17. The system used to manage the time effectively.

Time is scarce resource that must be managed well if manager is to be effective. It is not possible to create more time, but most people can make better use of existing time. The difficult part is not in finding time to do something, but rather in knowing what things are important enough to do. The key to time management is knowing what you want to accomplish.

The problem is that there are so many pressures on managers, reducing their efficiency.

The first difficulty is that work is fragmented. The second difficulty is that people take up a lot of manager’s time so manager has little time of his own. Finally, it’s difficult to distinguish between important and less important things. Its interesting to know that studies of managerial activities find some common time wasters including the following: drop-in visitors, telephone interruptions, unessential tasks, unnessesary or over-time meetings.

To solve these problems effective managers learn how to manage their time. They cut out unproductive activities. One of the best way to manage the time is to record the actual using of it. The usual method is to log the tasks the manager performs. This record may be done by his own or by his secretary.

One way of logging time is to note down all the activities and indicate how long they took. This logging of time should be done once or twice a year. It shows the executive how he actually spends his time at work.

The next stage of time-management is to analyse the record. This will help manager to re-think and re-plan his work schedule. As a result of this analysis, the effective manager will start getting rid of unproductive, time-wasting activities. So at this stage the manager ranks the tasks and delegates the work.

What is the result of this process? Having recorded and analysed the time, manager can re-shape his schedule. There are different ways to do it. Some managers like to set aside certain times for important tasks. So they may work at home one day a week. Others allocate certain days of the week to particular activities, that is management meetings, production scheduling and others. Manager may spend some time at home, in his study, before setting off to work.

A common method of managing time is as follows. The manager works out all the jobs he must do in the coming day or week. Then he lists the tasks in order of priority. He also sets deadlines for carrying out the more important activities.

All methods described above help managers to be as effective as possible. Peter Drucker believes that effective executives work systematically to manage time. They must acquire this “habit of mind”, this ability to use time effectively.

18. Management of time, actual problems.

In any business, time management is important that managers should be effective. But they have a lot of problems to get the right things done. Time is scarce resource that must be managed well if manager is to be effective. It is not possible to create more time, but most people can make better use of existing time.

The first problem is that there are very many pressures on managers, reducing their efficiency. For one thing, their job is fragmented. Most days, they are doing a number of tasks, some fairly trivial, others highly important. They find that they don’t have enough time to devote to the really important jobs. Besides, sometimes they are under such pressure that they forget which jobs are important.

The second, I would call it a group of problems are so called “time wasters”. Studies of managerial activities find some common time wasters such as:

1. drop-in visitors. Some managers fail to screen visitors and prevent interruptions because of the fear that people could be offended. Casual visitors are probably the biggest time wasters for managers. The ways out are: make yourself unaccesible during particular times, prepare polite excuses to shorten visits, meet with people in their offices instead of yours.

2. telephone interruptions. The telephone is important for communication and in comparison with visiting someone it could save time. Reasons for problems with with telephone interruptions are similar to the reasons for problems with drop-in visitors. To cope with this problem you can have your secretary screen all of your calls, have materials ready for the calls that you expect to receive, so you don’t need to waste time or call back.

3. cluttered office. In office things become lost if it not well organized. And you need to waste time to searching for them. Remedies involve a variety of approaches, including better organization of files, efforts to reduce the amount of necessary paperwork, decision rules for handling paperwork efficiently.

4. unnecessary or overlong meetings. Meeting are unavoidable part of the managerial job, but many of them waste your time due to their unproductiveness. To avoid such meeting you should follow a couple of recommendations: invite only relevant people, prepare a clear agenda, inform people about what they need to do to prepare for the meeting, distribute a summary of the meeting after it.