Time and Leadership

By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth

Time; it’s the only thing we all have in common, yet it’s how we choose to spend it that defines and differentiates us as individuals. Even though time is a key success metric, I am always amazed at how many leaders don’t manage it as such. Time is indeed a precious and finite commodity, and those executives that manage it wisely are those that achieve the greatest results. Show me an leader that doesn’t leverage time to its highest and best use and I’ll show you a leader likely to be replaced by one that can. In today’s blog post I’ll examine the value of time.

The proper understanding of how to use time will ultimately determine a leaders ability to achieve the results needed to be successful in the fulfillment of his or her duties. You see, time doesn’t slow, nor can it be accelerated or recovered; it can only be wasted, invested, or leveraged. I often hear people espouse the axiom “don’t work hard, work smart.” I have a bit of a different take on the subject as I work very hard at working intelligently. It was coming to an understanding of these fundamental principles at an early age that have made a tremendous difference in my life as contrasted with many others I’ve encountered along the way.

It doesn’t matter what your title is, what company you work for, where you went to school, or what continent you live on, the fact is that you only have 24 hours in a day, which consists of 1440 minutes, and when reduced to the ridiculous amounts to 86,400 seconds. If you want to do more, earn more, serve more, influence more, or significantly change the level of your impact in any area, you simply must make more out of the time you have at your disposal. So, my question is this…How well do you leverage your 86,400 seconds?

Have you ever heard someone say they wish there was more time in a day? While I’ve already pointed out that you cannot increase the amount of time in a day, I’ve also said that time can in fact be leveraged if you know how. Some people use only a portion of a full day, while others leverage the entire day, and those who are most productive leverage multiples of a day…Multiples of a day you ask? Through making good use of personal time, leveraging staff and technology, working across different time zones, associating with quality people and organizations, managing risk, and having a laser like focus on highest and best use principles, it is quite possible to leverage time by creating scale. Many of the most productive leaders I know estimate they’re able to average nearly a full week’s work into a single 24 hour period while rarely working more than an average work week on a personal basis. Leveraging time is all about making good choices…are you making good choices?

The first step in making the most out of your time begins with the understanding that time itself is a key success metric. As mentioned above, you can either leverage your time, or waste your time. Once you learn how to invest your time wisely, you can then get to a point where you can start to leverage your time into multiples. The first step in making this transition is to maximize personal time by avoiding the most common workplace time-wasters. According to most of the research I’ve read, which happen to mirror my personal observations, the following items represent the top 10 corporate time-wasters:

1. Inability to Focus: A lack of focus and shifting priorities will create unnecessary chaos in the life of any leader;
2. Technology Interruptions: Allowing technology (phone, email, IM, social media, etc.) to serve as a distraction instead of an enhancement – those leaders who allow technology to control them as opposed to controlling the technology have an addiction that needs a cure – discipline;
3. Bad Planning: Few things adversely impact productivity like a lack of planning. There is an old military saying that I’ve always found true – “Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance;”
4. Initiative Overload- Biting-off more than you can chew is a sure way to over-complicate things in a completely unproductive fashion. Keep in mind that no matter who you are, a rubber-band stretched too tightly will eventually snap;
5. Drop-in Visitors; It’s one thing to have an open door policy, it’s quite another to let unscheduled interruptions derail your focus.
6. Ineffective Delegation; There is a big difference between delegation and abdication. Either not enough delegation, too much delegation, or improper delegation can substantially harm an organization. Smart leaders view delegation as proper alignment of resourcing such that the best talent is matched with the greatest opportunities or the biggest challenges – nothing more, nothing less.
7. Poor Organization: Leaders who are not organized will become failed leaders. There is no excuse in today’s world that any leader should have a lack of organizational skills. If you’re not organized, stop making excuses and get the help you need to solve the problem;
8. Procrastination; Sticking your head in the sand and pretending things will miraculously take care of themselves is the act of a coward and not of a leader. Real leaders don’t avoid big issues, they hit them head-on. A proactive approach is almost always a better position to be in than finding yourself in a reactionary defensive posture.  
9. Improper use of “Yes” & “No:” While I’m a big believer in finding a way to get to a ”yes” there are simply times when a leader must say “no.” Using yes or no improperly simply because it’s the easy thing to do is not good leadership. Real leaders understand that questions deserve more than an answer – they deserve the correct answer.  
10. Unproductive Meetings: If you find yourself leading or attending unproductive meetings you need to change the culture within your organization. Don’t waste your time or the time of others by sequestering them for hours of nonsense.  Meetings should catalyze fruitful outcomes, not squander resources and adversely impact morale.

Time can either be your best friend or your worst nightmare. Leaders that understand how to use time to their advantage accomplish great things, and those who allow time to slip through their fingers don’t. The lesson to learn is to accomplish more through leverage while decreasing personal time commitments. Remember that time is a finite commodity, and once a moment in time has passed it is gone forever.