From the author: The article was published in the magazine “Director”, No. 2 (14)/2009 As Winnie the Pooh said, time is like honey... if it is there, it is immediately gone. Or rather, Vinny was talking, of course, just about honey, but you must admit that over time in the work of a leader this very often happens. I came to work in the morning before everyone else, didn’t have time to look around - it was already lunch (and often I didn’t even notice it), and there it was already - and the employees were reaching for the exit - they, you see, working hours are over... With the volume and diversity of work that the manager has to do it - 24 hours in a day really aren’t enough for him. Although the statement that with well-organized time, work should not take more than 6-8 hours a day is also true. That is why we suggest you figure out where it, the manager’s time, goes. There are, of course, a great many ways of wasting time, and each of us diligently adds to this list with our own “sinks”, however, generalizing, we can identify several main reasons for temporary losses of management: - improperly organized system of meetings; - reverse delegation from subordinates; - incorrect prioritization; - improper organization of workers place and information; - lack of internal motivation. Let's look sequentially at where these reasons come from and how they are expressed in the work of a manager. So, the first reason. Improperly organized meeting system. With a high probability, it can be stated that you really lose time during meetings in the case when: - Your working five-minute meetings and weekly/monthly meetings take more than 20 and 60 minutes, respectively; - there are definitely expectations for each meeting every single one of them is late; - there is no clear order established at the meetings and/or time limits for the speeches of the participants are not indicated (there are no time limits for each speech); - during the meetings, problems are discussed and issues related to one or two people present are resolved, while the rest (and you too) are not doing anything; - the meeting has to be suspended due to telephone calls coming to the landline phone in the room or the mobile phones of the participants; - You yourself are present at meetings at which you have nothing to say (either because the topics not yours, or for any other reasons). And indeed, what are called five-minute meetings in organizations constantly turn into boring “one and a half hours”, and regular final meetings sometimes “eat up” half the working day. It is for this reason that the vast majority of managers, especially in budgetary organizations, do not like meetings as a class. In reality, regular meetings are an excellent management tool, which is aimed precisely at saving working time, and also allows for control, stimulation, and transfer of information within the company and, above all, maintain discipline among employees. The main thing is to organize the process correctly, and then the exceptional effectiveness of meetings will not be long in coming. The second reason. Reverse delegation on the part of subordinates. We can safely say that you are susceptible to reverse delegation, and it takes up a lot of your time when: - Your subordinates really like to contact you with various issues, including, in your opinion, small and insignificant; - more than two hours a day you spend on “supporting” the work of subordinates (unless, of course, we are talking about newcomers who have just arrived in the organization); - employees often call you on the phone when you are not in the organization, or on weekends if you have different schedule; - You often hear compliments from the series “You are so smart, you know everything”, “You will definitely do better at this”, “Well, for a specialist like you, such a small thing is worth it”; - on your to-do list There are a lot of formulations like “help P...”, “resolve the issue with S...”, “find for A...”, and all these abbreviations are the names of your subordinates. This becomes especially relevant when you have been working withwith your team and the relationship has already been established, they know very well what they can “catch” you with, and this is even more pronounced if you yourself have grown from a once ordinary employee. Understanding reverse delegation is not always as easy as it seems on the market. at first glance, because solving this issue often requires first restructuring oneself (habits, stereotypes, views), and only then interacting with subordinates and their bad habits. In addition, at the first stage, the desire to abandon reverse delegation and wean your subordinates from it may not reduce, but even increase the time spent on them, but in the end, by teaching your employees to be independent, you will receive significant savings in your own effort and time. Reason three. Incorrect prioritization (getting caught up in small matters, routine). Time loss is associated precisely with incorrect prioritization of tasks, when: - you plan all the tasks simply as a list, without marking the sequence of their implementation; - in your diary they “crawl” from day to day serious, global, important matters that you just can’t get around to; - You always first of all deal with those things that have arisen right now, without fully analyzing their importance; - when doing