Effective Working Time

Last Saturday I had lunch with some friends and their families, most of them had studied at RWTH Aachen during the same time I studied there. Few of them were very successful and became the heads of China operations of large/medium German or other foreign companies.

I had an interest to understand how hard they work and threw a question on the round table: “How many effective hours do you guys work per day in average?”

One friend asked back: “How do you define effectiveness?”

“Adding value to your company.” I answered.

He smiled and responded: “I am happy, if my work does not destroy values.”

And another friend said: “Maximum three to four hours.”

That is exactly the phenomena I observed by discussions with other professionals. The higher you climb to the corporate latter, the un-clearer is it to determine the value of your work and therefore your effectiveness. Most people, yes, most people are focusing to protect their current positions. The best way to do it is to orientate to what the bosses require. And it is important too.

But is that all a leader like you should do? Obviously not.

You have an obligation to continuously increase the assets of your team, organization or your company, e.g. hire the best people, let the low performers to find other opportunities, develop your people as a team and as individuals, improve the working process, make sure that your team to stop doing things that either destroy value or do not create values.

If you have done all these perfectly, then the next step is for you to extend the responsibility of the team or create new business scope. As a leader you have always to move a step ahead for others to follow.