Over the last 12 weeks, I have stepped up my commitment to use our internal NetSuite timesheet system to better track all the activities that are work related. Part of the reason for this is because my wife says I work too much. Perhaps. To ground that assessment, I wanted to track all work related activities and categorize them so I could stand back and determine if I am indeed working too much. More importantly, is the work that I am doing yielding the results I seek.
Background on the Practice
I am the founder and principal of our NetSuite Systems Integrator practice. At this time, I have 11 consultants working on engagements in various capacities. My practice is organized similar to an attorney firm — in that most actors are senior professionals and the right consultant must be staffed according to need. Like a senior partner, I source and manage the business, the talent, and I act on client engagements. One of the common rules of thumb for consulting practices is to spend 1/3 of your time finding business, 1/3 of your time performing client work, and 1/3 of your time in administrative efforts. I don’t necessarily buy that thinking but it is a way to think about where energy should be expended in growing a practice.
In my practice, I break up work in three major categories as follows:
- Client Service: Direct work to satisfy promises made to clients.
- Practice Development: Effort to grow the practice which I include planning, marketing, sales, product development, resource capacity and training.
- Administration: Work such as bookkeeping, legal affairs, general email and other non-practice development communications; and anything that is not directly helping grow expertise or producing new client work.
Timekeeping Findings and Analysis
Overall Categories of Work
How Does Effort Vary Each Week?
How Many Hours I am Working Per Week?
Now that there is a feel for the division of work by category and nature, let’s see how many actual hours am I spending by reviewing the chart below (click to enlarge):
The red lines are averages and are as follows:
Client Service: 25 hours/week
Practice Development: 20 hours/week
Administration: 11 hours per week
Total: 56 hours per week
I am not surprised by the amount of work I expend each week and this seems consistent with other ambitious leaders and business owners I speak to. Am I working too much? My instinct says no; it seems appropriate given my ambition and what is necessary to provide quality service. Nonetheless, while my wife is quite supportive of my practice, I see opportunities to be more present with the family which may lead them to have an interpretation that I am not working too much. This is a good goal to strive for to produce family harmony.
Break out Practice Development and Administration
Finally, I wanted to see how I am spending my time in non-client related activities. See image below (click to enlarge):
Indeed, the major opportunity is to figure out how to reduce the General and Bookkeeping categories so that I can spend more productive time on practice initiatives that better serve clients and our people.
Summary
Overall, I am glad I have developed the timekeeping practices at this level. It is more demanding and requires more rigor; yet the effort supports making better interpretations and assessments of how I am spending my energy. Finally, it will be interesting to design new action to reduce overall Administration effort while tracking the growth of the practice and where I spend my attention. Perhaps I will revisit this topic a year from now to discuss new observations.
Marty – an interesting analysis. Now divide your total income by the total hours you work and come up with an average revenue/hour. If you can hire someone to do non-generating work at a cost less than your rev/hour, you should do that to free yourself up to build more revenue. Of course, easier said than done (since it is good to keep your “hand on the pulse of the business” too!) Jim
Thank you Jim. Indeed, it makes sense to bring revenue into the equation. The easiest target is the Administrative help. Yet, I find that as the practice grows, there will be time in areas that will be non-productive. For example, even though I have bookkeeping help, I still need to monitor it and do some work. Over time, I am concerned that Administration will grow, not shrink. We know the common pattern of increased G&A as businesses grow.
Marty,
Excellent post. The trick is tracking the intangible crossovers. Addressing a client need is often a direct path to a new business oppty. How you word a status memo can breath life into an opportunity. Fixing internal hardware issues generates an idea for a new service offering. The obscure phone call you field leads to ……
Hi Jim,
Wow, you are really pushing me on the time tracking granularity! It’s hard to measure the creation of goodwill as it is built in time in the background. Do you track your time in a way that would produce this kind of analysis? I am curious about the ratios between different types of business action.
Marty
Marty,
Great post. This is something that I’ve been struggling with for a few years now. I briefly tried tracking my non-billable time, but it became very tedious and I didn’t have a narrative to justify the extra effort. But, like you, I face the challenge of balancing work and family, so perhaps a short term analysis makes sense.
Thanks for the write up and analysis!
Steve,
I welcome comparing notes and findings. If you renew your commitment to track time, perhaps we can share experiences.
Marty