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Идеальная неделя любого руководителя. Что нужно учесть?… — Transcript

Learn how leaders can effectively plan their week to boost team productivity and avoid burnout, based on research and practical advice.

Key Takeaways

  • Effective leadership requires focusing on managing and enabling subordinates rather than doing all tasks personally.
  • Regular weekly meetings to coordinate plans and review metrics are vital for team alignment and productivity.
  • Planning and reporting habits must be cultivated within the team to avoid chaos and inefficiency.
  • Leaders must protect time for training and communication to sustain long-term team and business growth.
  • Overworking without proper planning leads to fatigue and reduced effectiveness.

Summary

  • Harvard Business School studied senior managers' work habits, revealing an average 62.5-hour workweek with significant time spent outside the office.
  • Two common manager types are identified: the 'dreamer manager' who has ideas but lacks execution, and the 'worker leader' who solves problems but may not lead effectively.
  • A true leader's main role is to achieve results through their subordinates, focusing primarily on management rather than individual tasks.
  • Weekly coordination meetings with direct subordinates are essential for aligning plans, setting priorities, and reviewing past performance.
  • Leaders must ensure subordinates have clear plans, metrics, and reporting habits to make meetings efficient and results-focused.
  • Resistance to planning and reporting often stems from lack of tools and habits, but effective planning is crucial to avoid being reactive.
  • Leaders should allocate time for training, communication, and coordination to maintain team effectiveness and personal development.
  • Overloading the calendar without realistic planning leads to burnout and unmet priorities; careful time management is critical.
  • Leaders must embrace their role in managing organizational chaos and building a strong business foundation through structured processes.
  • Practical tools and methods for strengthening teams and business foundations are available through additional resources like master classes.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
Most managers have big problems with working week planning. For example, Harvard Business School conducted a study, and in this study, they worked with 27 senior managers, executive directors of large holding companies, and they recorded everything that happens to these guys every 15 minutes, literally,
00:26
Speaker A
and they did it for three months. During the study, they collected information about 60,000 hours of work of top managers, where and how they spent their time, who they talked to, what tasks they solved, and so on.
00:43
Speaker A
The results of the study: The average manager works 9.7 hours a day, plus about 4 hours he works on weekends, and about 2.5 hours a day during holidays. That is, on average, the duration of the CEO's working week, those who entered this study, was 62.5 hours a week.
00:56
Speaker A
47% of the time the managers worked in their offices, and the rest of the time they did some meetings, visited companies' branches, or worked from home.
01:11
Speaker A
And this is quite a dramatic situation. 62.5 hours a week. Agree, this is quite a lot.
01:24
Speaker A
Well, if we talk about managers in general, according to my observations, there are, you know, two types of managers when it comes to planning.
01:35
Speaker A
The first one is a dreamer manager. By the way, I used to be a dreamer manager.
01:42
Speaker A
What is a dreamer manager? You go to work in the morning, wake up cheerful, do some exercise, a lot of energy, get ready.
01:49
Speaker A
You go to work in a car, you have a lot of plans, you think about what could be improved, what could be changed, and so on.
01:59
Speaker A
You come to work, and the curtain goes down. It's 6 o'clock in the evening, or when you finish your work.
02:07
Speaker A
You take your head off the desk, and it feels like it's hard to remember what you've been doing all day.
02:17
Speaker A
At the same time, you don't have time to realize these bold ideas, these cool dreams that you had in the morning.
02:26
Speaker A
Some managers cope with this in such a way that after the last employee leaves the office, he finally starts doing something to realize these ideas.
02:36
Speaker A
It will end soon. It will end soon. It will end soon. It will end soon.
02:48
Speaker A
If this happened to you, like this video. But at the same time, fatigue accumulates.
02:56
Speaker A
At the same time, you still feel like you're stumbling. Why does this happen? Why does this fatigue, this irritation arise?
03:05
Speaker A
Well, just because you understand that you don't control the development, that your beautiful ideas that you could realize and get results from, they just never come true in life, and so on.
03:15
Speaker A
And you feel a little like a loser who is trapped. Like a dream leader, but a little bit like a hamster in a wheel.
03:29
Speaker A
The second type is a worker leader. You see, this is a person who believes that he must do everything, solve all the problems, do the work for everyone.
03:40
Speaker A
A hyper-responsible, very hard-working, usually very competent person, who is overflowing with pride of how well he coped with all sorts of problems and tasks.
03:55
Speaker A
And these leaders mostly plan work tasks accordingly. To deal with some problem, to meet with a client, to deal with a supplier, and so on.
