I'm currently working with a senior management team that is absolutely drowning in work. In fact, a 40 hour work week is unheard of because these executives have long since been putting in anywhere between 70 to 90 hours per week.
One person even told me that his kids have learned not to bother him before noon on the weekends because he's always working. It's a wonder that he manages to spend any time with his kids at all given the demands on his time.
Are you able to relate to this situation? I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this sounds familiar. Many people experience the same challenge of having too little time for too much work. As a result, overtime becomes the norm as the time spent at home dwindles to accommodate the escalating time spent at work.
Obviously, this is an untenable situation. But before you do something drastic, such as hiring extra staff, it's worth analyzing how the work hours are getting away from you.
That was what I needed to figure out for this management team. I sat down with each person individually and asked them at what point, in terms of hours spent working, they felt that they shifted from being efficient and effective to the exact opposite. Interestingly, they each indicated that between 50 and 55 hours was the magic number - almost half of what they currently worked each week.
Think about that for a moment. These managers are spending so much time working that it's actually impeding their work and makes them less efficient and effective. Beyond that 50 hour point, they were neither helping themselves nor the company.
I couldn't help but wonder how much of this excessive overtime was really necessary. For example, what would happen if a reduction in hours was enforced? When I suggested they imagine if a rule was implemented that only allowed them to be paid for up to 50 hours per week and deducted pay for every extra hour until a certain cut off point at which they would receive no pay whatsoever. Everyone agreed that under these conditions, they would probably find a way to complete their work in the 50 hours given.
One of the reasons for this is what's known as Parkinson's Law, which holds that work expands to fill the allotted time. Or to put it another way, if you wait until the last minute to do something, then it will only take a minute to do. People tend to make do with the time they perceive to be available to them.
I suspected that these managers were subconsciously falling prey to Parkinson's Law or something similar, which is actually a very human and common thing to do. Even though they believed they were being more efficient with the excessive overtime, what they were actually doing was spreading their work out to fill more hours because they had subconsciously become accustomed to working extra hours.
Unless you truly have an impossible task for the time given, then this is a problem that can be overcome. You just need to take a closer look at how you're really spending your time.
In the case of these managers, I had each of them fill out an energy drain list. I discussed this activity in a previous blog post about goal killers, because that's exactly what energy drains do - they use up your time so that you have none left for the goals you really need to accomplish. These drains are often things you're reluctant to do, and your lack of enthusiasm causes you to delay, adding to the time it takes to complete this task.
The results of having these particular managers complete energy drain lists made more apparent some of the problems. For example, we discovered that they spend a lot of time in meetings. In fact, one of the managers found that he was spending up to 55 hours per week in meetings, leaving little time for anything else.
As we talked about this problem, we made other discoveries about their corporate culture regarding meetings and how it was impacting the entire company. Everyone seemed to feel they either needed to invite more people than necessary to a meeting, or that they needed to attend if everyone else was, regardless of whether or not they had anything to contribute. Subconscious peer pressure was making them inefficient.
Now, that we had identified some of the problems, new rules could be implemented to counteract it. Moving forward, these managers decided that meetings would be limited to necessary personnel only. Those invited would be provided with the purpose and objective of the meeting beforehand, and if they felt they had nothing to add, then they would be allowed to opt out entirely. On top of that, meetings would no longer conform to set time periods, such as a half hour or an hour, but would instead be monitored to ensure that only the time needed was used. From the top down, a culture shift around meetings was being implemented for all employees.
Already, these managers have made significant improvements in reducing their work hours. The individual who was previously spending up to 55 hours per week in meetings has reduced that to 35 hours and is working on bringing it down further.
There's still more work to be done and we've begun identifying other areas for improvement, but this is a good start. I intend to keep working with these executives until we reach a point where they can spend the entire weekend with their children, instead of just a small portion of it.
Hopefully, this has also been a good example for anyone experiencing the same types of problems. Use this as your motivation for finding ways to increase your efficiency while cutting down on overtime.
I hope you have a great day!