How should executives allocate their time?
Everyone wants to spend their time working on the right stuff. Ask your team to compare calendars every six months: no one wants to be working efficiently on the wrong thing. If your email threads are growing and growing, pick up the phone!
Topic question: How should an executive allocate their time?
Contributors
- Bill Mitchell
- Bob DeVita
- Kristi Thering
- Nathan Bares
- Pete Vogel
- Derrick Van Mell
Discussion questions
- When did you have to reallocate your time completely?
- How can you help employees value their time?
- How can you optimize everyone’s different “pie charts” of time?
Best practices
Efficient vs. effective: Don’t be efficient at doing the wrong things
- Managing your time is of fundamental importance
- Eliminating outdated and unnecessary tasks. Weed out tasks every six months
- Stay focused on priorities (i.e., have a plan and stick to it)
- Hold short “huddles” with team to synchronize for the week
- People should compare their schedules
- Understand the difference between billable and productive time
- Set goals for using time, but don’t overanalyze either
How COVID has forced changes in time allocation
- Executives must make an extra effort to keep people focused on rewarding work
- Remember and think about issues that past schedule
- Most people don’t like to change their schedules
- Not only employees with kids at home need to rethink their work/life schedule
- There’s now little travel or “down” time between meetings
- Be sure to have time to rest during the day and the week to deal with stress
- Big time shifts might require changes to organizational structure
The essential need to be flexible
- Executives need to be particularly adaptable
- Know who controls the schedule and be sure they respect people’s time
- Professional firms good about tracking time, but how to analyze and optimize?
Communication and time management
- Poor communication is the #1 time-killer (often 25% of everyone’s time)
- When email threads start growing, pick up the phone!
- Time allocation schemes: by geography, market, management discipline
- Time blocking: setting aside time per week or month for specific tasks
- Some days are better for certain things
- Some times during the day are better for certain things
- Time boxing: decided before you start how much time spend on a task
- Meeting management: how to run an effectiveonline meeting?
- Time management tools: paper calendars still work!
- Reports can be time holes: determine what information is essential
- Be sure to train people to use their time: now might be a great time!
See term 5.1.2.2 Time management for resources.