Okay, so you are the business owner, the president and CEO, the chief rainmaker and the straw that stirs the drink. Yeah, you are important, but your time is not nearly as valuable as you may think.
What is the best use of your time? If your managers are stacked up at your door awaiting their turn for a few minutes of your valuable time, you probably haven’t done a very good job of organizing your time or theirs.
Your time may be better spent hosting a meeting, or even attending a meeting.
Chances are all of those managers have overlapping issues on the same strategies, products or personnel. They may even be working on the same problems on different tracks. You need to get everyone working together.
A few thoughts:
Do have a weekly meeting with your managers. Discuss the upcoming week, the issues and the priorities. Solicit their advice and their help. You’ll be surprised at how quickly they will divide responsibility and make progress on some of the previously unsolved very thorny issues.
Do assign more than one manager to work on a project to promote cross training and a healthy collaborative effort.
Do take the time to train someone to assume additional responsibility. You will have shifted responsibility through delegation and freed yourself, a much wiser use of your time than doing it yourself.
Do take the time to attend a manager’s project meeting. I guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know, you will stay current on the project, and the manager’s staff will be impressed that you care and the project is important.
So, your time is important, we just believe it can be far better used in new ways.
