Spending Your Time

Though most managers understand intellectually that time is their scarcest resource, few make the effort to gain a strategic perspective on how they spend their hours each week. Still fewer make a regular practice of keeping track of how the priorities they say are most important jibe with the way they actually spend their time. "Those we label natural born leaders know how to leverage their time," writes Warren Blank in The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders (Amacom, 2001). For those in whom this talent is not innate, here's how to do it.

1. Break your responsibilities into categories

The categories will vary depending on your job function, but they must be both strategic and tactical — identify not more than six. Consider, for example, the following:

• Growth and improvement. This category focuses on opportunities, not on crises, and it's often the one in which the added value you bring to your company is the greatest. The challenge is to keep the time allotted to these high-leverage activities sacrosanct — don't let pressing but less important needs crowd them out.

• Managing people. You may want to break this category into managing up, managing across, and managing down. Managers are well aware that coaching and mentoring enable them to maximize their leverage, but especially in times of belt tightening, it helps to be reminded that you can't create efficiencies without upward and lateral alignment. Moreover, everyone agrees that communication is critical, but how many people actually plan time for it? In your haste to make your numbers, don't let your communication — in any of these three directions — falter.

• Primary day-to-day responsibilities. Depending on your role, this area could also be subdivided — say, into selling and delivering services.

• Administration. This includes necessary chores ranging from assessing resource needs to interviewing job candidates to responding to e-mail. Get ready for a shock when you add the numbers.

2. Ask yourself what percentage of your time you should be spending in each category

Before you assign percentages, Blank advises that you ask yourself this question: "Given what I truly want to accomplish today as a leader, what will be the best use of my time?" To answer, factor in the competing claims on your time: the activities that enable you to generate the most leverage, the company's strategic priorities, and the short-term needs of your supervisors, direct reports, and customers. Once you've assigned percentages, translate them into hourly figures for each category. Is the total number of hours realistic and sustainable for the time frame you're considering? To be useful, your time allocations may need to change quarterly, monthly, or even weekly.

3. Check for alignment with your superiors and colleagues

Run your time allocations by your manager and key colleagues; ask them to share theirs, if possible. Sharing time allocations with a team gives a group focus and cohesion.