Busy work. It’s nuts. It’s out of proportion. In fact, the people who are always whining about being too busy and overwhelmed tend to be your least effective people. Ever notice that? The fact that they do their work so gracelessly and with such difficulty (“Can’t people see how stressed I am??”) is the biggest clue that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing–or at least doing it really, really badly.

After a business has been going for a while, you’ll notice that many of your employees have become “chaos producers.” Let’s ignore the area of emotional chaos for a second and assume that gossip, whining, excuses, and drama queen stuff are cleaned up in your organization and look at the other kind of chaos–busyness with no results.

You know the type. He walks in every morning with the intention of getting results, and then “life happens” and he wraps himself around all kinds of things that have nothing to do with results.

It’s time for a mantra, and the mantra goes like this:

“Take only those actions that move ahead the long-term strategy of attracting prospects, converting them to clients, and developing great repeat relationships with them.” Period.