BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 260
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
The fact is, having 15
priorities is the same as
having none at all.
should be spending their time. I spoke with the
manager of a national sales force who felt frustrated that his direct reports were not focusing
on the tasks necessary to achieve their respective regional sales goals. As a result, sales were
growing at a slower rate than budgeted at the
beginning of the year. When I asked him to
enumerate the three to five key priorities he
expected his salespeople to focus on, he
paused and then explained that there were 15
and it would be very difficult to narrow the list
down to five.
Even as he spoke, a light went on in his
head. He realized why there might be a disconnect between him and his people: They didn’t
know precisely what he wanted because he
had not told them in a prioritized, and therefore actionable, manner. He reflected on this
issue for the next two weeks, thinking at length
about his own experience as a regional manager and consulting with various colleagues.
He then picked three priorities that he felt
were crucial to achieving sales growth. The
most important of these involved a major newbusiness targeting exercise followed by a substantial new-prospect calling effort. The regional managers immediately understood and
began focusing on these initiatives. The fact is
that having 15 priorities is the same as having
none at all. Managers have a responsibility to
translate their vision into a manageable number of priorities that their subordinates can understand and act on.
Failing to communicate your vision and priorities has direct costs to you in terms of time
and business effectiveness. It’s hard to delegate
if your people don’t have a good sense of the
big picture; hence you end up doing more
work yourself. This issue can cascade through
the organization if your direct reports are, in
turn, unable to communicate a vision and effectively leverage their own subordinates.
Managing Time
The second area to question is painfully simple and closely relates to the first: How am I
spending my time? Once you know your priorities, you need to determine whether you’re
spending your time—your most precious
asset—in a way that will allow you to achieve
them. For example, if your two major priorities are senior talent development and global
expansion but you’re spending the majority of
your time on domestic operational and admin-
harvard business review • january 2007
istrative matters that could be delegated, then
you need to recognize there is a disconnect
and you’d better make some changes.
It’s such a simple question, yet many leaders,
myself included, just can’t accurately answer at
times. When leaders finally do track their time,
they’re often surprised by what they find. Most
of us go through periods where unexpected
events and day-to-day chaos cause us to be reactive rather than acting on a proscribed plan.
Crises, surprises, personnel issues, and interruptions make the workweek seem like a blur.
I have recommended to many leaders that
they track how they spend each hour of each
day for one week, then categorize the hours
into types of activities: business development,
people management, and strategic planning,
for example. For most executives, the results of
this exercise are startling—even horrifying—
with obvious disconnects between what their
top priorities are and how they are spending
their time.
For example, the CEO of a midsize manufacturing company was frustrated because he was
working 70 hours a week and never seemed to
catch up. His family life suffered, and, at work,
he was constantly unavailable for his people
and major customers. I suggested he step back
and review how he was managing his time
hour-by-hour over the course of a week. We sat
down to examine the results and noticed that
he was spending a substantial amount of time
approving company expenditures, some for as
little as $500—this in a business with $500 million in sales. Sitting in my office, he struggled
to explain why he had not delegated some portion of this responsibility; it turned out that the
activity was a holdover from a time when the
company was much smaller. By delegating authority to approve recurring operating expenses
below $25,000, he realized he could save as
much as 15 hours per week. He was amazed
that he had not recognized this issue and made
this simple change much earlier.
How you spend your time is an important
question not only for you but for your team. People tend to take their cues from the leader when
it comes to time management—therefore, you
want to make sure there’s a match between
your actions, your business priorities, and your
team’s activities. The CEO of a rapidly growing,
300-person professional services firm felt that,
to build the business, senior managers needed
to develop stronger and more substantive rela-
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This document is authorized for use only by Michelle Sales (michelle@michellesales.com.au). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact
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