Situation: A company is enjoying a good year and is busy both adding new business and serving current clients. However, the CEO finds that when business is good he doesn’t have time to focus on all of his initiatives. This frustrates him. How do you make time for initiatives?

Advice from the CEOs:

• How extensive is your To-Do List? If you have two or three major, time consuming initiatives, and a host of small tasks, prioritize both categories. Focus on what you can do given the time you have available. Put lower priority on the smaller tasks, and delegate as much as you can, or put them off until things slow down. This will help deal with your frustrations.
• Block out time for yourself.
  • Do this early in the day, before you have lots of distractions on your desk.
  • Allocate 1-2 hours early in the morning, and get to work a little later. Let you staff know that you are not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency, but that they will have your full attention when you get to the office.
• Plan you initiatives, segment them into smaller pieces, and schedule them.
  • Use Mindmapping to segment them, or a piece of software like MindManager to assist your thinking.
  • Among the segmented pieces, look for opportunities to delegate to free up your time and involve staff in the initiative.
• Develop a Task List in Feature/Deliverables terms with a broad timeframe.
  • Prioritize and build into your Quarterly and Annual plans.
  • Again, look for opportunities to delegate.

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