Of Time And The Manager, Ross A. Webber

Instead we have many fragmented, partial answers to our countless questions on how to manage our most precious resource. This article summarizes what I have observed to be the common attitudes and behaviors demonstrated by effective time managers (ETM's). These managers:

No objective instruments can measure these behaviors, and few ETM's exhibit all of them, but these characteristics best capture the attitude of people who confront the mystery of time's inexorable passage and at least give it a good battle.

Projecting oneself into the future. Achievement-oriented people often have watches that are fast! They set their timepieces ahead (along with alarm clocks) in order to create time; thereby maintaining an illusory sense of being more in control of time than is possible. This practice is self-delusive, of course, but it indicates the future orientation that characterizes many effective time managers.

ETM's continuously transcend the flow of present events to consider the future, so that it might be mastered. One of the less exalted, but useful, common acts of ETM's is to sit on the toilet contemplating their weekly and monthly calendars. They project themselves into the future to see what is coming up. Too many unpredictable surprises spring on managers: they don't want to be ambushed by foreseeable deadlines and crises.

Central to this future-oriented perspective is converting the unique to the routine. By examining the flow of events on the job, an effective manager can detect the predictable crises that can be anticipated by standing policies and procedures. Thus when a difficult, but foreseeable incident occurs, it need not be handled as a unique problem. Rather, it has been analyzed in advance and solutions are on hand. The unique crisis is thereby converted into a routine, programmed task. The wheel is invented once and then reused rather than repeatedly being invented anew.

On board a United States Navy ship, responses to predictable emergencies are rehearsed to convert them into routine. During every four-hour shift, the whole watch crew rehearses responses to crises such as losing steering control, detecting an unidentified submarine, or losing electrical power. Similarly, a business can define procedures to be followed for predictable crises such as an intoxicated employee, wildcat strike, plant accident, or impending loss of a major customer.

Many readers may feel that such anticipation is obvious to managers: The need to anticipate is key to management. Many non-managers do not think this way, however. Professionals like physicians and lawyers, for example, are inclined to focus full attention and analysis on each case as if it were unique. My experience observing the offices of United States senators suggests that this is the predominant orientation in the Senate. Events are handled as unique, priorities are not differentiated, crisis predominates, and a great deal of time is consumed.

What many professionals and politicians fear about converting crisis to routine is that events will be assigned to the wrong categories- that something truly unique and important will be treated as routine. Hence the subtly different symptoms of the rare disease will be undetected and the patient mistakenly treated for the minor familiar illness. Or the letter from an especially influential constituent will be erroneously handled by a junior aide who orders an inappropriate reply composed of computer-canned paragraphs. Such feat is understandable, but not managerial. To be a manager implies defining and accepting at least some amount of risk.

Projecting personal cues, momentum, and artificial deadlines. When you were a child did you eat your spinach first or last? It could have been cauliflower or broccoli, but most everyone had some vegetable they just hated to eat. Nonetheless, many of us 'had parents who enforced a rule allowing "no dessert" until all of the main course was eaten, including the dreaded vegetable.

Assuming you really wanted that sweet reward at dinner's end, your two polar choices were to eat the spinach first and then be home free or save it until last, just before the ice cream. No data exist on the percentage opting for either course. but the dilemma is suggestive of self and time management. Procrastinators seek to put off the spinach in hope that the demanding parent will relax his or her guard and forget to enforce the rule. In contrast, ETM's usually consume the spinach of their jobs first.

People who don't really believe they control their lives look for external events to energize them. They want clear cues signaling when they should begin a difficult task. Astrology, fortune tellers, or happy coincidences are sought after to provide the necessary encouragement or even desired discouragement. Such people may delay starting a diet until an appropriate time, like a "Monday" or the "first of the month" or even a first of the month that is a Monday. Control over one's life can be abdicated to chance.

The moral of the spinach tale is that effective time management usually includes the courage to confront the difficult and unpleasant early - sooner rather than later. Thus, ETM's seldom accept other people's deadlines, but create artificial deadlines that are earlier. Although this would seem to increase the pressure on managers, paradoxically such self-set artificial deadlines seem to have the opposite effect. Such deadlines create the illusion that one is just a little more in control of time. ETM'S know they have a little leeway beyond the artificial deadline, but they almost never use it.

A college roommate of mine was one of the best time managers I've ever seen. He simply refused to engage in madly typing a paper all night before the morning class at which it was due. And he never studied a particular subject the night before the examination. He set his deadlines twenty-four hours in advance and might pull an "all-nighter" then if necessary. But, at the last minute, while we were trying to cover everything, he had a serenity that helped him fit ideas together in creative ways while we could only regurgitate as fast as we could write.

