This week we asked Karen Leland, president of Sterling Marketing Group and co-author of Time Management in an Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day to give us her thoughts on time literacy and it’s impact on organizations. Here then is an excerpt from her latest article in Chief Learning Officer Magazine.
A busy executive checks his e-mail on a PDA during a presentation of key findings from a major project. The harried head of a department texts under the table during a companywide staff meeting. A vice president of human resources takes a cell phone call and leaves the room while an important training session is taking place. Common occurrences in any company today — and all of them send the message that multitasking is to be expected and paying full attention is optional.
There’s a productivity crisis brewing, and it’s resulting in a dangerous struggle to find the time and energy to focus on critical business goals and priorities. It is, in fact, a crisis of time literacy — the ability to understand, manage, prioritize and use time within varying contexts.
In today’s 24/7, wired world, many businesspeople have lost touch with the principles and practices required to be highly productive. One study by the Families and Work Institute found that 50 percent of us are either handling too many tasks at the same time or are frequently interrupted during the workday — or both.
But, as it is with most company cultures, management sets the tone for how the rest of the organization will behave. It’s no different when it comes to time literacy. Executives and managers who model healthy productivity have staff who mirror their attitudes and actions. Those who don’t create a chaotic environment where crisis rules and stressed-out workers are the norm.
How can today’s well-meaning yet overwhelmed leaders walk the talk of time literacy and set an example? When all is said and done, the art of time literacy is really the art of decision making. It’s the courage to choose what actions you are going to take, when you are going to take them and how you will get them done. It’s about choosing your most important goals and prioritizing accordingly. As a start, managers can make sure to promote, model and train themselves and their staff in the best practices of time literacy.
To read the rest of this article and see what these best practices are read Karen’s latest article at Chief Learning Officer Magazine.
This month, we begin a series which will run every Wednesday over the next four weeks and focus on the topic of How Consensus May Be Hurting Your Company. For our first post in this series, we start by discussing the way agenda-driven meetings may be robbing your company of authentic conversations.
