We wrote a post about how to make a graceful exit (especially when it’s involuntary) that explored what steps to take when leaving your position. This post is the follow-up that dives into how to identify, assess, and consolidate lessons learned to find the right next job. We’ll explore three key steps to a successful transition plan for CEOs.
After reviewing the draft news release announcing my latest promotion (many years back) and offering her congratulations, our press agent exclaimed with some dismay that: “…now you’ll have even LESS time than ever!”
I remember remarking smartly in reply that she was wrong, and that I still had just as much time as I’d always had. In fact, I had the same amount of time each day that both Da Vinci and Einstein had, and that my job, same as ever, was to make the most of it!
Of all the things that top CEOs and leaders do well, managing their time is the most hailed productivity hack there is. How is it possible that those with the greatest demands on their time are so productive when so many are not?
Top CEOs and leaders all have one thing in common: they manage their own time well. And, doing so is no easy feat.
Every CEO has an especially full plate, including the responsibility to:
We all have 24 hours each and every day. How we spend it depends on whether we are Interrupt-Driven or Self-Driven.
Interrupt-Driven leaders are reactive. They allow their attention to be directed or stolen away by whatever comes along. They simply react to one input stimuli after another, permitting their energy to be diverted by the next call, text, email, tweet, knock at the door, etc.
This explains why some leaders constantly feel overwhelmed by their workload, spend their days in crisis-du-jour, and complain that they do not have enough time in the day. By the end of an interrupt-driven day, of course you feel exhausted! With infinitely active input sources there is never a chance you’ll have nothing to do, but there’s a high likelihood that you won’t get anything important done.
Self-Driven leaders, in comparison, are proactive. They determine the most important things to do next, decide which to do when, and do them! They acknowledge external stimuli, but don’t allow them to determine their actions. Self-Driven behavior requires conscious effort and, so, is harder to pursue than Interrupt-Driven, because it requires you to consistently manage your environment, priority list, and (especially) yourself to decide what to do next. But without this important distinction, your day is entirely decided by whatever comes up and not by you.
The first thing a good leader learns is how to manage him/herself, the focus of my book Manage to Lead, and the only way to manage oneself productively is through Self-Driven behavior. This is why Self-Driven CEOs and leaders are in control of themselves, and get an incredible amount of work done as a result. While working with and studying highly effective CEOs for over 35⁺ years, I’ve collected the best time management tips that really make a difference.
If time management is a problem for you or your team, start by tracking where time is spent. Effective leaders pay attention to how their time is allocated, with whom, the amount of time, and the results of that time investment. With this data, you can assess and diagnose what’s working and what’s not to take appropriate actions that treat the cause, not just the symptoms.
Most leaders don’t use a to-do list. Instead, they’re clear and intentional about their overall goals. With those goals in mind, they set three non-negotiable “must-dos”, big rocks, or 3-Wins for each day.
Every action and activity they spend time on throughout the day is in pursuit of the 3-Wins. By replacing an ever-growing to-do list with just 3-Wins per day, you’ll be more productive and accomplish your big goals faster.
The rise in the self-care movement is popular for good reason: there’s value in creating time for personal well-being. CEOs, especially, have all-consuming responsibilities and often work weekends and holidays.
Which is why most leaders carve out time to exercise, get a good night’s sleep, and spend time with friends and family. They use this time to refuel themselves, so they can attack their work with fresh minds.
With a time audit under your belt, you’ll find current activities that don’t further your goals. CEOs and leaders are ruthless with their time; once they identify time-wasting activities, they cut them out immediately, allowing that time to be better used for priority items.
The most popular time-wasters will vary based on your industry and personality, but most leaders inevitably cut out (or down) on email, social media, and repetitive tasks that can be easily automated, shortened, or assigned to others.
Schedule blocking is a great way to intentionally design an ideal week. When you schedule blocks of time for specific activities, such as processing emails, making phone calls, or even just thinking, you reduce the amount of time spent on non-essential, yet necessary activities.
Time-blocking helps leaders limit time on social media, for example, by setting a time limit per day. Likewise, CEOs can read, organize and respond to emails during a bulk time block, effectively reducing the overall amount of time spent in email limbo.
The number of time management apps and systems available at the click of a button is astounding, making it easier than ever to implement a new process. Systems like the Pomodoro Method help leaders schedule breaks, allowing them to refresh their minds before diving back into important tasks that take a long time and a lot of concentration.
CEOs are most commonly found in meetings. A Harvard study found that 72% of total CEO work time is in meetings. Given the amount of time required to context-switch between an investor call and an internal meeting, schedule batching can save a tremendous amount of time.
By batching all of your internal meetings on one day and external meetings on another, you can reduce the time needed for context switching. Likewise, batching all of your phone calls into a single time-block can save hours. Leaders can work more efficiently to solve problems or ideate with their teams.
Leaders are notorious for their infamous morning and evening routines. As they should be! Routines help to prepare us for the week and jumpstart our day. Top CEOs use this time to set intentions for the day, spend time on personal well-being, and create their 3-Wins.
