Beyond Memories #3: Making time.

Encounters with Grove #3: Making time.

During many of my years at Intel, the route from my cube to the nearest restroom intersected with Andy’s. One day, In my rush to the goal, I nearly crashed into Andy.  I apologized and tried to move on.  He stopped me cold.  

"Where's the fire?  Why do I always see you rushing around?" He asked.

The answer seemed obvious to me.  Intel meetings started on the hour and ended on the hour, but being late was a cardinal sin. Moving fast was a requirement, especially if you wanted to make a phone call, or stop at the restroom.

As I explained the obvious, Andy snatched my day's printed calendar from my hands and blankly stared at the hourly entries that started at 8:00 a.m. and ran through 5:00 p.m.  In exchange,  he handed me his little black calendar book, with its hand-written entries.  Astonishingly, there were more blanks than meeting entries in the hourly slots.

I’m not sure what Andy said at that moment, but I remember his look of utter disdain. I got the message. If being the CEO of a $20 billion company didn't require back to back meetings, how could mine? In fact, it occurred to me rather quickly that scheduling back to back meetings was not just unnecessary, it was counterproductive. High output management means exercising discretion in scheduling meetings and blocking time off to do other types of work.

The Andy look of disdain comes to mind now and then, and I am reminded of how much is in my control. My calendar is my calendar and more is less, less is more.

There was a corollary to that lesson that Andy provided some 8 years later. Now chairman of the board, but no longer CEO, I saw Andy in that very same aisle. We spoke for a few minutes about the shift, and whether he was still working as much as ever. Without hesitation, he reported he was now working 26.4 hours per week. Startled at the specificity, I attempted to chide him a bit.  

"Once a numbers guy, always a numbers guy."

His response: "You can't manage what you don't measure". The data geek in me smiled ear to ear.

Which brings me to another somewhat relevant learning from Andy's Senior Management Class. (From the final class handout).

• Strategies which are not leveraged by sufficient resources are unlikely to succeed, regardless of their brilliance