Time management for managers

There are two keys to time and efficiency management: 1) Focus. Determine your managerial strengths and develop them. Avoid falling victim to the frenzied atmosphere being generated today that suggests that as a manager, you have to have superior skills in all areas in order to survive. You are unique, and you bring unique capabilities to your role. As has been proven time and time again, it is not the particular method you employ that leads to success, but your employment of it with focus, discipline, and quality execution.

2) Prioritize. Everyone wants you to do everything with all your energy right now. You know perfectly well that that’s not going to happen. So, why do you keep trying to do it? The brilliant German General Erich von Manstein once offered a moral that helps assess this situation. He said that all officers are either smart or stupid, and also either energetic or lazy. Let’s get the stupid ones out of the way first: The stupid and lazy ones can usually be tolerated, but the stupid and energetic ones are an active danger and must immediately be eliminated root and branch (isn’t that the truth?).

Now the smart group: The smart and energetic ones make great staff officers, because they work on every tasking with no discrimination. Everything is equally important and they will simply toil ceaselessly to chip away at an ever-growing to-do list. Hopefully this doesn’t describe you any more than the previous group. The world is full of staff officers. They burn out and are replaced. And no one knows their names.

The smart and lazy ones make the best commanders. They know what’s really important - and they ignore the rest. Let’s say that again: They understand what mission accomplishment is, what will lead to it, and they separate out and focus on those things. The rest, they have determined to be of lesser or no importance, and they ignore them. They prioritize. Never mind lazy - they have managerial insight into what will lead to organizational success, and they have the character and discipline to focus on those issues and to insist on not jeopardizing their or their firm’s fortunes by wasting time in unproductive or pointless activity.

We know you’re smart. Now, work on being a little more organizationally self-indulgent.

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The importance of retaining control of your time and tasks as a manager | Managing Leadership on Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 9:04 pm

[...] Time management for managers - why the smart and lazy officer makes a better commander than the smart and energetic one. [...]