By ANAN CHOORAK,DBA
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Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to assessing how you spend
your time - it is too easy to forget time spent talking to colleagues,
making coffee, eating lunch, etc. It can also function poorly when you
are at a low ebb during the day.
You may also be unaware that your energy levels may vary through the
day - most people function at different levels of effectiveness at
different times. This may be caused by the amount of sugar in their
blood, the length of time since they took a break, routine
distractions, stress, discomfort, etc.
A revealing technique is to keep an Activity Log for several days.
Without modifying your behaviour, note down the things you do as you
do them, from the moment you start working. Every time you change
activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, dealing with
colleagues, gossiping, going to collect paper from a printer, etc.,
note down the time of the change.
As well as noting activities, it is worth noting how you feel, whether
alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. This should be done periodically
throughout the day.
Once you have logged your time for several days, analyse the log. You
may be alarmed to see the length of time you spend opening mail,
talking to colleagues, dealing with disruptions, or doing low value
jobs!
You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and
flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you
take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition.
The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these
variables.
There are common time wasters which need to be identified
In order for a time management process to work it is important to know
what aspects of our personal management need to be improved. Below you
will find some of the most frequent reasons for reducing effectiveness
in the workplace. Tick the ones which are causing to be the major
obstacles to your own time management. These we refer to as your "Time
Stealers".
Fortunately there are strategies you can use to manage your time, be
more in control and reduce stress, but you can analyse your time and
see how you may be both the cause and the solution to your time
challenges.
Whats required is a - The Central Shift in Attitude
At the heart of the subject is a simple, but obvious, shift in focus:
Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very
little because they are not concentrating on the right things.
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule.
This states that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20%
of results, and that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with
only 20% of the effort. By applying time management, including
planning, we aim to change this to ensure that we concentrate as much
of our effort as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that
we achieve the greatest payoff possible with our investment of time.
Below, we examine time management issues in more detail
1. Shifting priorities and crisis management. Management guru Peter
Drucker says that "crisis management is actually the form of
management preferred by most managers" The irony is that actions taken
prior to the crisis could have prevented the fire in the first place.
2. The telephone. Have you ever had one of those days when you thought
your true calling was in Telemarketing. The telephone-our greatest
communication tool can be our biggest enemy to effectiveness if you
don't know how to control its hold over you.
3.Lack of priorities/objectives. This probably the biggest/ most
important time waster. It affects all we do both professionally and
personally. Those who accomplish the most in a day know exactly what
they want to accomplish. Unfortunately too many of us think that goals
and objectives are yearly things and not daily considerations. This
results in too much time spent on the minor things and not on the
things which are important to our work/lives
4. Attempting too much. Many people today feel that they have to
accomplish everything yesterday and don't give themselves enough time
to do things properly. This leads only to half finished projects and
no feeling of achievement.
5.Drop in visitors. The five deadliest words that rob your time are
"Have you got a minute". Everyone's the culprit-colleagues., the boss,
your peers. Knowing how to deal with interruptions is one of the best
skills you can learn .
6.Ineffective delegation. Good delegation is considered a key skill in
both managers and leaders. The best managers have an ability to
delegate work to staff and ensure it is done correctly. This is
probably the best way of building a teams moral and reducing your
workload at the same time. The general rule is -this; if one of your
staff can do it 80% as well as you can, then delegate it.
7. The cluttered desk. When you have finished reading this article
look at your desk. If you can see less than 80% of it then you are
probably suffering from 'desk stress'. The most effective people work
from clear desks.
8.Procrastination. The biggest thief of time; not decision making but
decision avoidance. By reducing the amount of procrastinating you do
you can substantially increase the amount of active time available to
you.
9. The inability to say "no!". The general rule is; if people can dump
their work or problems on to your shoulders they will do it . Some of
the most stressed people around lack the skill to 'just say no' for
fear of upsetting people.
10. Meetings. Studies have shown that the average manager spends about
17 hours a week in meetings and about 6 hours in the planning time and
untold hours in the follow up. I recently spoke to an executive who
has had in the last 3 months 250 meetings It is widely acknowledged
that about as much of a third of the time spent in meetings is wasted
due to poor meeting management and lack of planning If you remember
your goal is to increase your self management, these are the best ways
to achieve this;
Getting the most out of meetings
Meetings can be effective ways of sharing information or reaching a
decision. They can, however, be ineffectively run in a way that
swallows up your time without giving a sufficient benefit.
Just as jobs that you do have a cost, the meetings that you attend
have a cost, not only of your time but also that of the other
attendees. You should ask yourself whether the benefit of the meeting
has been worth the time invested in both the meeting and the
preparation for it. Was your contribution worth your investment?
This section explains how to run a meeting in the most effective way
possible, and then how to get the most out of meetings that you
attend.
