By Jeff Bell.
There are many things that are out of our control as leaders. Especially in these pandemic times. Or so it would seem.
Nothing is predictable, but nor has it ever been. We never know what is going to happen—but we do form optimistic predictions that help us cope with uncertainty.
In particular, we never truly know what is going to happen in our market or in the lives of the people we rely on.
But there are at least two things that we can control.
How we perceive and how we react.
For instance, we can perceive that the world, our world, is too complicated and too busy for us. This may well divert us from calmly considering what we must do and when.
Allied to this is the consideration of how much time we have. As we know, time is a constant—it just is, there is no such thing as “there is never enough time”, only our failure to use it judiciously. This is a violation against ourselves and against others—particularly those who rely on us.
Of course, while we can consult life expectancy charts for our age, gender and location, the truth is that we could die at any time. So, in every sense, time is precious. Why then do so many of us treat time with carelessness, abandon and even contempt.
For the modern leader, here are principles for how we can react.
Our leadership
- Look to serve a greater cause than just ourselves.
- Make our job something that we love doing.
- Craft a strategy for the business so that everything we do is purposeful and profitable.
- Set up an electronic diary (e.g. MS Outlook) in 15min. intervals; share it with our direct reports.
- Delegate what we can, giving clear instructions, setting achievement and time goals, allocating commensurate resources.
- Allocate and communicate 2 “open” periods daily for our direct reports.
- Restrict all operational meetings to 45min., plus 15min. immediately afterwards for follow up actions and notes.
- Find the most efficient (lowest cost) and effective (highest results) ways to do our work. Draw the same from others.
- To make the best-informed risks, engage a leadership coach, allowing a 2 hour session monthly or fortnightly.
- Devise our work and personal goals and allocate time and resources weekly to achieve them.
- Use IT tools creatively for: project collaboration; teleconferencing; emailing; customer relationship management.
- Factor in enjoyable activities each week that improve the lot of others.
- Allow flexibility for and a category of family matters at any time.
- Allocate a 30min. “thinking and development” time in each working day.
- Keep in touch with regional, national and world events.
Our self-management
- Optimise our mental stamina with: appropriate sleep, 3 intensive exercise sessions per week; high level nutrition.
- Avoid mind-altering and addictive substances.
- Ensure that our allocation of tasks reflects our job description and then colour-code each category.
- Constantly discuss priorities with our EA (if we have one!); ensure adequate travel time between appointments.
- Draw start and finish lines to each working day (being fair to our home and personal life).
- Schedule all our fixed commitments that fall daily, weekly, monthly, annually (using the “recurring meetings” function).
- Think of our calendar as a planner and as a record of all that we do—constantly re-adjusted to “actuals”.
- Schedule at least 45min. for reading a book (fiction and non-fiction) every day.
- Schedule 30min. for lunch every day at least 5 hours after breakfast; forget about morning and afternoon tea.
- For the unallocated time, write a to-do list and allocate tasks in each.
- At the end of each day, provide 5min. to record “What went well today”.
- Make our first job of the week a review of all items in the coming week.
- Synchronise our calendar with our mobile phone, including our emails.
- Be both disciplined and flexible with our allocations and appointments.
- Get up and move around the office or outside, every hour.
Implement them all. Our time is too precious not to.