Supervisory Leadership

I was never a big fan of homework when I was a kid. I always wanted to rush through it to get to something I thought was more interesting. My mother was forever reminding me to "Take your time. Do it right." That advice is good for Supervisory Leaders, but in a different way.

Take enough time for the things that need it. There are lots of things you can do in the cracks in your day. You can check email, sign letters, file documents and a host of other things in segments of as little as a couple of minutes.

There are times when you can engage in the great sport of the Digital Age: multitasking. But sometimes you need to take enough time to do an important job right.

Analyzing people issues, working on key projects or drafting a key report are a few of the activities that require substantial blocks of uninterrupted time. Both of those criteria are important.

Substantial means ninety minutes to two hours for most folks. That's the time that research tells us we need to ease into a project, do significant work and wrap things up.

Uninterrupted time means just that. No visitors. No phone calls. No email.

You might want to consider the rule Raymond Chandler had for his writing time. He set aside time for writing. Then he honored that time by using it for writing and nothing else. In practice, that meant he didn't have to write, but he couldn't "do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at a magazine, or write checks."

To make this work, you'll need to be ruthless about setting the time aside and then enforcing the "no distractions" rule. That won't be easy, but the improved results you get will be worth it.

Here are some books I was reminded of or consulted while writing this tip.

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker is my nomination for all-time best business book. In this book, written decades ago, Drucker identified the need for at least ninety minutes of uninterrupted time when a manager was working on an important task.

Many executive authors have written about the need to devote significant time to people issues. There's an excellent discussion of this in "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.

Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers. "The Raymond Chandler Papers" will give you insight into how he thought and how he worked.

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