News Archive 2011

4Ps Business and Marketing
Should CEOs Waste time on 'Internal Meetings'?

"Too many Meetings, too much time wasted," is a lament one often hears within top and middle management. Should CEOs even believe in meetings?

After analysing the timetable of 94 European CEOs of major corporations, Prof. Raffaella Sadun of HBS' Strategy unit, in an April 2011 paper titled, What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better, concludes, "The vast majority of a CEO's time, some 85 per cent was spent working with other people through meetings... while only 15 per cent was spent working alone. Of the time spent with others, CEOs spent on average 42 per cent percent with only "insiders"; 25 per cent with insiders and outsiders together; and 16 per cent with only outsiders. Likewise, time spent with insiders was strongly correlated with productivity increases. For every 1 per cent gain in time spent with at least one insider, productivity - for example, profits per employee - advanced 1.23 per cent. Less reassuring, however, was that the time CEOs spent with outsiders had no measurable correlation with firm performance."

For full article go to http://www.4psbusinessandmarketing.com/28072011/editorsdesk.asp?sid=4738&pageno=3

Related Work:

What Do CEOs Do? Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat, and Raffaella Sadun , March 2011

The Wall Street Journal
The Juggle, Worth It to Work Long Hours?

In this age, when the 40-hour work week is increasingly viewed as part-time, many of us are pulling long hours at the office. But at some point, all that time spent in the cube reaches a point of diminishing returns and it's worthwhile just to call it a day and head home.

Determining that point, however, is tough, as Laura Vanderkam writes in a recent piece for Fortune.com. Vanderkam, the author of the helpful time-management book "168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think," examines the academic research on hours worked and actual productivity to try to come up with an answer.

Researchers at Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics and other institutions have launched a CEO Time Use Project to determine how a chief executive's time corresponds with a company's performance, defined as revenue per employee and the profitability of the firm. (The project uses time logs kept by CEOs' personal assistants, among other data.)

The study, which so far only has data from a group of Italian CEOs, found a strong correlation between the hours worked and the productivity of the firm; every one percentage point rise in hours worked meant firm productivity rose by 2.14 percentage points, Vanderkam writes.

For full article go to http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/07/13/worth-it-to-work-long-hours/

Related Work:

What Do CEOs Do? Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat, and Raffaella Sadun , March 2011

The Power of Slow (blog)
How Many Work Hours are Enough?

Fortune 500 magazine recently reported on research conducted by Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics and others on how much time CEOs spend at work. Entitled CEO Time Use Project, this study is headed by Raffaella Sadun, an Italian academic at Harvard who released the first findings of Italian CEOs in a pool of over 200 from around the world. On average, Italian CEOs work 48 hours a week.

What researchers have found is people themselves tend to stretch the truth about how much time they spend at work, a finding that places John Robinson’s Time Use Survey research into question (the next one is due to be release later this month). While many of his respondentsclaimed to work up to 80 hours, many of them really only worked 60. Even back in 1998, the self-reporting methodology was called into a question.

For full article go to http://powerofslow.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/how-many-work-hours-are-enough/

Fortune Management CNN
How many hours should you be working?

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tells graduates in his usual commencement address that "it never hurts to be the first one in in the morning -- and the last one to leave."

In last year's bestselling book Rework, 37 Signals co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson complain about people who "try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them.... This results in inelegant solutions." Workaholics "aren't heroes," they write. "They don't save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done."

So, what's the magic number?

Bloomberg, Fried and Hansson are all successful people, so who's right? Up until now, there hasn't been too much data surrounding this question, but researchers at Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics and other institutions have recently begun an ongoing CEO Time Use Project to figure out exactly how work hours relate to success. Using time logs kept by CEOs' personal assistants, and looking across different cultures, the study asks how CEO time use corresponds with a company's performance.

