Managing People in The Business World by Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad - HTML preview

Time Is Valuable

Many of us in the managerial and supervisory roles are well aware that our time is extremely valuable however, not all of us are equally conscious that other people’s time is valuable too. Recognising that time is money and other people’s time as well as our own is vital for the total profitability of the organisation, it should follow that a constructive way to encourage people to use their time is a lot more wiser and better phenomenon.

I have always strongly felt that we must try our best to make everyone in our organisation realize that time is valuable and must be managed with utmost care, proper control and adequate concern. This is definitely one of the vital things we have to strive for if we want an efficient operation and a profitable organisation. We must also remember that our concern for ours as well as other people’s time makes everybody feel important.

We managers are busy people and if we face a situation where our people or others want to see us we often or usually let them wait. Let us put ourselves in their shoes and then we would be able to understand whether it is wise and could make a much more positive impression if we quickly found out what they wanted.

In this way we may be able to immediately find out that it is something we can do to handle in a few seconds. If not, then we can suggest that they come back later when you could see them right away. Either that or we would be able to drop by and see them.

Remember that we would not achieve anything by forcing them to cool their heels for half an hour or so. This forms and dictates a better attitude at workplace.

Let us consider another scenario and time when we are really tied up with very important matters and our issues are very urgent. In such cases we do not want to be disturbed by additional matters if we can help it. All right, can we think first about the people who might want to see us and check to find out if they need your opinion or action immediately? This is where the issue of delegation of authority to someone responsible to handle the matter may be seriously considered. This action would certainly go a long way to make the situation smoother and manageable even if it would be someone else’s decision.

Some supervisors and executives, whether they realize it or not, are definitely in a bottlenecked situation and do not envision that their subordinates’ time is valuable too. Therefore those of us who do not think that other people’s time is worth money then why should they?

Closely related to this issue of time is the element of communication in the workplace and so it is very important when the listener properly understands the speaker. However, there are many reasons why real communication seems often to be short-circuited by the managerial personnel.

• Employees and the managers do not always feel free to say what they really mean.
• Some words have different cultural and social meanings to different people, particularly in a diverse work force.
• Some people hear only what they want to hear, with the result and consequence that the meaning intended by the speaker is somewhat or totally distorted.
• It sound odd but some people even do not want to listen. Much of the time they are either too busy thinking of what they are going to say next or they are in a different wave length.

Therefore, it becomes very important in relation to our time management as to how well do we communicate to succeed at our workplaces.