04:07
Speaker A
But such guys, of course, if they don't dream, they don't feel particularly disappointed, but they still stumble.
04:19
Speaker A
What is the right thing to do? How to plan your week if you are a leader?
04:25
Speaker A
Well, let's figure it out. You need to start with the fact that, first of all, a leader is different from any other employee of a company in that this is a person whose main task is to make his subordinates work well.
04:30
Speaker A
A leader creates his results through work, through the work of his subordinates. We can say that the result or the product of the work of a leader is a total result of the work of his subordinates.
04:46
Speaker A
That is, if you got some result with your own hands, in other words, you got it not as a leader, you got it as a specialist.
04:58
Speaker A
You are awarded as a leader, as a result of a leader, only those who received your subordinates thanks to your smart management and thanks to the fact that you, as a leader, are doing something.
05:07
Speaker A
And we will now talk about what needs to be done. Well, if your subordinates have poor results, and you are so handsome, you solve all the problems for yourself, well, it means that you are just a cool specialist,
05:19
Speaker A
you are not a leader. A leader should devote most of his time, and I understand that it may sound strange, but a leader really should devote most of his working time, the lion's share, to management issues.
05:29
Speaker A
I will tell you why in this video, I will justify it. And at the same time, I see a lot of guys who call themselves leaders, but they constantly complain that they have to constantly coordinate meetings, participate in some brainstorming,
05:44
Speaker A
do some planning, it's not a job at all, you have to work hard, you know, you have to solve issues with clients, you have to solve problems with suppliers, and so on.
06:01
Speaker A
That is, a person does not understand what the job of a leader is. The main tool of a leader is his subordinates.
06:14
Speaker A
Leaders are motivated, effective, focused on the result, who work with high priorities, and so on.
06:21
Speaker A
Speaking of the leader's plan for the week, the first thing that should be in the leader's plan for the week is a weekly meeting with his subordinates to coordinate plans.
06:29
Speaker A
We call it coordination of plans, that is, call it whatever you like, a meeting, a rally, or something else, but the point is that you, as a leader, invite your direct subordinates there, direct subordinates are those who directly submit to you,
06:43
Speaker A
and there are no other leaders. You invite your direct subordinates there, they come with their plans for the week, and you, as a leader, make sure that these plans are smart, good, focused on results, and you make sure that these plans are coordinated between subordinates,
07:01
Speaker A
coordinated in general, so that they have the right priorities, and usually such a weekly coordination starts with reports on the implementation of the plans of the previous week.
07:25
Speaker A
And, of course, the question immediately arises, if my subordinates have no habit of making reports, no habit at all to plan for a whole week, oh my God, a week is so unpredictable, and so on.
07:36
Speaker A
Well, it just means that you, as a leader, have no tools to be able to carry out such weekly coordination, and they were carried out effectively.
07:52
Speaker A
First, you need to make sure that your subordinates have plans, that they are ready to report, that there are some metrics that they can report on, so as not to waste time on these meetings, on some general discussions,
08:01
Speaker A
and to share general impressions and hypotheses about what is happening, so that you can just look at the metrics and say, yes, it's good here, everything is at the level, it's growing well, here we have a drop, let's figure out what to do with it, you know, quickly,
08:16
Speaker A
exactly as it is, that is, tools are needed for this. About all the most important tools of these leaders, which are used in practice, in the management of the team, you can find out in my free master class how to strengthen the team,
08:30
Speaker A
strengthen the business foundation and reach a new level. I will leave a link to this free master class in the description to this video.
08:49
Speaker A
The first in the plan: weekly coordination with direct subordinates. The problem that we are facing here, of course, is that they do not want to do reports, they do not want to read metrics, they do not want to plan,
08:56
Speaker A
oh my God, it's so scary, but you can treat it differently. Some say, well, what's wrong with these people, why are they like that, why do they not want to do such simple things, because it is even clear to a fool that if you have not planned your working week,
09:13
Speaker A
then nothing good usually happens. You are like, you know, a feather in the wind, where it flew, you fly there, that's actually all.
09:29
Speaker A
If you plan and think about the future, yes, maybe you will be able to implement this plan, maybe you will not be able to, everything happens, it depends on your ability, your competence in planning, and it depends on, well, there are also circumstances
09:39
Speaker A
that come, then you can draw conclusions, and when you plan the next week, you can t
09:54
Speaker A
that come, then you can draw conclusions, and when you plan the next week, you can take these conclusions into account and make it more reasonable, and so on, but if you do not plan a week, then you are definitely.
