Finally time for your vision

The owner of a company with 5000 employees hired me because he was struggling with poor numbers and great employee dissatisfaction. He was also dissatisfied and entirely overwhelmed by the daily complexity he was confronted with in his entrepreneurial activities. The result: too much micromanagement - too little delegation - lack of focus on the essentials.

The cell phone is my biggest time waster.

As a first step, we went in search of his time wasters. "The cell phone is my biggest time-waster of all," he quickly stated self-critically. "I like reading extremely much - even on my cell phone. But the danger of reading on a cell phone is that you're consuming knowledge that isn't necessary. The cell phone is an absolute danger to my effectiveness as a reading source." In response to my question, "What other time-wasters can you identify?" he quickly came up with other 'classics' that can easily be grouped under the heading of 'delegation'. When preparing for necessary lobbying appointments, he took on everything from writing individual emails to confirm charges to reading newspaper articles that might be relevant to the issue to making coordination phone calls for the organization, all in advance himself. "What else?" I ask. "It's hard for me to set the right priorities. Time and again, I get distracted or allow employees to approach me with less relevant issues. Then I take time, for example, to do research that I'm sure others could do as well."

No-matter-what appointment

In coaching, he learned to delegate and prioritize. This enabled him to increase his effectiveness and create free time slots significantly. He hired new people into positions he needed to move his business forward - including an executive assistant, an HR manager, and an innovation manager. Within three months, he introduced a weekly 'think tank meeting' as a 'no-matter-what appointment' and invested time developing a corporate vision and much-needed strategies to secure the future.

New York Marathon

In the next step, he asked me to start a transformation process for the entire company. After one year of collaboration, the result was impressive: In addition to an apparent increase in employee satisfaction and a turnaround, the entrepreneur also created new freedom for himself in his private life and began regular running training again after many years. His goal was clear: the following New York marathon.