Sunday, December 03, 2006

Time Management

A Cold Look at Time Management
After understanding how you are using your time, the next step is to examine your time utilization vis-a-vis your life objectives. Most people are so concerned about ' doing things right' that they rarely pause to consider whether they are doing the 'right things'. The day-to-day running around may contribute nothing towards life objectives and thus may not be the right thing to do.

This involves a cold look at your life asking two basic questions: "Where do you want to go?" and "Where are you going now?" If one is running exactly in the opposite direction, it is not particularly helpful to find that one is running very fast.

Some people want to make their family happy and spend most of their time away from the family to earn the extra money that they think will make the family happy. Some others want to rise to higher levels but spend so much time working hard on routine jobs that they have no
time left to develop themselves to handle higher responsibilities.

Professionalisation of Management

The fact that the subordinates are not developed does not seem to bother most managers. In the Indian situation, a typical manager would try hard to help his brother or cousin, but will not lift a finger to help his subordinates. Family ties are able to command greater loyalty than organizational ties. As far as a subordinate is concerned, the manager is ready to take a fatalistic view that " he may come up if that is in his luck". At best, he will nominate his subordinate to a training program - which becomes ineffective without support on the job in terms of job enrichment and increased responsibility.
This brings us to the main Inducement for delegation i.e., professionalization of management. We talk about professional management. But frankly, there can be no professionalism unless managers have learned to delegate and develop their subordinates. The real motto of professionalism is the desire to defeat your disciple. Unless your disciple excels you, you have not made your contribution to professionalism. This is exactly what delegation achieves. It allows the subordinate to work initially under your guidance and later on beyond your guidance to achieve things greater than you have been able to achieve. Unless a manager believes in professionalism and is ready to undertake this type of endeavor, professional management will not be established.

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