Some people, of course, have trouble starting a difficult task in the morning or after lunch. A tough, ambiguous, postponable job can be extremely discouraging. Momentum can be developed, however, by beginning with some easy, programmed tasks like routine correspondence and bureaucratic detail. But set a time limit on how long you will do this, and stick to it. A desk alarm set for thirty minutes will signal you to stop the easy and start the difficult. Don't be sucked in by the sense of achievement you may feel from completing the routine tasks. Give them up after a half hour and confront the ambiguous.

Saying "no," being selectively ignorant, and challenging the status quo. Effective time managers learn how to say "no" to their bosses' demands. Many superiors are horrified at the idea, but let us consider it for a minute. Certainly a manager has a right to expect that his or her subordinates will generally do what they are told. Sometimes, however, a subordinate has an obligation not to do what a superior directs.

NEWTON Minow was President John Kennedy's Director of the Federal Communications Commission. One evening Kennedy became extremely angry after watching the "Huntley-Brinkley" news report, because he felt he had been unjustly criticized. In a fit of rage, he called Minow on the telephone and with various colorful oaths ordered his aide to punish NBC, to "get" those s.o.b.'s through any means available. Minow replied that he would look into it.

But Minow did nothing. The next day be wrote a note to Kennedy indicating how lucky the president was to have subordinates who were so loyal that they didn't always do what they were told. Kennedy recognized Minow's wisdom and called him with thanks. Minow believed, and Kennedy agreed (when his anger had abated), that a loyal subordinate sometimes should say "no" in order to protect a boss from the consequences of his or her own folly.

Saying "no" extends to telling a superior when time demands are excessive or deadlines impossible to meet. The word "no" is in quotes because it doesn't mean to refuse a task. Rather, subordinates should try to bargain with their superiors to lessen unreasonable demands. Don't passively accept a deadline when you know meeting it will be impossible. Remaining silent only misleads a superior into thinking the job will be done on time.

In addition, developing tactics for selectively ignoring certain cues and demands, for determining what doesn't really have to be done, is crucial to effective time management. Ignoring cues is necessary in many settings. For example, colleges frequently hire graduate students as dormitory advisors. A dormitory adviser is expected to be a friend and adviser to undergraduates, a communication link to the administration, and an enforcer of university regulations. However, it is difficult to be both friend and police officer. Being too conscientious in the latter role can destroy the former.

Similarly, in industry some industrial engineers are expected to be advisers to line managers at the same time they monitor production performance and set standards and budgets. But advising and monitoring are tough to combine, because most people are unlikely to discuss their real inadequacies with anyone who evaluates them. The line managers may not necessarily lie, but they do sometimes hide the truth.

The most debilitating response to role stress, paradoxically, is the most passive: Unfortunate is the person who tries to meet everyone's expectations. Some great men and women may be all things to all people, but most cannot. Trying to meet all demands can have a markedly adverse impact on satisfaction and even on mental and physical health. The time of one's life can be chewed up by others' inappropriate demands.

Effective time managers develop criteria for deciding which cues and demands to ignore. These criteria include:

The dormitory adviser might take action against only major rule violation and ignore the more numerous minor ones. The newly promoted supervisor might apply pressure on former working buddies only when a crisis arises or when higher management is physically present. Otherwise, the supervisor would adhere to the group's informal code.

In fact, one study indicates that superiors give higher ratings to managers who ignore demands that interfere with performance, and lower ratings to managers who conform more closely to their supervisors' demands. Getting the job done is what most superiors value.

Unfortunately, many managers and professionals are characterized by personal passivity. Huge gobs of calendar and career time are lost because we don't attempt to change what others demand. Passivity sometimes springs from a feeling of helplessness, that the organization has so many confining roles and traditions that one can't be "different." Of course, organizations do demand substantial conformity, but many binding chains are of our own forging. And many organizations would accept and reward initiative.

For example, a young assistant manager in a posh department store was told by everyone that be wouldn't be allowed to sell used jeans. The store's affluent clientele would supposedly be offended and store management agreed. But, he did and no one was. His initiative was very successful and he was widely praised.

To some people, rules become ends to be pursued without thought as to whether they actually contribute to the firm's objectives. Policies and procedures are, of course, essential to giving stability and control to organizations. Unfortunately, they also create problems because immediately after being written, they begin to become obsolete. Therefore, if they are followed blindly, management loses direction. Means and ends are inverted.

