Great managers – obstacles to spending time on highest value activities

Terry Thompson, Surrey, BC, CYBF Mentor, tesh@shaw.ca

The main reasons that managers (including CEO’s) do not properly allocate their time to the high value priority activities are:

1. Lack of awareness as to what these activities are and how much time is required for each in a normal day/week/month/year;
2. Time allocation is not tracked or self-assessed;
3. Compensating for under-performing subordinates:

a.    Not delegating the appropriate amount of work to them;
b.    Spending too much time ensuring that work is done and/or done correctly;
c.    Spending too much time solving problems that the subordinate should be solving.

4. Underdeveloped time management skills;
5. Carrying out administration work that could be delegated to a subordinate.
   

You will notice that having too much to do is not listed. This is because in the significant majority of situations it is not a primary reason and is, in fact, a result of one or more of the above factors.

In my previous article I listed the top activities that any manager must perform to be a great manager. The time required by each manager to undertake these activities will depend upon:

1. The number of people reporting to the manager;
2. The expected growth of the manager’s department;
3. The self-sufficiency of the manager’s direct reports;
4. The manager’s self-sufficiency with respect to each activity;
5. The support offered by the company (e.g. HR, finance) in certain areas.

So what are the next steps that you need to take for you to become a great manager (if you are not already one) and to take any managers that report to you to greatness?

The first step is to identify what is by far the most significant obstacle to personal development – the need to change behaviour. For some people there will be little behaviour change needed – for others a lot. Naturally, the greater degree of behaviour change needed, the lower the probability that it will happen.

My next articles will discuss behaviour change in more depth and hopefully provide you with additional insight so that you may properly identify the behaviour changes needed to improve yourself and any subordinate managers, and the steps that will increase the probability of achieving the desired behaviour change.

Should you have any questions or feedback regarding the content of this article please email me at tesh@shaw.ca ©