something that requires concentration, you are constantly forced to be distracted from it to resolve smaller issues; - your organization does not have “office hours” to resolve questions from visitors and employees, and/or “do not enter” signs during important matters of the manager; - you yourself answer all telephone calls coming to your office ( and even more so adjacent premises), look through emails arriving in a common mailbox, communicate personally with each manager offering advertising, website development and other services, and answer visiting visitors where to go. But setting priorities, along with setting goals - this is one of the most important levers of time management in general, because it has long been known that the 20% of the most important tasks bring 80% of the effectiveness and success (Pareto principle), and the task of the manager is precisely to accurately highlight these 20% of tasks. Of course, in addition to debugging the arrangement priorities, you may have to work on the formulation of tasks, time norms, determining the first step and a number of other details, but by at least starting to divide things into several categories based on the criterion of importance, you will save a lot of time and effort. Reason four. Incorrect organization of the workplace and information. You lose a lot of your precious time due to incorrect organization of the workplace, when: - both in the evening and in the morning your desktop is equally cluttered, it is a little freer only during vacation; - You are often looking for the necessary document on your desktop for more than a minute; - there are no signatures on the folders with paper documents that you work with, and there are separators and bookmarks inside them; - in the roots of most electronic folders on your computer there are more than 10 subfolders or documents (the exception is alphabetical archives by last name or organizations that are convenient to store together); - any employee of your company can put some paper on your desk without your knowledge. And indeed, a manager’s littered desk is often not only the subject of numerous jokes from colleagues and subordinates, but also a real headache its owner. It’s extremely simple to check how effectively the organization of your workplace is working - searching for any item you need (even if it’s a stapler) or document on your desktop, desktop, shelf or any electronic folder should not take more than 30 minutes. 40 seconds. Fifth reason. Lack of internal motivation. Your time is unconstructively spent on self-persuasion and other motivational issues, precisely because of reduced motivation for work, if: - the first associations that you have with the word “work” can be attributed more to negative than even neutral or those more positive; - hand on heart, each orAlmost every morning you go to work reluctantly and/or you simply don’t like the color of the walls, floor, ceiling, table, etc. in your office; - your daily to-do list contains a large number of “toads” (that is, tasks that are unpleasant, and therefore you don’t want to do them at all); - before you begin solving the next task, you need to tune in for a few minutes and even force yourself; - You are happy to be distracted by coffee, a cigarette or a personal telephone conversation, regardless of what exactly you were doing. In reality, if most of your tasks are formulated for yourself in terms of “need”, you can already talk about lack of work motivation. The maximum task in this regard is to teach yourself to think in terms of “I want” in relation to work. If, while responding to statements in different sections of the article, you discovered several “black holes” at once, into which your time may be wasted, it’s okay, implement measures to eliminate them consistently. If you haven’t found any, try doing timekeeping for two weeks - that is, simply write down all your actions in the process of work with an accurate (to the minute) indication of the time for each. Such calculations, even if they do not directly indicate the causes of temporary losses, will be an excellent stimulant for you in terms of working tone, because, as you know, regular measurement of any indicator already affects its growth. Sidebars: How to make meetings more effective: 1. Determine what type of meetings you need (daily five-minute meetings, weekly or monthly meetings to sum up results, problem meetings that are not strictly tied to a time grid). 2. For each type of meeting, develop competent regulations (determine who should be present at the meetings, in what order they will speak, and what the topic of their speeches will be), determine when it is more convenient to hold it (it is advisable that the meeting does not fall on Monday morning or Friday evening ) and set time limits.3. Follow the rules (start on time, regardless of the number of people present, limit speakers if they “begin talking”)4. Instruct someone to keep minutes of the meeting, where all orders given during the meeting will be entered, with deadlines and those responsible for their implementation, as well as interesting ideas expressed by the participants. How to overcome the phenomenon of “reverse delegation”: 1. Try to determine the reason why reverse delegation occurs so often. For example, you may have really low-skilled employees working for you. Or you set tasks illiterately. Or your subordinates are afraid to take responsibility. Or they are simply accustomed to you doing most of the work yourself. 