manager, master of time

Editor's note: In addition to managing others, managers must also manage themselves. The book "Effective Managers" by management master Drucker (also translated as "Drucker") is about how to manage yourself and make managers themselves more effective. We excerpted the chapter "Mastering Your Time" from the book and published it for readers.

The higher the manager's position, the less free time he has. Effective managers distinguish what is a waste of time and what is not important, and reject or ask subordinates to do them on their behalf, freeing up time for more important work.

Discussions about managerial tasks generally begin with planning. This seems logical. It's a pity that managers' work plans rarely really work. Plans are often just words, or good intentions, and rarely come to fruition.

In my observations, effective managers don't start work from the start, they tend to start with timing. They don't start with a plan, but knowing where to spend their time is the starting point. Then they manage their time, reducing the time taken up by unproductive work. Finally, the "freely usable time" is grouped from sporadic to large continuous periods. These three steps are the basis of manager effectiveness:

· Record time

· Manage time

· Schedule time in a unified manner

Effective managers know that time is a limiting factor. The output of any production process is limited by the scarcest resources. And in the production process we call "job achievement," the rarest resource is time.

But people are often the worst at managing their time.

Some managers often claim to have a good memory, and I sometimes ask them to make an estimate from memory about how they use their time and write it down. Then, I save them temporarily. At the same time, I asked them to keep track of the time they actually spent. A few weeks or months later, their original estimates are taken out and compared with their actual records, only to find that the two are far from each other.

The chairman of a company told me with great certainty that his time is roughly divided into three parts: 1/3 is used to discuss business with the company's senior management; 1/3 is used to receive important customers; the remaining 1/3 are used to participate in various social activities. However, after actually recording for six weeks, compared with his original estimates, it turned out that he spent almost no time on the above three areas. It turned out that the three types of jobs he was talking about were nothing more than jobs that he thought "should" spend his time. So his memory tells him that he has spent his time in these three areas. The actual record of six weeks shows that most of his time is spent on scheduling tasks, such as processing orders from customers he knows himself, and calling the factory to rush orders. The customer's order, which could have been handled smoothly, was prevented from being delivered on time due to his intervention. This time record was taken by his secretary, and when the secretary showed him the record, he couldn't believe it at all. Later, his secretary made a few records for sure, and he believed that his estimates were unreliable, and he began to believe the authenticity of the records.

So, effective managers know that if they want to manage their time well, they should first understand how their time is actually being spent.

How to Diagnose Your Time

The first step in improving a manager's effectiveness is to document how his or her time is actually being spent.

The specific method of time recording, we do not need to go into details here. In fact, many managers have a booklet and record it themselves, and some people ask the secretary to record it on their behalf. Importantly, a job must be recorded "at the time" of the job, not from memory afterwards.

Many effective managers maintain such a time record on a regular basis and review it on a monthly basis. At the very least, effective managers tend to record daily for three or four consecutive weeks, and two or three periods a year. With a sample of the time-consuming records, they can review it on their own. After half a year, they will find that their time is spent in a mess and wasted on all kinds of unnecessary little things. After practice, they will definitely improve in the use of time. But management time must be consistent to avoid returning to a wasteful state.

So the second step is to do systematic time management. We start by identifying unproductive and time-wasting activities and excluding them from the schedule as much as possible. To do this, ask yourself the following questions.

1. First of all, find out what things don't have to be done at all. Doing these things is a complete waste of time and does not help the results.

Take out the time record and ask item by item: "What will be the consequences if this matter is not done?" If you think "there will be no impact", then the matter should be cancelled immediately.

However, many busy people are doing things that they find difficult to give up every day, such as being invited to give speeches, attending banquets, serving as committee members, and attending as non-voting guides, which take up a lot of their time. In fact, to deal with this kind of thing, just consider whether he has contributed to the organization, whether he has contributed to himself, or whether he has contributed to the organization of the other party. If not, just decline it.

