Better Decisions, Faster: Techniques for Exploiting Top Management Time

A company’s scarcest resource isn’t capital or even talent, it’s top management time. No amount of money can buy a 25-hour day or create an extra week to wrap things up at the end of the quarter. Yet despite its value, top management time is rarely managed systematically. As a consequence, crises of the moment often push aside deep discussions of strategy and investment. Important decisions either get put off or made too quickly without adequate consideration.

Last fall, Marakon Associates, in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit, surveyed senior executives from 187 large, multinational corporations worldwide to learn more about the effectiveness and productivity of top management team meetings. Confirming observations from our own experience, the survey found that the vast majority of executive teams manage their time together poorly. Specifically, the research revealed that at most companies: