"...As a supervisor I am continually asked to increase my knowledge.
The problem is, there are so many new topics I am running out of time to do little else
but learn. What is your experience in helping supervisors find the time to do everything
they need to do – including learning?" Mrs. W.D., California
THE INDUSTRY ADVISOR
FINDING TIME
Gene Levine - www.genelevine.com
As I grow older the more I realize time is a treasure to be spent wisely. By
watching very successful people throughout the years I have learned just how to maximize
available time. Learning time management takes time but yields results disproportionate to
the effort involved. Even Peter Drucker, in The
Effective Supervisor, wrote that "Nothing
else distinguishes effective supervisors as much as their tender loving care of
time."
First, I hope you realize that as a supervisor, your first priority is to give the people you supervise the positive attention they need. If you leave people to guesswork or chance, sooner or later, you’ll have to spend more time correcting problems than if people were dealt with correctly the first time.
You may feel you do not have enough time, but, you have as much as anyone else and you aren’t going to get anymore. Because time utilization is usually not a supervisory training topic most supervisors do not use their time effectively because they have never been taught the importance of prioritizing activities.
Here’s is a true story that will help make my point. It’s a safe assumption Charlie Schwab was a rather competent Chief Executive Officer. He was one of the few men ever to be paid $1,000,000 a year as former president of Bethlehem Steel.
In 1924, Schwab, wasn’t as satisfied with his own performance. He felt he could do more if he had more time. He granted an interview to Ivy Lee, a forerunner of today’s Business Consultants and told Mr. Lee, "I know what to do. What I want is a way to get it done. If you can show me how, I’ll pay you anything you ask – within reason – for the idea." What happened next became history.
Lee handed Schwab a blank sheet of paper. "Write down the six most important things you have to do. Put them in the order of their importance. The most important one on top, and so on. Tomorrow morning, start on item one and work on it until it’s finished. Then go on to the next item. Doing it this way you’ll always be working on the most important thing. If you do it any other way, you’ll end up going around in circles accomplishing nothing."
The steel executive tried the idea. It worked so well he reportedly sent Lee a check for $25,000 in appreciation (big dollars for less than 15 minutes worth of work).
The story is especially interesting because of Schwab’s willingness to try a simple idea others might have thought too elementary to bother with. So even highly capable, proven executives and supervisors can improve their effectiveness through prioritizing. Many years ago I was told, "If you write down a problem the solution is easier to find." The philosophy of Ivy Lee’s approach was 1) Put priorities on the important things that have to get done, 2) put the most important thing on the top of the list and 3) work on the most important priority first without worrying about the items further on down the list.
Peter Drucker, in Hospital Administration, wrote:
"A few people seem to do an incredible number of things. However, when you look a little more closely into precisely what they do, their impressive versatility is based mainly on doing one thing at a time. This also means they can do it much faster than those who try to do many things at once. In other words, they concentrate; they set priorities and stick to them."
We all know how difficult it is to set priorities. Every project is on somebody’s "must" list and we don’t like to say "No." But, when you get serious about managing your time you . . .
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