The general manager mentioned above, who is entertaining every day, after a review, found that at least 1/3 of the banquets did not need to be attended at all. Sometimes he was even a little dumbfounded, because the owner didn't really want him to be there. The invitation from the host was just a courtesy. In fact, the host really wanted him to write "Thank you" on the invitation receipt, but every time he accompanies him, the host doesn't know how to arrange a seat for him.

2. The second question to ask is: "Which activities in the time record can be attended by others without affecting the effect?"

The aforementioned general manager also found that in the banquet he attended, the fact that There are 1/3 as long as the senior management of the company is present, not every time he is required to participate in person. Organisers simply want to put the company on the guest list.

I've never met a manager who, after reviewing his time records, doesn't change his habit of leaving things he doesn't have to deal with himself. Just flipping through the time records, he can see at once that his time is spent on unnecessary things, and he has no time for what is really important, what he wishes to do, and what he has promised to process. In fact, if he really wants to make a difference, he only needs to give others what can be done by others.

Business travel is an example. Professor Parkinson (C. Northcote Parkinson) pointed out in the book "Parkinson's Law" that the best way to force an incompetent supervisor to retire is to make him travel constantly. . Of course business trips are necessary, but sending a less experienced person can still get the job done. Younger people usually like to travel, and young people tend to sleep well in hotels. Younger people tend to be more hard-working, and therefore tend to be more capable of out-of-home work than more experienced but fatigue-prone seniors.

3. There is another time-wasting factor that managers can control and eliminate. This factor is: managers are wasting other people's time.

It's not obvious, but there's an easy way to diagnose it: Ask your subordinates. An effective manager knows how to systematically and sincerely ask his subordinates: "Please think about it, what do I often do that waste your time without producing results?" Honestly, that is the hallmark of an effective manager.

Even if managers deal with productive work, they can still waste other people's time in the way they do it.

The financial manager of a large corporate organization felt that meetings were wasting too much time. Usually no matter what is being discussed, he informs all the heads of the finance department to come to the meeting. The result is that meetings drag on every time. Every supervisor who attended the meeting had to express his opinion in order to express his concern about the issue, but most of the opinions expressed had nothing to do with the issue, and the meeting was naturally prolonged.

It wasn't until the financial manager asked everyone honestly once that everyone thought the meeting was a waste of time. However, he also thought that everyone is very important in the organization and should be aware of the situation. If there are fewer people invited during the meeting, he is worried that the uninvited people will feel that they are ignored.

Now the financial manager has finally found a way to do both. Before the meeting, he generally distributed a meeting notice: "It is scheduled at 3 pm on Wednesday, in the conference room on the fourth floor, to invite Zhao Qiansun and Li Sijun to a meeting to discuss the capital budget for the next year. Anyone who needs to understand this issue may be willing to participate. If you are unable to attend the meeting, we will submit the record immediately after the meeting for your reference and hope to provide valuable comments."

In the past, 12 people attended each meeting and took the whole afternoon, but now it only takes 12 people to attend each meeting. With 4 people in attendance, it could be over in an hour, and none of them felt neglected.

Many managers are aware of what is wasting their time, yet they are afraid to face it. They are afraid of making mistakes because of small mistakes. As everyone knows, even if there is a mistake, it can be quickly corrected. If you can cut down on unnecessary and unproductive work a lot, the work goes much faster.

In fact, there is never too much risk for a manager to take drastic measures to reduce unnecessary work. There is always a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of their own status and think that many things must be done by themselves. Even the most effective managers still have a lot of unnecessary and unproductive work.

Eliminate time-wasting activities

The three diagnostic issues described above are about the handling of unproductive and time-wasting activities. Every knowledge worker and every manager should ask themselves those questions. But wasted time is also sometimes caused by poor management and institutional weaknesses, which should be given equal attention as managers. Poor management not only wastes everyone's time, but more importantly, the supervisor's own time.

