Many business books and articles offer a deceptively simple solution: "just delegate." But as a CEO, you know it is difficult, if not impossible, to delegate with confidence unless you have confidence in your leaders. The reality is that you cannot sustainably free up your calendar until you have aligned your executive team around a plan and clear roles, implemented disciplined execution rhythms, developed your leaders into high performers, and ensured they are driving a healthy culture. But sometimes the first step to making changes is being clear how much of a problem you have. Enter time tracking. The purpose of a time-tracking exercise isn't to instantly fix your schedule today. Instead, it is a diagnostic tool designed to create deep awareness of the problem and reveal the hidden opportunities on your calendar. This awareness creates the urgency needed to start to implement the four core practices that will not only get you out of the weeds, but also propel your company forward. Here is the 4-step process to run an effective time-tracking experiment: 1. Set up activity-based categories The first step is to request our time-tracking spreadsheet, which is specifically designed to log activities from 5:00 am to 10:00 pm over 10 business days, total up the results and provide helpful graphs. Before you start tracking, look back at recent weeks to define up to 14 distinct categories of work. The secret here is to categorize based on what you are working on, not who you are working with or how you are working. Do not create categories like "meetings," "emails," or "phone calls." Instead, focus on the functional outcome. For example, use categories like "sales," "solving customer problems," or "planning production." Combine similar activities if you exceed 14 categories, or split overly broad ones if they become too vague to provide meaningful data. 2. Run an honest 10-day experiment Once you have your activity categories in your spreadsheet, run the tracking experiment for 10 consecutive business days. Throughout your day, simply log your activity in 15-minute increments by selecting the appropriate category for each time slot. If you just stepped out of a 60-minute sales alignment meeting, you would select "Sales" for those four 15-minute blocks. If pausing every 15 minutes is too disruptive, you can update the spreadsheet twice a day or at the end of the day by reviewing your calendar, email sent folder, and recent phone logs to reconstruct your time from memory. Crucially, do not change your behavior during these 10 days. Do not try to be a "better version" of yourself. Continue your normal pattern of work so you can get a completely honest baseline of your day-to-day habits. 3. Analyze the "Sand" vs. the "Rocks" After 10 days, review the graphs for the total hours spent in each category. Group these categories into two main buckets: working IN the business (the sand) versus working ON the business (the rocks). As popularized by business frameworks like Stephen Covey's time management practices, working ON the business means dedicating time to one-time tasks or projects that change, improve, or build the company's future capabilities. Working IN the business refers to the day-to-day operational and support activities needed to sell, produce, and deliver to customers today. Look closely at your "sand" categories: How much time are you spending doing your leaders' jobs, over-directing their moves, or answering questions they should already know the answers to? 4. Take action to get out of the weeds The final step is to use these hard truths to spur action. You will likely find that you cannot immediately delegate these tasks because your leadership team isn't fully equipped yet. However, this data provides the exact roadmap of who you are too involved with and where you need to focus your future leadership development. This awareness should become the catalyst for putting the four core scaling systems in place: aligning your executive team around your plan and roles, establishing an efficient execution rhythm, developing your leaders, and building a healthy culture. As you strengthen these pillars, you will naturally gain the confidence to empower your leaders and hand off those operational tasks. The Time-Crunched Shortcut: If you are feeling so overwhelmed that tracking 14 categories feels completely impossible, adopt our simpler fail-safe approach: at the end of every day for the next 10 to 20 days, simply log how many hours (or fractions of an hour: 1.0, 0.5, 0.25) you spent working ON the business. Calculate your average at the end of the two to four weeks. While this shortcut won't tell you the root cause or pinpoint which leaders you are over-managing, it will give you undeniable, black-and-white clarity on just how deep in the weeds you really are.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
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