Regaining Control of Your Time

A follow up to September 10’s Time Management Tip

Bob, a vice president with a large general contracting company, carefully tracked his time over a two week period. After analyzing the data he was surprised to discover that his 72 work hours are spend doing the following:

40% responding to unanticipated situations,
10% checking and responding to e-mail,
30% attending meetings,
5% doing his own work,
5% listening to Henry complain,
5% doing administrative tasks (scheduling appointments, making copies, etc.),
5% on miscellaneous breaks.

Bob’s own work is suffering so he’s serious about taking control of his time. What can Bob do differently?

Here are a few suggestions.

1. Bob could further evaluate the almost 29 hours he spends responding to unanticipated situations. How many times was his expertise really needed verse how many times was an employee looking to Bob to solve his or her problem? If an employee comes to the door when you are in the middle of something it is okay to ask a few questions before dropping everything. Try “Is this urgent or could it wait 30 minutes until I complete this task?” You’ll be surprise how often someone resolves their own issue in that 30 minutes.

2. Build blocks of time into your schedule to respond to e-mails. Sitting on e-mail is a huge time waster. If you have a Blackberry respond to a message by asking yourself “is this urgent or could it wait until later?”

3. Get rid of Henry the complainer. If Henry’s complaints are legitimate either work to alleviate them or send him to someone who can appropriately address the issues. If Henry’s complaints are way off base take control of the conversation and tell him you don’t agree. You want to nip this in the bud.

4. Bob has an assistant who can be doing 90% of his administrative tasks. Learn to ask for assistance and cultivate a good working relationship with an assistant. This is the person who is going to look out for you.

Delegating

Anyone in your organization doing the work of a team because he or she doesn’t delegate? Most leaders find delegating takes a lot of effort. Effort that is worth expending because everyone’s success, the executive, team, and organization’s, depends on it. What can make the effort successful?

Here’s a scenario: You need a financial report illustrating the fiscal health of your department over the last 6 months. You could generate the report yourself but a few of your team members could also complete the project.

Where do you start? Have a conversation to clearly define what you need and when you need it. Talking through the project provides you and your staff member an opportunity to uncover the details and create a roadmap.

Beware … of a command and control approach – telling an individual what to do, getting the “I understand” head nod, and then dismissing the person to do what you’ve asked.

Next, set up a schedule for monitoring progress and then follow through. It is great news if things are moving forward as needed. If things are not going well you have the opportunity to support your employee to get the project back on track. Let me repeat … support your employee to get the project back on track … not take over completing the work.

Ask questions to get to the root of the situation. Some possible reasons things aren’t going well include

· additional detail or clarity is needed
· additional resources are needed
· competing priorities exist

Notice that “your staff members are incompetent, lazy, saboteurs” is not on the list!

You may go through several cycles on the path to project completion – stick with it. Delegating frees up time for you to focus on strategic issues, communicates that you trust, respect and value the people working for you, and develops tomorrow’s executive leaders.

Effective delegating does take practice. Learn to be the guiding hand that supports others to achieve superior business results.

Time Management

Is time management a problem yet your executive doesn’t seem to be over committed or struggling with setting priorities?

In order to best diagnose the cause of a time management problem the executive must do an assessment of their time utilization. How are they spending this limited resource?

Here’s an assessment exercise you can offer your executive.

1. For the next 2 weeks document how you spend your time. Write down all of the activities and the time committed to each. No one will see this information so please include everything – scheduled meetings, unscheduled meetings, phone calls, e-mail, administrative responsibilities, conversations at the coffee pot, lunch, etc.

2. After completing your documentation ask yourself the following questions to evaluation your data.
What did you actually spend your time doing?
On what did you anticipate/ expect to be spending your time?
How do you feel about how you are actually spending your time?
What action will you take from what you observed in this exercise?

Setting Priorities

Is anyone in your organization missing deadlines because they are overwhelmed by job responsibilities? Many people find themselves pulled in several directions due to diverse project and team responsibilities. And they report to, or are accountable to, several people with conflicting priorities.

How can you support others to set priorities?

1. The best support you can provide is to ensure the individual understands the culture and the criteria important to establishing priorities. Are priorities always set by deadline? How does senior leadership influence priorities?

2. Periodically ask what support the individual needs to be successful. He or she may feel too overwhelmed to even ask for help.

3. The following questions also support an individual to successfully evaluate priority actions on a daily basis:

What is most important for me to accomplish today?
What is most important for me to communicate today?
What actions will move me toward fulfilling my responsibilities?

Setting priorities and using them to guide actions causes a dramatic increase in productivity – try it out.

Over Committed?

Are your executives over committed? Do they have any of these symptoms:

· Chronically late to meetings?
· Drop in work quality?
· Work many hours of overtime?
· Feel tired and stressed?

In the fast pace of today’s business climate many executives suffer from these symptoms. They get caught in the whirlwind of meetings, problems, e-mails, and phone calls, and lose an awareness of how they are investing their precious time. Have you heard any of your employees say, “I did a lot today but I didn’t get anything done.”

If executives intentionally choose how to spend their time the results are greater productivity and lower stress. Unplanned events will always arise but a plan of action will ensure the unplanned events are the exception not the rule.

Here’s a simple scheduling and debriefing practice to share with an over committed executive.

1. Each day before leaving work, make a “To Do” list for the next day inclusive of a time schedule. Include all meetings, preparation, and travel time.

2. The ask the following questions:
· Is this scheduled really possible, given how often I’ll be interrupted?
· If not, what action can I take now?
· Can one of my staff take on this responsibility? Do I really need to do it myself?

3. Debrief at the end of the day with the following questions:
· What did I accomplish today that’s important for my goals?
· How can I correct tomorrow’s scheduling by what I learned today?

This practice may seem too simple to alleviate the symptoms of over commitment yet I challenge you to have your executive try it for 2 weeks. The small investment will yield a great return.

Coaching in the Moment

Coaching in the Moment

A significant issue is elevated to your level and after evaluating the information you understand the problem developed because one of your employees made a series of bad decisions. What do you do? Take care of the issue yourself? Blow up at the employee? While many executives often choose one of these two options, a third possibility does exist.

Coaching in the moment is a very powerful means of guiding an employee to a successful outcome, and is also quite effective in "de-briefing" after something hasn't gone quite as well as you would have liked. Here's a brief process to help you effectively coach your employees:

Start by uncovering what lead the employee to their decisions. Come from a place of curiosity and ask a few simple questions.
What did you intend to accomplish?
How did you analyze the situation?
How did you decide what to do?

Beware ..... of asking, "Why did you do that? as the question often triggers justification and defensiveness.

Second, invite the individual to see the issue from a different point of view. The wisdom gained through your experience will open up an opportunity for your employee to see the situation in a new way.

Beware ..... of shifting into a problem solving approach and sending the employee off with a directive.

Third, coach your employee to develop his or her own action plan. Questions to guide this process include:
What actions will you take?
How will you monitor progress?
In what ways can I support you?

I encourage you to try using this tool. While it may initially feel uncomfortable practice will bring proficiency.