Managers Part XIII - The System

It likely came as no surprise that your boss has a legitimate claim on your time, maybe a bit more of a surprise that your subordinates had a legitimate claim on your time, but what's this about the system having a claim on your time? We're going to define the system as anything and anyone who is not in your chain of command, but whom you have to deal with and/or keep happy as part of your job. For many businesses this includes the customers, suppliers, and vendors. It probably goes without saying that you have to treat your customers right, whatever that entails in your business, and to pay your vendors and suppliers on time. But it also includes those who are part of your company, but whom you don't directly answer to. This could include Human Resources, Accounting, Tech Support, or Janitorial. Some of the people in these other departments may be at the same level as you in the organizational chart, some may be on the same level as your boss, some may have positions that don't translate neatly into the hierarchy. But they all make up the system that you have to deal with. They all have procedures, and maybe even paperwork that you have to fill out before you can make a legitimate claim on their time. How well you get along with these other departments can determine how strictly they decide to enforce their requirements and how often they "cut you a break". If most of the time you follow their rules, don't go over their heads, and don't make unreasonable demands, then you've got some good interdepartmental credit that you can draw upon in an emergency. For example, at the government agency where I work there is a defined procedure for resolving computer problems. It's not very difficult, but it can take a while to get a result. Unfortunately I require computer access to do 90%+ of my job and my computer was not functioning the other morning. I know that the normal procedures would cause me to be non-productive for a good portion of the morning, so I walked over to the IT department and asked for some help. Since I never before had jumped the line and get along well with all of the tech people, I was up and running in about five minutes. They could have easily made me follow procedures, "paying full price" for what I needed, but since I had good credit with IT that I had not squandered, I was given a "discount" on the time it took. On the other side of the coin, several years ago I was managing a grocery store. The various stores usually helped one another out by transferring items from stores that had a surplus to stores that were short a product. The procedure was to call ahead, ask if you could spare item xyz, and find out when would be a good time to pick it up. This allowed the store that was transferring out the time to organize the transfer without disrupting their own operations. One particular store manager never called ahead; he just sent one of his subordinates with a list of things that they needed. The first time we chalked it up as inexperience, the second time to an emergency, but it kept happening, even after we asked that procedures be followed. After a while we stopped helping this manager - he had ruined his credit with us.

There are many examples, some that you could think of, where cooperation and help from another department, or even from your peers in the same location would make your work day proceed smoother. There are a lot of people on your team that are neither boss nor subordinate that can make or break your day. If you are spending all of your time battling the system, your self-imposed time might be shrunk to nothing.

The other part of the system involves reports, those you read and those you produce. This includes emails, trade publications, tracking, forecasting, payroll and whatever else you have to involve yourself in that doesn't involve direct interaction with another human being. There are a few ways to handle these items. One is to delegate. Does everything that you do necessarily have to be done by you? Is there someone else who would benefit by reading that report, or by answering those emails? Is it really someone else's job and not yours?

Does the report even have any impact on your job? Years ago the store director that I worked for asked all of the department managers to report the dollar amount of their waste every week. One of the managers refused to do it, claiming that the head guy wasn't doing anything with the information. I thought that he had a point, so for a couple of weeks I just made up numbers and put the report on the boss' desk, which he proceeded to file away unread. There was another incident where a central office supervisor required that we enter sales numbers in a database in order to project sales and labor. I thought that I had a better way to do it, but had to use this other guy's system. After a while I stopped changing the numbers and just changed the date every week. He never noticed. This is a strategy known as benign neglect. If you leave something undone, and no one notices, you probably don't need to do it. Furthermore, if you make it look like you're reporting something and no one sees that the information is fake, or isn't changing, then they don't really care about the information, only that you are obeying their order. You have freed up the time that you would have spent compiling information that no one will look at or care about and can spend that time wisely, managing, rather than stupidly following orders. 

Notice that I haven't trotted out the usual time management tips like "make a list" or "prioritize. I used to tell my subordinate managers that I was paying them to think. Think about what parts of the system can be eliminated and eliminate them. We've touched upon the skill of knowing what you should be doing and what you should delegate. Coming up in the next installment, management time vs. vocational time.