DANIEL VASELLA, chief executive of Novartis AG, is in charge of 98,000 employees in 140 countries at his giant drug and health-care-products company, which had $38.1 billion in revenue last year. Yet for all his authority, he sometimes feels like a prisoner - to his calendar.
"I'm locked in," he says. He is booked nearly solid until September, with back-to-back meetings and trips that were scheduled months ago.
"Due to the constraints, I have to put down in priority things I like to do and that would be very interesting. I can't spend as much time as I'd like to at hospitals, talking with doctors and patients who use our products. This is where I hear and see so much and get so many ideas."
Other CEOs are equally chained to crammed agendas. They complain about a lack of spontaneity their workdays and little time to mull over the problems that crop up. They often have to make do with phone calls and emails when a face-to-face meeting might have been more effective.
Far more than their pre decessors, top executives face more demands from more people. "Where CEOs a de cade ago may have had five choices, they have 100 - and because they're under more scru thiy, they're more pressured to be visible and make themselves available," says Richard Wellins, senior vice president of global markethig at DDI, a Pittsburgh-based consultant. T0 START WITH, executives are at the helm of much larger companies than existed even a decade ago. They spend considerable time globetrotting to visit employees and customers dispersed around the world. They are expected to stay in close touch with a growing list of constituents-from direc tors and biginvestors to government regulatory officials and potential bushiess partners.
They are also ini demand to serve as directors of other companies and other organizations, to appear on television, to give speeches at universities, to headline conferences, and to participate at some level in nonprofit or civic groups or act as advis ers or directors for those groups.
Before these executives wres tie with the issue of finding downtime for themselves, and their family and friends, they are asking themselves what it takes to do their job well amid such a workload.
'With each request, I have to make a judgment about whether this is somethhig important for the company, something I'd enjoy doing, or something I want to do to help someone else," says Mr. Vasella.
He keeps himself in check by occasionally stepping back to evaluate his plans, questioning whether he could do his job differently. When he has to give presentations to analysts, he asks himself whether they really add to sales and earnings, and often thinks his time would be better spent visiting more customers.
Like Mr. Vasella, Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, thinks meetings with customers are crucial to expanding the bottom line and shouldn't be sacrificed. He tries to visit at least one customer whenever he is traveling for another purpose.
THE PROBLEM is that it is impossible to predict months in advance, when trips are being planned, which customers will be most important to meet with. So he makes sure he has some breathing space on his calendar. He leaves some time each day for things that just come up. That can be anything from a call from an executive at another company to an impromptu meeting with one of his own managers.
Planning daily downtime for impromptu meetings isn't easy for globetrotting CEOs. Kathleen Murphy, CEO of ING US Wealth Management, says her calendar is already booked a year ahead for national sales conferences, meetings of several nonprofit boards she sits on, and meetings she holds every quarter with employees in different locations in the U.S. She spends about 60% of her time traveling. These days, she looks forward to the time she has for herself on planes. "No one can reach me by phone and I can get reading and think- ing done," she says.
When she is back at her office in Hartford, Connecticut, she has to find a way to get an enormous amount of work done- quickly catching up and then moving ahead. She often schedules meetings in half0hour intervals during her workdays, which are typically up to 12 hours long.
She has learned that the best way to manage her overbooked schedule is not to micromanage.
"I ask pointed questions to make sure [subordinates] know I'm focused on what is driving the business. It's not about keeping them on their toes but about having meetings that matter," she says.
The single most crucial ele ment for surviving such a schedule, she believes, is to have a competent team to which you can delegate important jobs. She can't afford to micromanage. "At my level, you can't get caught in the weeds," she says. "You have to move back to a more strategic position."
No comments:
Post a Comment