Every Banker needs to read James post here. This particular paragraph resonated for me, having lived this life for years, and now being in a position to re-orchestrate my day according to my schedule. I have some suggestions …. the back to back meeting day is the death of effectiveness.
A cultural oddity of the bank is that we do back-to-back meetings, probably most days. So our email keeps piling up, and so many of us have resorted to fitting email processing into odd slots of the day.
I have some cures for this ailment, before you follow the person James speaks of and eliminate email. Some hard hitting comments to follow, so don’t anyone take personally.
- Eliminate executive assistants. Their job is to slot meetings into the empty spaces in your calendar. They are your worst enemy. The better they are at their job, the worse your life will be. Eliminate them and do yourself. This is paramount. The rest of my suggestions are just window dressing. PS, you will also save the Bank money here.
- When someone requests a meeting, ask why?
- Manage the number of “Executive time” meetings where career advancement of the meeting requestor is the desired outcome. You cannot sponsor 90% of the upcoming stars in a 50,000 employee organisation. You are NOT superman.
- Schedule days (not hours, days) for yourself.
- Get an ipod, and earphones … best time management device ever invented … think about that!! Go here for help.
- If you use Outlook (poor you) set up a filter to place the cc’s in a cc folder, and eliminate from your inbox. Read the cc folder once a week, and only if you have to. Control that urge! Do NOT tell anyone you have done this.
- Use Xobni, and boggle at your own ineffectiveness
Thats it. My “email for Banks with 50,000 employees system”. Thanks James, for letting me reflect on years of falling into these traps.
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