5 Great Reasons Why CEOs Should Use (Automated) Timesheets

Senior managers, like academics, often object to the idea of timetracking by pointing out that their productivity does not correlate in any way with the time invested in a certain task:

Precisely because visionaries, artists and intellectuals often come up with the greatest ideas when they allow their minds to wander, there is a strong argument why CEOs should maximize such time slots. And this can be accomplished, you guessed it, by eliminating inefficiencies in other areas.

What if you didn’t have to hope for the incidental cancellation of a call, but you were able to rely on rock-solid, irrefutable data that lets you take deliberate action? If that sounds attractive, (automated) timetracking might just be the solution for you.

As the CEO, you probably don’t lack ideas for what you could, in theory, delegate to your team. Assign one task to another person and, sure enough, something else will make its way on your desk.

The challenge, then, is to find out the priority in which you should delegate your work. Because let’s be clear: even the most-principled delegator can recount stories where something, somehow, made it into her task list, even though it should have been tackled by a member of her team. One solution to help with this might be implementing automated timesheets. This system can help you track how your and your team’s time is spent, making it easier to identify delegation opportunities.

The problem lies in our systematic underestimation of the things that reach the CEOs desk, even though they shouldn’t. Again, this is where (automated) activity tracking and process mining helps, because it lets you quantify in very simple ways all the things on which you spend your time. And that’s a solid base for delegation.

The classic understanding of time tracking is that its sole purpose is to prevent employees from wasting their time at the expense of the company. But let’s be clear: any person can just as well waste other people’s And as the CEO, you probably encountered many situations where you terminated a meeting or a call, because it didn’t justify a further investment of your time.

It is obvious, therefore, there’s value not only in tracking what you do, but also who you do it with. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re tracking that information to lay blame on others. But who can deny there’s value in improving our collaboration as a group, by collecting and analyzing data on the ways in which teams form, what they work on and how they do it.

Automated timesheets can be an invaluable tool in this regard. They not only help you keep track of your own time, but they also provide insights into how your team’s time is spent. This can promote accountability and improve collaboration.

And for the CEO, with whom everyone wants to get facetime, that information is of particular relevance. Manage others better.  And as a result, your team will know that you appreciate the time they get with you even more.

CEOs are tough cookies. And while shareholders, boards and managers are becoming increasingly aware that mental health and fitness of the company leaders is both at risk and worth protecting, in practice, it’s as hard for CEOs as for anyone else to maintain healthy routines and find the right balance between work and leisure.

Enter time tracking. Who says we should exploit our activity data solely for the benefit of the company?  Solely to improve the bottom line and optimize for “executive time”, so that we can devise that next, grand strategy that will make our shareholders more money?

It is just as legitimate to use process mining to one’s own, personal advantage.  Eliminate time-wasting habits, kill inefficiencies in your workday, and get to go home – or to the gym – on your own terms.  Increase your productivity by a lot and split the difference between the business and your own health & happiness.