LACK OF TIME,
PROBLEM
OR SYMPTOM?
The
author Carl
Heyel
asks this question and after carrying out studies on
people with high levels of responsibilities, he establishes that time,
or more appropriately lack of time,
appears as one of the biggest problems for management teams.
In
reality this is one of the problems that effects our society,
be
it employees in a factory, office, housewives, students, etc. It
doesn't matter what our profession is, we always claim that we don't
have enought time. There are those that are not able to adequately
organize their own time, time that instead of wasting it, we should
invest in to obtain the best for ourselves.
It
seems that nowadays time is
"shorter" rather than "longer".
Another
important point relating to "the lack of time" is its relentless
relationship with "money".
The authors Stalk
and Hout
establish that time and money are linked. One of
the most famous and oldest slogans comes from Benjamín
Franklin, "time is money". Stalk and Hout ask "if time is money, why
don't directors speak and act in a consistent way? Almost none of the
statements from 500 companies highlight the importance of time. Also,
service companies don't associate time with profitability".
Don't
forget that benefits are achieved by maximizing the obtained product by
a number of factors and "time" is one of those factors. A
typical example is that of the first industrial competitor, The Ford
Motor Company, you all know what happened to them!
You
can't do everything now....
K.
Gleeson points out that
"after repeating that you have to do it now, let me tell you, it is not
always possible or desirable to do everything now. For example, you
have to ring Maria but she is not back until Monday. Instead of having
a coffee call a different client. It is clear that priorities play an
important role in the productive work and when trying to achieve
results.
In
our daily plan we always
have important and urgent activities to carry out and we always try to
rush and do the urgent things, forgetting what is really important.
However, we don't have to do everything at the same time, but develop
your work in an organized way. Later we will give you some advice on
this.
¿Do
you want to take on too much?
C.
Heyel
asks the following question: Am I trying to take on too much? or on the
contrary, Do I have too little personal contact with the different
centres? It is obvious that the lack can be on both sides, and that we
should be able to detect the problem to be able to attack it from its
roots.
Regarding
this aspect Heyel
says that "if your objective estimation shows a notable divergence (as
usually happens) between the time invested and the time you want to
invest, what you will have to do is see where you are more stressed and
how you can ease the stress. The plan of attack consists of having a
series of deep questions that suggest ways to act.
Later
in the course we will
look at this point in more detail.
