Put time to work for you

Today’s to do list: Meet with the crews, price out an engine rebuild, finish the drainage project, meet with the chair of the green committee, run the kids to soccer practice and attend the quarterly club-planning meeting.Sound familiar?
For most superintendents life means getting pushed in as many directions as a high-handicapper’s tee shots. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Bruce Williams, CGCS, superintendent, Los Angeles Country Club. By taking a hard look at how you use your time , and taking better control of the time available , superintendents can find the hours needed to get more work done, play golf, spend more time with family and get more than five hours of sleep per night. Williams says carefully managing time can yield eight to 10 extra hours each week.

Step One: Analyze
“You can’t analyze how to save time or manage time, until you analyze how you are currently spending time,” Williams says.  The solution is to begin keeping a daily time  log of how you spend your time for a few weeks. After the information is recorded, analyze the way you spend your time using three tests to critically review all the tasks you complete
1. Necessity: Is this activity necessary?
2. Appropriateness: Who should be performing this task?
3. Efficiency: Is there a better way to complete this work?
Once you have critically evaluated all the ways you spend time during a given day, you should find ways to eliminate the low-priority tasks by finding someone else to take on some of your responsibilities, then be more efficient at the tasks you must handle.
Williams encourages superintendents to take a hard look at the forms and meetings that can suck time out of a day. For instance, are their forms you are completing that just get filed away and are unnecessary? If so, stop using them.
“Sometimes it is irrelevant for me to be in a meeting. For instance, our catering department reviews all food and beverage activities for the week. Superintendents have some interaction with the food and beverage people, but at our club they meet for an hour and a half each week to review prospective events.  Now the catering manager’s secretary highlights anything from the meeting that concerns me. Saving an hour and half doesn’t sound like much, but when you are working 60 hours a week, now you’re down to 58.”

Step Two: Delegate
The toughest part of time management for many superintendents can be learning to let go of certain tasks. Superintendents are often proficient and being efficient, but have real challenges when it comes to delegation. “I talk to some superintendents who are afraid to give some things up and are afraid to empower their people and want to be the ‘hands-on guy.’ Well if you want to be the hands-on guy, then welcome to 12-hour workdays,” Williams says.
“My motto is to hire the right people, train them appropriately, empower them and then do what you need to do to retain them.”  

Step Three: Schedule
As the saying goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” While planning takes time, it ultimately can save more time for you and your staff by organizing days, months and years better.
Williams also advises planning your daily activities around your personal energy cycle. “Some people are at their best early in the morning. Others peak in the afternoon. Whenever possible, try to plan your daily schedule to match your prime time,” Williams says. Schedule work that requires concentration during your prime time and leave less demanding activities, such as mail or returning phone calls, during your non-peak performance time.
Extra time cannot be manufactured, so when scheduling set priorities realistically on what to do and not to do. To set priorities, first list what needs to be done, then prioritize them. An easy method is to prioritize tasks using an A, B, C method. Priority “A” tasks are must do. Priority “B” are the things you should do. Priority “C” are things that would be nice to do, but that are not essential.
When creating plans, don’t forget to leave room for unexpected events, Williams advises. On a golf course any number of unexpected equipment breakdowns or weather delays can wreak havoc with a superintendent’s schedule. So, allocate some time in your daily and weekly plan for coping with the unexpected. GCN

Five time-saving ideas
To save time and use it more effectively try the following:
1. Make a list of the things you want to and could do if you had more time and use the list as motivation to improve your time management.
2. List and prioritize weekly objectives.
3. Continually ask, “What is the best use of my time right now?” and do it.
4. Devote primary attention to Priority A tasks.
5. Take advantage of available technology such as handheld computers, cell phones and call forwarding.