Situation: A CEO says that she fills her time with too much, leading to pressure. She is concerned that by thriving on pressure she may be sacrificing quality. Additionally, she wonders whether she is trying to do too much. How do you improve your time management?

Advice from the CEOs:

• The real key is creating priorities, and concentrating on these. As Brian Tracy indicates in The Creative Manager, geniuses know how to concentrate fully on one thing at a time. As a corollary, multitasking is the enemy of genius and quality – it sounds neat to say that one can multitask, but the reality is that this is wasting both focus and productivity.
• Many of the Forum members revisit their priorities daily.
• Consider the Quadrant paradigm from Steven Covey:

• Quadrants 1 and 2 represent the highest priority tasks, and only the highest priority tasks. Quadrant 3 represents lower priority tasks. Quadrant 4 is self-explanatory.
• As CEO, delegate many of the Q1 items to staff and spend more time in Q2.
• Do Not spend any time in Q3 and Q4. There may be times when it is necessary to do some Q3 tasks, but keep these to an absolute minimum.
• Use the quadrants to better manage time. Take the existing task priority list and categorize each task in the appropriate quadrant. Within each quadrant, prioritize each responsibility. Get together with the management team and delegate these tasks as appropriate. All of the Q3 tasks are areas to delegate to the team and supervise their work.
• One of the responsibilities of management is to be the firewall for the CEO. This means keeping all Q3 and Q4 tasks off of the CEO’s plate, and handling as many Q1 tasks as possible so that the CEO can concentrate on Q2 tasks.
• Completing this exercise should yield immediate ways to reduce existing time management pressures.

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