10:08
Speaker A
a consequence, and you are controlled by life, you are controlled by everything that happens around you, and you do not control life, and who needs such subordinates, so this is such an important point.
10:18
Speaker A
Naturally, in order for subordinates to have plans, reports, metrics, and so on, they need to be trained, they need to be explained why this is important, they need to be shown, by the way, you also need to spend some time on this,
10:32
Speaker A
which will take time in the calendar of the leader, you will not do anything, and after you have explained all this, do not hope that they, having understood and realized, and, so to speak, having penetrated with all these ideas,
10:44
Speaker A
they will immediately start acting like this every week without fights, no, they will not start, because the habit is not developed, so your task as a leader is to constantly remind, to achieve, do it with a big friendliness,
10:58
Speaker A
with a pleasant smile, but at the same time, as such an internal bulldog, you repeat, you remind, you demand, you achieve, and at some point it becomes a habit, and this happens constantly, every week, and you, finally, at least part of your work you do as a real professional leader,
11:19
Speaker A
conducting coordination, and I feel right how your ability to manage these people grows, you will not do anything.
11:28
Speaker A
By the way, it takes time, when we help companies, when we help leaders to introduce a business operating system in the company, they usually have to set up and introduce all the tools.
11:41
Speaker A
in business, and they have to spend for a year and a half, 18 months, 10 hours a week to train, introduce, adapt, correct employees, and so on, for this operating system to work, it requires certain efforts.
11:59
Speaker A
A very correct practice, I would say, the only correct practice is when weekly coordination is always carried out at the same time, on the same day of the week.
12:11
Speaker A
It sets the rhythm, it sets a certain order. So, let's get started? Yes, let's get started, because it's a very serious business.
12:21
Speaker A
Yes, exactly, it's a business meeting. The second thing that should be in the plan for the leader's week is intermediate coordination, because life is different from plans, because life always brings something new, so 15 minutes a day of communication with each of the direct subordinates is what is called a must-have.
12:41
Speaker A
If you have 7 people, for example, in direct direct subordination, then 4 working days in addition to the daily coordination day, when you have already spent an hour on all of them, it is, accordingly, another 7 hours a week,
12:56
Speaker A
an hour a week per person. Well, I call it 7, I know there are managers who have 10 people in direct subordination, I have no idea how they cope.
13:04
Speaker A
Normally, it's from 5 to 7, it depends on the level of the leader. The higher the leader is, the fewer direct subordinates he should have, because otherwise he just won't cope, because he still needs time to think, to strategize, and so on, I'll tell you about it now.
13:19
Speaker A
An hour a week is 7 hours. In total, we've already got. 7 hours plus 1, we've already got 8 hours in the calendar.
13:29
Speaker A
This is only for weekly coordination, but it's important, because if you don't do it, then that plan, I mean, if you don't do intermediate daily coordination, then what happens?
13:41
Speaker A
Well, the plans were agreed once a week, well, everything is fine, well done, but something comes every day, and if you don't communicate with this subordinate every day.
13:54
Speaker A
and ask him questions, how is the execution of the plan going, what have you already done, how do you plan the rest of the tasks of the plan, what are you going to do tomorrow, what came unexpectedly, if there are any difficulties,
14:07
Speaker A
let's look at the priorities again, if you don't do this, what will happen? Well, all these plans will simply remain in dreams.
14:17
Speaker A
And by the way, people get disappointed very quickly, because one of the reasons why, for example, weekly planning does not work, according to my observations, is the following.
14:28
Speaker A
Everyone was taught, everyone was inspired, they wrote their first plans. Naturally, since this is the first plan, this is the first pancake, a lot of things were not taken into account at all.
14:36
Speaker A
The first thought that people have is, why are we even planning if we can't make these plans later?
14:43
Speaker A
But the reason is not that planning is bad, the reason is that, first of all, this skill is not immediately developed, that is, they did not take into account a lot of things, making their plans for the week.
14:53
Speaker A
And since there was no intermediate daily coordination, there was no opportunity to correct it on the go, and they came with such, you know, defeat and disappointment.
15:02
Speaker A
Therefore, daily coordination with your subordinates must also be in your calendar, as a leader.
15:09
Speaker A
And again, it is a good practice if your subordinate, each of them, knows at what specific time he should talk to you to talk about the course of the plan, and so on.
15:19
Speaker A
In the same way, you make a calendar and it creates a certain order and a certain rhythm.
15:26
Speaker A
And as a leader, you very quickly find out that what a person planned to do for the day, knowing that tomorrow at 10.
15:33
Speaker A
15 he has a 15-minute coordination with the leader, he will try to do everything that he himself planned to do by the plan that you have chosen.
