Who holds you accountable for how you use your time?
If you’re like the bulk of knowledge workers across the country, the answer is likely that no one does.
It’s a sad truth that we have the autonomy to make our own decisions about where and how to invest our time, but no accountability for the return on those investments.
If we did, you would see people leaving irrelevant meetings rather than multitasking their way through them. You would see people making focus time appointments with themselves and holding them sacred. You would stop seeing everyone continually missing deadlines and then playing the universal get out of jail free card – “I’m so busy.”
Years ago, I found an article titled “Your Scarcest Resource” that posed the question: “What if your company managed it’s time with the same diligence as its money? What would be different?” Although the article was published in 2014, there hasn’t been much progress towards that ambition. Organizations waste millions of dollars of time every year, but no one sees it, no one counts it, and therefore no one is accountable.
Imagine if a shareholder could peer into the average meeting at your company. What would they see? Highly engaged problem-solving? Breakthrough innovation? Leveraging cross-functional insight? Not often.
Instead, they would likely observe a weekly update meeting which amounts to a series of one-on-one meetings between the leader and their direct reports with a very disinterested audience. Or a cross-functional brand team discussion where only a tiny percentage of the attendees participate. While the intention is good, execution is poor.
I founded a company dedicated to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of meetings. I didn’t do that just because I’m good at designing and facilitating meetings. I did it because collaboration is an essential capability for all organizations. And while there is definitely more collaboration migrating online than ever before, there is still a lot of it happening real-time in meetings. And if the quality of the meetings isn’t good, it stands to reason that the quality of the collaboration isn’t either.
So instead of spending so much energy debating where people need to be when they’re working, how about directing some towards the quality of how they work? Just like we needed to be taught good study habits in school, we also need guidance on how to maximize focused work time and collaborate effectively as a team. When we leave it to chance, precious time is inevitably wasted.