How Do You Get Your $hi! Done?

In the fast-paced world of financial services, efficient task management is a crucial skill. It's all too easy to forget important tasks when they come at you from a variety of sources: emails, phone calls, text messages, and your home office. The key to staying on top of your workload is having one central hub for all your tasks.

Let's face it; we're all human, and forgetting tasks is a common occurrence. Whether it's a crucial client meeting, an important deadline, or a follow-up call, letting things slip through the cracks can have dire consequences in the financial services industry. A forgotten task might result in a missed opportunity, a dissatisfied client, or even compliance issues.

The solution to this task management challenge is to establish a centralized system. A central hub for all your tasks not only helps you avoid forgetting important responsibilities but also streamlines your workflow and reduces stress. A central hub for your tasks also ensures that if one member of the team can’t or doesn’t show up for work then the business knows what promises it must fulfill.

Six benefits of using a central hub for task management include:

1. Eliminate Task Overload: When you have one place to consolidate all your tasks, you gain a holistic view of your workload. This prevents overloading yourself with too many tasks and helps you prioritize effectively.

2. Prioritization: You can categorize tasks based on their importance and deadlines. This allows you to focus on high-priority items and ensures you never miss critical deadlines.

3. Collaboration: In financial services, teamwork is often vital. A centralized task management system can facilitate collaboration by enabling you to assign tasks to team members, track their progress, and share information seamlessly.

4. Accountability: By keeping track of who is responsible for each task and setting clear deadlines, you can hold yourself and your team accountable, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

5. Efficient Communication: A central task management platform can integrate with your email and other communication tools, allowing you to convert important messages into tasks and keep all relevant information in one place. 

6. Peace of Mind: With all your tasks organized and readily accessible, you can have peace of mind, knowing that you're in control of your workload.

In the modern digital era, numerous task management tools are available to streamline your work. Whether it's a dedicated project management platform, a to-do list app, outlook tasks, your CRM’s task function, or another tool, choosing the right tool for your specific needs is crucial.

A few suggestions for task management solutions include:

• Your CRM – most have a solution built into them.
• Microsoft Planner – many offices have access to this software, but do not realize it.
• Team/Outlook Tasks – another solution that many offices have access to use.

While putting pen to paper still works, there are limits. Using a pen and paper system means that you must update or rewrite the list often. It also makes it more difficult to share with your team. And if each team member keeps their list somewhere separate it makes it difficult for the business to easily access and fill the promises to clients if that team member cannot. 

We challenge you to look critically at your task management system and think about what works best for you, your team and your business. We think you will find that using a centralized task management system will ease your workload and you will wonder how you managed without it for so long.