Improving the fit between the priorities of managers, their direct reports, and their supervisors—all the way up to the CEO—is a good place to start. The biggest and most destructive myth in time management is that you can get everything done if only you follow the right system, use the right to-do list, or process your tasks in the right way. That’s a mistake. We live in a time when the uninterrupted stream of information and communication, combined with our unceasing accessibility, means that we could work every single hour of the day and night and still not keep up. For that reason, choosing what we are going to ignore may well represent the most important, most strategic time-management decision of all. To illustrate, let’s look at the experiences of Todd, 1 the head of sales in a large financial-services firm and a direct report to the CEO. Todd had been struggling to change the way people approached the sales process. He wanted more m...
Raf Sanga’s notes on project management, technology-enabled change, Lean Six Sigma, process improvement, analytics, and building practical systems that help teams deliver measurable results.