Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Michael Mankins, Chris Brahm, and Gregory Caimi that originally appeared in Harvard Business Review, “Your Scarcest Resource” (May 2014). It was selected by the HBR Editors to be included in HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2015: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review, published by Harvard Business Review Press (2015).

I agree with Mankins, Brahm, and Caimi that most companies have elaborate procedures for managing capital. “They require a compelling business case for any new investment. They set hurdle rates. They delegate authority carefully, prescribing spending limits for each level.”

What’s the problem?

“An organization’s time, in contrast, goes largely unmanaged. Although phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, meetings, and teleconferences eat up hours in every executive’s day, companies have few [if any] rules to govern those interactions. In fact, most companies have no clear understanding of how their leaders and employees are spending their collective time. Not surprisingly, that time is often squandered — on long e-mail chains, needless conference calls, and countless unproductive meetings.”

A Few companies have learned how to attack this problem directly. “They create formal budgets to manage organizational time as the scarce resource it is. They purposefully curb demands on executive time. And they push their people to improve the productivity of meetings and other forms of collaboration.” Mankins, Brahm, and Caimi have identified eight practices for managing organizational time much more effectively. Each is discussed in detail (Pages 133-136). Here they are:

1. Make the agenda clear and selective
2. Create a zero-based time allocation budget
3. Require business cases for all new projects
4. Simply the organization
5. Clearly delegate authority for time investments
6. Standardize the decision process
7. Establish organization-wide time discipline
8. Provide feedback to manage organizational load

“Time is an organization’s scarcest — and most often squandered — resource.”

How many of the eight practices are now operational in your organization? Of those involved in each, what is the percentage of them are actively and productively engaged? If any of the eight are not operational now in your organization, why not?

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Michael Mankins heads Bain’s Organizational practice in the Americas and is a partner in San Francisco. He is a co-author (with Marcia W. Blenko and Paul Rogers) of Decide & Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010). Chris Brahm is a leader in Bain’s Technology practice in the Americas and a partner in San Francisco. Gregory Caimi is a partner in Bain’s Technology and Organization practices in San Francisco.