Joseph Hall, long-time chief executive at the Kroger Company, suggested that his executives should periodically change their view of their jobs. In order to forestall overreliance on the past, "I would tell them that they should, a couple of times a year, pretend they are a new man on the job. All right, one of the first things you do is just go through your desk and look at the files and clean them out; and everything that crosses your desk you question: Why? Never take things for granted. I don't believe in tradition unless tradition is sound."

PERHAPS even more dangerous for the organization is that spontaneity disappears. Once established, controls tend to limit flexibility and initiative. In the beginning at least, management gains in coordination and predictability what it may lose in initiative. Nonetheless, since policies, procedures, and controls are based on the past, it is difficult to keep them up to date: Policies may no longer apply to new conditions, controls may measure irrelevant factors, and those rational plans which were developed to promote organizational effectiveness begin to interfere with the accomplishment of objectives.

If managers blindly follow these rules, spontaneity is lost. If they feel that punishment awaits any unsuccessful departure from procedure, managers may do what "the book" requires - and that's aH. No spontaneity will be demonstrated, and apathy will be prevalent.

Saying "no," bargaining, and challenging the status quo are all easier said than done, of course. Substantial courage and self-control may be required. An astute manager will fight to change demands, but not always. For example, a divisional general manager should oppose the most crippling central policies, but he cannot fight all the time, or his upward influence will be totally expended and his credibility gone.

Withdrawing and hiding periodically. The biggest problem with discretionary time is that it is so chopped up. We can't get anything done because we are interrupted every ten minutes. We may even underestimate how much discretionary time we potentially possess or find it impossible to start anything substantial for fear of being interrupted.

[ 2/5/09: Webmaster note - One CEO of a major insurance company came to work four hours before everyone else in order to get work done BEFORE the routine daily interruptions prevented him from focusing on any one problem long enough to tackle it efficiently - undoubtedly forcing its 'for real' resolution to be delayed until the next morning. I always face the same problem when working on creatively new computer programs and web sites - after a few hours, my mind gets so cluttered with details and demands from the new day's activities that I can't focus on anything for more than a few minutes. ]

One of the most proficient time managers among recent United States presidents was Richard Nixon (although many people didn't like what he did with his time!). In the Executive Office Building across the street from the White House, President Nixon had a small private office where he could work alone. When he walked over to his private office with his yellow legal pads, his aides knew they should interrupt for only the gravest cause.

All presidents have found it essential to have secluded retreats such as Hyde Park, Key West, and Camp David. Business executives may also maintain two offices and work at the isolated location periodically. (An entrepreneur in Fairfield county, Connecticut, erected an office building specifically intended to provide second offices for Manhattan executives residing in Connecticut.)

Other common practices are to work at home one day a week; close the office door and refuse all calls; or merely to utilize travel time. "You don't have to talk to anybody on a plane," comments a company president. "A couple of hours on a plane and you can do a tremendous amount of concentration, and that's impossible in the office." An ETM makes an effort to consolidate chunks of uninterrupted time in order to think more deeply about organizational problems.

At the most modest level, a manager may gain a little isolation by refusing to participate in working luncheon meetings. These meetings cut into free time on an expense account at a lower rate of remuneration than a manager receives for office time. Instead of thus working for their lunch money, some executives eat alone in the office, sit in the park, or go to the zoo. (Medical research supports skipping the working lunch in favor of eating alone because talking while eating is one of the most stressful of executive activities.)

Periodic isolation seems so simple, but risks are involved. Can the manager afford to be unreachable? The President of the United States clearly cannot, so he has extensive communications equipment that travels with him. Many managers take much the same view of themselves. If they are accessible, however, how can they confine interruptions only to true emergencies?

Decisions about frequency and length of isolation periods depend upon the demands of the manager's position, the magnitude of potential emergencies, and faith in subordinates. An operating supervisor can be out of touch for only short periods; the demands of technology and subordinates are too insistent. A high-level general executive will have much more leeway.

[ 5/5/01: Webmaster note - One secret learned quite accidentally while in the U. S. Navy was that our brains can solve problems while we are asleep. And, when the problem is critical, we can awaken the instant the solution is presented within a 'dream'. The key is the ability of the brain to refresh itself during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep - the state associated with dreaming. This means that merely taking a 15 to 90 minute "nap" once (or more) during the day can help one resolve numerous critical issues during one 24 hour period - the total time required being a function of how quickly one's brain can transition into REM sleep.
8/30/2009 update: This is also why, in many cases it is better to 'sit on' a problem for one or more days - our minds, especially during restful sleep, can help come up with an effective solution.]

