Time is the scarcest resource for managers. The amount of time top executives spend in meetings has been increasing for years. In addition, there are often short-term fire brigade operations, urgent inquiries and concerns on dozens of channels in everyday life. “In the company I often felt like I was in the Bermuda Triangle of meetings, Powerpoints and events,” says Michael Trautmann. “I received 200 emails every day and sometimes had three meetings in my calendar at the same time.”
That was during his time as Chief Marketing Officer at Audi. Trautmann later founded the advertising agency thjnk, invented the sport Hyrox and became self-employed. And met Swantje Allmers, who coached him on the topic of self-organization. “I am your Sistine Chapel,” says Trautmann. He had worked rather chaotically throughout his life, but Allmers is excellently organized and structured.
Despite all the differences: Today the two run the training company New Work Masterskills together and have come together as a team. They primarily use ideas from David Allen's “Getting Things Done” self-management method to manage their time wisely and organize collaboration effectively. These five tips can be implemented immediately.
1. Reduce your inboxes:
“Michael had over 30 inboxes when we met,” says Allmers. By this she means all the ways in which information arrives: email addresses, social media profiles, chats, sticky notes, Excel spreadsheets, post-its and stacks of tasks. “The more channels we have to keep an eye on, the more overloaded we usually feel,” says Allmers. Her advice: redirect emails. Reduce channels. With apps like Braintoss or “Note to Me” you can send all your notes and to-dos to your inbox and collect them there.
2. Make a clear decision:
The “Getting Things Done” method, which Allmers and Trautmann often use, starts every planning with a question: Is an action required of me or not? There is no maybe. If your answer is no, you can throw away the task, file it or put it on resubmission. If you decide you want or need to take action, consider: What is the next step?
3. Formulate the details:
Maybe you have an elephant on your to-do list that you keep putting off because it stresses you out. This could be the tax return or the board presentation. Formulate your to-dos more specifically and limit yourself to the next step in order to take action. For example: “Sort documents”. Or “Collect initial ideas for the presentation by brainstorming.”
4. Make a date with yourself every week:
Set a date each week where you look back and plan the week ahead. What has been left behind and needs to be planned for the coming week? Check your priorities and what tasks arise from them. Go through your different roles. What is important to you as a father or mother this week? What to-dos result from your goal to reformulate the strategy in the first quarter? This means you don't allow yourself to be controlled by your appointments and external requests, but instead set the direction yourself.
5. Use the two-minute rule:
Michael Trautmann has been using a simple principle from David Allen since his first coaching session. Anything he can do in less than two minutes, he does immediately. The idea behind it: It would hardly be worth finding an appointment and scheduling such mini-tasks. Therefore, such tasks are checked off without much thought.
How can you support your team to find focus? And what do leadership duos have to consider when they plan? Swantje Allmers and Michael Trautmann answer these questions in the podcast “Because of good leadership”.
In “Because of good leadership – the honest leadership podcast,” Antonia Götsch, editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Manager, speaks every two weeks with guests from business, science and sport about leadership, strategy and management. “Because of Good Leadership” appears fortnightly here as well as on Spotify and Apple in the podcast.