At this point, data is only available from a group of Italian CEOs of large firms. But according to Harvard's Raffaella Sadun, "we found this very strong correlation between the number of hours spent at work by a CEO and the productivity of the firm" (defined as revenue per employee) "and also the profitability of the firm." Every one percentage point rise in hours worked meant firm productivity rose by 2.14 percentage points.

For full article go to http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/06/how-many-hours-should-you-be-working/

This article was also reprinted in EDUESL.com

Accunomics (blog)
Bosses Should Stick to the Knitting...

This article is available at http://www.accunomics.com/our-ideas/blog?post_id=1807

Extract Value from Consultants (blog)
CEOs don't think - they hire McKinsey to do that

This article is available at http://extractvaluefromconsultants.com/2011/?p=3094

Sam Keller's TEC Blog
How CEOs Spend Their Time

This article is available at http://sam-keller.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-ceos-spend-their-time.html

Living on the Real World (blog)
A scary statistic

This article is available at http://www.livingontherealworld.org/?p=287

TIBCO Spotfire's Business Intelligence Blog
The Data Analytics of What CEOs Do All Day

This article is available at http://spotfireblog.tibco.com/?p=6359

168 Hours (blog)
What Do CEOs Do With Their Time?

This article is available at http://www.my168hours.com/main/2011/05/what-do-ceos-do-with-their-time/

The Economist
What do bosses do all day?

This article is available at http://www.economist.com/node/18651811

Working Knowledge
What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better

This article is available at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6665.html?wknews=04252011

Also referenced/reprinted at:

• Leadership and Management Articles
• mgmt articles.com
• Forbes Business India
• ExecWatch vol. 11 issue 3
• IT Audit & Security
• Consistently great's Weblog

BNET Leadership / The View from Harvard Business
Are CEOs More Effective as 'Mr. Inside' or 'Mr. Outside'.

Using time diaries, a research team followed the activities of 94 CEOs in Italy over a week's time. They wanted to see not only how executives spent their time - a precious commodity, after all - but also to determine when they were most effective.

Here are some highlights from the paper, What Do CEOs Do, written by Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School, Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute, and Oriana Bandiera and Andrea Prat of the London School of Economics.

The more hours that the CEO worked with at least one insider, the more productive he was. The stronger the company’s governance, the likelier it was that the CEO spent more time with insiders. Time spent with insiders correlated with profits while time spent with outsiders did not. In sum, the team learned that CEOs who spent more time with employees inside the company were more successful than those who met with customers and other stakeholders outside the company.

This article is available at http://www.bnet.com/blog/harvard/are-ceos-more-effective-as-mr-inside-or-mr-outside/10948

The Globe and Mail
The Manager, Focus on questions: Spend time with staff for your firm

If you know how much time your CEO spends with people outside your company and how much with people inside the firm, you may gain a good idea of how effective he or she is. Four academics - Oriana Bandiera and Andreat Prat of London School of Economics; Luigi Guiso of the European University Institute; and Raffaella Sadun of Harvard University - followed 94 CEOs of top Italian companies, focusing on the time spent with employees and outsiders. They found that time spent only with outsiders is not correlated with company performance, while time spent with insiders is. They suggest that time spent with outsiders is on average less beneficial to a company, and more beneficial to the CEO's own interests. Harvard Business School Working Papers

This article is available at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/managing/morning-manager/focus-on-questions/article1969490/

BNET Life at Work / Leadership Lab
Study: How CEOs Really Spend their Time

Does your CEO seem to spend a lot of time meeting with people you've never heard of? And should it matter to you?

Given how much CEOs are paid, how your CEO spends his or her time should have some impact on how profitable or productive his or her company is. But at companies with weak governance, nobody's really keeping an eye on the CEO, and it seems the CEO knows it.

According to research from four professors-Oriana Bandiera and Andrea Prat, of the London School of Economics, Luigi Guiso of European University Institute, and Raffaella Sadun, of Harvard University at those companies, CEOs spend much more time on activities that are personally beneficial to them and less time on activities that help their companies thrive...

For full article go to http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-research/study-how-ceos-really-spend-their-time/1123