Get More Done: A Webinar Series on What Productivity Really Means

In an interview, HireHarbour Co-Founder Ash Ravi talks about how high performers, such as Chiefs of Staff and Operations Specialists, can buy back their time by learning the art of delegation.

Introduction

Ravi worked in investment banking where he experienced firsthand the intense demands of high finance. Coming from a background in investment banking and private equity, he saw how industry leaders managed their workload—by leveraging the art of delegation and the expertise of capable executive assistants.  

Working long hours in a high-pressure environment that demanded constant focus, he realized that delegation wasn’t optional for them. It was an existential requirement.

Observing the significant time savings that EAs provided on a daily basis, Ravi decided to hire a virtual EA for his personal life, and in the process, trained them to optimize their productivity.  

Seeing the transformative impact of this decision, Ravi and the other co-founders took it a step further. They built HireHarbour on the foundation of hiring smart, talented people, equipping them with a bespoke training program (tailored to each client), and fostering ongoing learning and development. In a world where remote work is the default, leveraging a global workforce is essential – getting the best, to bring out your best.

Rather than seeing AI as a challenge to the people-intensive services industry, HireHarbour  embraced it as an opportunity. While many viewed automation as a headwind for sectors like outsourcing and executive support, we’ve integrated AI to enhance, not replace, human expertise.  

By training our virtual executive assistants and equipping them with the latest AI tools, we ensure that our clients benefit from smarter, more efficient workflows—whether that’s automating routine tasks, optimising scheduling, or providing data-driven insights.  

This commitment to innovation means our clients always receive added value by combining the best of human intuition with cutting-edge technology.

The vision was clear: to create a service that takes tasks off people’s hands so they can focus on what truly matters. At its core, HireHarbour is driven by a strong belief in service, proactivity, and true partnership.

And that’s exactly why we’re thrilled to hear from Ravi in this exclusive interview, as part of our upcoming quarterly webinar series, Get More Done. Designed for leaders, this session will dive into delegation techniques that top professionals can adapt and use to reclaim their time and focus on high-value work.  

The Interview

Below is a refined and concise version of a conversation between our Communications Manager, Virna Odiver, and HireHarbour Co-Founder, Ash Ravi.

Virna Odiver: First, I am excited about HireHarbour’s upcoming Get More Done webinar series! But when you say, “get more done”, what does it mean exactly?

Ash Ravi: Granted, it's a bit of a broad phrase, but what we're trying to achieve is that mythical “48-hour workday”. Now, there are many terms for it, , whatever it is, what we’re trying to achieve is to double the productivity of a single person.

Ironically, a part of this is achieved by doing less.  

VO: Sounds like a paradox.

AR: Yes, so in the Art of Delegation deck that you’ll receive as part of this webinar, it talks about the cost of task switching and how focusing on one task and moving on to another task is actually very expensive from a productivity perspective.

According to research, you waste roughly between 20 to 25 minutes when you switch between tasks. What HireHarbour aims to do, through this webinar, is to help high performers refine their delegation techniques to prevent them from the trap of task switching.

VO: Oh, okay. So by 25 minutes, does this apply to all tasks? For instance, suppose you tried multitasking twice that day, then you’re saying that’s almost an hour gone from your day, basically?

AR: Exactly. For example, let’s say you’re writing up a client report and you get an email from a potential customer on one side of your screen, so you switch tasks to respond to that email. Getting back to the client report can take you half an hour.  

And we’re only talking about just the cost of task switching here. That doesn’t even count doing the task itself.

It’s definitely a very expensive and inefficient way to be productive.

VO: Eliminating these task switchings to focus on your most important tasks and then offloading others via the art of delegation...is that how people in finance get so much done?

AR: I think so, and it’s not just in finance. Part of the reason people in finance can get so much done is because they have someone else looking after all the other things that distract them. This gives them a singular focus.

Time and time again, it has been proven through research that humans just can’t multitask, or at least multitask effectively.

