article thumbnail

What Great Managers Do Daily

Harvard Business

Managers lead by example when it comes to working hours. Two metrics we use to provide a proxy of active working time per week are utilization and after-hours time. It’s an imperfect metric, but does provide a good directional sense of working norms. However, managers need to ensure even allocation of work.

article thumbnail

How to Manage Managers

Harvard Business

But your direct reports don’t just learn from you when you sit down for your one-on-one meetings. People are watching all the time,” says Finkelstein. The best training for someone learning to become a manager is individualized attention from you, their boss. This shouldn’t just occur in meetings though.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Prioritize Your Opportunities with This Checklist

Harvard Business

Your Team’s Time Management Problem Might Be a Focus Problem. For them, this system becomes an Opportunity Filter to evaluate the most optimal uses of your available time and resources. Ultimately, as I have become skilled in using this metric, it has become a calculation I am able to do in my head. Staying Focused.

article thumbnail

3 Small Things Every Person Can Do to Reduce Stress in Their Office

Harvard Business

But there’s one glaring exception: messages that contain specific, time-sensitive inquiries. Can you come to the meeting Friday at 4pm? Recognize that responsible professionals thrive when they’re given autonomy, and work with them to establish a timeline and agreed-upon metrics of progress.

Fashion 28
article thumbnail

Case Study: Are Our Customer Liaisons Helping or Hurting?

Harvard Business

It was meant to be a win-win: Patients and their families would get a better, more personalized hospital experience, and doctors could spend less time managing patients and more time practicing medicine. It took several meetings to convince them that he didn’t know what he was talking about.” ” he asked.

article thumbnail

What If Companies Managed People as Carefully as They Manage Money?

Harvard Business

Today’s executives spend a lot of time managing the balance sheet, despite the fact that it doesn’t represent their company’s scarcest resource. According to Bain’s Macro Trends Group, the global supply of capital stands at nearly 10 times global GDP. One way to do this is to measure the cost of meetings.

article thumbnail

How Marketers Can Connect Profit and Purpose

Harvard Business

. “The amount of time management teams are spending reacting to dramatic changes in the world is unprecedented. “We talk purpose at the highest level strategy meetings. “We start with purpose, to transform healthcare, then we map that purpose to goals and metrics.