Objectives
- To improve the team’s output – impact by helping the team eliminate time-wasting activities and so be more productive.
- To learn time management solutions from each other.
Time
30 minutes
Materials Required
The “top twenty time wasters” handout.
Flip chart and marker pens.
Instructions
- The activity leader asks the rest of the team members to call out examples of typical time wasters. Write the list up on a flip chart at the front to the room.
- After 15 minutes, the activity leader shows the rest of the team the handout. Check that everything was there. (Clearly some will be phrased differently.)
- One interesting activity is to now do a survey through a voting process. Give everyone three adhesive dots and on a flip chart or 20 sheets of A4 paper stuck to the wall ask team members to “vote” on the three time-waster which they suffer from most.
- Discuss actions that can be taken to deal with each time waster starting from the most critical.
- Establish team rules for time management behaviours.
Debrief
- What are the underlying questions that need to be asked in order to help reduce these time wasters?
- Ask the team to suggest actions that the team can take to avoid the worst and strengthen the best examples.
Note
The Activity leader may like to read a book on time management before the session. One that is recommended is The Time Trap, Alec MacKenzie, AMACOM, 1997.