By Stephen Lynch
You sit down and begin to work on your most important priority for the day. Then the phone rings, someone knocks on your door, a new message alert flashes on your screen.
Unfortunately, studies show that we get interrupted, (or allow ourselves to be distracted), every eight minutes on average. That’s 73 times a day!
As the late American writer and management guru Peter Drucker said, “If you cannot manage yourself for effectiveness, you cannot expect to manage others”. In essence, if you want to be an effective manager you need to learn how to manage your most precious resource – your time.
A typical interruption time of five minutes – equates to about four hours – or 50 percent of your productive day being wasted by interruptions. Even worse, it prevents us from getting into that highly productive state called “flow”. After every interruption,
it can take 20 minutes to get back to the level of concentration you were at prior to the disruption.
It is easy to see why business execution is still the number one challenge for business leaders. Here are some key time management tips to improve your business execution effectiveness:
Close the door
- An “open door policy” can severely reduce your productivity if you do not set some boundaries
- Close your door, or use a “do-not-disturb” sign for at least two hours per day
- Let people know what times of the day you are available for them to drop in
- Ask people for a brief overview of what they want to discuss. If it is going to take more than five minutes, book it in your calendar. Booking time in your calendar lets your people know that while you are busy right now, you view their issue as important. (Bonus: chances are, they will learn to solve the issue themselves in the meantime)
- Beware of “reverse delegation”. Train your people to use the GROW method. If they have a problem, they must come to you presenting the options, along with their recommended solution
Reduce phone call and email interruptions
- Stop living your life in reactive mode. Plan your day. Turn off email alerts – and schedule specific times to read and reply to email. Turn off your phone for two hours per day while you complete your number one priority for the day
- Ask for your phone calls to be held (with exceptions only for family or key customers). Then check phone messages and return your calls at a specific time every day
- If you must answer a phone call when you are in the middle of a task, let the caller know that you are busy, and schedule a return call later that day.
Run more effective meetings
- Ask yourself; do you really need this meeting at all? What is the purpose?
- Only invite those who absolutely need to attend
- Create an agenda and a meeting timeframe that ensures you make the best use of everyone’s valuable time
Send the agenda out to attendees with sufficient time for them to come prepared to discuss the topics on the agenda.
Consider using business execution software to run more effective meetings. It keeps everyone focused on the key issues that are being discussed, and you can “add tasks” in real time to make sure action items committed to during the meeting actually get carried out.
Stephen Lynch, chief operating officer of Global Operations at RESULTS.com Information kindly provided by RESULTS.com: www.results.com
