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Eric Barton
When dive instructor Yarden Davis takes a group of tourists to the Naked Lady
shipwreck in Hawaii, she has one big priority: time management.
The shipwreck, off the island of Kona, sits under 33.5 meters of water. That
means divers have, at best, 10 minutes of air to explore the bottom. If Davis
manages her time right, and conditions are perfect, she can use that time to
show tourists a school of yellowtail snapper, the white-tip shark that
frequents the wreck and the rainbow-coloured mantis shrimp that hide in the
sand.
You learn how to judge time after doing it for a while, said Davis, who is
from Israel but now lives in Hawaii and works at the Kona Diving Company. You
don t even have to look at your watch to figure out how many minutes have
passed and how much time you have left to explore.
Smart time management
Managers can create a vastly more productive office. Here s how.
Cancel meetings that just sum up past accomplishments.
Forbid meetings that last more than 90 minutes.
Require gatherings be limited to seven employees or less, unless approved by a
manager.
Reduce email by asking employees (and yourself) whether reply all is really
necessary.
Set aside a part of each week to brainstorm and generate innovative ideas.
Imagine if managers were just as careful with their minutes and the time they
ask of their employees. Imagine if all that time wasted in meetings or
answering emails was instead dedicated to generating new ideas.
For some, this seems like a dream, particularly if they work for a company that
ignores time management. But even if you can t change a company s
organisational structure, you can free up time for the people who work for you,
allowing them to do more work and even come up with new ideas.
Worse than expected
The problem with wasted time is perhaps worse than you think. Research released
recently by US management consulting firm Bain & Co found that the average
executive spends just a quarter of each week on actual work. Another quarter is
spent on e-communications, like email or messaging, and a whopping half of
their week is spent in meetings.
Self-help books are, well, little help.
The problem with most tips on time management is they assume that you can, as
an individual, make an impact on how you spend your time, said Michael
Mankins, a partner at Bain, from his office in San Francisco.
However, managers can reduce their own contributions to the culture of wasted
time. Cancel regularly scheduled meetings where nothing gets done. Forbid
meetings that last longer than 90 minutes or meetings that include more than
seven people unless they have their manager s approval. Encourage your staff
to cut down on unnecessary emails with short face-to-face exchanges or with
email replies that go to only necessary recipients.
You as a leader should almost never hit reply all. You as a leader can be
more selective about how you communicate, Mankins said. You can play a big
role in how you think your organisation should treat time.
Former Intel chief executive officer Andy Grove saw time as a company resource.
Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office
equipment, Grove once wrote, you shouldn t let anyone walk away with the time
of his fellow managers.
Consider, too, that Grove s appreciation of time could make his employees more
productive, leading to a smaller and more lean staff.
Once you ve figured out how to save your staff s time, then you can figure out
productive ways to reallocate it, said Oliver Som, senior researcher at Germany
s Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research.
Managers should carve out time each week, maybe as little as a couple of hours
Friday afternoon, to reflect on the work done by staff and themselves. They
should also brainstorm new ideas for improvement.
Many of these managers, they have lots and lots of ideas, and their
innovations just get lost in the everyday business, Som said from his office
in Karlsruhe.
One of the core missions of the Fraunhofer Institute is to pair up firms that
are productive, but aren t generating new ideas, with companies that have
healthy research and development. It often takes years to get such a
collaboration to work, but in the end both can teach each other about how to
better manage time with a balance between work and new ideas.
As a dive instructor, Davis needs to find a balance between the solitary nature
of the sport versus her need to guide her group. She ll try to nudge fellow
divers toward the areas with more wildlife without being too obtrusive into
their experience.
You make every minute down there count, that s for sure, Davis said. Any
deep dive scenario is limited by time, and you want to make sure everyone uses
the few minutes they have.
Employ that logic in your office and you re likely to build a more productive
and creative workforce.