The Practice of Leadership » Time Management

Focus on Getting a Few Meaningful Things Right

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:55:38 +0000

Effective leadership focuses on doing a few things right. Trying to do too much is a recipe for failure.

How a leader spends time and money reveals what matters to them, it reveals their focus. . . or lack thereof. Effective focus requires that you understand the outcome you’re looking to achieve. So, a key leadership question then becomes, “can you describe the outcome you looking to achieve in clear, concise and simple language“? Without a clear understanding of your outcomes you will struggle to lead effectively.

“I can’t be involved in 50 or 75 things. That’s a Noah’s Ark way of investing – you end up with a zoo that way. I like to put meaningful amounts of money in a few things.” – Warren Buffett

What’s your focus and is it clear? As Warren Buffet rightfully points out, a leader who is chasing many things, end’s up with a zoo! A leaders most precious commodity is their time and attention. Leader’s should focus on putting meaningful amounts of time into a few key things. The things that matter.

I liked the approach taken by the top selling author of “Built to Last” and “Good to Great”, Jim Collins who maintains a disciplined focus to ensure he gets the most out of each day. In an interview with the New York Times, provided in the article “For This Guru, No Question Is Too Big”, Mr Collins provides the following insight into how he manages his time:

“….in a corner of the white board at the end of his long conference room, Mr. Collins keeps this short list:

Creative 53%

Teaching 28%

Other 19%

That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.

These aren’t ballpark guesstimates. Mr. Collins, who is 51, keeps a stopwatch with three separate timers in his pocket at all times, stopping and starting them as he switches activities. Then he regularly logs the times into a spreadsheet.

He has a good jump, too, on another overarching goal he’s set for himself: to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work.”

In addition to maintaining a focus in his purpose and on relentlessly managing his time, he also understands when to say “no” to the good to focus on his personal great.

“Mr. Collins also is quite practiced at saying “no.” Requests pour in every week for him to give speeches to corporations and trade associations. It could be a bustling sideline, given that he commands a top-tier fee of $65,000 to dispense his wisdom. But he will give only 18 speeches this year, and about a third of them will be pro bono for nonprofit groups.…. Book tours? No. Splurging with the millions he’s earned from his books? No, too….

This orientation — a willingness to say no and focus on what not to do as much as what to do — stems from a conversation that Mr. Collins had with one of his mentors, the late Peter F. Drucker, the pioneer in social and management theories.

“Do you want to build ideas first and foremost?” he recalls Mr. Drucker asking him, trying to capture his mentor’s Austrian accent. “Zen you must not build a big organization, because zen you will end up managing zat organization.”

Therefore, in Jim Collins’s world, small is beautiful.”

It’s clear that Mr Collins is focused on his purpose and manages his life accordingly. In an HBR blog post he goes on to say that…

“As a great teacher, Rochelle Myers, taught me, you can’t make your own life a work of art if you’re not working with a clean canvas,”

And elaborates further in an article on his website…

“Rochelle spoke to me repeatedly about the idea of ‘making your life a creative work of art.’ A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally important, what is not.”

So, how about you? How do you manage your time? Consider the following questions:

Do you have the clarity of purpose and the discipline of execution required to ‘make you life a work of art? Or are you just trying to keep up with the frantic pace of 21st century life?
What are your key focus areas? How much time should you be spending on each?
What should you stop doing? Discipline requires you discard that which does not fit!

Keeping Your Goals in Focus

George Ambler — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:39:37 +0000

Photo by kenteegardin

The article “For This Guru, No Question Is Too Big” from the NY Times discusses the work of the best selling business author Jim Collins. Given the popularity of Jim Collins the article discussed how he allocates his time, which is as follows:

“… in a corner of the white board at the end of his long conference room, Mr. Collins keeps this short list:

Creative 53%

Teaching 28%

Other 19%

That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.”

This seems to be an odd approach to allocating how to spend one’s time! However, this time allocation suddenly makes sense when you consider Jim Collins “overarching goal,” which is “to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work.”

Besides making wise use of his time in a way that supports his overarching goal, Mr. Collins keeps focused, making sure he is not distracted.

“Mr. Collins also is quite practiced at saying ‘no.’ Requests pour in every week for him to give speeches to corporations and trade associations…”

To achieve meaningful and challenging goals requires “… a willingness to say no and focus on what not to do as much as what to do…”! All leader’s who are passionate about perusing a challenging vision, have to ensure they spend their time wisely and remain focused on their goals. How are you doing?

Have you allocated your time in a way that support your overarching goal?
Do you say “no” to distractions?

Keeping Unscheduled Time

George Ambler — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:06:04 +0000

Photo by Bombardier

“Every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.” – Dov Frohman

Making time to reflect and think is a critical leadership practice. In its simplest form, reflecting is just thinking about what happened. It’s the process of thinking about and examining what we’ve experienced, how we reacted and what changes we need to make to become more effective.

There are few people who make a conscious effort to learn from their experiences and fewer still who learn from their experiences. This is because reflection is not an automatic process for most people. Most of use make our way through life simply reacting to circumstances. To be effective leaders must make reflection a regular practice.

“Leaders like everyone else, are the sum of all their experiences, but, unlike others, they amount to more than the sum, because they make more of their experiences.” – Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead

A simple way to start a practice of reflection is by asking questions, questions about how we feel, about the results we are getting in our life, and what we can do differently to get different results. For example, find a quite place where you are not going to be disturbed, take an issue that’s important to you, and ask yourself the following questions:

What happened?
What was I trying to achieve?
What went well and why?
What didn’t go so well and why?
How did it affect me?
How did it affect others?
What were the consequences (positive or negative) for myself and others?
What could be done differently next time?
Would this change improve the consequences?

“Reflection is asking the questions that provoke self-awareness” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

As leaders much of our success is dependent on the way we think. Given this, it’s important that we schedule regular time-out to reflect on how we are behaving, how we are thinking about a situation and what adjustments we might need to make to improve our effectiveness.

Do you have a dedicated place when you spend time reflecting?
When was the last time you spent reflecting on an issue that is important to you?

Leader: You = Your Calendar!

George Ambler — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:34:13 +0000

Photo by emma.kate

Leaders are closely watched by their constituents and how leaders spend their time is a clear indication of what’s really important. If you say that customers and innovation is important to you, ask yourself how much time you’re spending time with customers and on driving innovation. People look at how leaders spend their time, as a means to judge if leaders measure up to their talk. Followers ask themselves, “Does my leader spend time on what they’re telling me is important?”. “Do you spend their time on what they say is important?”

“You = Your calendar*
*Calendars never lie

All we have is our time. The way we spend our time is our priorities, is our ‘strategy.’ Your calendar knows what you really care about. Do you?” – Tom Peters presentation on Leadership

Review your calendar entries for the past few weeks and ask yourself:

Is there a clear relationship between your priorities, your values and how you spend your time?
Are you spending time on what you believe is important?
How much time are you spending on what you claim is important?

Leader: Who do you intend to be?

Talking Time to Stop and Think

George Ambler — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:06:41 +0000

One of the topics that I have written about on numerous occasions is the importance of setting aside time to reflect and think. How are you doing with this leadership practice? Do you have a place to think and shape your thoughts? Consider the following event in the life of Edward Bear from Winnie the Pooh…

“Here is Edward Bear now coming downstairs on his head bump bump bump behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming down though he feels there really ought to be a better way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it.” – A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh (original version from 1926)

Bump bump bump! Does this characterise your days, weeks and months? Are you acting purposefully? Are you taking the necessary time to think? When last did you set aside some time to think about how and why you’re doing what you’re doing?