Making time management the organization’s priority

The impact of always-on communications, the growing complexity of global organizations and the economic uncertainty have all added to a feeling among executives that there are simply not enough hours in the day to get things done. What’s more, only 52 percent said that the way they spent their time largely matched their organizations’ strategic priorities. Nearly half admitted that they were not concentrating sufficiently on guiding the strategic direction of the business.

When we asked nearly 1,500 executives across the globe to tell us how they spent their time, only 9% of the respondents deemed themselves “very satisfied” with their current allocation. Less than half were “somewhat satisfied,” and about one-third were “actively dissatisfied.”

Leaders who are serious about addressing this challenge must stop thinking about time management as primarily an individual problem and start addressing it institutionally. They would benefit from:

- Having a ‘time leadership’ budget—and a proper process for allocating it

- Thinking about time when introducing organizational change

- Ensuring that individuals routinely measure and manage their time

- Refining the master calendar

- Providing high-quality administrative support

The starting point is to get clear on organizational priorities—and to approach the challenge of aligning them with the way executives spend their time as a systemic organizational problem, not merely a personal one.

To read the full article from Mc Kinsey, please click here.