2. Determine a way to deal with the identified cause. If the ways to deal with the first two reasons (low qualifications of personnel and incorrect task setting) lie on the surface (teach an employee or learn how to set a task yourself), then the other two are becoming more serious. Employees’ fear of taking responsibility for the results of task completion is often caused by excessive the predominance of negative reinforcement over positive (that is, when they scold much more often and more seriously than they praise). Think about the last time you uttered praise out loud and when you reprimanded, and if there are really more of the latter than the former, this is a direct path for you to learn the same operational management. 3. Fight. Since most often reverse delegation is still associated with the bad habit of employees to shift their affairs to you (and they do this for the simple reason that you willingly take them away), you need to work with it for a long time and consistently. Do not decide for your subordinates their tasks, and send them to do it themselves. It sounds something like this: “think again for yourself, and come to me in... (indicate time) at least with... solution options.” How to increase efficiency in working with priorities: 1. Write it down on a piece of paper (you can use your work diary to help)a list of all the tasks that are currently facing you.2. Divide them into three groups: category A - the most important matters that cannot be delayed. Category B – things that can be done today, tomorrow, and even the day after tomorrow without loss of efficiency, but if they are completed today, this will free up time for you in the future. Category C – tasks that must be completed someday, if there is time left from the tasks of the first two categories.3. Perform your tasks in a given sequence. It is advisable to do similar actions for each specific working period (working day, week, month). In addition, you can include both purely work tasks and personal matters (visits to doctors, the gym, self-development, etc.) in your lists. If you have long mastered such prioritization, you can use more complex systems (for example, the Eisenhower matrix, in which tasks are divided into several categories according to scales of importance and urgency). How to organize your workplace: 1. Make it a rule to regularly clean your desk. It’s good if it’s Friday (or Saturday if you have a six-day work week) - so that when you leave work at the end of the week and look at your cleaned desk, you feel well-deserved satisfaction from the work you’ve completed so far.2. Distribute all the items and documents currently on the table and in the table into three groups: what is necessary (what you use every day), what is not urgently needed (what you use no more than once a week) and not necessary at all. Leave only the items of the first group on the table, remove everything else, and try to sort them in desk drawers, shelves, etc. in such a way that the more frequently used items and papers are also more accessible (lay closer).3. Check that the number of documents in each folder/subfolder/tray, etc. (and here we are talking about both printed and electronic documents) does not exceed nine.4. Use all possible visualization tools that will help you quickly navigate your desktop, as well as in shelves and drawers (this can be large inscriptions, colored bookmarks, page separators, separate trays for different documents, etc.).5. Introduce clear rules for colleagues and subordinates to interact with you through your desktop (email, server, etc.). For example, agree that it is prohibited to place documents on your desk in your absence, or have a special tray for incoming documentation, or agree on special marks for urgent papers (colored sticker). As soon as the rules are formed and tested, demand their strict adherence. How to increase self-motivation: 1. Find 20, or better yet 30, advantages in your current job. You can even write a free-form essay on the topic “why I love my job.” The only condition is that at this time you do not pay the slightest attention to the disadvantages of your adored work, even if they stubbornly try to show themselves to your eyes.2. Give yourself a reward for a successful day at work or a completed task. It can be anything (buy yourself ice cream or a chocolate bar, allow me to take a five-minute break, call your loved one, watch your favorite movie in the evening, etc.), the main thing is that you can tell yourself – this is for me....3. When making a list of tasks for the day, week or month, highlight one “toad” (an unloved, long-postponed task or a conversation with an unpleasant interlocutor) and complete it first thing in the morning (on Monday, the first day) so that it does not “hang” over you like Damocles sword, and the rest of the period passed smoothly. Be sure to praise yourself for completing it on time, mark it visually or with an action (for example, boldly cross out the wording of this task in your diary or happily crumple up and throw away the piece of paper with its name that was attached to the monitor/rack/diary).4. When planning your day, pay attention to the sequence of tasks. Let more complex ones intersperse with.