29 January 2010

Discipline and Downtime Important

Many managers marvel at how high performing leaders get so much done. Everybody’s busy at work, and there are only so many hours in the day… so how do they do it?

One common characteristic of effective leaders is a stringent approach to time management. Highly regarded business researcher, author and consultant Jim Collins says it’s all about discipline and using a ‘stopwatch’ approach to split precious working time into blocks.

In a recent feature on the Harvard Business Review Editor’s Blog, the famously disciplined and productive management expert and writer of such business favourites as Built to Last, Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall discussed his method of self-organisation.

Blogger Bronwyn Fryer writes that Jim divides his working life into blocks – 50% creative time, 30% teaching time and 20% other stuff (“random things that just need to get done”).

“He blocks out the morning from 8am to noon to think, read and write, unplugging everything electronic. After lunch, he spends his afternoon in the office with his researchers, or with clients. In the late afternoon he goes for a long run or rock climb, again to clear his mind. Then comes dinner, possibly more writing, and bed.”

“One of his favourite quotes comes from the famously disciplined French novelist Gustave Flaubert: ‘Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.’ For Collins, high quality work requires long stretches of high-quality thinking.

“White space,” as Jim calls it, is the prerequisite for fresh, creative thought. It’s the time that he spends with nothing scheduled, so that he can empty his mind and refill it with new thought. He aims to spend 100 days next year in the white space.”

While it’s easy for an international best selling author to plan this downtime, Jim insists that this approach worked for him even before his success as an author.

“Before he became famous, he spent his time thinking and working on his first book, Built to Last, turning down consulting offers from large companies that wanted him to travel to them. And he credits that ‘time in the cave’ spent thinking for his success,” Fryer writes.

His message for managers is to “afford” white space time, even if for only a half hour a day.

Purchase Jim Collins’ best selling books online at www.managementbooks.com.au.