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The scarcest resource in most organizations is the leader’s time. Every CEO, division head or even first-level manager has a to-do list longer than feasible. The bottleneck on the boss’s desk causes opportunities to be missed or shunned. Delays in decisions can trigger workflow stoppages, overtime, lost sales and customer complaints. Frustrated subordinates lose patience with the boss and confidence in the company.

The CEO and other leaders must confront the scarcity of the resource head on. They cannot simply pledge to work harder. There will never be enough time for everything that could be done. That’s the nature of scarcity that we economists always talk about. Leaders can start by analogizing other scarce resources. Gold has many industrial uses, but it’s also pretty expensive. So it’s used where its unique properties justify its high cost. Similarly, companies are thoughtful in their use of titanium, platinum, rare earth minerals, and so forth. They don’t give up, but they use the resource sparingly. Similarly, the leader’s time must be used only in the highest-value applications.

A long to-do list does not, by itself, indicate a problem. Those familiar with Eliyahu Goldratt’s excellent book, The Goal: The Theory of Constraints, will recall that in a factory setting, the sign of a constraint is work in progress piling up in front of an operation. The leader who processes many tasks on the to-do list such that tasks are not increasing is doing fine—so long as important tasks are not ignored because the list is already too danged long!

When work is piling up in front of a machine, a good first step would be to evaluate if everything really needs to be run through the machine. That may have been the easy way when the organization was not as busy. Just copy every piece of paper, weigh every incoming load of steel, test every finished product. But when activity increases to the point where a bottleneck is developing, it’s time to figure out if some things don’t need to be copied, weighed or tested.

Delegating is the leader’s most valuable tool for time management. One approach I call The Four-Bucket Process. The boss provides to each subordinate a general sense of how decisions can be sorted into these categories: 1) you decide; 2) you decide and report; 3) you recommend; 4) you ask.

The first category holds decisions that the subordinates simple does, with no further communication.

The second category includes items that the subordinate has the authority to decide, but which the boss wants to be informed about. This is best done in a regular meeting (maybe weekly), in which the subordinate runs through the list of decisions made. The boss will provide feedback on two dimensions: was the decision correct, and was the decision properly categorized. The second dimension calibrates the process. After the boss hears a number of correct decisions about a particular type of issue, the subordinate may be told that this issue is now in the “you decide” category and need not be reported. Or if the subordinate is not making decisions as the boss wants, then the issue could be put into the “you recommend” bucket.

The ”you recommend” bucket can also be calibrated over time to include more or fewer issues.

In addition to delegating, some issues can be shunned by the boss. One of my clients heard a proposal for a new business line. The person pitching the idea had good experience in the field and a well thought-out proposal which would likely have added money to the bottom line. My client, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, turned it down. I asked why and got a good lesson. To start the new line of business, the CEO would have to take the idea to the board. One of the senior executives would have to add the new line to their portfolio. For the dollars that the line would add, the cost in term of senior leaders’ time would be too great. They had other initiatives to pursue that would entail much larger dollar amounts. The company passed on the small ideas in order to prioritize the big ideas.

Most importantly, the business leader should periodically review the time management strategy. Key questions for the leader’s self-review include: What issues come to me? Can any of these be decided by someone else? What issues should I spend more time on? How will I get those issues onto my schedule?

After the self-review, others can be brought into the discussion. Direct reports, superiors and same-level managers can be consulted to help minimize unnecessary time usage and streamline those activities that must be done.

Time management strategy itself is an activity that must be considered in competition with other possible uses of the leader’s time. But it’s an activity that has very high leverage. If done well, it will dramatically increase the leader’s capacity for valuable contributions to the enterprise.

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