember their yearly, quarterly, or monthly targets, even though they spent precious hours crafting a clear vision.

But that’s okay.

You don’t have to recall it from memory, as long as you have a clearly named file that key stakeholders can find quickly and easily to keep their targets in focus.

Schedule 10 minutes to create a Strategic Planning Folder later this week, and I promise it will serve you and your team for the rest of the year.

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