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Other articles in this issue:

• The difference between time management and controlling events
• The major time robbers and how to avoid them
• Effectively scheduling your time to maximize your accomplishments
• Vacationing for better health and productivity

How Owners and Managers Should Manage Their Time

Given the current economic climate, there’s no better time than now to step back and ensure you are capitalizing on your worth to your agency. Here are five steps that, if followed, will make sure that you and your staff is doing so.

1. Identify your priorities.

You have to know where you want to be in order to make sure that what you spend your time doing, is working towards achieving your goals. Each day, take a hard look at your to-do list and make certain all items you have planned will help you reach your vision. Anything else is a waste of your time and has no value. You should remove these from your to-do list.

2. Compare your calendar with the priorities.

Every quarter, review your activities to make sure that they are connected with your top five priorities. If you are looking to grow your agency and you do not attend regular networking meetings, but you do have a standing golf game with a good friend in another industry, you need to rethink your schedule. Unless this friend has connections with new clients in new sectors, plan the golf games for weekends.

3. Be ruthless.

Stop convincing yourself that you have been productive with the time you’ve spent on business avenues that are not been in alignment with your vision of success, or continuing to work for overly demanding clients that seem important although they are not allied to any of your strategic priorities. Instead, realize that you simply cannot afford to continue to work with them. Most of the time, you will realize that you have been treating the symptoms of the disease and should shift your focus to finding the cure for the disease. In others, you’ll discover that the task will provide a growth opportunity for someone else. Maybe an up and coming agency is better suited to handle that demanding client, allowing you to grow with new and more promising clients. Then, ask your staff to do the same. Discuss with them how jobs could be streamlined and how the group as a whole could better spend its time. Encourage them to challenge any and everything – down to the status meetings. Do you really need everyone for the entire hour and a half, or can you be more productive with a one – on – one meeting with each Account Manager?

4. Make time for your people and yourself.

When you’re rebuilding your calendar, be sure to include quality time for your team to get together to brainstorm about the strategy, the organization, and new opportunities. Last but not least, absolutely include time to pursue personal priorities that will help you grow and make you more valuable to your organization.

5. Avoid management by crisis.

Managing by crisis allows unforeseen events, interruptions and problems to determine your priorities. There are times we need to react quickly to a crisis; controlling it before it does more damage. But when crisis management becomes the norm, you end up spending more time putting out fires than doing actual productive work. When crisis management becomes the routine, it can easily lead to what Stephen Covey refers to as "Urgency Addiction."
There are people who are addicted to crisis and enjoy putting out fires. They thrive on stepping in and solving problems and are often rewarded for doing so. They have no incentive to avoid or prevent the crisis. Just the opposite, they are often rewarded for encouraging the crisis that they step in to control.
When crisis management becomes your normal way of doing business, it's usually pointing to a more fundamental problem you need to solve.
An old Chinese proverb says, "The superior doctor prevents sickness. The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness. The inferior doctor treats sickness." Don't just treat the symptoms of the latest crisis. Cure the underlying disease and prevent crises from recurring.

You should expect your staff to manage their schedules effectively. How they do so depends on how you manage your own time and how you coach and mentor them. Share your vision with them and guide them to focus on the tasks that will help achieve that vision.

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Copyright 2008© CSB Consulting and Connie Burtcheard