It's About Time -- Literally

Time. It's a boss's most finite resource; there's no way to expand the supply. So managers must strive to make better use of it. As 2007 expires, we asked executives to reflect on how well they fulfilled resolutions to better manage time this year.

Mike Durney, the 45-year-old chief financial officer of online recruiter Dice Holdings Inc., says, "I'm not very good at time management." This year, New York-based Mr. Durney resolved to handle matters involving Dice's London office early in the day so British staffers, five hours ahead, didn't have to work into the evening.

It didn't always go that way, though. Mr. Durney sometimes had to attend morning meetings, forcing him to call or email London later in the day. "I can't say I actually succeeded totally," he says.

In 2008, Mr. Durney will try a new strategy: setting aside blocks of time for email and investor calls. Following Dice's public offering in July, Mr. Durney found himself juggling investor calls amid other tasks. So he'll now publicize times each week in which he'll promise investors his full attention.

For email, which Mr. Durney says can be "overwhelming," he plans to put down certain times in his calendar and try not to use email at other times. To help minimize distractions, he'll turn off the beeping alert that signals new mail arriving.

Nortel Networks Corp. Chief Executive Mike Zafirovski also hopes to minimize email distraction. This year, Mr. Zafirovski resolved to respond quickly to email, so that he never had more than 99 unanswered messages. He thinks he did well, but he would like to reduce Nortel's internal email traffic. "I know I get too many emails, and probably issue too many as well," he says.

Mr. Zafirovski, 54, says he didn't do as well with his other major 2007 resolution: start and finish internal meetings on time. He blames aggressive agendas and a relatively new management team, which he assembled after arriving at Nortel in late 2005. "This continues to be a challenge and will be a carryover resolution for next year," he says.

Many executives resolve to strike a better balance between work and life. Some admit failure. "I always say, 'I have to manage my time better. ... I have to be a real person with a real life,' " says David Joys, a 64-year-old partner at executive recruiter Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. Mr. Joys says he again broke his resolution, working many weekends and spending less time than he would have liked at his vacation home in Montana.

Others did better. Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer at staffing company Adecco Group North America, a unit of Swiss-based Adecco SA, used all her 30 vacation days and arrived home by 6:30 p.m. "more than half the time" when her husband, an executive at a paper company, wasn't away on business. "I am at a point in my life where my personal life is more and more important to me," says Ms. Kenny, who has two grown children. Next year, she resolves to better coordinate her work schedule with her husband's.

DISCUSS

 

Did you strike the right balance of work time vs. personal time in 2007? And what do you resolve to do differently in 2008? Share your thoughts.

Randall O. Perry took even more time off: 2½ months to climb mountains with his 16-year-old son, including Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Mr. Perry, 49, is chief executive of Interstate Risk Insurance Services Inc., Concord, Calif. To get more free time, Mr. Perry pared his operating responsibilities and tapped independent brokers to help sell policies.

Next year, Mr. Perry plans to tackle Mount McKinley in Alaska as part of a plan to climb the highest peak on each continent. The plan was born on a 2006 hike through the Andes Mountains in Peru. "I'm not going to be carried out of here on a stretcher without seeing more of the world," he vows.

Mr. Perry says he always summits with a notebook to scribble ideas. "I thought up the latest program for car dealers when I was on top of Kilimanjaro," he says.

John Racanelli, chief executive of strategy consultancy Racanelli Partners Inc., boasts that he snuck out of his San Rafael, Calif., office 39 times this year to surf. The 52-year-old Mr. Racanelli is a veteran surfer who was an executive at aquaria in California and Florida before starting his own business.

His biggest challenge is planning absences to coincide with good waves, which are unpredictable. He begged off one conference call by telling a client that he had an "unexpected board meeting."

"It was a meeting with my surfboard," Mr. Racanelli says with a laugh. "Technically, it was correct."

Write to Erin White at erin.white@wsj.com, Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com and Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com

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