Time Management

Image Source: Nick, Creative Commons

I was scheduled to teleconference with one of my clients last week. We had one hour for our conference call but were not able to connect until 15 minutes before our time was up. What do you think the topic was that he wanted to talk about when we finally did connect? Time management!

This client is actually at the top of his game and in many respects at the peak of his career. He’s doing wonderful things at the top of a company that is improving quarterly and is a highly respected leader and team member. But he was feeling overwhelmed and over run. What could he do to improve and get back on top of things?

When we did talk a week later, these are a few of the topics that were discussed:
• Meetings
• Quadrant II – Urgent vs Important (discussed in an earlier blog)
• Planning and early execution
• Empowerment/Delegation
• Systems and Support

Let’s discuss meetings.

How much of your time for the week or month is pre-booked in meetings before you even start? Even if you’re working 50 or 60 hour weeks, if 90% of your time is booked in meetings before you even start your week, than you really only have 5 or 6 hours for the week to get your non-meeting work done.

I hesitate to call non-meeting work your “real work” because much of your real work is conducted in well run meetings. But, if you have more than 60% of your available time pre-booked in meetings before you even start the week, you should probably question if you need to be in the meeting or not.

Efficiency and Effectiveness of meetings

Even if the meetings are important, how much effort is put into analyzing the efficiency and effectiveness of the time spent in the meeting? This topic can have multiple sub-headings but a couple right off the top should be:
• Who’s running/facilitating the meeting?
• What’s the purpose of the meeting? Information? Prioritization? Decision making?
• If a decision is to be made, what type of decision? Consensus? Consultative? Unilateral?
• If it should be a unilateral decision, why are we having this meeting?
• If it’s to be consensus, who are the right players and are we willing to take the necessary time?
• If it’s to be consultative, who owns the decision?

You might enjoy a book titled: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business

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