One of the
constant cries that arise from a busy leader (or anyone else for that matter)
is a complaint about the shortage of time.
This is, of
course, nonsense because we all have exactly the same allocation of time as
everyone else. It is just the way in
which we allocate the requisite amount of time to the action or inaction in
hand.
Professor Stephen
Hawking says that asking the question of what was there before the big bang is
like asking what is north of the North Pole.
It is, on the face of it, an unanswerable question because the general
onion is that there was nothing or in Kabbalistic terms, no-thing, prior to the
creation.
Inherently there
was neither space nor time both of which came into immediate existence at the
big bang. Space was ever expanding to what we call infinity and time was
reckoned from that point, 13 billion years ago.
Even that is an estimate based on our conception of time.
It is interesting
to take a quick stroll through Google to see what brilliant minds have made of
this concept and have tried to define time.
For example:
That which is measured as seconds, minutes, hours, days, years,
etc.
That doesn’t define time, merely
the way in which we measure it..
A non-spatial continuum that is measured in terms of events
which succeed one another from past through present to future
Once again this
depends on how we see the way in which time is measured.
The Greek
philosopher Plate expressed it more poetic terms:
Time is the moving image of eternity
The fact that
great minds have been unable to derive an understabable concept of time without
resorting to the method of measurement is a testament to its mystique while at
the same time (!) dominating our very existence.
Money has been
made from training courses on Time Management when the real issue is not in
terms of management but rather of time allocation.
This, I suggest,
depends then on what the individual considers to be important and that needs to
be prioritised. If we have a certain
amount of time in order to achieve something then it makes sense to be sure
that the right amount of time is allocated to the action.
That is obvious
but how many times do we allow things that are actually only urgent to get in
the way of those that are important.
Consider this
thought. In business, urgency is almost always communicated to us
by someone else. If we succumb to
the tyranny of the urgent, more often than not the really important takes a
back seat and a severe attack of fire-fighting takes over.
If we consider one
of those quadrants so beloved by consultants this time with the vertical axis
labelled Important and the horizontal axis as Urgent, then the box in which the
leader should be operating is the Important/not Urgent.
It is self evident
that the not Important/not Urgent box can be discarded and the other two should
be delegated.
The art of the
management of the time available to us is to decide what is important to us
while not necessarily being urgent and then make the time to do it.
Sometimes, by the way, doing nothing is a great option.
Golfer Sam Snead said that we should take time out to smell the roses. Taking time out to think is never wasted and
it is more often than not the most productive thing that a leader can do.
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