Where do managers spend time?

One of the scarce resources which managers get is time. No matter how brilliant or foolish you are, you will only get 24 hrs a day. Not a single second is given as stock by God.
“Time management is a self-discipline in action”- Brian Tracy, motivational speaker.If we can manage our time effectively then we can go ahead from anyone.

Question arises is that where does an average, effective and successful manager spends time?  

In the year 1988, Fred Luthans and his team came up with a path breaking research which tremendously affected the management thinking.  They studied 450 managers to identify what these managers do in managing their organisations. What they found was these managers were broadly engaged in the four managerial activities:

1. Traditional Management- Which means planning, controlling and decision making.

2. Communication- They spent their time in exchanging the routine information and processing some kind of paperwork.

3. Human Resource Management- They used to spend their time in motivating, disciplining, training, managing conflict, team building, recruitment and selection.

4. Networking- They used to spend time in interacting with outsiders like competitors, suppliers, government officials, customers etc. and they were also engaged in organisational politics held among different units.

When I read these functions I realized that being an executive I myself spend most of the time in these activities only.

Time spent by managers in above activities

Managerial Activity	Time Spent (%)
	Average Managers	Successful Managers	Effective Managers
Traditional Management	32	13	19
Communication	29	28	44
Human Resource Management	20	11	26
Networking	19	48	11

After going through the research I realized that I was spending very few hours in paperwork and networking.  Slowly, when I started managing my time for Communication and Networking it improved my personal performance. Due to this small change, I have evidence of every work which I have done and this has given me amazing confidence for future actions.