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How Do Top Managers Manage Time?

2008/8/9 14:50:00 41790

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Editor's note: how do successful managers explore suitable strategies, methods and means?

The "efficient personal time" and "flexible time management art" put forward in this article are successful managers' experience. They are not only practical, but also provide us with a new angle to think about time management.

A manager once said to me, "you know, we had never had any training in methods of work at that time.

There are so many things on our table that we can hardly breathe.

I do know this, but the following question is: is CEO often overwhelmed by work?

How exactly did they organize and schedule the time and tasks of the day?

What is the best day of the top people?

What implications do they have for managers and professionals at all levels?

Now we will see how these top managers find their own useful ways of excellence.

Time switching strategy for top managers

If you ask some ordinary managers what a good day should be in their minds, most people may reply, "I think time should be controlled much more tightly than it is now. I am casual at 9:00; when I am 10:00, I still fail to clear up my mind" or "I think I should close the door and concentrate on my work, so many things have already been completed."

Most of them are well organized and efficient. One day is achieved through tight control. They also think that CEO must have done the same.

But what surprises me most is that the most important premise of CEO organization is the flexibility of time arrangement.

What they focus on is not to control their time, but to concentrate on controlling what should be done through the endless changes in the day.

Using personal time efficient approach

Do you have the best time of the day to call it an efficient time?

The answer is, of course, yes.

Most people are most conscious in the morning, and some in the afternoon are the best.

The purpose of this discussion is to allocate the most challenging tasks to your most competent time.

Taking advantage of the quiet hours of early morning and late night, some people still believe in the eighteenth Century Matthew Henry: "those who make big things must get up early."

Disney's boss Robert Egle (Robert A. Iger) gets up at 4:45 every day, goes to the gym to exercise, and enters the office at 6:00 to read all kinds of materials until she holds the first meeting of the day.

"I think people have their own circadian rhythms," he said. "But for me, the morning is the peak time, and it's more peaceful."

Howard Rubinstein came to his study in the house before 4:30 every morning and quickly ran through the TV news. Then he began to deal with the documents with different colors that he brought home, determined the phone call to return, signed the cheque, and fixed the day's schedule, so he would stretch his body and run after it was over for a while.

Announcer and Don Imus always wake up at 4:17 and begin to "think about how to annoy people," Don Eames said.

Janet Wagner (Jeanette Wagner), vice chairman of the board of Estee Lauder group of New York, likes to deal with some routine tasks such as signing letters, checking checks, and so on at the end of the day and when he feels tired.

"On the other hand," Wagner said, "if I really want to solve something important, whether it's a complicated personnel problem, or how to think about how to start a middle level manager meeting, I will choose the weekend's special personal time or the early quiet time to deal with it.

Sometimes, 3:00 at night can be a very creative time. "

"I don't want to sleep too long," Wagner continued. "I often wake up in the middle of the night and take notes to write down what I think is important.

Sometimes, I can even solve a problem that was difficult to solve before, or draft an outline of a complete project plan that was hard to come up with before. "

Getting up at 5:00 in the morning may make many people dare not imagine.

But if you get up at 6:30 in normal times, you can advance half an hour earlier, and then advance an hour. Many people find that cutting off some sleep time is not so terrible, and the benefits gained, such as completing more work, and slowing down the whole day's work, are huge and lasting.

Using the quiet time on the road, another quiet time outside the office is the way to commute. Many managers can be efficient in their journey time because they have special drivers to pick them up and go to work. Most people can use the following two ways to achieve this effect.

1. make use of public pport.

Mary Barnby once said, "I work very efficiently in the morning. When I go to the subway, I always bring a stack of documents to deal with. I spend 1 hours and 20 minutes on the road. It's really a good opportunity."

Whenever I leave Manhattan for the airport in the early morning, I think the most time wasting thing is to sit on the other side of the highway which leads to Manhattan to Long Island.

I asked myself, why do they prefer to honk their horn there, endure such troubles and great waste of time, and do not want to take the subway and make good use of the great amount of time on the road?

I really can't figure it out.

In fact, many office workers besides private cars, there are two choices of subway and bus.

Just imagine that the freedom and comfort you are sacrificing without the private car are compared with the efficiency obtained by using the quiet and undisturbed time on the way of the subway.

2. make use of the time saved reasonably.

If many office workers in the same area can get together, they may also adopt the "popular base" approach now popular in Washington, D.C.

There, the office workers, who do not know each other, take the private cars of other people at the predetermined parking points and enter the urban area quickly through the fast lane of many passenger vehicles.

The most important thing is that the car must be quiet, no music, no chatting, no cell phone interruption, you can work, think, read, or rest in it.

5 tips for finding quiet time at work include: 1. Retreat.

If you have the freedom to come and go freely, if you are not at the desk, the manager will not ask, "where has Gary gone?"

You can retire to an empty conference room or get up to take a walk around the office compartment, or take some books to the coffee shop.

General manager of a general food department sneaks into an empty glass office next door, so that he can think about the problem without interruption.

Every day when a lawyer in New York greets his colleagues, he will turn to another elevator and go down to Starbucks coffee for an hour.

2, negotiate with your superiors for a quiet time for yourself.

If a mere retreat does not work, you can negotiate with your boss for a quiet time for yourself.

From your boss's point of view, the advantage of doing this is that you can concentrate on dealing with something that he or she thinks is important.

The rigid collective rest time usually does not have any use. Too many unexpected things will make the whole team completely out of their mission.

3, use the writing board.

People can still find you when you close the door.

Many companies pursue an open door policy, and people frown on closed doors.

But for Niekelodeon, a manager of one of the most avant-garde children's TV stations, he can open and close others to find him. He installed a writing board and writing pen on his door.

When his door is closed, people who want to see him only need to write prompt information on the writing board.

The way it works is that whenever he appears in front of the tablet, he will immediately follow the directions to find those people, so that everyone knows that it is not necessary to break into his office directly and find him as well.

In other words, when you go to those who leave information to you, you must remain extremely cautious. This is the only way to make your escape time beneficial to yourself and your colleagues.

Tip: what if your colleague closes the door without writing boards?

A yellow sticker can be placed above the doorknob so that visitors can use it to conveniently write down messages and paste them on the door.

4, set up no interference period.

If you are a leader in a group, you can ask your colleagues to give you an uninterrupted time. A lawyer mentioned in my early book, a well-organized manager, told his colleagues in the office:

5, stagger the rush hour.

Leave the office one hour before lunch time. If you arrive early, for example, at 11:30, many restaurants will allow you to sit in advance or do some work.

Are you unwilling to fight for high efficiency?

Many people do not want to do this even if there is no obstacle or difficulty. Some people even tell me that they feel sorry for their customers and colleagues at that time.

If you have such concerns, you can use the following two questions to confirm your real situation: 1, if you are your own colleague or client, will you occupy all your attention?

Only when your important time is guaranteed, your attention to someone will be assured. Who has not experienced the difficulties and sufferings of people who have no time for themselves?

2, when you are in a meeting, customers and colleagues can not find you. If you take your private time as if you are attending an important meeting, what should you think?

You can even apply this idea to similar things in your work.

Top management how to organize changing working hours -- basic work point checking plan

"Every day before I start work, I will have a simulation game, imagine what I should do, suddenly meet unexpected meetings or emergencies, and open the door" bang ". Through this game, I try to find a better way to control my time.

Almost everyone was overwhelmed by the flash of communication at the moment. A customer relationship manager of a financial industry once told me, "the most important thing is to be affected."