Since it is February, which tends to be the quietest month of the year, it is a good time to sit back and reflect on whether you and others in your organizations are “bottlenecks” or “funnels.”

It might not be immediately obvious, but this idea of bottlenecks and funnels is a leadership-focused concept.

Over the years, there have been many times that I have felt like that I was acting as a “bottleneck”—in other words, that I was preventing growth in the organization that I was leading. There were so many things to do and goals to reach, and I often felt that if I only had a bit more time, we could have been so much more successful. When you feel like this, I think it is because your organization isn’t organized in a way that is scalable. The boundaries aren’t clear around who does what and therefore, everyone in the organization tends to feel overwhelmed, which isn’t what we want.

Ideally, what we do want is more “funnels.” Funnels help tasks and communications move in a much more fluid way, allowing for program growth and preventing burnout. February and March are good months to sit down and look at how you are doing in your community, and at how the board, volunteers, and staff are doing in terms of achieving your annual goals. If things seem overwhelming to you now, then you might want to think about and adjust your goals to make them more realistic.

So, how do you go from being a bottleneck to a funnel?

One of the best ways is to be careful about how you spend your time. If you like planning, there are a couple of online tools that you can use to help make the workload a bit lighter. I am a big fan of Google Docs. If your work systems aren’t too complex, Google Docs might just be the right thing to use to be able to communicate better with your team. If you want to get more intense, you can use Asana and/or Trello to better manage your workflow.

Another place to look at in terms of where you spend your time is email. I find that we are too tied to our inboxes and often feel like we have to respond to every text or email we get immediately, which is a huge drain on our time and attention. I am just as guilty as the next person about keeping an eye on my inbox too much. I am trying to get better about this by allowing for a solid period of uninterrupted time during the day to work on projects or record podcasts, etc. If you use Gmail, I highly recommend checking out Boomerang and Inbox Pause to help with this.

Another time management tip is to unsubscribe from as much as you can. We all get so much junk email, and while I used to think that all it took was a few minutes to tidy up my inbox, even that act of tidying up takes time and mental energy away from the other things I really want to focus on. If you can’t unsubscribe to something, consider a separate email account just for those marketing emails you might want to check out. Or have them go straight into a folder that you clean out once a week—and set a dedicated period of time to do that. I know I send out a weekly CCP newsletter and I do hope you get a benefit from it—but if you don’t, I won’t be hurt if you chose to unsubscribe to the newsletter after reading this blog.

Social media is another time drain. I have written about my love/hate relationship with social media in the past, so I won’t go into great detail, but the best thing that has happened to me recently is that my social media applications seem to quit on my phone after about 10 minutes. It is a great reminder that it is time for me to get off the phone and do something productive. Treat social media with intense care and consider planning specific times during the week where you schedule your organization’s posts and do your planning. Focus more on the planning, not the scanning!

Good luck at becoming a funnel for your organization and getting rid of that bottleneck feeling. I’d love to hear any tips you have for being a better funnel!