In the HVAC world, peak periods demand full throttle. For most managers, this busy time brings high expectations, increased workloads, and extended hours. Labor shortages, supply chain issues, customer conflicts, urgencies, and emergencies can create high levels of stress. It often feels just as intense inside the workplace as it does dealing with external pressures! The long hours and stress can take a toll on our family life, sleep, exercise, diet, and friendships. Most of us accept the rigors of peak periods as unavoidable, often bidding farewell to our families and promising to return to normalcy after the rush subsides.

At Management Action Programs (MAP), we work with hundreds of clients and thousands of managers in multiple industries, including HVAC. Here are some tips, tools, and strategies in three key areas that will help you gain control of your time, leverage your staff, and reduce costly communication errors, so that you can turn down the heat of stress and turn up the sizzle on performance. 

Bonus: These tips, tools, and strategies work all year long. 

1.    Time - Control time, or it will control you

We can’t actually control time, can we? No matter what we do, it keeps marching along. We can’t buy it, create it, slow it down, or hold onto it. We can only control what we DO within those minutes and hours each day and week. 

Prioritize with Pareto

Are you a list maker? There’s relief to get things out of your head and on paper, and crossing tasks off the list is satisfying. Many of us go about our day knocking out a few easy wins and never really considering what matters most. Unfortunately, the items on the list are not equal in importance and don’t deserve our equal attention.

The Italian Vilfredo Pareto taught us what many recognize as the 80/20 rule. The Pareto Principle states that roughly 20% of our efforts yield 80% of our results. The numbers may vary, but you’ve probably already witnessed that a few technicians or sales staff are driving the majority of your sales. Most revenue is generated in a few hot zones across town. You spend way too much time dealing with a few difficult employees. Similarly, only about 20% of your To Do list is likely vital to your performance and the success of your business.

Focus on the Vital Few

Determine your vital few and prioritize them. Keep your list small, and instead of being mediocre at many things, you’ll be great at a few highly impactful needle-moving things. 

All hours are not equal either.

Everyone has pockets of time when they are most productive. For most people, that time is in the morning. We’re charged up and fresh. Our energy is high, and so are our focus and attention. Protect those energy and high-focus hours by blocking them from your schedule. Close your door, remove distractions, turn off notifications, silence your phone, and get in the zone. You may have to designate someone else to handle any trivial issues or emergencies during your productive time. This might feel really weird. Start by giving yourself 30 minutes of uninterrupted time and work your way up to 90 minutes. See if you can find another 60-minute block or two in the other parts of the day to do the same. 

The 4 Ds

For the other 80%, you have four choices:

•    Delegate it.
•    Delay it.
•    Delete it.
•    Do it (try not to).

Challenge 1: Track your time for one full week and analyze the results.
Challenge 2: Use the Pareto Principle and the 4 Ds to cut your workload in half.
Challenge 3: Block off 30 minutes for deep focus during your peak production window.

2.    Delegate – Let go to grow

If you’re like most overwhelmed do-it-all types, you really struggle letting others help. Maybe you’re afraid to give them additional work or worried that they won’t do it as well as you. Or maybe you think it’s just faster if you do it. You can do anything. You just can’t do EVERYTHING.

Research conducted by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, authors of Multipliers, indicates most leaders only extract about 50% of their employees’ capacity, while some leaders, multipliers, extract 100% capacity through coaching and development. Does your team have some unused capacity? I’ll bet they do. Delegation not only leverages their time to free up yours, it’s a great opportunity to provide professional development.

Select the right person.

Find the person whose skills match up best with the task, but caution against always tasking your A player. They will never say no and burn out quickly. Pay attention to workloads and delegate tasks to everyone.

Focus on the results.

Provide clear instructions, a desired outcome, and a deadline, but resist the temptation to micro-manage. In his book Drive, author Daniel Pink tells us that employees want to be players, not pawns. Autonomy is a key piece to what he calls Motivation 3.0. Let your delegate have as much control as possible over when, what, how, and who else to work with. Focus on the results and let them do it their way. They might even do it better than you! 

Follow up.

Remember that you are still ultimately responsible. Don’t hover, but do schedule some checkpoints. Be available for additional guidance if needed. And give full credit to your delegate when they succeed. Take full responsibility for failure. 

Challenge 1: Choose two things to delegate today.

Challenge 2: Create a tracking and follow-up system.

3.    Communication – Is anyone listening?

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” 

– George Bernard Shaw

It is estimated that poor communication is costing us somewhere in the range of 12 to18% of payroll. Combine all the lines of communication inside and outside your company, and then determine the cost of all the mistakes and misunderstandings that could result. You will quickly realize thousands of dollars (profit dollars) are wasted on communication failures. 

Poor communication is not only costly, it’s highly frustrating. How can we cool off this major heat source on your stress meter?

Listen first

Everyone is talking, but is anyone actually listening? In a recent survey, 96% rated themselves as good listeners. However, research has revealed that we only retain about 25 to 30% of what we hear (in the first hour). It’s not completely your fault. Most people speak about 150 words a minute, while our brains process about 400 words per minute. Too often, we’re jumping ahead or thinking about what we want to say, or even worse, interrupting.

Start by removing distractions. 

Distractions (phones, notifications, noises, other people) surround us, making it difficult to focus on a single person. When possible, seek out a quiet place. Silence your phone. Quiet your mind. Pay attention.

The sounds of silence

Good listeners ask questions. After asking, wait for the answer and be comfortable with silence. For some reason, we hate silence, and so we feel compelled to fill the dead air with more talking. People need space to think, so they should be willing to wait a long time for the answer. And by a long time, I mean at least three seconds.

Simplify

When speaking, have some compassion for the listener. You know they’re struggling to pay attention, so minimize the history, the lead up, and tangents. Pare it down and focus on a simple message or set of instructions. Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

The Feedback Loop

When speaking, make sure you are conveying understanding by having the listener play back the message. It’s amazing how simple yet effective this technique is at eliminating confusion and misunderstanding. It sounds like this: “I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Would you mind playing back what I just said?” Use this over and over to make sure everyone is on the same page. You can also reverse the feedback loop when you are on the listening end. “Just to make sure I understand, what I heard you say is…” 

Challenge 1: Identify your biggest listening obstacle and commit to minimizing it.

Challenge 2: Use the feedback loop three times today and start making it a habit.

Final takeaway

Turn down the noise by focusing on your vital few and ignoring the trivial many. Be proactive by organizing your time and protecting your productive windows. Use delegation to leverage the open capacity of others while picking up time for yourself. Eliminate the illusion of communication by becoming a better listener and simplifying your messages. Lastly, use the communication loop to ensure understanding and reduce costly errors. Do less. Do it well. Stay out of the heat. Watch your results sizzle.

Rick Gutenmann is a senior consultant with the Management Action Programs. Contact him at rkgutenmann@mapconsulting.com.