As a CEO, your time is undoubtedly busy. There are just so many things screaming for your attention. You must juggle them all: unhappy customers, demanding Wall Street analysts, NGO lobbies, scrutiny from governmental agencies, PR disasters, complaints from suppliers, employee strikes, accident lawyers, non-performing direct reports, aggressive shareholders, and the list goes on and on.
Despite this chaotic frenzy, as a CEO, you need to ensure that you deliver on the most important thing, i.e., setting up and executing the organization’s strategy. After all, the #1 top responsibility of the CEO is the organization’s strategic direction.
But how can you ensure to do so amid this chaotic frenzy? There are actually silver bullets for this. I called them DED, an acronym for:
Delegate: You don’t have to do everything by yourself. This is why you need to hire a team of capable people to help you. For example, a good COO will handle the operations for you, a good CCO will handle the customers for you, and a good Chief of Staff will handle the admins for you. This way, you can focus on the most important tasks that only a CEO can do and no one else can do.
Effective Time Management: You need to use your time wisely. After all, time is limited and one of the most precious resources. Unfortunately, so many hardcore CEOs tried to take on everything and ended up burned out while delivering minimal impact. Only by allocating your time strategically and prioritizing the most important tasks, you can optimize your time. I know this is easier said than done. Laura Montini from Inc.com reported that in general CEOs waste 70% of their time each day. This is why in this blog post, I will share with you the ideal benchmark on how you should spend your time as a CEO. But before that, let’s cover the last remaining element of DED.
Delete: Yes, you hear me right. Many kinds of stuff actually don’t even need to be done (you don’t have to come to all meetings, reply to all emails, or say yes to all requests). Many CEOs fall under this perfectionism trap. If 100 issues are coming their way, they will try to tackle all 100 issues. While most of the issues will take a lot of energy, brain power, and time to tackle, not all of them are equally important – some issues are more important than others. It is perfectly okay to be imperfect. Rather than tackling 100 issues, spreading yourself too thin, and achieving not much – it is better to focus on the top 3 issues, dedicating yourself there, and achieving a lot. If you read my book, you will know my mantra is 80/20.
The mnemonic is easy to remember: “Do DED or end up dead.” This mnemonic refers to one of my favorite books, Death by Meeting (this affiliate link will bring you to Amazon store).
Now, let’s get back to the effective allocation of time management. We, as busy executives, often don’t know how poorly we allocate our time. We habitually think that we have made great progress because we have been working hard. But the reality is this: spending a lot of time on unproductive things is a total waste of time.
A 2018 Harvard Business School study, “What do CEOs actually do?” found that CEOs spend more than 70% of their time in meetings. While meetings are important for CEOs to get things done, most of these meetings are unproductive. The same study found that CEOs spend almost 60% of their time on non-core agenda (i.e., this means CEOs are significantly distracted). Similarly, according to INC., CEOs (on average) waste 70% of their time each day.
To avoid making the same mistake, it would be good to analyze your time spent for the last 3 months. Use the following approach:
Step 1. Analyze Your Historical Time Allocation
Get your PA/EA to collate and analyze your calendar for the last 3 months (all the meetings and time blocks).
Categorize all the activities into these 12 buckets:
Internal Meetings – Core Agenda/Strategy Related.
Internal Meetings – Regular Functional and Business Unit Performance Reviews.
Internal Meetings – Regular Catch-up with Direct Reports/Other Senior Managers.
Internal Meetings – Regular Updates with VIP/Board Members/Committees and its preparation.
Internal Meetings – Employee Engagement/Communication Campaign.
Internal Meetings – Ad-hoc/Crisis Management/Important Unfolding Development.
External Meetings – Key Customers/Suppliers/Consultants.
External Meetings – Other stakeholders (e.g., banks, investors, industry groups, media, government, charities, social events, banks, etc.).
Personal Work – Core Agenda/Strategy related (e.g., Thinking and Planning).
Personal Work – Admin/Have-to-Do/Non-Core Agenda (e.g., replying to emails).
Personal Work – Work on Self/Professional Development.
On the Road/Travelling.
Take note of your total working hours per month. For example, your average working hours in Q1 2023 was 250 hours per month.
Then, calculate the time spent (in average hours/month) for each of the 12 buckets. For example, you may find that you spend 50 hours per month on traveling.
After that, convert these numbers to the percentage of total time spent per month. In this example, you spent 20% of your time traveling (50 out of 250 hours = 20% of total working time).
Step 2. Compare your historical time allocations against the ideal benchmark.
Once you have calculated your total time spent per month, compare your time allocations to the ideal benchmark below.
Internal Meetings – Core Agenda/Strategy Related: 15% or 26 hours/month.
Internal Meetings – Regular Functional and Business Unit Performance Reviews: 5% or 9 hours/month.
Internal Meetings – Regular Catch-up with Direct Reports/Other Senior Managers: 5% or 9 hours/month.
Internal Meetings – Regular Update with VIP/Board Members/Committees and its preparation: 5% or 9 hours/month.
Internal Meetings – Employee Engagement/Communication Campaign: 2.5% or 4.5 hours/month.
Internal Meetings – Ad-hoc/Crisis Management/Important Unfolding Development: 5% or 9 hours/month.
External Meetings – Key Customers/Suppliers: 5% or 9 hours/month.
External Meetings – Other stakeholders (e.g., banks, investors, industry groups, media, government, charities, social events, banks, etc.): 2.5% or 4.5 hours/month.
Personal Work – Core Agenda/Strategy related (e.g., Thinking and Planning): 30% or 52 hours/month.
Personal Work – Admin/Have-to-Do/Non-Core Agenda (e.g., replying to emails): 10% or 18 hours/month.
Personal Work – Work on Self/Professional Development: 5% or 9 hours/month.
On the Road/Travelling: 10% or 18 hours/month.
Note that the ideal benchmark is based on the following ideas:
The ideal total monthly hours is 176 hours/month (i.e., 8 hours/day x 22 working days/month). I know many CEOs spend between 220 – 264 hours/month or more, but I don’t think this number is healthy or sustainable for the long term.
On-the-road travel time is a necessary evil, but it should not consume more than 10% of the CEO’s working time. Otherwise, it becomes unsustainable. You can reduce your travel time by leveraging video conferencing technology.
Excluding travel time, the core agenda should take at least half of the remaining CEO’s time. Thus, the ideal ratio between Core Agenda, Non-Core, and Travel is 45%-45%-10%.
Similarly, we aim to balance time between meetings and personal work. Thus, the ideal ratio between Meetings, Personal Work, and Travel is 45%-45%-10%.
Step 3. Take the Necessary Actions
Determine the improvement actions if there is a significant discrepancy between your existing time allocation and the ideal benchmark. For example:
Make your regular meetings more effective by adopting the Level-10 meeting techniques (I will cover these techniques in another post);
Quickly close the ad-hoc meetings by focusing on actions/decisions to solve the issues (I have been in a lot of meetings where problems are discussed extensively, but their solutions are hardly discussed, and I consider these meetings that don’t solve problems time-waster);
Introduce pre-meeting homework and a structured meeting approach to ensure people come to the meeting with data, analysis, and recommendations (not just rambling). This way, you can reduce meeting hours while still getting things done.
Let me know what you think of this time allocation benchmark. Hopefully, it helps you to manage your time more effectively.
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