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Managing your time more effectively as CEO

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Managing your time more effectively as CEOThe responsibilities of a Chief Executive Officer are seemingly endless. From managing strategic direction, evaluating group and company operations to communicating with various stakeholders – the daily schedule of a CEO can be relentless. There are never enough hours in the day, and for business leaders this is certainly true. So, if you’re a relatively new CEO or you’ve been at the helm for a while – how can you manage your time more effectively?

Master Delegation

The most important thing any business leader can do to manage their time more effectively is improve their delegation skills. It can be tempting to control and oversee every aspect of a business, particularly if you’ve built it from nothing, but it’s impossible to do this as a company grows. In order to delegate effectively, you must have the right team around you and an appropriate structure beneath you to support this. This includes people that you trust to get the job done, and competent employees that you can rely on.

Travel Smart

CEOs can spend a significant amount of time traveling between meetings, offices and partners. Therefore, being smart with this time is an absolute must. For example, you could opt for private jet rental instead of commercial flights to save time by avoiding busy airports, and give you more flexibility when it comes to multi-destination trips. It’s also important to make best use of the time while traveling to free up space elsewhere in the day. You could use your travel time to power through some emails or catch up on some work that doesn’t require much collaboration.

Reserve Time

Much is demanded of CEOs from others in the organisation, and as such, a large proportion of their day can be filled with meetings and other scheduled commitments. It’s essential that you reserve some time each day or week for your own priorities, work or even just for a 10-minute breather. Pockets of time here and there can help to boost productivity and break up the day. Reserving time for yourself also relies on delegation – if someone else can take one of your meetings per day, you’ll automatically create more time for yourself to work on other projects.

Power Sessions

Being a CEO is all about imagining and developing the big picture, but you can still get caught up in the intricacies of operations. Use power sessions, or periods of intense focus, to blast through the more mundane or administrative tasks that you will undoubtedly have to do every once in a while. The same goes for emails – reserve a time slot to power through your inbox and you will almost certainly clear it quicker than if you have your mind on other things.

Recommended Resource – Positive Intelligence

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Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours

by Shirzad Chamine

About the Reference

Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine reveals the ten personality Saboteurs limiting individual performance and the three Sage strategies to combat these limiters. Through his book, Shirzad provides a step-by-step method for unleashing potential by:

  • Identifying and conquering your top Saboteurs
  • Determining your initial Positive Intelligence (PQ) score
  • Developing new brain ‘muscles’ and significantly increasing your PQ score
  • Applying PQ tools and techniques to increase your personal performance and fulfillment

Benefits of Using This Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Positive Intelligence for its well-structured approach to identifying and overcoming one’s performance limiters. We found the book, its assessments, and recommended actions to be easy to follow and implement. Shirzad’s assessments accurately identified our Saboteur traits and the inner struggle – the thoughts, feelings, justification lies, and impact on self and others – these cause. It further revealed our personal motivation and style; leading to an understanding of the performance barriers improvement efforts should target. Positive Intelligence concluded with three Sage strategies, supported by insightful and thought provoking ‘inquiries,’ that were helpful in addressing our unique Saboteurs.

Understanding the intellectual and emotional barriers limiting one’s actions is a first critical step to improving performance. While a dry read at times, Positive Intelligence helps readers precisely identify their personality limiters and provides sound, actionable advise on how to overcome them. Shirzad’s book goes beyond the academic; providing real world examples and solutions. It’s this sound, implementable insight that makes Positive Intelligence a StrategyDriven recommended read.