Running Meetings
This section gives a series of recommendations that should help you to
run effective meetings:
1. Hold meetings only when trigger events occur
Regular meetings are often little more than a security blanket, where
the convenor feels vaguely that 'it is a good thing to communicate'
with only vague ideas what to communicate about. Time is routinely
made available for discussion, so discussion will expand to fill it
whether this is cost-effective or not.
In many cases it is much more effective to agree to hold meetings only
when specific trigger events show them to be necessary. As an example,
a manager may propose a meeting when he or she projects that resource
difficulties may be encountered, and needs a decision on how to handle
this.
By scheduling meetings to occur on trigger events, you can ensures
that time is invested in the solution of a problem only when it is
needed.
2. Use the Agenda Effectively
The agenda of the meeting shows the aim of the meeting, and points of
discussion in priority order - effectively it is a To Do List for the
meeting.
Using an agenda helps to focus the meeting, stopping it drifting
off-topic. If you circulate it sufficiently far in advance, it allows
people to prepare fully for the meeting so the meeting does not stall
for lack of information.
Where many people are to attend the meeting, it may be beneficial for
a small expert subcommittee to meet to prepare the agenda.
3. Setting the time of the meeting
You can usefully change the timing of the meeting depending on the
habits of the attendees:
• Where people tend to waffle excessively, you can schedule the
meeting just before lunch or going home. This gives people an
incentive to be brief
• Alternatively where other people are time conscious, writing the
cost per minute of the meeting on a flip chart can have a focusing
effect.
• Where people tend to turn up late, start a meeting at an unusual
time, e.g. 19 minutes past the hour. This seems to improve
punctuality.
• If possible, ensure that the meeting starts on time - where it
starts late, time of all the attendees is being wasted waiting for the
start. If late-comers are not critically needed, start without them.
4. Other Useful Techniques
These points can also improve the effectiveness of a meeting:
• You should only bring the minimum number of attendees to a meeting -
the more people are present, the more will want to air their views.
Similarly, bringing people who are not needed to a meeting wastes
their time.
• Ensure that decisions taken at previous meetings have been acted on.
This ensures that the meeting will not just be seen as a
'talking-shop'.
• At the end of the meeting, summarise the points discussed, and make
an action plan out of the decisions taken. This ensures that everyone
understands what has been decided, and who will do what.
Attending Meetings
When you attend a meeting, ensure that you do not waste other people's
time. To this end, you should be:
• on time, and present only if needed
• well prepared and briefed on your contribution
• attentive to the discussion so that your contribution does not
repeat someone else's
• involved in the discussion
• and brief, relevant, focussed and courteous in your interventions
How to delegate work to other people
Delegation involves passing responsibility for completion of work to
other people. This section examines the reasons you should delegate,
how to delegate, failure to delegate and what should not be delegated.
Delegation is useful for the following reasons:
• Once people have learned how to work with you, they can take
responsibility for jobs you do not have time to do.
• You can develop people to look after routine tasks that are not
cost-effective for you to carry out
• It transfers work to people whose skills in a particular area are
better than yours, saving time.
• Transfer of responsibility develops your staff, and can increase
their enjoyment of their jobs
The ideal position to reach as a manager is one where your staff carry
out all the routine activities of your team. This leaves you time to
plan, think, and improve the efficiency of what you are doing.
How to delegate
The following points may help you in delegating jobs:
• Deciding what to delegate:
One way of deciding what to delegate is simply to list the things that
you do which could be more effectively done by someone either more
skilled in a particular area, or less expensive. Alternatively you may
decide to use your activity log as the basis of your decision to
delegate: this will show you where you are spending large amounts of
time on low yield jobs.
• Select capable, willing people to carry out jobs:
How far you can delegate jobs will depend on the ability, experience
and reliability of your assistants. Good people will be able to carry
out large jobs with no intervention from you. Inexperienced or
unreliable people will need close supervision to get a job done to the
correct standard. However if you coach, encourage and give practice to
them you may improve their ability to carry out larger and larger
tasks unsupervised.
• Delegate complete jobs:
It is much more satisfying to work on a single task than on many
fragments of the task. If you delegate a complete task to a capable
assistant, you are also more likely to receive a more elegant, tightly
integrated solution.
• Explain why the job is done, and what results are expected:
When you delegate a job, explain how it fits into the overall picture
of what you are trying to achieve. Ensure that you communicate
effectively:
o the results that are needed
o the importance of the job
o the constraints within which it should be carried out
o the deadlines for completion
o internal reporting dates when you want information on the progress
of the project
• Then let go!
Once you have decided to delegate a task, let your assistant get on
with it. Review the project on the agreed reporting dates, but do not
constantly look over their shoulders. Recognise that your assistants
may know a better way of doing something than you do. Accept that
there may be different ways of achieving a particular task, and also
that one of the best ways of really learning something is through
making mistakes. Always accept mistakes that are not caused by
idleness, and that are learned from.
• Give help and coach when requested:
It is important to support your subordinates when they are having
difficulties, but do not do the job for them. If you do, then they
will not develop the confidence to do the job themselves.
