where do you spend your time?

August 201410 Nurse Leader

Where Do You Spend Your Time?

Katherine Vestal, RN, PhD, FAAN, FACHE

L e s s o n s L e a r n e d

It is hard to imagine that there are nurse lead-ers who would say that they have plenty of

time to manage all of their workload. It is farmore common to hear that they are running atfull speed and still not keeping up with all thatneeds to be done. It is also common to hearthat they love what they do, but the pressuresare wearing them down. It is the frenetic natureof healthcare organizations today that feels quiteoverwhelming at times and contributes to thelong work hours and a sense that it can neverall be done.

This is a hard way to live and manage ourwork lives, especially since the work demandsoften spill over into the evenings and week-ends, creating even more reasons to try to getthings under control. Many leaders think it isjust the nature of the beast that captures ourtime and energy in such a relentless way. Theproblem with this acceptance is that itobscures the solutions that could in fact helpto improve the situation.

Is it possible to find ways to better managehow you spend your time? Of course! Ironically,it will take a little bit of your time to figure itout, but in the long run, you can vastly improvehow you manage your time. Whether you are anew leader or seasoned executive, there is valuein taking stock of how you spend your timeand realigning your activities to the placeswhere you will achieve the highest return onyour time investments.

The first step is to acknowledge that youneed to manage your time better or differently.This will require that you take a deep breathand commit to keeping a time journal for a2-week period. Much like a food diary, youwrite down how each minute or minutes arebeing utilized, such as in system meetings, man-agement meetings, coaching, communicating bye-mail, phone, web casts, etc. Establish cate-gories so that you can then tally up the wayyour minutes, hours, days, and weeks are beingspent. You might also capture a list of things thatyou were unable to get to during the day, andmaybe how much work you are doing at home.These data will be used to analyze how yourwork time is spent. Once you have done this,

you are ready to move on to the second type ofanalysis, and it may be harder to figure out.

Set aside time to think through what the 5to 8 key result areas are that you as a leadermust accomplish during the year. These wouldbe the major accountabilities that you have tofocus on and either complete or make majorprogress on. It is usually some combination ofmore global expectation such as establishingand communicating clear visions, values, andaction plans for building and maintaining ahigh-performance culture. It may include youraccountabilities for attracting high-performingtalent and for raising the future high-potentialleaders. Often included is the specific programdevelopment that is a part of your leadershipportfolio. It is important that you crystallizethese key result areas into tangible plans so thatyou can begin to correctly allocate your time.

With these 2 important sets of information,what you are currently doing and what youneed to be doing, you can compare the two.Once you get clarity on the nature of the timegaps between the two you can then find solu-tions. The solutions are fairly practical but notalways easy to accomplish until you have prac-ticed and learned new behaviors. Here are afew things to think about:

• How you allocate your time is largelydependent on your role in the organiza-tion. If you are a middle manager, youshould plan on spending the majority ofyour time on managing, measuring, androutine performance job responsibilities atthe unit level that you manage. As youbecome more senior, this will flip as yourtime is better spent on planning and organ-izing for the future while others run theday-to-day operations. It is interesting thatthis is harder to accomplish than it appears,especially for leaders who are recentlypromoted. Being promoted to a new jobrequires that you learn to reallocate time,learn to delegate, and assume new func-tions. Because we often learn to be aleader by emulating others, be sure you arelearning from a leader that is clear aboutthe differences in roles, or you could end

up doing more than 1 job justbecause you are unable to letsome things go, or fear losing yourcomfort zone to a new world ofthe unknown. The only effectiveway to move forward is to dele-gate some things to make roomfor the new expectations.

• Prioritize the key result areas anddecide how you will allocate yourtime. If your goal is to develop anew culture that is focused onhigh performance and results, youwill need to spend a lot of time inconversations with your leadersand staff in order to coach androle model your values and desiredbehaviors. The is nothing that canreplace your direct presence tochampion your goals and to inter-face directly with the staff wholove to experience you unfilteredand genuine. The time you spendover the course of months ormore should demonstrate what isimportant to you and your team.

• Can you learn to say no? If youare clear about your priorities andcan articulate them well to others,there may well be times whenyou are asked to do other thingsthat you will have to request notto undertake at the time. If youare going to many meetingswhere it is for information only,begin the process of reviewingagendas to determine whetheryou need to be at the meeting,and learn to review minutes tocatch up on information. Trysome tradeoffs, like if you aregiven time to concentrate yourefforts for a time period, you willthen be better able to join anoth-er team in a few months.

• Spend time with your high-per-forming staff by coaching or sup-porting them to succeed. Theseare usually around 10% of yourstaff and most likely the ones whowill be anxious to learn more andto progress. The opposite 10% atthe bottom of the curve areunderperformers and typically thestaff you spend the most timetrying to raise them to a higherlevel. The rest of the staff are

“good,” but easily influenced bythe underachievers. Your returnon investment for further devel-oping the stars will be invaluableto you because they are the staffthat you will be able to delegateto and to depend on as issuesarise. If there is little chance ofthe low 10% progressing, perhapsit is time to find them anotherplace to work that better suitswhat they want to do.

• Better manage conflictingdemands on your time, priorities,and logistics. A huge amount ofthe everyday life of a leader isspent on spontaneous meetings tosolve a problem, conversations inthe hallway and elevators, andtrying to get a feeling for what isreally going on. You support theneed to an open-door policy eventhough it leads to your reducedproductivity from many interrup-tions. One way to better yourown time management is to blockout routine times to have openoffice hours, block off time toanswer e-mail and calls, and espe-cially block out time for planningand strategy work. These are a fewthings that seem to always be donein a rush or not done at all exceptafter hours. It is for you to decidehow you will organize your daysand weeks. And if you do not, andanyone can schedule your calen-dar, you will definitely be at aconstant point of conflict. Takecontrol of your calendar until youfigure out how you want toschedule your time.

Working on the business and notjust in the business will be time wellspent. Your needs may differ from lead-ers around you, but they all wouldprobably welcome some changes in thedemands on their time. Maybe as agroup you could schedule non-meet-ing blocks to free up time to work onyour own goals. Simply doing nothingbut throw you hands up in frustrationwill not make it better. This is aboutmanaging your time to focus on thepriorities .Leadership is about how youspend your time to help the organiza-tion succeed and to support you as a

key manager. If you focus on thewrong things for the time that youhave, the consequences are likely to bedifficult. If you take the time to spendyour time wisely, everyone will gain,and you will find that you go homefeeling good about the day and yourrole as a leader.

Katherine Vestal, RN, PhD, FAAN,FACHE, is president of Work Innovations,Inc., in Lake Leelanau, Michigan. She canbe reached at kvestal@aol.com.

1541-4612/2014Copyright 2014 by Elsevier Inc.All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2014.05.007

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