Working harder is not enough nowadays because the business world is incredibly competitive. Increasing productivity can be achieved by working smarter. One effective strategy that can help employees boost their productivity is DILO, which stands for “Day In the Life Of”. This strategy suggests that employees analyze their tasks in a detailed step-by-step fashion to determine which ones are genuinely useful and which are a waste of time and resources.
Recapping DILO:
Ever wonder why some team members always look busy doing work but find it impossible to achieve their target while other employees seem to have a much easier time completing their work? This difference often stems from their attitudes toward time and task management. DILO helps answer essential questions like:
- Which tasks are assigned to the team members?
- What are the reasons behind spending time on these tasks?
- How exactly are the tasks being done?
Through these questions, DILO permits better issues of time usage and enables better task management decisions by watching these versions.
The Results of DILO:
To illustrate my point on how effective DILO is let me give you two examples of regional sales managers who have comparable positions but vastly different approaches in structuring their daily schedules. The two examples are Mr. Akshat Arora and Mr. Vinay Puri.
While Mr. Arora handles his day by following an unsystematic approach to multitasking, he is always busy on calls, responding to customer questions, checking in with colleagues, and preparing reports. He spends his entire day choked with activities, but in the end, he is left with very little to show for it. Thus, he only manages to achieve a meager 2530 percent of his goals.
Mr. Puri, on the other hand, uses DILO approach and is highly planned and organized in his work. He focuses on urgent tasks, trains new hires, deals with complaints, and plans the next day. As a result, he regularly meets and exceeds his targets and objectives by up to 120 percent of sales goals, which is four times more than what Mr. Arora achieves.
The difference in their results highlights the need to focus on the right activities and manage time with precision.
Advantages of DILO:
DILO is highly advantageous to implement because it:
Sets Boundaries:
DILO helps set boundaries around activities that add the most value to the business, for instance, dealing with clients, generating new interest, and closing new business deals.
Eliminates Nonvalue Adding Activities:
Employees can identify nonvalue adding activities and refrain from spending precious employee time on tasks that do not result in any fruitful outcome like overcomplicated internal conferences and unnecessary reporting.
Productions Results:
DILO ensures that employees are coordinated in their endeavors daily and the overall business objectives are achieved. This ensures that at the end of the work day, there is a sense of purpose in each task that was completed.
Increases Overall Responsibility:
With DILO, any schedule is a plan and every plan undergoes scrutiny minute by minute so that there is a self-imposed discipline to achieve the objectives within the set time.
The 37X Growth Rule: Consistent Small Changes Will Lead To A Bigger Impact
One of the most important lessons DILO tries to teach us is the step-by-step progression. An employee who can touch performance on a daily basis and make an improvement of 1% on the previous day’s improvement would see progression like never before. In other words, after a year of continuous advancement of 1 percent, a person can assume to be 37times better than he was at the start.
For companies, this means that a company that is earning 100 rupees can increase that to 3700, only if they were to change their approach and exercise a daily increase of 1 percent.
How to Apply DILO for Your Team
Keeping Track of Daily Tasks:
The first thing to do is to log all the activities employees does in the office throughout the day which helps to identify where better time management can be applied.
Set Specific Goals:
Make sure every activity done on a day-to-day basis is aligned with the overarching organizational goals so that any effort spent is deemed valuable and contributes to the success of the organization.
Eliminate Tasks that Lack Impact:
Figure out which activities do not benefit the organization, and then cut them out or reassign them in order to have more time available for productive work.
Continuous Evaluation:
Regularly check the success of the DILO technique by monitoring the KPIs and changing some of the activities where it is necessary.
Conclusion:
Using the Day In THE Life Of (DILO) technique encourages all employees to make the most out of some of their work activities. The proper focus on activities, elimination of distractions, and integration of daily activities with higher level goals, ultimately leads to immeasurable results. As a manager or as an employee, it increases productivity and ensures that the effort being put in gets maximized. DILO may be the solution to business growth and greater success.
So start implementing DILO and see how the productivity of your employees, as well as the performance of the business, improves significantly!
