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You are here: Home / 1 - Productivity / No Tasks?

No Tasks?

July 27, 2009 by Matt Perman

From Organized for Success: Top Executives and CEOs Reveal the Organizing Principles That Helped Them Reach the Top:

After studying a number of organizational leaders at close range, I discovered that they operate in a highly distinctive mental realm when it comes to organization and time management.

In my opinion, what CEOs are really doing in this different realm — the real focus of their time, their core and ongoing project — is what I call managing influence. I first started to understand this phenomenon during an interview with a CEO in which I repeatedly pressed him to describe his “tasks.” Finally he got a bit testy and replied, “Look, there’s just one traditional task I do: I edit drafts of speeches prepared by my speechwriter — and I do that mostly when I’m on a plane. Otherwise, no tasks.”

His retort brought me up short. I finally got it. No tasks.

But in the next breath, I asked myself, “These guys aren’t sitting around watching the flowers grow. So if they’re not doing tasks, then what exactly are they doing?”

Because virtually all their time is spent with others, I deduced that their work had to be conducted in some way through these contacts. By shadowing them, I had discovered, as described earlier, that these contacts were very free-form, consisting mostly of suggestions, questions, observations, and eliciting their direct reports’ views, interwoven with occasional chat about golf, family activities, etc.

What the CEOs were doing, I concluded, was not primarily ordering others, but influencing them through constant contact. So that became my focus: how CEOs use their time to guide their company by influencing others.

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What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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