Every leader should work on the most productive projects he/she can accomplish for the company. Are you?
At the beginning of each year, I meet with my coaching clients to review the past year’s successes, and failures, analyze them, and set new goals for each the new year and the first quarter. Inevitably, time management comes up as an issue: “How do I find time to do some of the things I didn’t do last year, that need to be done, when I’m already working full-time plus?”
We focus on the ability to delegate more effectively, recruit and train staff to take projects off our plates in order to free executives to handle the more important projects. But the question is whether we’re doing the job as well as possible?
In Becoming a Coaching Leader: The Proven Strategy for Building Your Own Team of Champions, Daniel Harkavy introduced an interesting metric which executives can use to make sure they’re being as productive as possible: one’s hourly rate. Think of it this way: if you work 2080 hours in a year at 40 hours/week, what are your earning? A salary of $160,000 translates into $80 per hour. Once confronted with that number, most executives realize they’re worth more, which means they need to work on higher value projects which can add greater value to the company and thereby earn a higher salary.
We then sit down and discover that as much as 20-25% of the time is spent on activities that could be turned over to lower paid staff – and enable them to also add more value to the company. By doing this, one CEO re-allocated his time and the new responsibilities he took on increased sales 25%!
So, calculate what you should be earning and then reallocate your time to work on projects of highest value to the company – and you!