Too Busy to be Effective? Pulling Back the Covers on Time Use.
A state manager I coached wanted more time to focus on business development. The guy was already doing a brilliant job and was well-liked by his team, who relied on him daily to be on the other end of the phone to help them problem-solve and sometimes fill in the gaps with onsite deliveries.
We quickly analysed his time and compiled the results, which revealed a massive 50% of his time was devoted to fielding phone calls from his team and reacting to the inevitable and unpredictable day-to-day issues. I was impressed he was doing so well in his role, given how little time he had in which to do it.
I asked him if there were any senior trades personnel in the company: he identified three. My recommendation was to create new roles for these, call them supervisors and then communicate to the team that these were the ones to call when issues arose. He could then use the time saved to focus on business development.
Having coached managers for over a decade, I have found that by streamlining their tasks and projects, helping them to plan and get control of their calendars (or in some cases to find time to even use a calendar), and delegate more effectively, 20% of the average manager’s time is liberated that can then be directed into high-value activity.
And if you think about it, if you have five managers and you free up 20% each, you get an entire extra person’s efforts without recruiting or finding the extra salary for someone new. If that amounts to a 150k salary (because you didn’t have to hire anyone new), plus 150K in the recovered time of the five managers, there is 3MIL in your bank account in 10 years’ time; and that’s not including recruitment costs or lost productivity for onboarding.
So, if you or your managers feel too busy to be truly effective, it’s worth pulling back the covers and look for that 20%. The return on investment for having a set of well-informed “fresh eyes” to help your team optimise their time can be huge.
To get you started, you are welcome to download my time analysis template here for free, and if you’d like further help, please get in touch.
Ray
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