How CEOs Manage Time

Michael E. Porter; Nitin   Nohria

Article | Harvard Business Review | July–August 2018

How CEOs Manage Time

Abstract

In 2006 Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria launched a study tracking how large companies’ CEOs spent their time, 24/7, for 13 weeks: where they were, with whom, what they did, and what they were focusing on. To date, Porter and Nohria have gathered 60,000 hours' worth of data on 27 executives, interviewing them—and hundreds of other CEOs—about their schedules. This article presents the findings, offering insights not only into best time-management practices but into the CEO’s role itself. CEOs need to learn to simultaneously manage the seemingly contradictory dualities of the job: integrating direct decision-making with indirect levers like strategy and culture, balancing internal and external constituencies, proactively pursuing an agenda while reacting to unfolding events, exercising leverage while being mindful of constraints, focusing on the tangible impact of actions while recognizing their symbolic significance and combining formal power with legitimacy.

Keywords: CEOs; Executives; Time Management; Attitudes; Managerial Roles; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy; Decision Making; Organizational Culture;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Porter, Michael E., and Nitin Nohria. "How CEOs Manage Time." Harvard Business Review 96, no. 4 (July–August 2018): 42–51.

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How CEOs Manage Time

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