1. The first thing to do is to identify the factors that cause wasted time due to lack of institutions or foresight. What should be noted is that the same "crisis" occurs over and over again in the organization. If the same crisis occurs a second time, it should never be allowed to occur a third time. The inventory crisis that occurs every year in factories falls into this category. Although this kind of problem can be solved by computer today, it can be solved more thoroughly than before, but it is also more expensive than before. Such a solution is hardly a remarkable advance. A recurring crisis should be predictable. Therefore, such crises can be prevented in advance, or can be designed as a routine that everyone can handle. The so-called routine work is the work that is designed to be handled by everyone without the need for research and judgment. Routine homework can be said to be a systematic and step-by-step approach that experts have learned from past crises.

Recurring crises are not limited to lower levels of the organization. Every part of the organization suffers.

For a large company, for many years, every early December, there will be such a crisis: the company's business has strong seasonality, the fourth quarter of each year is a low season, and sales and profits are not easy to predict. Under company rules, management is expected to forecast a full-year surplus in an interim report due at the end of the second quarter. When the fourth quarter began three months later, all parts of the company were immediately jittery and hustling to meet management's projected goals. Management can't do anything else for three to five weeks before the end of the year. This crisis, however, can actually be solved with a single stroke of a pen: The estimates don’t have to be overly deterministic, just a list of upper and lower ranges. This measure, in fact, fully complies with the requirements of the company's board of directors, shareholders and the financial industry. The crises that used to be every December are now gone and almost no one knows about it. And because managers no longer have to waste time coordinating with estimated results, business performance in the fourth quarter of each year is better than in the past.

When the same crisis recurs, it is often the result of negligence and laziness. When I first worked as a management consultant many years ago, I often couldn't figure out the difference between good and bad management of a business organization -- but that's not to say I didn't have production knowledge. Only later did I find out that a peaceful factory must be managed on track. If a factory is always full of climaxes and everyone seems to be very busy, it must be bad management. A well-managed factory is always monotonous and without any exciting events. That's because every possible crisis has been foreseen, and solutions have become routine. In the same way, an organization whose management is on track is often an uninteresting organization. In such an organization, the so-called "observable" thing is presumably making decisions for the future, rather than fiddling with the past.

2. Too many people often cause a waste of time.

I remember when I was learning arithmetic for the first time, I had this question: "A job can be completed by 2 people in 2 days, and 4 people can do it together. How many days will it take to complete?" For elementary school students, the answer should be 1 day . But in an organization, the correct answer will probably be 4 days, or even never.

Of course, if there are too few personnel and insufficient strength, it will not work, otherwise, even if the work is completed, it will definitely not be ideal. But this is not a hard and fast rule. A common phenomenon is that there are too many people to be effective. Because everyone's time may not be spent on work, but used to coordinate the relationship between people.

There is a reliable standard for judging whether there are too many people. If a senior executive, especially a manager, has to spend 1/10 of his working time dealing with so-called "interpersonal problems", dealing with disputes and frictions, dealing with disputes and cooperation, etc., Then the unit would be considered too many. Too many people will inevitably violate each other and will inevitably become an obstacle to performance. In a lean organization, people have a large space for activities, and they will not conflict with each other, and they do not need to explain to others every time they work.

3. Another common reason for wasting time is poor organization. The manifestation is that there are too many meetings.

We have meetings only because we each have our own jobs, and we rely on each other to work together to accomplish a particular task. Moreover, the knowledge and experience required for a certain situation cannot all be stored in one person's head, and it is necessary to brainstorm ideas.

The problem is that there are too many meetings. In an organization that regularly works together in conferences, the opportunities for collaboration created in good faith by behavioral scientists will be superfluous. A manager who spends too much time in meetings is a sign of poor organization.

Each meeting spawns many other meetings, some formal and some informal, but each meeting takes hours. Therefore, to have a meeting, there must be a certain plan, otherwise it is not only annoying, but also a danger. Meetings should be the exception and not the rule. An organization where everyone meets at any time must be an organization where no one can do anything. Try to look at our time records, if you find that there are too many meetings - for example, the time spent in meetings is more than 1/4 of the total time, it must be an unsound organization that wastes time.