15:45
Speaker A
Fantastic! So, at 8 o'clock your plan flew out for a week. Well, not flew out, but was invested, let's say, in real management.
15:55
Speaker A
The third point is what should be in the plan. Usually, if you are a leader, you have your own leader to whom you have to come every week with your plans for coordination, report on the work done, show some metrics,
16:12
Speaker A
discuss, bring some ideas. Well, I think that to prepare plans, to prepare reports, to look at it, to think, to make a decision, and plus to go to this coordination of the superior leader, you need to spend a couple more hours a week.
16:29
Speaker A
You already have 10 hours in terms of work as a leader, what is called a must-have, an indisputable amount.
16:38
Speaker A
The fourth point is what should be in the plan of each leader. Coordination with other departments.
16:44
Speaker A
Because usually a company consists of departments that need to cooperate, that need to interact.
16:51
Speaker A
In my experience, there were companies that, for example, had to do price education several times a week in order to make this price correction, they traded raw materials.
17:02
Speaker A
To make this price correction, those who are engaged in purchasing had to participate, the participants of sellers, marketers, those who are engaged in marketing of sales, and some other departments, to gather several times a week for half an hour to
17:18
Speaker A
discuss the situation and see what to do with stocks, warehouses, and so on, and how to change the price of a product.
17:24
Speaker A
That is, depending on the peculiarity of the activity, it can be different coordinations. No matter what company we work with, no matter what business we have, a couple of hours a week the leader will have to allocate to coordination with other departments.
17:40
Speaker A
A total of 12 hours in the calendar. Fifth, we need to work with different kinds of communication.
18:03
Speaker A
We receive messages by e-mail, we receive messages in messengers that need to be processed, there are incoming calls, and someone has written correspondence, ordinary mail.
18:16
Speaker A
Well, in my experience, the answers to questions, redirecting, approving decisions, all this takes at least half an hour a day.
18:27
Speaker A
Yes, let's take up to three hours a week you work with communication, with these messages.
18:33
Speaker A
The total is 15 hours a week already in your calendar. That's not all. Next, each leader has some priority tasks that he can do only by himself.
18:47
Speaker A
To develop something, to write something, to create something, to think about something, to work on some figures, on some document, on some plan, or to talk to someone, or to meet someone, or to go to some department, to look with your own eyes, and so on.
19:03
Speaker A
But let's at least allocate three hours a week for this. The total is already 18 hours a week.
19:13
Speaker A
Pay attention, I did not name any tasks that subordinates should do. I'm talking only about the work of the leader.
19:21
Speaker A
18 hours a week, I think you won't argue that the figures I name are very realistic.
19:27
Speaker A
At the same time, I have not yet mentioned any development, any strategy, nothing like that.
19:35
Speaker A
The seventh thing, or the seventh moment that should be in the plan for any leader's week is training.
19:43
Speaker A
We can't stand still. There are constantly new technologies that we need to master. By the way, I'm not an exception.
19:50
Speaker A
I constantly study something. And the list of courses that I need to go through, and the books that I need to read, and the videos that I need to watch, for some reason, it only grows.
20:01
Speaker A
I have a technical duty, although I constantly allocate time for this. Training. Well, according to my standard, it should be at least five hours a week.
20:10
Speaker A
I usually spend more, but let's be realistic and take on average, taking into account the leaders of some low-level line managers and top managers, for top managers, of course, I would like more, let's say, five hours a week for my own training.
20:27
Speaker A
And the trick here is that we all know that if you didn't set this time if you didn't allocate it, if you didn't fence it with barbed wire, then life will definitely give you some tasks and this will not happen.
20:43
Speaker A
Because there is always something that is more acute, that is related to income, that needs to be solved right now, this fire needs to be put out, and so on.
20:53
Speaker A
And for this reason, training suffers all the time if you don't set it in the plan and don't cling to this plan with your teeth like a bulldog.
21:15
Speaker A
So, five hours, it turns out 23 hours a week we already have in the plan of the leader.
21:21
Speaker A
It doesn't look like a lot, does it? 23 hours is not much, we have like a 40-hour working week.
21:29
Speaker A
But look, this is just how it looks. No matter how well we plan our work, we live in the real world.
21:38
Speaker A
And many people, by the way, think that if we have 40 hours in the working week, then we can make a plan for 40 hours.
21:46
Speaker A
Well, I can say this, these people are either supermen, that is, they have subordinated.
21:53
Speaker A
everything that happens around them and everything happens only according to their will and their consent, or they are just unaware people, or, let's say, those who do not understand very well in planning.
22:07
Speaker A
