In today’s business environment, time and agenda management is crucial for success. In an article by Xavier Marcet that I read recently, he highlights the importance of “emptying agendas” to free up time and energy for more meaningful and empowering activities.
All companies should rethink how they use their diaries, moving away from the saturation of meetings and corporate commitments with no apparent purpose.
One of the first pieces of advice I received over twenty years ago when I started working at D-Link was, “Look at your team’s diary, not to control but to know what the quality of their work is like.”
Today, this phrase has even more value.
Managers and business leaders need help in trying to clear their diaries. This act does not imply embracing laziness but instead distributing tasks strategically, avoiding taking on activities that others could do with sufficient quality.
By freeing time, leaders can engage in deeper thinking and empower others by offering challenging opportunities.
“Meetingitis” is a common pathology in business environments. Often, agendas are cluttered with time-consuming meetings with no apparent purpose, leading to a lack of time for the execution and transmission of decisions made in those meetings. The quality of meetings becomes an essential factor, and it is important to improve that quality, reduce the number of sessions, and provide agility by considering shared brevity as a generous act.
The hybrid format of meetings, with both face-to-face and virtual participants, has introduced additional challenges. The quality of meetings has declined, and valuable interaction time before and after meetings has been lost. Meetings need to be improved to stay within participants’ time.
Multiply the time spent on empowering, productive and learning activities. This time includes empowering others, selling, producing, learning and innovating. There is time that adds, such as advocacy and inertia, and time that subtracts, such as unnecessary sophistication and bureaucracy.
Effective time management means leadership. Leaders must have time to accompany their teams, learn from customers and employees, explore and innovate. Lack of time often presents an obstacle to innovation and solidarity in decision-making.
Empowerment and delegation are critical elements in clearing agendas. We must spread the game, make others believe, and reward those who deliver and learn. In addition, we need to deploy a good ecosystem and contain the “ego-system” for more efficient time management.
Beware of the overacceleration trap, where accumulating tasks and responsibilities leads to saturation and burnout. Putting more people in a similar work culture can encourage bureaucracy rather than improve efficiency. The equalisation of agendas through shared approaches is a more effective solution.
Agendas not only reflect projects and operations but also reveal an organisation’s corporate culture. Endless meetings and flexible agendas are crucial indicators of corporate culture.
Emptying agendas means working less and more effectively and meaningfully, allowing more life to enter into time management.
In a nutshell, we should advocate a change in mindset towards time management in business. Emptying agendas is a pivotal strategy to free up time and energy, allowing leaders to focus on more impactful and empowering activities.
The quality of meetings, empowerment of others and intelligent distribution of work are crucial elements in this approach. Ultimately, effective time management not only improves productivity but also contributes to building a healthier, more meaning-centred company culture.
In today’s business environment, time and agenda management is crucial for success. In an article by Xavier Marcet that I read recently, he highlights the importance of “emptying agendas” to free up time and energy for more meaningful and empowering activities.
All companies should rethink how they use their diaries, moving away from the saturation of meetings and corporate commitments with no apparent purpose.
One of the first pieces of advice I received over twenty years ago when I started working at D-Link was, “Look at your team’s diary, not to control but to know what the quality of their work is like.”
Today, this phrase has even more value.
Managers and business leaders need help in trying to clear their diaries. This act does not imply embracing laziness but instead distributing tasks strategically, avoiding taking on activities that others could do with sufficient quality.
By freeing time, leaders can engage in deeper thinking and empower others by offering challenging opportunities.
“Meetingitis” is a common pathology in business environments. Often, agendas are cluttered with time-consuming meetings with no apparent purpose, leading to a lack of time for the execution and transmission of decisions made in those meetings. The quality of meetings becomes an essential factor, and it is important to improve that quality, reduce the number of sessions, and provide agility by considering shared brevity as a generous act.
The hybrid format of meetings, with both face-to-face and virtual participants, has introduced additional challenges. The quality of meetings has declined, and valuable interaction time before and after meetings has been lost. Meetings need to be improved to stay within participants’ time.
Multiply the time spent on empowering, productive and learning activities. This time includes empowering others, selling, producing, learning and innovating. There is time that adds, such as advocacy and inertia, and time that subtracts, such as unnecessary sophistication and bureaucracy.
Effective time management means leadership. Leaders must have time to accompany their teams, learn from customers and employees, explore and innovate. Lack of time often presents an obstacle to innovation and solidarity in decision-making.
Empowerment and delegation are critical elements in clearing agendas. We must spread the game, make others believe, and reward those who deliver and learn. In addition, we need to deploy a good ecosystem and contain the “ego-system” for more efficient time management.
Beware of the overacceleration trap, where accumulating tasks and responsibilities leads to saturation and burnout. Putting more people in a similar work culture can encourage bureaucracy rather than improve efficiency. The equalisation of agendas through shared approaches is a more effective solution.
Agendas not only reflect projects and operations but also reveal an organisation’s corporate culture. Endless meetings and flexible agendas are crucial indicators of corporate culture.
Emptying agendas means working less and more effectively and meaningfully, allowing more life to enter into time management.
In a nutshell, we should advocate a change in mindset towards time management in business. Emptying agendas is a pivotal strategy to free up time and energy, allowing leaders to focus on more impactful and empowering activities.
The quality of meetings, empowerment of others and intelligent distribution of work are crucial elements in this approach. Ultimately, effective time management not only improves productivity but also contributes to building a healthier, more meaning-centred company culture.
