Thursday, March 18, 2010

SELF ORGANISATION & TIME MANAGEMENT

Time management is a part of self-orgnisation which involves prioritising activities according to their relative importance and doggedly following those priorities.

The following grid is self-explanatory. We can slot all our activities into its four quadrants. The work of quite a few activity-based managers can be slotted into quadrant (1) as they tend to douse fires and somehow meet deadlines and achieve metrics. Nothing exceptionable in that as deadlines and metrics are important too. However the key to time management and managing results – not managing activity – lies in quadrant (2). If managers spend time in proper planning, envisaging opportunities and keeping communication channels open, they can certainly pre-empt emergencies. 

IMPORTANT & URGENT
(1)
CRISES
EXIGENT PROBLEMS
PROJECT DEADLINES
ACHIEVING METRICS
IMPORTANT & NOT URGENT
(2)
PLANNING
IDENTIFYING NEW OPPORTUNITIES
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
PREVENTING EMERGENCIES
COMMUNICATION WITH OTHERS
N0T IMPORTANT & URGENT
(3)
ROUTINE MAILS
INTERRUPTIONS
REPORTS
MEETINGS
IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS
POPULAR ACTIVITIES
N0T IMPORTANT & NOT URGENT
(4)
SOME MAILS
SOME PHONE CALLS
TIME WASTING ACTIVITIES
PLEASANT ACTIVITIES
OFFICE GOSSIP / SHOP TALK




















But the real death-traps are quadrants (3) and (4). On a day when you are seriously contemplating a strategy to bag ‘that’ large hospital order, in walks a colleague with the news that the ‘boss’ was spotted at the Director’s residence the previous weekend.

As is human, both of you spend a lot of time speculating whether (a) he has gone there to placate him to grab the post of a Senior Vice President that was opening up shortly, (b) he was pushing the case/s of his favourites in the annual appraisals that were under way or - better still - (c) he has gone there to squeal and bitch about his colleagues. The exchange of ‘perspectives’, which feeds on itself to keep the ‘meeting’ going, goes on for forty minutes before you realise it.

With an exclamation of surprise at the passage of time, your colleague unwillingly tears himself away for he has a report to file. His quadrant (1) is looming large while both of you were in (4) till now!

When you were about to return to your original contemplation after a little lag for the mind takes time to refocus, another colleague calls with a few more tidbits about boss’ weekend activities and as both of you have but ‘one mind’, have an animated exchange of ‘perspectives’ for an extended period of time. Of course the two of you are now in quadrant (4). Finally the colleague ends the phone call reluctantly.

In the mean time your line was ‘busy’, your secretary was hard put to explain it to callers and your boss was wondering whether you were planning a coup d'état to usurp his chair. You might even have missed an important customer or two who wanted to discuss business, which they would now take elsewhere.

In both the cases it was the other colleague who terminated the conversation for you do not have it in you to hurt other peoples’ feelings. And the greater danger is in deluding yourself that you were ‘communicating’ with others around the office!

We all know quadrant (1) is unpredictable and quadrants (3) and (4) are unavoidable. Therefore can we begin by planning quadrant (2), by allotting some time of our working day everyday to activities listed in it? As it consists of the most salient activities for our success should we not allot at least 40% of our time to it - and brook no interruptions during the allotted time. This roughly translates to two hours and forty eight minutes in an eight hour working day minus one hour for coffee and lunch breaks. It would be ideal for managers to indulge in activities listed in quadrant (4) once in a week and allot not more than an hour for activities listed in quadrant (3). Be that as it may the focus should be on quadrant (2) for sustained and long term success. 

The following case study is an illustration of ‘SELF ORGANIZATION AND TIME MANAGEMENT’ or the lack of it and is all too familiar for people in line management.

Mr. ABHAY KUMAR, AREA BUSINESS MANAGER, Ά-Β PHARMACEUTICALS LIMITED, BANGALORE.
Mr. Abhay Kumar is the Area Business Manager of ά-β Pharmaceuticals Limited at Bangalore. Abhay (as he is fondly called by everyone) used to top the charts as a Sales Officer (SO)* and has been promoted Area Business Manager (ABM)* six months ago.
By the time Abhay arrived at the consulting chambers of Dr. Surendra Kumar in Jayanagar he was already twenty-five minutes late for the appointment. He was to join his Sales Officer for a joint call on the doctor. As per the company’s marketing strategy the doctor was to be met by the ABM as a core call. Now the SO too missed the call.
As the two were coming out of the building after vain attempts to cajole the doctor’s secretary to arrange for an interview, Abhay got an SMS from his Zonal Manager’s office reminding him about the list of doctors to be prepared for the new product introduction. The company was about to launch a new product that was expected to bring in sizeable revenues. There was a circular a week ago from Head Office informing ABMs about the grand launch in the first week of the following month. The circular instructed ABMs to compile and submit a list of doctors for the launch but in his rush of work, Abhay stacked it along with a lot of other mails to be read when he was free. Abhay decided that he would call his team members during a break in the day and instruct them to submit the list immediately. He decided he would have to be particularly stern with that lazy fellow at Mangalore who was always late in submitting returns and needs frequent chiding.
With these thoughts in mind Abhay guided his SO to the fast food joint across the road for a coffee. As they were sipping coffee Abhay’s Regional Manager called. Abhay knew that his RM was calling him about the secondary sales statement which was due a week ago.  He was yet to compile it. The RM is old fashioned and insists that ABMs should discuss secondary sales trends and doctor call coverage with SOs during their joint field work. All this means paper work. Abhay has not had time to even open the envelopes in which his team members couriered their daily call reports in bunches during the last month. And then there is the ABMs’ meeting coming in a week which means some more paper work. Who has time for bloody paper work!
Abhay did not want to answer the call but could not ignore it in front of his SO. He finally answered the call with a lot of hesitation but his RM wanted to know what happened to the major institutional order that Abhay informed him was in the offing. Oh! Abhay planned to see some important calls but it appears now he would have to rush to the Medical & Health Directorate to follow up for the order.  
That’s it. He would excuse himself from field work; visit the Directorate to follow up for the order and return home to finish at least a part of the paper work.
Abahy sighed and told the SO that he had to leave; their RM instructed him to call HO with some urgent information; he (the SO) should meet all the top calls planned for the day and report. And there should be no excuses for not meeting the month’s budget.


* The Indian pharmaceutical industry has various designations to describe field sales people. In this example ‘Sales Officer’ and ‘Area Business Manager’ are used to describe ‘medical sales person’ or medical detail-man and ‘frontline manager’ respectively.

No comments:

Post a Comment