What is discretionary time?

It is within discretionary time that you apply your traits, skills and proficiencies (in a word: your “competencies”). Discretionary time does not just “appear” on the job; it must be generated during working hours and then preserved. There are several enemies of discretionary time in the workplace.

Enemies?

Yes, the most prevalent being “subordinate-imposed time.” This occurs when subordinates (“managEEs”) impose on their managER’s time by “upwardly delegating” to their managERs those problems or questions that the managEEs should be handling. Monkey Business addresses the causes of subordinate-imposed time, how to eliminate it and thus generate and preserve discretionary time needed to control events.

You have spoken about ‘freedom levels’. At the highest level, 5, on your scale, people act on their own and routinely report, and at the lowest level, 1, they wait until told. Isn’t it a fact that most managers allow their staff to operate at lower freedom levels?

The burden is NOT on the manager to “offer higher levels of freedom.” The burden is on each individual staff member to earn that freedom. It is the responsibility of the managEE to lower his managER’s anxieties about both what the subordinate is doing and how he is going about it.

How can that be done?

A subordinate who wishes to become a “professional managEE” must keep several things in mind when interacting with his managER:

His managER has more to do than he has time to do it in.

His managER will put his time and attention to those things about which he is most anxious.

His managER needs answers, not just questions; recommended solutions, not just problems.

The more competent the managEE’s recommendations, the more often the managER is able to “buy” those recommendations, and the more often the managEE exhibits alert execution of his managER’s decisions, the more c onfidence the managER will have in his managEE’s competence.

The managER will then move his managEE to freedom levels 4 and 5 not because “he should” or because “it is good management.” He will do that because at the higher levels of freedom the managER has to spend the l east amount of his discretionary time in required interactions with that managEE.Would your ideas work in politics, especially, in a democracy as in India and the US?

The answer is yes! ‘Managing Management Time’ and my book, Monkey Business, from which it is derived are, in part, political philosophies. Oncken’s First Law (and its derivatives) states: “What you know will not get off the ground without the active support of who you know.” That is, once you get into a leadership or management position, “who you know” is more important than “what you know.” That doesn’t mean that “what you know” is not important; it is. But when in leadership or management positions, “who you know” is paramount in that you must build and maintain a “following”, a “constituency” inside the organisation for your ideas and recommendations.

Are organisations like democracies?

Organisations are not “democracies”. All leader-led organisations are authoritarian by nature because someone, somewhere, sometime is going to have to make a decision. “Democratic consensus” breeds indecision when time is of the essence.