I often refer back to Steven Covey’s Time Management Matrix when prioritizing my schedule. It helps me focus on the most important tasks, rather than what’s simply urgent (which is everything these days).
Chris Brogan had a good post the other day about how to organize your business (or rather, how he organizes his business). This quote was particularly poignant for me:
Email is a system that delivers other people’s priorities to your attention. It’s up to you to decide when that priority should be managed into your world. It’s not the other way around.
I’ve also read The Three “Ds” of Customer Experience from HBS quite a few times. The bottom of that article has a great excerpt that discusses how to target (focus on) the right customers.
All of it got me thinking about how to focus on what’s important in business and whether we’re always focused on the right customers. It’s true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but there’s good squeaking (promoters) and bad squeaking (detractors). Either way, revenue and profit has to be part of the equation, which is why the HBS article is something I often reference.
I put together a Customer Management Matrix that visually explains the bottom of the HBS article; I think I’ll refer back to it often. Let me know what you think.
