Time Management

Key Result Areas

Time management is about achieving the greatest volume of useful work in a fixed amount of time. There is a particularly important word in the previous sentence which we might have glanced over, can we pick it out? If we chose greatest, we would be incorrect in my opinion - it was useful.

Time management could be considered subjective; what I think is time spent wisely, we could consider a waste of time and visa versa. The obvious question should then be:

How do I accurately select items to spend my time on?

The answer to this simple question rests with a phrase we may or may not have heard: Key Result Areas. A key result area (also known as Key Performance Indicators) describe the main areas of responsibility or accountability of a job. A key result area is not a particular task and they are not really goals; they do however group together tasks which help to achieve a result. An example for a bank manager might be customer relations or leadership while for a software developer it might include software quality or business efficiency.

If we are to relate a key result area to our daily job, they would form our primary roles or responsibilities. From a productivity stand point, if everyone could manage to have a high ratio of key result area tasks to non-key result area tasks; everyone would be incredibly productive. Unfortunately in the real world, this is often not the case which is where the management of our work priorities comes into play. We must find the appropriate balance between key result areas and non-key result areas.

When we review the earlier opening statements, the two important points, greatest and useful. Without realizing it, our time can be consumed very easily by doing a lot of little tasks. Doing a lot of little tasks isn’t in itself a problem, however if those smaller tasks aren’t contributing to our key result areas or performance indicators then our time isn’t being utilized as efficiently as possible. Fortunately, there are a few simple questions to ask “yourself” to try and swing it back into the favor of the key result area. Does our current or next task:

Increase revenue or decrease costs? Increase the quality of the product or service? Increase the quantity of product produced? Increase business efficiency or decrease the time? Increase security or reduce risk? Increase safety?

If we are answering yes to one or more of the above points, then there is a good chance the task will contribute to our key result areas in some way.

If we are not answering yes to any of them, we should probably be asking our self why we’re completing this task and not a more important one. Of course, there will always be situations where we need to complete non-key performance indicator tasks. This is the exact scenario where our time management skills must come into play and find the appropriate balance of these tasks to achieve the highest performance from our company, staff or our self.

As a self development exercise, take notice of the type of tasks we are performing and how many of them are being attended to. Make sure we are counting all the tasks, even the ones that we don’t complete - as an incomplete task still competed for our attention and work time. Once we have our list, run each set of tasks through the itemized list above. Out of our list of tasks, how many of them satisfied one or more of the above points? If we completed tasks which didn’t satisfy at least one of the above points - ask your self why it got our attention.

Time management is about working effectively; achieving the most good in a fixed amount of time. If we’re not primarily working on our key result area tasks, then we aren’t effectively managing our time. What we might find is that we are being efficient, in that we are completing a lot of tasks but they aren’t the tasks that we should be completing. Be mindful of what items are actually getting your attention and work time, we might find that the wheels are turning and we’re not getting anywhere.