Drucker’s Time Management: Record, Eliminate, Then Consolidate

#TimeManagement One of a manager’s main challenges is that time is not their own: demands can crowd in and interrupt at any moment. The higher a manager’s position, the more time the organization takes. General managers, for example, often attend social functions, entertain important customers and government officials, and appear at public events. Large amounts of time are spent on activities that contribute nothing. More troubling, few managers recognize this. Most have no idea how their time is allocated. One chairman confidently told Drucker that a third went to business discussions, a third to customers, and a third to social activities. Drucker asked his secretary to record his actual daily allocation for six weeks. Most of it went to routine coordination, such as personally calling to chase deliveries. The supposedly important business discussions, customer meetings, and social activities received hardly any time. Drucker said that if managers cannot ‘know themselves,’ they should at least ‘know their time.’ This is not difficult: consistently record how time is spent. Crucially, record an activity while doing it, rather than reconstructing it afterward from unreliable memory. Once time allocation is recorded, the second step is to cut waste aggressively. Ask which activities are unnecessary, which can be delegated, and which waste other people’s time—for example, repeatedly summoning everyone to meetings. Drucker asserts that any manager who seriously reviews their time record will find considerable time spent on such unnecessary activities. Cancel what should be canceled and delegate what should be delegated; these are relatively straightforward fixes. Another kind of waste arises from the organization’s own management shortcomings. The same crises may recur repeatedly, keeping managers frantically occupied. A system could often prevent them before they happen, eliminating daily firefighting. For example, at each fiscal year-end, the U.S. Department of Defense struggled to spend its entire annual budget or return the unused amount to the Treasury. Everyone became exceptionally busy. When Robert McNamara became defense secretary, he discovered a provision in U.S. law allowing necessary unspent funds to move into a temporary account rather than be returned. The discovery ended the annual emergency spending rush and freed attention for more important matters. Drucker concluded: ‘If a factory always seems frantically busy, it must be poorly managed. A well-managed factory is invariably dull, with no exciting events, because possible crises have already been anticipated and their solutions made routine.’ #TurnExceptionManagementIntoRoutineManagement Other organizational sources of wasted time include overstaffing, frequent meetings, and poor information flow. Even after all these are resolved, a manager’s time remains limited. Senior executives generally control only a quarter of their working time. If that quarter is fragmented rather than concentrated, the result is disastrous. Many important matters require a minimum uninterrupted period. Work done in shorter intervals cannot be done well; the time is wasted, and the next attempt must start over. Important decisions require still more time. Effective executives approach them carefully, often thinking deeply for several hours at once and repeatedly weighing the alternatives before deciding. The third step is to find ways to consolidate fragments into solid blocks. Senior managers might work from home one day a week or concentrate routine matters on certain days to free the others. Greater effectiveness requires longer uninterrupted periods. Those blocks must then be used effectively: concentrate on one thing at a time, and on the most important thing. This is the principle of putting first things first. But managers often face several important matters. How should they order them? Drucker offers two suggestions. First, do not stay busy with yesterday’s tasks. Once work starts, people tend to keep going even if it has no future value. This resembles the economic concept of sunk costs; decisively abandon it. People also become dependent on past successes. A product may once have brought enormous success but no longer meet future market needs. The company must then focus on developing new products rather than endlessly preserving the old one. Second, do not set priorities by pressure. The most pressing, apparently urgent matter is not necessarily the most important. Truly important work—thinking strategically about the future or turning decisions into action—often lacks urgency. If pressure sets priorities, that work is postponed. Experienced managers know ‘leave it until later’ really means ‘never do it.’ That is the first route to effectiveness: manage time well. Record its use, cut wasteful and low-value activities, consolidate fragments into blocks, and follow the principle of putting first things first, doing one thing at a time.