Agree Your Strategic Time Investments

Time is our most valuable asset, but our time culture at work is broken and it’s hurting businesses and individuals. These cause organizational ‘defects’ that make it harder for people to deliver their best work and flourish in their careers. We need to fix the system, not the individual. Collective time management is about understanding how we are all spending our time today and making conscious, strategic choices about how we want to be investing our time tomorrow. Businesses need to invest time at work differently if they are serious about inclusion, improving productivity and the wellbeing of their workforce. External forces have a significant impact on how we spend our time at work. The nature of our organizations and work days is stifling our productivity and creativity. Our advances in diversity are glacially slow, and stress, anxiety and burnout are rocketing. The organizational goal here is to manage our energy input as optimally as possible to help people to show up positively and deliver their best work in a way that leaves them feeling energized and rewarded. Their characteristics are distilled into six traits set out below. I appreciate that, for many people, ‘organizational culture’ often feels like a woolly concept and is hard to pin down in concrete terms. Let’s take a closer look at each trait in turn.

Take Me By The Hand

It views collective working time as a valuable business asset that it proactively manages through the business strategy, governance and leadership approach. Businesses can apply greater rigour by quantifying an average hour’s cost. Instead of thinking about time as, ‘How much can I/we get done in the short term and how quickly?’, the question becomes, ‘What’s the most valuable way I/we can spend our time over the short, medium and longer term?’ For example, if you aspire to be innovative, how much time do you spend collaborating with others? This means not spending more time on a decision than it is worth, knowing where ownership best sits for different decisions and seeking out different perspectives. It also means less likelihood of decisions being endlessly pushed around, particularly in highly matrixed organizations. In outcome obsessed organizations, leaders demonstrate a deep appreciation of working time. Their work calendars reflect this, with time prioritized for the important stuff. Microsoft founder Bill Gates disclosed how he learnt to keep a clear diary from legendary investor Warren Buffett, saying, ‘You control your time. For example, businesses who believe that building relationships is crucial to their future success are prioritizing time and opportunities for building social bonds and trust. Deliberate design means dealing with the distractions. Our work days tend to be highly fragmented and littered with tasks that require low levels of expertise but eat up our time. By automating or outsourcing these activities, businesses can help employees to focus on more valuable work. With core hours, employees are expected to be available for certain parts of the day – for example, 10.00

There Is A Happy Land

am to 12 noon and 1.30 pm to 3.30 pm – but outside of core hours they are free to adapt their working day to suit their energy levels, personal lives and working styles. Conversely, short time spans that are tightly controlled actually achieve the opposite, because the control process itself takes up too much time and effort. Opening up and lightly managing the working week is more effective than rigidly controlling working hours. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, posits that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. Applied to work, it follows that 80% of results come from 20% of our total work effort. This permits the employer to tap into a wider talent pool and gives employees additional opportunities to broaden or deepen their skills. How work gets resourced has a fundamental impact on diversity and inclusion, and people’s career progression. When it comes to business technology, we can select tools and data that better support the ways people think, speak, and make decisions. By thoughtfully changing the default settings of our everyday tools and technologies, they build in ‘nudges’ that help people to adopt healthier, more productive habits. These are things that you can draw on paper and label.

This Could Be The One

They will have a certain impact, but for meaningful results, the nature of everyday interactions, behaviours and informal working practices needs to change. For people to do their best work, their environment needs to work for them. People can crack on with deadlines, do deep thinking and work undisturbed in quiet zones, while dedicated wellbeing areas help people to decompress, deal with difficult emotions, rest and even exercise. When both are on, others understand that the user is not to be disturbed. The physical principles translate to the virtual environment too. Collaboration tools and channels such as intranets, workflow tools, shared diaries and knowledge bases help people to locate and exchange information easily and connect with others in a timely way. Importantly, employees are able – and encouraged – to switch all of these off for extended periods during the working day in order to concentrate or to take a break. Organizations that genuinely value collective working time give employees as much autonomy and control over their working hours as possible. This allows people to organize their time to fit with their peak energy levels, preferred working styles, personal commitments and wellbeing. To make this work requires trust and dialogue. Giving employees more autonomy and control doesn’t mean loosening the reins and hoping for the best. We’re all responsible to a certain degree for our behaviours and choices regarding how we spend our time at work. We can blame our unproductive day on email overload, but how disciplined are we at switching our email off to concentrate on the task at hand? How often do we get our comments to a colleague at the last possible minute without thinking of the impact on their working time? And yes, sometimes this requires courage. This trait is about how organizations recruit, manage, develop and reward people. So it pays to think beyond the timespan of the employment contract.