Hardcover—320 pages (April 2007) Crown

Reviewed by Will Phillips

Over the last five years, I have met close to 1,000 CEOs and posed the following situation.

Let’s assume that you have clarified in your mind the areas in which your talent excels for your business. This means that you are clear on the areas where you make a unique contribution to your business that most likely no other person in the business can make. In addition, this is an area where you have interest, passion, and drive. For instance, in one company, the CEO was an extraordinary negotiator of strategic partnerships with other companies. In another company, the CEO was, in fact, the number one salesperson in opening up new accounts.

Now, let’s suppose that you have hired, developed, and trained a staff so that you can delegate everything outside of your unique talent to your management team. Let’s further suppose that they are skilled, confident, and able to carry out this work without close supervision from you.

Now, the question for you is, “How many days a week would you have to work pursuing your unique talent to keep your business at its current level of performance?”

The average amount of days per week with over 1,000 CEOs responding and over 40 different types of industries is four hours per month. The younger the CEO, the higher the hours. The more mature the business and CEO, the less the hours. But, the average was clearly four.

This, of course, is a great motivation to put in place a management team that can truly pick up the pieces of the business that are not your unique talent.

The next question for the CEO is, “Well, suppose you were only working four days a month and the business was ticking along as usual, what would happen if you doubled that time?” The response was universal—the business would expand, grow, and become dramatically more profitable. This series of questions comes from one of North America’s most insightful executive coaches, Dan Sullivan, who is based in Toronto, Canada.

More recently, Timothy Ferriss, who runs a product-based business largely selling online called Brain Quicken, a nutrition product. When Ferriss grasped the insights of the Pareto Principle which many of us know as the 80/20 Rule, he began applying this vigorously and systematically to his business. “I made several simple, but emotionally difficult decisions that changed my life forever.” Ferriss began focusing on the 20% of his customers who produced 80% of the profits in his business. He also decided to eliminate his extraneous addictions, such as the news addiction, and he now never watches the news or buys a newspaper. He’s also decided that his most important focus was on the key 20% of the activity and customers which drive his business, and he claims, “I complete my most important tasks before 11:00 a.m. every morning. As a result, I have a four hour work week.”

This may seem extreme or impossible to you, but I say it is a worthwhile direction to pursue. In my experience with all of the sophisticated and insightful methods of time management, there is only one word which comes to mind as we talk about time management for the Chief Executive or senior management positions. And, that is “focus.” The more you focus as leader, the more your time management becomes powerful and effective. It is interesting that this strategy parallels the core concept of business strategy, which is to focus the organization. Michael Porter, in his article in the Harvard Business Review, What is Strategy?, laments the fact that most businesses do not have a strategy. Oh, of course, they have strategic plans. But, they do not have strategy because they are unwilling to focus. He goes on to explain that the challenge of building focus is that we must decide what not to do. Peter Drucker commented on this challenge by saying setting priorities is never the problem. It is setting posteriorities, which is what really challenges executives. In other words, deciding what not to do is much more difficult than deciding what to do. And, as a result, everyone’s plate is overfull, everyone’s business is overextended, which weakens every action in every business and weakens the CEO’s leadership time by focusing too broadly.

Maybe you can not achieve a four hour work week or a four day month, but this book may help you gain more focus and more time. If your spouse has ever complained that you work too much, or don’t have enough time at home or for yourself, give this book to your spouse and let them pull out ideas for you to try in applying the 80-20 rule to your life.

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