Be Ruthless with how you choose to spend your most precious resource - time

This past weekend I facilitated a strategic planning retreat with a Board of Directors and the chief executive team. The day progressed well, with the Board achieving agreement on the broad strokes of the strategy throughout the day. Then one question flew in that provided a moment of deep reflection among the group – “what about the current priorities? We really should bring them to a close”.  

What immediately comes to mind is that priorities are typically set from above and trickle down to each of our teams. We hear the words Big Bets, Organizational Priorities, Strategic Initiatives, all playing up the level of importance we need to put on these projects. Yet, we still need to keep the lights on, and be prepared for the inevitable curveballs that are thrown at us in the form of new urgent items that need to be addressed. In the end, everything on our plate is either a priority, a strategic initiative or an emergency. Think about it, is there really anything else that consumes our time?

In today’s hustle culture, especially if someone is earlier in their career, they will be less inclined to speak up when a new project is added to their workload. Not only that, the shift to virtual and hybrid working has also been met with meeting overloads, creating tighter times for people to deliver all the work they’ve been allocated. How did we, as leaders, get here?  There must be a diminishing return to working smarter not harder.  

As leaders, I am proposing that we act as the Chief Time Officer for our teams. Be the Auditor, Steward and Investment Manager of the most important resource on any team – time.

The best place to start is by setting out a clear direction for your team. Strong direction and clear directives will keep everyone on track. Once you’ve given clear direction, the next step is to do an audit of your team’s deliverables. What is everyone working on and approximately how much time does it take to do each task? What tasks are spinning in circles? Do you have the flexibility for tasks that may pop up? Where will you acquire surge capacity?  Most importantly, does your team have time to breath, think and be inspired?

When you get a holistic view of how your team is spending time, you have a better understanding of the investments your team is making into the important things and where there are opportunities to stop sunk costs in its tracks.  

A simple team-building exercise to audit your team’s collective time investments is to do a team STOP, START, CONTINUE activity when the annual strategic priorities of your organization are communicated. Begin the exercise by laying out what is within each team member's portfolio and the recurring meetings that they are in. Then, use the below framework to do an audit of everyone’s portfolios.

STOP: What is everyone working on that is not driving results, not laddering up to the collective priorities, and/or may be duplication of work.

START: What activities should start given the refreshed strategic priorities for the year? Plan these activities and allocate resources to support them collectively.

CONTINUE: Which of these tasks should continue and what modifications and resource shifting should be made to ensure the progress of the projects.

This exercise is just one way to keep your team engaged and empower your team when it comes to how they spend their time. The investment of time is finite, and we only have so many mental and physical hours to give ourselves in a day. When we look at our time as interconnected, we create space for creativity, mistakes, collaboration, and healthy habits within our workday.

 For more information on how to be your team’s Chief Time officer, click here.