Time, Talent, Energy

2

Liberate the Organization’s Time

As we noted earlier, most companies have elaborate procedures for managing financial capital: business cases, hurdle rates, spending limits, and so on. An organization’s time, by contrast, goes largely unmanaged. Although phone calls, emails, instant messages, meetings, and teleconferences eat up hours of every executive’s day, companies have few rules to govern these interactions. Most companies have no clear understanding of how their leaders and employees are spending their collective time. Not surprisingly, that time is often squandered—on long email chains, needless conference calls, and countless unproductive meetings.

This lack of management results in acute organizational drag. Time devoted to internal ...