Any self-imposed isolation may create personal animosity. The associate or subordinate who calls with a matter he or she deems important may be offended if denied entry. Even more courage is required to withdraw from a superior's initiations for any length of time. A superior may expect a subordinate always to be on tap. In fact, some managers are afraid to close their doors. They are afraid that a closed door may suggest that they are plotting secret changes, or worse, that they are sleeping.

Superiors should recognize their subordinates' problems in this regard. Managers are rarely sensitive about their responsibility to protect their subordinates' time for thinking, and they thereby contribute to the impulse to act at the expense of thought. Young managers particularly are caught in a tension between reflection and production. A superior should protect subordinates by requiring thinking time and refusing to let them equate busywork with deliberation.

Some managers fear isolation and withdrawal because of their own personalities. Perhaps they fear the ambiguity of such periods; perhaps to maintain their drive, they must be on their feet talking with others; perhaps they fear time for thought because they have no idea of what to think about.

Rewarding oneself after progress and recognizing the impossibility of perfection. We humans suffer from a tremendous capacity to deceive ourselves. Thus one of the most pernicious forms of procrastination lives eternally: When faced with an unpleasant task we may wrestle with the fundamental decision of whether or not to do it at all. After agonizing deliberation, we courageously Convince ourselves to proceed. Self-applause for the hero!

Unfortunately, we may be so pleased with our apparent intention to begin that we tell ourselves that the chore is as good as done. Why not reward ourselves now? So some of us do. The student reasons, "I've decided to write the paper this weekend, so I deserve to go to the town tonight." Or the manager thinks, "I'm going to crack down on the lax discipline around here next week, so this week I'll do what I like."

Delay may not always be bad, of course, and self-rewards are entirely appropriate - as long as they follow, not precede, substantive progress on the undesirable task. Rewarding yourself before you even start often destroys the motivation to begin. Once you've dispensed the reward to yourself, what's the point of the task? Or so some procrastinators ask.

Effective time managers reward themselves for progress, not just for intention. All large, complex projects have smaller parts that can be celebrated as they are accomplished. Small self-rewards like a coffee break or even an afternoon off to play golf are justified if they mark significant progress on a lengthy project. Just be scrupulously honest with yourself that they follow and do not precede or replace the actual work.

Perfectionists are especially prone to procrastination. Such people passionately want to do things exactly right, so they are very upset when confronted with a task that is "impossible." More precisely, if perfection is your aim, it is very difficult to begin a task that has no universally accepted criteria for judging how well it is done.

The old Naval Civil Engineering (the "Seabees") of World War II fame had a motto: "The difficult we do right now; the impossible will take a little longer." What the Seabees celebrated was their ability to produce, not perfection, but something that would serve.

Most managerial problems don't lend themselves to perfect answers. Thus managers need to be able to tolerate some uncertainty about how well the task has been performed. Such tolerance usually means living with the anxiety that the procrastinating perfectionist tries to avoid.

NO ONE is perfectly honest with himself, or herself. Even the healthiest of us utilize certain neuroticisms or games to deal with difficulty. Discounting is one of the most useful devices (and it is basically "healthy" if not done to excess). Discounting means imaginatively projecting yourself into the future after the completion of the task and dealing in advance with inevitable disappointment. When the job is actually completed you will have already worked through the letdown that comes from the inevitable imperfection of the result.

Some people judge discounting in advance as "settling for less." Perhaps it is, but I feel there is an important distinction. Settling for less implies lowering your aspirations by relaxing your standards. This might be necessary, but can be corrupting, in contrast, discounting implies maintaining aspirations and standards, striving to reach them, but merely recognizing their probable impossibility.

Confronting ambiguity regularly. Many managers allow a busy present to overwhelm them because an ambiguous future is too threatening. Everyone has limited tolerance for ambiguity; we tend to prefer the known (especially if it is acceptable) to the unknown. We prefer the act that has measurable results to the unmeasurable. This leads us to concentrate on those details about which we complain so loudly.