Your routine can consist of anything you like and works best when the activities help to prepare your mindset and energize you for what’s ahead.
A CEO’s responsibilities are vast, working with both the internal operations teams and external stakeholders including customers, partners, investors, and media. When asked how they do it all, inevitably the answer is always some form of ”I don’t.”
CEOs delegate heavily to their reporting directors and managers, especially when it comes to routine tasks. And when that’s not possible, they bring in outside help to tackle the workload.
Because leaders have clearly identified their overarching goals along with their daily 3-Wins, they say “no” a lot. With so many demands on their time, it’s simply not feasible to accept invitations or opportunities that don’t align with their top priorities.
A polite, but firm “no” reinforces a proactive time management approach versus a reactive one. And when the opportunity is aligned with your priorities, you’ll have the available calendar space (from all of those “no”s) to dedicate time to it.
Every organization does three things. It does what it does, it creates demand for what it does, and it grows; or DO-SELL-GROW. The key to success is not to “make pizza”; it’s to “build a pizza making business!” Cultivating a company culture, creating demand, delighting customers, and inspiring a growing team all at once is no easy trick.
Effective leaders, therefore, implement systems and processes their teams follow that are consistent with the strategy and vision set by the leadership team. Without systems, a leader will inevitably step in to handle issues and unexpected problems personally. This isn’t sustainable in the face of increasing scale and complexity that comes with growth, and a CEO can burn out or (worse yet) drain the organization.
Effective time management is just one tool in the toolbelt to becoming a better leader. The leaders who learn to harness that time by taking action are the ones who grow their organizations faster and perform better.
Time management is just one aspect of managing to be a better leader.
Are you interested in learning even more about how to manage yourself to be a better leader?
Watch the video below about the IntelliVen Manage to Lead Immersion Program or head to the Program’s landing page to learn how to become a better leader.
Every leader stands to benefit from the opportunity to meet monthly in a professionally facilitated session with about a dozen non-competitive peers who are in similar roles, in similar organizations, and at a similar stage of evolution.
Leaders who make the one decision to join, as long as they show up, prepare, pay attention, andparticipate, get six distinct benefits that are hard to achieve any other way:
Professional facilitation is mandatory. Self-facilitation varies based on how much effort session leaders are able to put into preparation and how much training and experience in group facilitation each leader has had. Meeting without any facilitator may work for a session or two but will eventually devolve into nothing more than a monthly coffee, lunch, or drinks with the gang.
CEO group participants also need to stay sharp. When you ask for advice, you will get it. The issue is quality and fit. Each peer speaks from a different context and Mandate. What worked there may not work here. Treat input as data, not instruction. Test it against your strategy before you act. Let the buyer beware.
The time, training, and drive required to :
far exceeds the capacity of just about anyone with a full time day-job let alone a Chief Executive!
See this slide presentation of lessons learned and practices that lead to improved performance and growth thanks to Peer Group affiliation.
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Peter DiGiammarino is a professional CEO, professor, and author with 30+ years of success leading public, private, private-equity-owned, and venture-capital-backed software and services firms. He helps leaders, top teams, and organizations achieve their full potential to perform and grow in the name of IntelliVen.
Leadership teams need to Get Clear about many things, including:
Leaders often struggle to reach a good, a better, or even a best solution to countless such questions. More important than the right answer, though, is all team members having the same answer.
Once all team members are aligned on one answer, even a not very good one, on any matter, odds are that performance will improve because everyone pulls in the same direction. The result is a multiplier effect suggested by the three arrows forming a much larger fourth arrow in the above graphic . Continue reading How to test for and secure top team alignment on key matters to improve growth and performance.
Many intelliven.com blog posts are based on the slides and lecture notes from a masters class in Organization Development called Organization Analysis and Strategy offered at American University and taught by Peter DiGiammarino. These posts and other material from class, including:
are available from Amazon as a softcover workbook or from iTunes as an iBook titled Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World.
Whether one wants to change personal habits, implement a new information system, improve a business process, get team members to work together, increase a community’s appreciation for diversity, or even to topple a monarchy, taking seven actions driven by seven disarmingly simple truths will individually and collectively help achieve the goal.
Manage to Lead presents a framework to describe and assess any organization. It also provides a structured approach to plan and implement next steps for an organization as it strives for long-term growth and performance.
Readers are invited to select a familiar organization on which to apply the tools and templates introduced throughout the workbook. Exercises in each chapter produce essential elements for the organization’s annual strategic plan and lay the groundwork for implementing that plan.
Readers can package the key elements from Organization Exercises to form a strategic plan that communicates how the organization sees itself and where it is headed. At the end of the year leaders can compare actual results with what was described in the strategic plan to study what happened, why what happened was different than plan, what is to be learned from that, and what to do differently going forward as a result.
Repeat the process over several years and compare actual to planned results year-to-year to see the organization mature, perform, and grow to its full potential.
