In economic climates in which organizations are attempting to do more with less, many managers and professionals conclude that executive management is doing nothing more than passing on the workload of the furloughed to those who remain. That’s where the additional work hours come from. That may or may not be true depending on whether or not all the furloughed people had a full workload. Downsizing is all the more reason to evaluate, to analyze, to prioritize, to eliminate what no longer adds value, and then focus on the priority issues. While managing your time is important, I believe the greater benefit comes from finding the sources of lost time and eliminating them.
Somewhere along the line many managers and professionals either never learned how to work effectively and efficiently or forgot how to work. They disregard the impact of lost time on performance. An hour of lost time per day by each employee represents 12.5 percent of the traditional eight-hour workday. Lost time occurs in many different places and as a result of inaction or some improper action. Oncken and Wass described boss-imposed time, system-imposed time, and self-imposed time. But the origins of lost time go beyond these three categories. Consider the following lost-time generators.
- Lost time imposed from the top of the organization
- Lost time imposed by the system
- Lost time imposed by managers
- Lost time within the functional silos
- Lost time from meeting mania
- Time frittered away by people
- External lost time generators