Building Team Effectiveness with Time Management
Listen, I’ve been going on about this for the better part of two decades now and most companies I visit still have their people running around like headless chooks. Not long ago, I’m sitting in this shiny office tower in Melbourne’s business district watching a manager frantically switch between countless browser tabs while trying to explain why their quarterly targets are shot to pieces. Honestly.
The guy has got several mobiles ringing, Slack notifications going nuts, and he’s genuinely amazed when I suggest maybe just maybe this method isn’t working. This is 2025, not 1995, yet we’re still treating time management like it’s some mysterious dark art instead of basic workplace practice.
What really winds me up. Most Business owner I meet believes their people are “just naturally disorganised” or “are missing the right approach.” Complete nonsense. Your team isn’t broken your systems are. And more often than not, it’s because you’ve never attempted teaching them how to actually handle their time well.
The Hidden Price of Poor Time Management
Let me tell you about Rebecca from this marketing agency in Perth. Sharp as a tack, really gifted. Could convince anyone of anything and had more innovative solutions than the rest of the team combined. But good grief, observing her work was like witnessing a car crash in slow motion.
First thing, she’d begin her day checking emails for an hour. Then she’d attack this huge project brief, get partially done, realise she needed to call a client, get interrupted by someone dropping by, start handling a another project, remember she’d overlooked a meeting, hurry to that, come back to her desk absolutely fried. This pattern for the entire day.
The kicker? This woman was working massive overtime and feeling like she was spinning her wheels. Her anxiety was obvious, her work standard was unpredictable, and she was seriously considering jacking it all in for something “simpler.” In contrast, her colleague Dave was managing similar workloads in standard hours and always seemed to have time for casual chat.
Why was Dave succeeding between Sarah and Dave? Dave knew something most people never discover time isn’t something that dictates your schedule, it’s something you control. Simple concept when you say it like that, doesn’t it?
What Succeeds vs What’s Total Nonsense
Now before you roll your eyes and think I’m about to sell you another software system or some elaborate framework, hold on. Real time management isn’t about having the flawless technology or creating your planner like a rainbow exploded.
The secret lies in three basic principles that most training programs completely miss:
First up Focus isn’t plural. Sure, I know that’s grammatically dodgy, but hear me out. At any given moment, you’ve got one priority. Not several, not three, only one. The moment you start juggling “priorities,” you’ve already fallen into the trap. I learnt this the hard way running a firm back in Perth during the resources surge. Assumed I was being brilliant juggling numerous “important” deadlines simultaneously. Came close to ruining the Business entirely trying to be everything to everyone.
Second Distractions aren’t unavoidable, they’re a choice. This is where most Australian businesses get it completely wrong. We’ve created this atmosphere where being “accessible” and “quick” means jumping every time someone’s notification sounds. Mate, that’s not productivity, that’s Pavlovian conditioning.
Consulted for this law office on the in Brisbane where the owners were proud that they replied to emails within thirty minutes. Seriously proud! In the meantime, their productivity were down, client work was taking twice as long as it should, and their solicitors looked like zombies. Once we created sensible email rules shock horror both productivity and client satisfaction improved.
Third Your stamina isn’t constant, so don’t assume it is. This is my personal obsession, probably because I spent most of my thirties trying to power through fatigue periods with increasingly stronger coffee. News flash: complete failure.
Some work need you focused and attentive. Different work you can do when you’re half asleep. Yet most people distribute work throughout their day like they’re some sort of work android that functions at constant capacity. Mental.
Programs That Deliver Results
Here’s where I’m going to annoy some people. Most time management education is complete rubbish. Had to be, I said it. It’s either excessively complex all models and charts that look impressive on slides but fail in the field or it’s obsessed on tools and apps that become just additional work to handle.
What works is training that recognises people are complicated, workplaces are constantly changing, and flawless processes don’t exist. My most successful course I’ve ever delivered was for a team of builders in Townsville. This crew didn’t want to know about the Eisenhower Matrix or David Allen’s system.
Their focus was simple techniques they could use on a job site where things change every few minutes.
So we zeroed in on three simple concepts: batch similar tasks together, guard your best thinking time for meaningful projects, and learn to say no without feeling guilty about it. Nothing earth shattering, nothing fancy. Within six months, their project completion rates were up 30%, additional labour expenses had fallen dramatically, and injury compensation cases had nearly been eliminated.
Compare that to this fancy consulting firm in Brisbane that spent a fortune on comprehensive time management software and intricate performance frameworks. After eighteen months, half their team still wasn’t using the system properly, and the other half was spending excessive hours on administrative overhead than actually achieving results.
Where Australian Companies Stuff This Up
The issue isn’t that leaders don’t see the need for better organisation. Most of them get it. The real issue is they approach it like a one size fits all solution. Send everyone to the same training course, provide identical resources to all staff, hope for uniform improvements.
Total madness.
Here’s the story of this manufacturing Company in the Hunter Valley that brought me in because their supervisors were constantly behind schedule. The CEO was convinced it was a training issue get the section leaders some efficiency education and the issues would resolve themselves.
As it happened the real problem was that head office kept changing priorities without warning, the production planning system was about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and the supervisors spent half their day in discussions that should have been with a quick conversation.
All the time management training in the world wasn’t going to fix systemic dysfunction. We ended up rebuilding their workflow structure and creating sensible coordination methods before we even addressed personal productivity training.
This is what absolutely frustrates me about so many Australian businesses. They want to fix the symptoms without dealing with the fundamental problem. Your people can’t organise their work properly if your organisation doesn’t respect time as a precious commodity.
The Melbourne Revelation
Speaking of organisational respect for time, let me tell you about this software Company in Brisbane that totally shifted my thinking on what’s possible. Tight group of around twenty five, but they operated with a level of scheduling awareness that put major companies to shame.
Each session featured a specific outline and a firm conclusion deadline. People actually came organised instead of treating meetings as brainstorming sessions. Email wasn’t treated as instant messaging. And here’s the kicker they had a Company wide agreement that unless it was truly critical, professional contact ceased at evening.
Revolutionary? Hardly. But the results were outstanding. Workforce output was higher than any similar sized Company I’d worked with. Employee retention was virtually non existent. And service quality metrics were through the roof because the delivery standard was uniformly outstanding.
The CEO’s approach was straightforward: “We employ capable individuals and expect them to organise their tasks. Our job is to create an environment where that’s actually possible.”
Consider the difference from this mining services Company in Perth where leaders bragged about their overtime like badges of honour, sessions went beyond allocated time as a matter of course, and “immediate” was the normal designation for everything. Despite having significantly more resources than the Melbourne startup, their individual output rates was roughly half the level.
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