Have you ever ended the month exhausted from wearing all the hats? Strategic client work, plus marketing, sales and bookkeeping. Not to mention keeping the family happy and walking the dogs.

It’s easy to feel that your consultancy is a bit more chaotic than you’d like.

Just like when your most important client asks for a call in the middle of deep work. You make time for it, then it takes you two hours to get back into flow.

When that happens most days, you end up with five to ten hours of catching up by the end of the week. So it’s no wonder you can’t shift that feeling of disorganisation, nagging away at you.

Your capability is your challenge

Remember when you were starting out? You were given a job, the instructions and then left to it. You could give it the time it needed and do a great job. Your capability grew. The more you did, the more capable you became, and the more responsibility you were given.

Now you’re running a consultancy, you win clients on trust because you deliver. But that capability also means your clients want you. So do your associates and your team.

An important client asking for a call, and you making time for it, is more than reasonable. So is helping an associate on a shared project, or giving someone in your team a hand when they’re stuck.

These reasonable interruptions eat into your focus. Over time, they add up to an extra ten hours you have to find each week just to get your priorities done.

Notice how the small tasks take up far more space once they enter focus. That’s why days can feel full, while progress feels thin.

What this does to your client projects

It impacts your clients as much as it impacts you.

Let’s say you’re working with a client who has an assigned project team. Like most client teams, they’re expected to deliver their day job while also working on the change project with you.

Hopefully, they have dedicated time set aside for the project. Even with dedicated time, their day job takes precedence. And the most diligent team members often experience the most disruptions.

What this does to your priorities

I’m sure you have priorities you’re struggling to get traction on.

You’ve got to answer client demands. You’ve got to help team members and associates when they need it. And you’ve got to be there for your family and friends.

Having lots to do and getting it done can feel like focus. It feels good to get things done, help others out, and keep clients and colleagues happy. But when “getting everything done” means you can’t focus on what matters most in the time it should take, the only way through is working hours others would never dream of.

The chaos accumulates

It happens slowly, one responsible, helpful act at a time.

The time it takes to handle non-priority tasks eats into the headspace you need for strategic work in your business. The big decisions you need to make now get put off until you have headspace later.

Time to reflect

These are the kinds of topics we explore at Breakthrough Day. The areas that don’t usually get discussed, and the subtleties that sit behind running a consultancy.

It’s a day to compare notes with other consultancy owners who get it, and to reflect on the things you rarely get time to look at properly.

The next one is on Friday, 20th March, in central London. If you’d like to join us as my guest, reply “Breakthrough” and I’ll send the details.