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People, Places and Things

Jun 18th 2011Business

I spent about 70 hours working this week, and now I’m going back and figuring out the breakdown of that time into people, places and things.

Here’s the definitions I’m using:

  • People – time spent working issues related to motivating, nurturing, supporting, disciplining, so basically leading people
  • Places – Time spent going somewhere to learn something new
  • Things – Time spent doing the business of the business; in other words, the things that have to be done to move stuff forward

With those definitions, here’s my breakdown:

  • People – 40%
  • Places – 10%
  • Things – 50%

These ratios change every week, sometimes with the “things” being dramatically higher as I hunker down and work on something for the organization.  At other times, “people” requires significantly more time, especially at times of great change or distress in the organization.

Great leaders know where they need to focus, and they always seem to have the required time needed to support the people issues.

You can always hire or deploy others to do places and things.

You can’t delegate the people responsibilities, even though many try.

Where do you spend your time?

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