• Accept only finished work:
You have delegated a task to take a work load off you. If you accept
only partially completed jobs back, then you will have to invest time
in completing them, and your assistant will not get the experience he
or she needs in completing projects.
• Give credit when a job has been successfully completed:
Public recognition both reinforces the enjoyment of success with the
assistant who carried out the task and sets a standard for other
employees.
Why do people fail to delegate?
Despite the many advantages of delegation, some managers do not delegate.
This can be for the following reasons:
• Lack of time:
Delegating jobs does take time. In the early stages of taking over a
job you may need to invest time in training people to take over tasks.
Jobs may take longer to achieve with delegation than they do for you
to do by yourself, when coaching and checking are taken into account.
In time, with the right people, you will find that the time taken up
reduces significantly as your coaching investment pays back.
• Perfectionism - fear of mistakes:
Just as you have to develop staff to do jobs quickly without your
involvement, you will have to let people make mistakes, and help them
to correct them. Most people will, with time, learn to do jobs
properly.
• Enjoying 'getting my hands dirty':
By doing jobs yourself you will probably get them done effectively.
If, however, your assistants are standing idle while you do this, then
your department will be seriously inefficient. Bear in mind the cost
of your time and the cost of your department's time when you are
tempted to do a job yourself.
• Fear of surrendering authority:
Whenever you delegate, you surrender some element of authority (but
not of responsibility!) This is inevitable. By effective delegation,
however, you get the benefits of adequate time to do YOUR job really
well.
• Fear of becoming invisible:
Where your department is running smoothly with all routine work
effectively delegated, it may appear that you have nothing to do. Now
you have the time to think and plan and improve operations (and plan
your next career step!)
• Belief that staff 'are not up to the job':
Good people will often under-perform if they are bored. Delegation
will often bring the best out of them. People who are not so good will
not be effective unless you invest time in them. Even incompetent
people can be effective, providing they find their level. The only
people who cannot be reliably delegated to are those whose opinions of
their own abilities are so inflated that they will not co-operate.
It is common for people who are newly promoted to managerial positions
to have difficulty delegating. Often they will have been promoted
because they were good at what they were doing. This brings the
temptation to continue trying to do their previous job, rather than
developing their new subordinates to do the job well.
What should not be delegated?
While you should delegate as many tasks as possible that are not cost
effective for you to carry out, ensure that you do not delegate the
control of your team. Remember that you bear ultimate responsibility
for the success or failure of what you are trying to achieve.
Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between
effective control of work and letting people get on with jobs in their
own way.
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Technology Inertia
Even in technically savvy organizations, document sharing is predominantly done through emails. Some people are only comfortable using Excel for various business needs—even after various collaborative platforms and productivity enhancement tools are made available. There seems to be considerable inertia within organizations when it comes to new tools.
Apart from email, ERP, centralized- and approval-based systems if people have not been exposed to other collaborative platforms the challenge will become even more complex and Enterprise 2.0 tools will be of little help.
Takeaway: There will be existing tools within the organization that overlap with the Enterprise 2.0 toolset but an organization needs to plan on addressing the areas that are beyond the normal, collaborative scope of their existing tools.
There are very few, if any, vendors who have a real Enterprise 2.0 offering that can easily integrate with the existing infrastructure of an organization. The choices for Enterprise2.0 toolsets—Wiki, blogs, collaboration and social networking—range from open source to niche, stand alone vendors, to SaaS offerings, to the large document management and ERP vendors.
An organization planning for the Enterprise 2.0 journey should keep in mind the following:
▫ Users are going to benchmark the Enterprise 2.0 solutions against those available in the public domain.
▫ The expectations on usability and feature richness will be very high and a mere feature up tick will not help. (The open source and the niche vendors seem to score higher on this front than the traditional large document management and ERP vendors.)
Enterprise 2.0 toolsets have to be integrated into the existing solutions and their place and role needs to be clearly thought through. Having a standalone Wiki will not do any good and, at best, will add to information clutter and silos. (The traditional large document management and ERP vendors seem to score higher on this front than the open source and niche vendors.)
Takeaway: Evaluate and choose the technology solutions for Enterprise 2.0 platforms with the same rigor as you would do for an ERP.
Ironically, the same principles that serve as the basis for success of Web 2.0 in the Internet world can be a cause for concern within an organizational context. The free, open and uninhibited sharing of information, ability to reuse and mix content and applications, mash-ups and micro-formats, widgets and APIs—the backbone in the Web 2.0 successes can be an issue for IP sensitive organizations.
Enterprise 2.0 toolsets and methodologies have significant implications on how organizations should plan for IP protection, access controls, legal and regulatory compliances such as SOX. For example, a services company providing similar services to competing clients should have a well defined policy on what its employees can write and share in their corporate blogs, corporate Wiki and the like.
An absence of a well thought out security, IP protection plan for Web 2.0 applications can severely hurt an organization.
Takeaway: Web 2.0 within an enterprise brings its own set of IP and security issues that have to be thought through in detail.
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