In principle, a manager's time must not be too much of a meeting. Too many meetings indicate improper position structure and improper unit setup. Too many meetings indicate that the work that should be done by one position or one unit has been dispersed to several positions or units. It also indicated confusion in duties and failure to deliver information to those who needed it.

4. The last time-wasting factor is that the information function is not perfect.

The director of a hospital has been struggling with calls from doctors in the hospital for years. Doctors called him and asked him to make a bed for the patient. The inpatient department said that there were no more beds, but the dean could find vacant beds almost every time. The reason is that when a patient is discharged, the inpatient department cannot be notified immediately. Of course, the head nurses of each ward can know at any time whether there are beds or not, and so can the cashier's desk that handles the billing procedures for discharge. People in the inpatient department go through the "bed survey" work at 5 a.m. every morning, and usually most patients go through the discharge procedures after the doctor's rounds in the morning. In fact, problems like this can be solved as long as the head nurses of each ward fill in an additional copy of the discharge notice and send it to the inpatient department.

Another equally common phenomenon is the inappropriate presentation of information. The consequences are sometimes more serious.

A common problem that manufacturing departments encounter is that production numbers are not directly available to production operations. For example, production, the report often only lists the "average production" required by the accounting department. But what the direct operator needs is not the average number, but the range and size, including the product mix, the variation in output, and the time of each batch. Therefore, when they need this kind of information, they don't have to spend a few hours every day to calculate, they have to set up their own secret statistics group in their own unit. Of course, the accounting department must have this kind of information, but usually no one wants to tell the accounting department what kind of information they need.

The above-mentioned shortcomings of time-wasting, such as too many people, unsound organization or failure of information systems, etc., can sometimes be easily improved, but sometimes it takes a lot of time and patience to improve. However, as long as you are willing to put in the effort, the effect of this improvement is great, especially it can save you a lot of time.

Unified arrangement of free time

After the manager has done his own time recording and analysis, of course, he knows how much time is available for important affairs. In other words, how much time is free to spend and how much time can be spent on things that really contribute.

However, don't expect too much of your free time. No matter how ruthlessly a manager cuts out wasted parts, he still won't have much free time.

I worked as a consultant for a bank for two years, researching the structure of the bank's top management. The president of this bank is probably the best time management executive I know. For two years, I met with him once a month, and he only gave me an hour and a half each time. And every time he talks, he is fully prepared first, so I have to prepare in advance. The content of our conversation is limited to one topic at a time. When we talked about 1 hour and 20 minutes, the president began to urge me: "Mr. Drucker, I think we should draw a conclusion and decide what topic to talk about next time." When he arrived, he stood up and shook hands with me. After about a year, I finally couldn't help asking him, "Mr. President, why do you limit each time we talk to an hour and a half?" He replied, "The reason is very simple, my attention can only be It lasts an hour and a half. No matter what the problem is, beyond this limit, there is nothing new in my conversation. Moreover, I also know that if the time is too short, less than an hour and a half, I am afraid that I will lose the focus of the problem. "

In every meeting, I found that there was never a phone call, and his secretary never pushed the door and said that the big man was waiting to see him. When I asked about this one day, he said, "My secretary knows that no one should be bothering me while I'm thinking. There are only two exceptions: the President of the United States and my wife. But the President of the United States rarely calls. , and my wife is well aware of my temper. Therefore, the secretary has to wait until we have finished talking to tell me about any major event. Then, I will answer the phone for half an hour and receive visitors. Of course, you know, I arrange this It's also an adventure, and maybe something really big can't wait for an hour and a half while we talk."

Needless to say, the president of the bank, what we do in our monthly meeting , far more than any equally capable manager who meets every day.

However, even a highly disciplined manager like him often has to spend at least half of his time dealing with many minor and not necessarily meaningful matters, as well as many personal issues. Involuntary things, such as receiving important customers who "drop by", attending meetings that he does not have to attend, and reviewing official documents that do not have to be reviewed by him.

