Are you an engineering boss? Seven days in a week, 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour, yet still feel like you are always running out of time? Yup, that’s because you are the “Boss”, and you sure are busy with a lot of stuff. But regardless of that, you need to win the battle of time management and emerge as an effective leader at all times. With that, here’s a fresh release from a study in Harvard that completely got your back!
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According to the study ‘The Leader’s Calendar’ that had gone through intensive research for about 12 years of good fact-finding, organization leaders including engineers got only one thing to blame why they have to give up on any shot of social life and spend exhausting late nights doing work because the clock seemed to tick excessively fast.
Meetings…
That’s it! Harvard Business School researchers confirmed that 72% of a Boss’s day was spent on meetings! Yep, you got it right.
To add, the result of their survey to 182 senior managers when asked about what they think is the purpose of meetings will completely lose your mind. About 65 percent of them said that meetings only prohibit them from accomplishing their tasks for the day. Enough said, imagine how the study had confirmed that more meetings do not actually equate to great business performance.
Photo: How to Make Engineering Boss More Effective
But honestly, have you observed yourself before the conduct of a meeting? You can’t start working because you keep on telling yourself why start something when you’re going to have to stop? So you just sit there and waste about 20 minutes of waiting before the actual meeting begins at last.
Waste another good 10 minutes making yourself that hot-brewed coffee to settle yourself and bore your companions to death by doing unnecessary recap on what they’ve already announced. And so the cycle starts, you spend half your time checking your watch because you have another meeting right after this one…and then another one after that.
If this scenario is something you can relate about, well maybe you are someone who also worries about everything you’re not accomplishing while in a very unproductive meeting that I’m sure wouldn’t equate to progress that much.
So what now? GineersNow got your back! Heed this advice and redefine meetings to make it worthwhile.
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Tip #1. K.I.S.S meaning Keep it Short and Simple
Keep meetings as fast as you can, allot just enough time to make sure everything is tackled and everybody gets reminded on important tasks.
Tip #2. T.H.A.T meaning Thinking Habit At Time
Avoid long power point presentations. Just keep everyone’s brains and eyes open. Have notes and do brainstorming!
Tip #3: L.I.P.S meaning Let Insignificant Powwow Substitute you
Don’t travel a lot just to meet everybody for every meeting. Have a priority of the most important meetings to least important. Assign somebody to represent you for the least important ones. You flee yourself from meetings plus you trained somebody else to become the next Engineer Boss just like you for a day.
Again, remember to KISS THAT LIPS every time you do meetings!
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