n today’s climate of corporate down-sizing, professionals find themselves taking on more and more responsibilities. This work gives readers a creative alternative to working harder over longer hours. Casting aside superficial time-saving techniques, it shows how to create a time management portfolio that generates maximum yields in both personal growth and work performance.

However, time management is one of those practical concepts that turns out to be a bit elusive when you try to put it into effect. The discipline required to put time-management prescriptions into effect can be a bit over-whelming. Anyone reading the standard list of time traps and their solutions is likely to get tired just thinking about all the things you have to do. It sounds like more work, not less!

The interest in time management is by no means new. The problem of how to manage time was already discussed in the 50s and 60s, and several authors proposed methods on how to handle time issues on the job. They suggested simple remedies such as writing work plans down on paper (so-called “to-do lists”) in order to increase job performance.

At the same time, some authors recognized that planning tasks and activities does not always lead to the completion of planned work, especially when time pressure is high. James T. McCay developed a concept for a time-management training program. The critical elements of the concept are: giving insight into time-consuming activities, changing time expenditure, and increasing workday efficiency by teaching people how to make a daily planning, how to prioritise tasks, and how to handle unexpected tasks. This practice is still being used by some companies.

Many books and articles were written to convey these and similar ideas to managers, promising them a greater effectiveness while using less time.

In spite of all popular attention to managing time, relatively little research has been conducted on the processes involved in using one’s time effectively and completing work within deadlines. In 1987, a review was published that addressed the increasing popularity of time management. It discussed the principles mentioned by authors like McCay  and concluded that, for instance, setting life goals and keeping time logs were important techniques for effectively managing one’s time. Although this review was helpful in understanding the ideas behind the notion of time management, it was not a review of empirical time management studies.



Research
Some years ago, when a critical strategic initiative at a major multinational stalled, company leaders targeted a talented, up-and-coming executive to take over the project. There was just one problem: she was already working 12-hour days, five days a week. When the leaders put this to the CEO, he matter-of-factly remarked that by his count she still had “60 more hours Monday to Friday, plus 48 more on the weekend.”

Extreme as this case may seem, the perennial time-scarcity problem that underlies it has become more acute in recent years. The impact of always-on communications, the growing complexity of global organizations, and the pressures imposed by profound economic uncertainty have all added to a feeling among executives that there are simply not enough hours in the day to get things done.

Experienced business analysts suggest that leaders who are serious about addressing this challenge must stop thinking about time management as primarily an individual problem and start addressing it institutionally. Time management isn’t just a personal-productivity issue over which companies have no control; it has increasingly become an organizational issue whose root causes are deeply embedded in corporate structures and cultures.



Power tools
Fortunately, this also means that the problem can be tackled systematically. Senior teams can create time budgets and formal processes for allocating their time. Leaders can pay more attention to time when they address organizational-design matters such as spans of control, roles, and decision rights. Corporate bosses can ensure that individual leaders have the tools and incentives to manage their time effectively. And they can provide institutional support, including best-in-class administrative assistance.

Approaches like these aren’t just valuable in their own right. They also represent powerful levers for executives faced with talent shortages, particularly if companies find their most skilled people so overloaded that they lack the capacity to lead crucial new programs.



Leadership profile
Aaron De Smet is a principal in McKinsey’s Houston office and leads work on organization design in the Americas. In one of his surveys, it was revealed that 91 percent of executives are dissatisfied in how their time is spent – Only 9 percent deemed themselves “very satisfied” with their current allocation of time. Only 52 percent said that the way they spent their time largely matched their organizations’ strategic priorities. Nearly 50 percent feel they’re not concentrating sufficiently on strategic objectives of the business.

This research identified 4 broad leadership profiles defining 4 flavours of frustration with time. The Online junkie, the Schmoozer, the Cheerleader, the Firefighter.
Online junkies stick to the office and spend less time than others managing and motivating their employees. Their pain point is personal contact.  (Pain point, for those who do not know, is a problem or need a business or company aims to solve). Their roles are wide ranging, and their communication channel will be by email and phone. Thirty eight percent of their time is spent on asynchronous messages.

Schmoozers spend much of their time on the outside and can be elusive for their direct reports. They can be CEOs, high level sales persons. Their communication channels are Face to face, meetings with clients and their pain points are strategy, thinking time. Twenty nine percent of their time is spent on the phone.

Cheerleaders are good with employees, but spend little time with outsiders (including customers). The roles are executives and the communication channels are face to face internal meetings. Their pain point is external orientation. Fifty five percent of their time is spent face to face.

Firefighters are invariably dealing with emergencies, micro-managing and operationally focused. They are General Managers or alike and their communication channel is E-mail and their pain points are direction setting and meeting people, meeting people. Thirty nine percent of their time is spent alone.



Behaviour change
Like most self-improvement ideas, time management simply demands too much behaviour change. We are creatures of habit and changing the habits of lifetime is far more difficult than most people imagine. People usually discover this only when they try to do it. Changing managerial behaviour is difficult even if managers know why they should change, how to change and the direction in which to change.

The answer to this brain-teaser seems to be to keep the change very simple and small. In behaviour change, modesty and simplicity seem to work best. Grand plans simply do not work.

 (Next week: Time management during meetings, desk work and other activities)