Finance people have very capable assistants who help them by taking a load off their plate. While it may seem like a VA or an EA only looks after inbox management or calendar management, or maybe typing up a few logs or doing market research, each of those individual tasks may only take a few minutes if you think about them, but in reality...think of how much they’re saving across the day? It’s hours.  

____________________________________________________________________________________

DID YOU KNOW?

According to a paper published by the University of California, Irvine, task interruptions not only cost an average of 23 minutes to return to the point you were with a previous task, but their data also suggested that people also tend to compensate for this loss by working faster. Unfortunately, that comes with a cost too: “more stress, higher frustration, time pressure, and effort.” (Mark et al., 2005).

____________________________________________________________________________________

VO: Interesting. Sounds like an industry secret! Speaking of professionals in high finance, though, is this webinar designed for them?

AR: Actually, this webinar was formulated for people in leadership positions--regardless of the industry they belong to--such as Chiefs of Staff, Operations Managers, and other leaders, since they are the people in charge of delegating and allocating resources.

VO: Got it. You know, when I think about delegation, it seems like a very straightforward thing to do. But it’s not as simple as handing over a task to someone else, is it?

AR: Absolutely not. You’re 100% right about that and it’s a journey that I think is essential. It’s a rite of passage that every leader in business must go through, in my opinion. And it can be really challenging because some people are self-starters.

They have usually gotten to their position by creating something, whether that’s creating a business, an idea, a product, (or) a service.  

That means that they tend to have a sense of ownership and accountability over their product that lends itself to a frame of thought that goes along the lines of “I’ve made this. This is my baby. I don’t trust anyone else to do this right”, and that’s natural.

This is very human and natural.  

The canyon to traverse, or the leap of faith to make now, is to know that there are very capable people out there and that, provided you delegate in the right way to the right people, you can achieve double the output.

And I think that’s one of the most difficult challenges that leaders face and part of the reason why this webinar exists.  

That is to show people how they can overcome this obstacle.

VO: Aside from that lack of trust, are there other hurdles that leaders face in delegating?

AR: Fear of the unknown, or just not having done it before is one. In terms of the actual delegation process, another factor is not being able to communicate what’s required and the expected outcome.

VO: I see,  this leads me to my next question then. Given these hurdles, what can high level professionals do about them?

AR: Without giving too much away, our upcoming  webinar, Art of Delegation, that’s part of our Get More Done series, goes into a lot of detail on this. We will talk about a few frameworks and hopefully, change people’s perspectives on how they think about tasks.

A sneak peek of these is something called the Eisenhower Matrix.  

Now, you may have heard of the Eisenhower Matrix before, but at HireHarbour, we take a slight twist on it.  

For those who don’t know what the Eisenhower Matrix is, it is basically a two-by-two box that has importance and urgency on the two axes, and you basically bucket your tasks into each of those into one of those four quadrants: whether your task has high importance and/or high urgency or low importance and/or low urgency. As such, there are four permutations on this.

What we want to focus on is taking the time to assign your various tasks into those buckets and deciding who takes accountability and responsibility for those tasks.

And that’s just before delegation. Then during the delegation process, we have sections in the webinar where we’ll talk about other aspects such as timely check-ins and how to manage expected outcomes.

And then there’s the post-delegation frameworks which covers how to review output and ensuring there’s adequate feedback so that anything delegated again is received well and so on.

So that’s just a bit of a sneak peek as to some of the techniques we’ll go through in the webinar.

VO: Awesome. It seems like knowing how to find these competent people is one of the main key points in delegation.

AR: That’s right. Basically, the goal of this webinar is to help us help you. Let’s put it this way: you can give someone the fanciest tool in the world, but if you don’t show them how to use it, they’re going to use it very badly.

Developing the skill of being able to delegate efficiently is as important as the person you delegate to.

That’s why I believe our webinar is critical. It’s to make sure that the people using our services will use the service in the best way possible to get the most out of it.