In my experience, if you try to put a task on your calendar for 40 hours, then you will work for at least 60 hours.
22:15
Speaker A
Because it's just impossible to predict everything. Because there are problems, problems with people, problems with clients, something changes and so on.
22:24
Speaker A
Good things happen, not problems, amazing things happen. For example, I planned my working week, what I usually do, it is pretty well planned.
22:34
Speaker A
And then I am invited to a conference in Colombia for Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs. Fortunately, it's not in Spanish, you can translate me into English.
22:43
Speaker A
This is a good opportunity, because we have plans to provide our wonderful business booster not only in Chinese, Russian and English.
22:50
Speaker A
We have plans to provide it in Spanish. Maybe I will find wonderful partners there.
22:54
Speaker A
Moreover, this is a very high-level conference, stars on stage and so on. But in order for me to take advantage of this opportunity, I need to allocate time.
23:06
Speaker A
I need at least a couple of coordinations with the team to discuss topics, discuss how to prepare for this.
23:13
Speaker A
I need to allocate time because I am still the author, I have to allocate time to work with the presentation, despite the fact that the team is doing an incredible job, helping me.
23:22
Speaker A
Well, at least 2-3 hours, thanks to this wonderful opportunity, I have tasks that I did not plan at all.
23:32
Speaker A
You see, I did not plan when I made my plan for the week. I did not know what to do.
23:37
Speaker A
Of course, I will take advantage of this opportunity, because it is an opportunity to implement the strategy and expand our company.
23:45
Speaker A
Do you understand what is happening? If you do not plan realistically, if you plan for 40 hours a week, but something unexpected constantly comes to you, what happens to you?
23:57
Speaker A
A week passes, you look at your plan, you feel like a worm and a loser.
24:03
Speaker A
Because you did not fulfill half of your plan. You did a lot of good things, but you did not fulfill half of the plan and most likely failed some priority tasks.
24:13
Speaker A
Therefore look a very realistic approach, if you plan the maximum, let's take a lot, 35 hours a week.
24:27
Speaker A
35 hours a week is what is planned in the manager's calendar. Well, let's leave, let's say, 5 hours a week for unplanned things.
24:36
Speaker A
But when you just start planning your week, I recommend you to start with 25.
24:44
Speaker A
Because. very quickly you will find out that the further you advance in this weekly planning, the more you begin to see the nuances that really should be included in the plan, and so on.
24:57
Speaker A
You see, it's just numbers, it's an indescribable thing. They say that at least 25 hours a week should be planned for organized work with your subordinates.
25:07
Speaker A
If you are a top-level manager, then most likely more. You should not be afraid of this, you just need to realize this, you need to be proud, you need to understand that at this moment you are a manager,
25:21
Speaker A
that at this moment you really create something for which you are paid by your manager's salary, for which you are respected as a manager and given this status.
25:32
Speaker A
Well, if a person looks at his calendar and calls himself a manager, and he has meetings with clients, dissatisfaction, some settlement of dissatisfied employees, constant sorting out scuffles with other units, meetings with the tax office, settlement of some.
25:51
Speaker A
harmful suppliers, then we understand that you are not really a manager. Not at all.
25:59
Speaker A
In other words, it is not necessary to work 12 hours a day without a day off to be a successful manager and to create a successful company.
26:09
Speaker A
There are many examples of this. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, his working day is.
26:17
Speaker A
8-10 hours, and a week is a standard 5 days. Apparently, this guy just knows how to plan his work.
26:25
Speaker A
If you are a manager, then, of course, according to my experience, you will have to work 50 hours a week and some time off.
26:35
Speaker A
This is a statistic. Especially when you are just building a company, developing it, and have not yet managed to cope with organizational chaos.
26:45
Speaker A
But in order to get the maximum return, you still need to plan a lot of time for working with staff, because if they do not work efficiently, then you will work for them.
26:57
Speaker A
The second point is that you need to plan rationally. Do not plan 40 hours for the tasks planned per week, otherwise you will work 80.
27:08
Speaker A
And this is not very cool.
Topics:leadershiptime managementweekly planningteam coordinationmanagement skillsexecutive productivityworkweek planningbusiness leadershipteam managementwork-life balance

Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between a leader and other employees according to the video?

A leader's main task is to achieve results through the work of their subordinates, focusing on management rather than doing tasks personally.

Why are weekly coordination meetings important for leaders?

They help align plans, set priorities, review past performance, and ensure subordinates are working effectively towards common goals.

What causes fatigue and frustration in managers as described in the video?

Fatigue arises when managers have many ideas but lack control over their execution, leading to feeling stuck and overwhelmed.

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