Now, let me acknowledge that it's not really an
"extra" hour. You have to give it back in the spring, and it doesn't
really affect your lifespan. However, it's important to consider what to do
with extra time — since one of the most frequent concerns of managers is not
having enough.
In an article by Robert H. Schaffer about why managers waste
time. In the article, he shared a question that had been posed to dozens of
managers: “Imagine if the president of
your company personally asked you to take on a special assignment — working
directly for him/her. The project would take one day per week but you would
have to continue your regular job in the remaining time. Would you take the
assignment?”
By now we've asked this question to hundreds of managers —
most who complain about not having enough time already — and 99% say they would
take the assignment.
The reality is that we all have "extra" hours
available, without having to turn back the clock. Sometimes it takes a
presidential request or a customer crisis to find them; and sometimes it takes
a personal incentive such as clearing the decks before a vacation.
But we all know that those hidden hours exist, buried in
unnecessary meetings, inefficient work processes, interruptions, false starts,
PowerPoint perfection, misplaced files, and a host of other time-wasters. We
may assume that these patterns are part of the normal rhythm of imperfect
organizational life — but unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) we know
that these inefficiencies give us a cushion in case we have to suddenly step up
the pace.
It is still likely that most managers have more cushion than
they actually need — and some of that time could be applied to reducing today's
feeling of overload, instead of waiting for a crisis or special event. If that
applies to you, then here are a couple of ideas for identifying and capturing a
few additional hours:
1- Do a quick calendar analysis. Go back through the last few months of your Outlook calendar, your Blackberry, or handwritten diary. Grade every activity by assigning a dollar value to each. So for example, opening and reading your email would generate a value of $10 per hour. In each of the nine boxes below, assign a value for each activity you perform during the day. Which activities generated no revenue, nor add value to you or your business? Do you start seeing a pattern? Finally, look forward at your next couple of months and see if there are meetings or activities that you could bypass or eliminate without any consequence.
Where would you grade yourself in the nine boxes below? Remember that an owner of a $1 million annual revenue company, is responsible for the company’s revenue at the rate of $500 per hour (times 2,000 hours per year). Much like a stop light, spend a much time in the 'green' areas and avoiding the 'red' areas a much as possible.
2. Ask for feedback. Our time-wasting patterns are often
invisible to us — but apparent to those around us. So a second useful step is
to ask your subordinates or colleagues if they could identify some activities
that you could do less often, do in less time, or stop doing altogether. For
example, one manager who did this was told that he didn't need to attend a
weekly operations meeting that was run by one of his people — a meeting that
had no value.
A one great mentor once said to me, “No employee is more motivated,
efficient and focused than the week before they take vacation”. How do you find extra time, you don’t– you
simply make the necessary time?
So, make every day count– just like you are taking vacation
tomorrow.
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