Too Much Time Tracking

Domain: Execution - Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The easiest ways to lead are rarely the best.

One of the most obvious ways of managing others is to track their time and how they use it. It's easy to see when someone comes in late, to take notice of that late night email or to leverage reporting to see how frequently people are badging in to the office. Because we don't do a great job of training managers on results-driven work, they default to these easy and available methods for managing.

But being present, or even busy, doesn't mean being effective. Unfortunately, many managers focus too much attention on the time itself rather than the results that are produced within that time.

Today I'll provide some common examples of what that looks like in order to start shifting our thinking towards outcome focused management.

Punctuality

Many leaders place an emphasis on punctuality without considering how it drives desired outcomes.

I often have managers bristle at this point. "But punctuality is important!" they say. If I only ask why it's important, they point to ideas like professionalism or vague feelings about dependability. But if I ask for the specific outcomes that punctuality supports, we inevitably get into a more thoughtful discussion.

In some roles, punctuality matters a great deal. If a waiter is late for their shift, other staff have to cover their area which can directly impact the experience of all customers. This also creates a delay in service that, if significant enough, can reduce the total number of customers served. That's an impact to revenue. The customer experience and revenue are critical outcomes in that scenario so punctuality makes more sense as a relevant input.

There are also plenty of roles where someone coming in 10 minutes late has little to no impact on the results they produce. In these scenarios, it's worth focusing on the desired outcome instead of a readily available but less relevant metric.

The importance of punctuality even depends on the situation. Being late to an important client meeting is much different than being late on a random Tuesday when nothing is scheduled.

The point is not whether or not you should worry about punctuality. It's to set aside assumptions in order to truly understand how (or if) punctuality drives outcomes.

Extra hours

Long hours, including nights and weekends, are seen as signs of hard work and dedication. That makes sense and I'm certainly not opposed to recognizing effort.

I also know that effort is only one part of the performance equation. You can put tremendous effort into something and still get disappointing results.

This seems obvious, but I've seen long hours cited as rationale for promotions with little consideration given to the results the individual was producing.

In fact, consistently working long hours has been shown to be counter-productive to performance. Add in the fact that these additional hours are often spent on low-priority work such as emails and it becomes clear that we are recognizing the wrong things.

When we prioritize meaningful results and outcomes, the hours become less relevant. Developing a team who can deliver strong results within a 40-hour work week yields multiple benefits to the company. You have less burnout and fatigue while also better managing costs.

Time in context

Time in the office vs. out of the office. Time in meetings. Time on specific tasks. In these examples, managers go beyond whether this person is or is not working and focus on whether they are present for specific tasks. But this is still a form of tracking presence, just at a more granular level.

I worked with a group who had a hybrid schedule where they were required to be in the office a certain number of days each week. The hybrid requirement was intended to promote in-person collaboration but everyone continued to take all their meetings via Zoom. This was because many of their clients and partners worked in other geographical locations and would never be available for the desired in-person collaboration. Instead of thinking deeply about how to promote and gauge collaboration, they elected to implement a hybrid policy and track badge reports.

Finding the right outcome and determining how to measure it is often a more difficult task. That's why so few leaders do it. But if we really consider ourselves to be results-oriented leaders, we need to be more intentional about designing our work around meaningful results.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

List the actual impact that punctuality has on your key outcomes. Can those outcomes be achieved without tracking time-in and time-out?
Before delivering your next performance review or promotion offer to an employee, document the ways they have driven outcomes while removing references to hours worked.
Inform your team that meeting attendance is optional for the next month with the expectation that they must continue to deliver results. Review at the end of the month to reveal whether results were impacted.