In the business world we are always struggling to make progress and to achieve success.  It is all too common to hear people lament how busy they are and that they just don’t have enough time.  The more I work with senior leadership in organizations the more I see that this is not the actual problem, but is a symptom of problems that permeate the very fabric of organizations and drain already thin resources.  It stems from an inability to prioritize and focus energy on the key decisions and operations of the group.

I recently was asked to present to the Senior IT Leadership Team for a large global organization.  This represented a significant step change for the IT organization and addressed a sore point that many had complained about for years.  We worked across the various IT teams for weeks and distilled our analysis ad recommendations to a simple message.  The ask was clear and straightforward.

The day before the meeting we were informed that the meeting was to be shifted from the morning to the afternoon.  A fairly significant move due to the level of the attendees and that many were traveling for this forum.  The session was to start at 2:00pm, it pushed back to 3:00pm.  There were six 30 minute sessions on the agenda.  By the time the meeting was concluded at 5pm, they had made it through 1 and a half of the scheduled topic areas and our session was cancelled.  Now we were forced to have one on one meetings with each of the Senior IT Leadership Team Members over the next several weeks.

Where does the problem lie?

All too often senior organization management fails to focus their attention on the unique tasks that only they can do.  Instead they dive into details that they should delegate to their lieutenants.   They confuse strategic and operational activities.  The amount of face to face time many of these senior team members have is limited, but they fail to structure it to take advantage of the scarce time they have together.  Then they find themselves overwhelmed as they have to make up for the lost time and opportunity.

According to Michael Mankins, “Most leadership team meetings (more than 65%, according to our research) are not even called for the purpose of making a decision. They’re held for “information sharing,” “group input,” or “group discussion.” The meetings that do focus on strategy are most commonly off-site brainstorming sessions—typically amorphous events that produce few tangible outputs. As a consequence, very few executives surveyed (only 12%) believed that their top management meetings consistently produced decisions on important strategic or organizational issues.”

So how do we bring focus to these sessions and help lead executives to make the best use of their, and your, time?

1. Focus sessions on decisions, not on issue discussion
2. Establish clear expectations for what the presenter must bring for the decision session
3. Make sure that all of the participants are ready for the session, the decision makers are informed and knowledgeable
4. Respect the clock. Contain the amount of time dedicated to a single agenda item.  If you come to the end of the allotted time and have not reached a decision, then the necessary prep work probably was not good enough.  Ignore the urge to push through.

In the end we must resist the urge to present all of the amazing analysis and design that we have done.  Focus on what the ask of the audience is and what do they need from you to comply with that ask.

When asked about preparing for a speech, President Woodrow Wilson has been credited with saying, “That depends on the length of the speech.  If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”