Table of Contents
How productive are you at the workplace? I hope you might have done some self-analysis for this. If not, then you must do that. People at the workplace put their efforts into productive activities, but many a time they landed up wasting their time in non-productive activities. It’s not that they do it intentionally, but it happens. One has to find the non-productive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if one possibly can. This requires asking oneself a number of diagnostic questions. The below outstanding excerpt is from ‘The Effective Executive’ by Peter F. Drucker.
#1 Question
One should try to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely a waste of time without any results whatever. To find these time-wastes, one asks of all activities in the time records: “What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it. This is one of the effective ways to avoid wasting time.
It is amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed. There are, for instance, the countless speeches, dinners, committee memberships, and directorships which take an unconscionable toll of the time of busy people, which are rarely enjoyed by them or done well by them, but which are endured, year in and year out. Actually, all one has to do is to learn to say “no” if an activity contributes nothing to one’s own organization, to oneself, or to the organization for which it is to be performed.
#2 Question
The next question is: “Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?”
There has been for years a great deal of talk about “delegation” in management. Every manager, whatever the organization—business, government, university, or armed service—has been exhorted to be a better “delegator.” In fact, most managers in large organizations have themselves given this sermon and more than once. Results are yet to be seen from these preachings. The reason why no one listens is simple: As usually presented, delegation makes little sense. If it means that somebody else ought to do part of “my work,” it is wrong. One is paid for doing one’s own work. And if it implies, as the usual sermon does, that the laziest manager is the best manager, it is not only nonsense; it is immoral.
There is not enough time to do the things the executive himself considers important, himself wants to do and is himself committed to doing. The only way he can get to the important things is by pushing on others anything that can be done by them at all.
Effective Deligation is a Way Out
“A good example is executive travel. Professor C. Northcote Parkinson has pointed out in one of his delightful satires that the quickest way to get rid of an inconvenient superior is to make a world traveler out of him. The jet plane is indeed overrated as a management tool. A great many trips have to be made, but a junior can make most of them. Travel is still a novelty for him. He is still young enough to get a good night’s rest in hotel beds. The junior can take the fatigue—and he will therefore also do a better job than the more experienced, perhaps better trained, but tired superior.”
There are also the meetings one attends, even though nothing is going to happen that someone else could not handle. There are the hours spent discussing a document before there is even a first draft that can be discussed. And there are plenty of people around with enough science to understand what the physicist is trying to say, who can write readable English, where the physicist only speaks higher mathematics. Altogether, an enormous amount of the work being done by executives is work that can easily be done by others, and therefore should be done by others.
“Delegation” as the term is customarily used is a misunderstanding—is indeed misdirection. But getting rid of anything that can be done by somebody else so that one does not have to delegate but can really get to one’s own work—that is a major improvement in the effectiveness.
#3 Question
A common cause of time-waste is largely under the executive’s control and can be eliminated by him. That is the time of others he himself wastes.
Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without nervousness: “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?” To ask this question, and to ask it without being afraid of the truth, is a mark of the effective executive. The manner in which an executive does productive work may still be a major waste of somebody else’s time.
A Good Practice to Implement
■ The senior financial executive of a large organization knew perfectly well that the meetings in his office wasted a lot of time. This man asked all his direct subordinates to every meeting, whatever the topic. As a result, the meetings were far too large. And because every participant felt that he had to show interest, everybody asked at least one question—most of them irrelevant. As a result, the meetings stretched endlessly. But the senior executive had not known, until he asked, that his subordinates too considered the meetings a waste of their time. Aware of the great importance everyone in the organization placed on status and on being “in the know,” he had feared that the uninvited men would feel slighted and left out.
Now, however, he satisfies the status needs of his subordinates in a different manner. He sends out a printed form which reads: “I have asked [Ms. _____, Mr. _____, and Mr. _______] to meet with me [Wednesday at 3] in [the fourth-floor conference room] to discuss [next year’s capital appropriations budget]. Please come if you think that you need the information or want to take part in the discussion. But you will, in any event, receive right away a full summary of the discussion and of any decisions reached, together with a request for your comments.”
Where formerly a dozen people came and stayed all afternoon, three men and a secretary to take the notes now get the matter over with within an hour or so. And no one feels left out.
So by using the above diagnosis questions, you can avoid wasting time & increase your effectiveness at the workplace.
“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”- Peter F. Drucker
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