Too Much on Your Plate?

You're a busy executive, and you want to be effective and powerful, creating positive change in your organization. But lately it seems that there's just too much to do. There aren't enough hours in the day, and you never see your family because of all the work-life balance seminars you've been attending.

Here are a few time-management morsels for you to chew on, as you struggle to bite off the daunting pile that's on your daily plate:

1. Can We Just Stop Doing It? When a problem arises, we often add additional tasks, approvals, reporting, and steps to our processes to deal with that problem. Then, when the problem goes away, we keep on doing those extra steps forever even though they're adding no value. One executive had started personally reviewing all purchase orders when his company was in financial crisis, but had continued this practice even after the crisis had long passed and the system had been dramatically improved. The reviews were cumbersome, acted as a bottleneck, and didn't add any value, but he kept on doing it. Then he stopped, freeing up hours of his time each week, and eliminating the bottleneck.
2. Can We Change How We Do It? You've prided yourself on always answering your phone quickly, to show that you're focused on your customer and on providing good service. Unfortunately, you end up constantly being interrupted, even during meetings and important matters that need your undivided attention. The loss of productivity is huge, but you've "always done it this way!" One sales executive was able to go from frantic to calm, simply by training himself to turn off his phone (yes OFF, not Vibrate) and turn off his computer (yes OFF), when he needed to focus. He was shocked at how quickly people adapted to his slightly slower responses, and at how much more he could get done in a day.
3. Can We Do It In a Different Order? One work process required an initial two-minute approval, a walk to the photocopier, then some additional work by another department, then another three-minute approval. The result was three little inboxes, with three little piles of work waiting for the next step, and three little handoffs. Some minor changes allowed the photocoying to be included in a previous step, and allowed the two approvals to be combined into one three-minute approval. This saved one little inbox, one little pile of waiting work, one little handoff, and some walking. Multiplied by a hundred repetitions a week, this saved the approving manager an estimated five hours a week.
4. Can Someone Else Do It? A small insurance company would divert a certain type of policy to a senior manager rather than moving it through their regular process, because it needed "specialized knowledge". Since the manager was busy doing management stuff, these policies would sit and wait, weigh on his mind, and then he'd do a marathon session to get through it. By teaching the "specialized knowledge" to the people who did the regular policies, they were able to process these just as effectively, and without delays. The change saved hours each week for the manager, reduced failure demand on the regular staff - customers used to phone repeatedly to check progress on these special policies. Everybody won, including the customers.

Ask a few of these questions about all the tasks that you're juggling, and see if you can't free up a bit of time.

 
Good luck with what's on your plate.