Every organization has an inexhaustible supply of detailed issues crying for attention now! "I waste my time on trivia," managers complain. "If I could get rid of such nonsense, I would spend my time on important planning and evaluating." Some of them may actually mean this, but many are really more comfortable with the demand for detailed activity. It is not that managers are forced to expend all their energy on trivialities; the opposite may be true. The real challenges of managing are so difficult and anxiety-provoking that some managers allow their days to be filled with details and trivia. At least, when they issue a directive modifying travel allowances, they "accomplish" something tangible. For some executives, the real challenges of managing are so threatening that they keep busy all week on this sort of thing. This protects them from having any time to contemplate what they are not doing.

A former chairman of Inland Steel warns about the self-appointed martyr that is the poor, harried, overworked manager: "Pity the overworked executive! Behind his paperwork ramparts, he struggles bravely with a seemingly superhuman load of responsibilities. Burdened with impossible assignments, beset by constant emergencies, he never has a chance to get organized. Pity him but recognize him for the dangerous liability he is."

Attention to familiar details has special impact when a manager is promoted. Sometimes he or she continues to hold on to the former position by close supervision, partly lacking trust in the replacement, but mainly seeking the comfort of the familiar. Managers tend to concentrate on areas where they know they are proficient. Though not wrong in itself, such behavior emphasizes the present at the expense of the future and the old to the detriment of the new.

Fear of ambiguity is evident especially in controlling subordinates. Collaborative or participative management includes a period when the superior does not know what the subordinate is doing or at least knows only what the subordinate chooses to reveal. For a time after the desired objectives have been agreed upon, collaborative leadership means that the subordinate should be free to explore his or her own means.

For example, superior and subordinate agree that a cost accounting and control system is needed in the subordinate's department. Once the superior sets limits on the amount to be spent in setting it up, he must give the subordinate freedom to plan the department independently. Even though the superior may be an expert on 'such plans, he should allow the subordinate to suggest her own proposal. Why wait for this? Because the subordinate will probably make her own plan work more effectively even if it is intrinsically inferior to an expert's.

An oil company president recently complained, "I don't know why, but everybody around me works too hard ... my executive group all work too much. I think that's a bit characteristic of business executives in the United States today. If anything, they spend too many hours at work."

He might have added that many managers pride themselves on the long hours they work. But, as we know, input does not always equate to output. The manager who spends the weekend doing his subordinate's work; the manager who complains of details and then spends the preponderance of his time mired in them; the manager who spends all his time managing crises because he has not learned to convert them into routine; all these mangers are less effective than they could be.

To do their jobs right, managers must confront the future. Certainly this means carving out substantial chunks of time at work and devoting that time to significant management problems. But, for many managers, it should also mean spending less time on the job.

Because the future has the nasty habit of being unpredictable, managers need time to read and to think, not just about their jobs, but about a wide variety of topics. Just as we rarely know where the next problem will come from, we can almost never predict where the next solution will come from. Resourceful managers are those with resources.

Even more importantly, in order to tap your internal resources, you have to be in touch with them. Many managers are "too busy" to take adequate time for internal exploration. A manager who doesn't know his or her own goals can hardly be expected to set meaningful goals for an organization, or to make much progress in moving an organization toward those goals.

The paradox for managers is that they need to relax a little in order to work more effectively - relax the intensity of their work on present problems and address themselves more to future responsibilities. They need to value today less and tomorrow more.

[ 12/18/04: Webmaster note - The importance of 'time-outs' for anyone involved with intensive demands on their mental processes was first made known to me back in 1961 while attending Chinese Mandarin language training at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. In addition to mandating that there be no more than nine students to an instructor (our 'new' classrooms were structurally designed to accommodate no more than that - those designers knew all about the military and its tendency to rearrange other people's priorities), the 6 one hour language sessions (50 minutes with 10 minute breaks) each day were split in two by a mandated two hour lunch break. It wasn't until I became the full time, primary tax preparer at Neff & Company in Albuquerque sixteen years later that the value of a two hour lunch break became self-evident - I returned to work refreshed, even without a "nap", much more able to focus on ways to save clients money on their complicated tax returns. ]

PETER DRUCKER, The Effective Executive. Harper & Raw, 1967. The most succinct statement of Drucker's views on personal effectiveness and time management.

ALAN LAKIEN, How to Get Control of Your Life and Time, Wyden, 1973. One of the biggest selling time management books that focuses on personal goals rather than management objectives.

MARILYN A. MORGAN, Managing Career Development, Van Nostrand, 1980. A collection of readings dealing with common problems at various stages of one's career.

ROSS A. WEBBER, Time and Management, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972. (former) Professor of Management at the Wharton School, Ross Webber is the author of (numerous) books. He conducts many seminars on executive self-management.