VO: Okay, we’ve talked about the why, let’s talk about the when. Why is now the right time for executives to rethink their approach to delegation?

AR: Great question! I have a slightly philosophical and macroeconomic view here.  

You don’t need a politics degree to see how our political landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented. From discussions on reducing immigration to calls for more nationally based supply chains, many factors are currently limiting the movement of people across borders.  

At the same time, technology—particularly AI—is evolving at a rapid pace, making it possible to receive high-quality work from halfway across the world, just as seamlessly as someone who probably lives just two doors down from you.

Another factor is the economic cost associated with employing someone. Within the Western world, that’s increasing at a very rapid rate.  

VO: I see.

AR: Yes, delegating to smart, talented people, who are incredibly well-trained is simply the perfect solution.

Let’s take the UK as an example. UK employment costs are increasing annually in double-digit percentages. This is because of tax hikes, National Insurance increases—these are making the cost of employing someone in the UK increase on a quarterly basis.  

The ancillary costs of employing someone that involve training them on a continuous basis, making sure that they're motivated...all these things are becoming harder and harder in the UK.

Getting talented and smart people from the Philippines is definitely an ideal alternative.

VO: Wow, Filipinos get a special mention. What do you love about them and aside from the Philippines, are you also planning to expand your VA pool to other countries in the near future?

AR: Well, there are a lot of things I like about Filipino remote workers. They have a high English literacy rate. There’s a high concentration of smart and talented people in the Philippines.  

They have this core value of hard work and dedication—they call it “pagsisikap"— that’s embedded in their culture. And personally, I've found them very caring, kind, and proactive in general.

There’s just genuine hospitality within the “Pinoy” culture which I’m proud to be associated with.  

Now, with regards to if we’re planning to expand to other countries? Potentially, yes. But our base will stay in the Philippines.

____________________________________________________________________________________

DID YOU KNOW?

Recent statistical reports show that the Philippines is the leading country when it comes to virtual assistant services. In another report, this time published by the Special Broadcasting Service, it was highlighted that the Philippines received an Education First English Proficiency Index score of 578 in a recent survey.

____________________________________________________________________________________

VO: Very interesting. You know, I’ve also noticed that trend. HireHarbour definitely isn’t the only virtual assistance provider that prefers Filipino VAs, but aside from that, what other trends do you see shaping the business landscape and how is our company adapting to them?

AR: There are a lot of recent trends and developments in the industry. If you want to stay updated with them, I highly recommend following our LinkedIn channel. But as to how we adapt, for me, I think fundamentally it all comes down to caring.  

Caring means a number of things in this industry. Yes it means being kind, but it also means productivity in the task that you’ve been assigned to. I believe that while there are multiple other agencies out there, we bring a new spin to a very well-established industry because we care.

We care about training employees. We care about the clients that we place them with, and given that we have experience on both sides, being the delegator and the delegate, we’re able to kind of marry the two and make sure we’re providing a premium service.

We’re staying true to our commitment to provide genuine partners in productivity.

VO: Sounds awesome. So, aside from getting the benefits of attending a master class on delegation and having an “in” so to speak to a resource of skilled, well-trained, and fully-vetted virtual assistants by teaming up with HireHarbour, are there any other perks you’d like to share with our readers if they join our upcoming free webinar this March 6^th?

AR: Absolutely. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but we definitely have more in store for our attendees beyond just the educational perspective.  

For instance, attendees will get a delegation kit that they can use to apply the learnings discussed, a certificate of attendance that they can add to their portfolio, and an exclusive discount on HireHarbour services, exclusive to only those who join us in the event.  

VO: Awesome! I just have one more question left, then. How can people sign up?

AR: Great question. Signing up is super simple! All you need to do is head on over to our pre-registration page, where you’ll be asked to fill in a few details like your name and email address. Once you’ve submitted the form, you'll receive a confirmation email with a unique webinar link. We’ll also send timely reminders leading up to the event on March 6^th, so you can stay updated on the schedule and any additional reminders!