Every time I hear a senior executive tell me that he can control at least half of his time and really can do what he thinks he should do. I listened, and I really felt that there was good reason to suspect that he had no idea of how his time was being spent. The time that senior executives can really use freely is only about 1/4 of the time. That is to say, he can only spend 1/4 of his time on important matters, on matters that he has contributed to, and on matters he should do. This estimate is not false at all, and it is certainly true of any organization. The exception may be senior officials in government agencies -- who tend to spend more unproductive hours than senior executives at other organizations.

The higher a manager's position is, the more time he must have outside his control. The larger the organization, the more time it must spend to keep the organization running rather than to function and produce.

Therefore, an effective manager knows that he must concentrate his free time. He knew that he needed to concentrate a whole block of time, and that time was divided into many segments, which meant that there was no time. If the time can be concentrated, even if it is only 1/4 of a working day, it is enough to handle several major events. Conversely, bits and pieces of time, even 3/4 of the working day in total, are useless.

Therefore, the last step in time management should be to concentrate the fragmented time at the discretion of the manager.

As for how to concentrate, everyone has their own way. Some high-ranking people leave one day a week to work from home. This method is often used by many journal editors and scientists who conduct research.

Some people schedule meetings, reviews, problem analysis, and other routine tasks to be done on one or two days of the week, while reserving the entire morning on other days for really important matters.

The president of a bank in the previous example managed his time this way. Things like holding business meetings, inviting senior staff to discuss and hosting important clients are all scheduled on Mondays and Fridays. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, the afternoons are not scheduled, and are used to deal with other affairs, such as researching sudden personnel problems, meeting with the returning foreign branch manager, receiving important customers, or going to Washington on business. But on the mornings of these three days, he schedules time for important matters in advance, in 90-minute units.

Another common approach is to schedule a time each afternoon to work from home.

Professor Carlson mentioned one of the most effective managers in his research report. The manager spends 90 minutes at home every morning before going to work, not answering the phone, dedicated to research work. If you have to go to work on time, then you naturally have to start work early in the morning at home. However, this approach is far better than taking important things home after get off work every day and spending 3 hours after dinner. Because it is inevitably overworked, it is best for people over middle age to go to bed early and get up early. But now more and more people like to take their work home and drive at night, which often creates a bad situation: people think they can work overtime at night, so they don't make enough time to work during the day.

However, I have to say it again: focus on your time, the "method" of focus is second, the important thing is how time is used. Many people focus on less important tasks, so they allocate a block of time. But this method doesn't work much. Because this kind of method, in terms of psychology or time, still can't let go of those secondary things, and those things that make little contribution and think that they cannot help but do. As a result, new time pressures will eventually be created to take up his free time and sacrifice what he should be doing. In a few days or weeks, the free time he had "concentrated" would be divided up by those so-called "new problems, new emergencies, new troubles".

The first step for an effective manager should be to estimate how much "free time" there is, really his own time, and then reserve a substantial chunk of continuous time. As soon as it was discovered that there was something else "cannibalizing" the time he kept, he would immediately analyze his time record carefully, and re-filter the less important work. They already know this, so they won't cut it too far.

All effective managers understand that the control and management of time cannot be done once and for all. They need to keep time records, analyze these records regularly, and set deadlines for some important activities to be completed according to the amount of time at their disposal.

There is an extremely effective supervisor who often has two such deadline sheets by his side. One is about emergencies, and the other is something you have no interest in doing but have to do it. Every time he finds that the completion time is behind the scheduled deadline, he is alerted that the available time is slipping away.

In short, time is the rarest resource. If you don't manage your time well, you're just talking about managing other things. And analyzing your time is also a way to systematically analyze your work and identify the importance of your work.

The wise saying "Know thyself" is too difficult for the average person to understand. However, "knowing your time" is something anyone can do if they want to, and it's the path to contribution and effectiveness.

——This article is authorized by Huazhang Branch of Machinery Industry Press, and is excerpted from the book "Effective Managers" by Peter Drucker, which was published by the press in June 2005.

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