How CEOs Manage Time

02
What Do CEOs Actually Do?

03
One CEO’s Approach to Managing His Calendar

Summary.
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.
What Do CEOs Actually Do?
A look at the data on how CEOs allocated their time among various
activities, places, priorities, and constituencies
One CEO’s Approach to Managing His Calendar
In an interview, Tom Gentile, the CEO of the $7 billion aviation supplier Spirit
AeroSystems, shares what he learned from tracking his time in Porter and
Nohria’s study—and what he’s trying to change as a result.
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In the lexicon of management, the CEO is the epitome of leadership. Yet

surprisingly little is known about this unique role. While CEOs are the
ultimate power in their companies, they face challenges and constraints
that few others recognize.
Running a large global company is an exceedingly complex job. The scope of
the organization’s managerial work is vast, encompassing functional
agendas, business unit agendas, multiple organizational levels, and myriad
external issues. It also involves a wide array of constituencies—
shareholders, customers, employees, the board, the media, government,
community organizations, and more. Unlike any other executive, the CEO
has to engage with them all. On top of that, the CEO must be the internal
and external face of the organization through good times and bad.
The Leader's Calendar: Series reprint

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CEOs, of course, have a great deal of help and resources at their disposal.
However, they, more than anyone else in the organization, confront an
acute scarcity of one resource. That resource is time. There is never enough
time to do everything that a CEO is responsible for. Despite this, CEOs
remain accountable for all the work of their organizations.
The way CEOs allocate their time and their presence—where they choose to
personally participate—is crucial, not only to their own effectiveness but
also to the performance of their companies. Where and how CEOs are
involved determines what gets done and signals priorities for others. It also
affects their legitimacy. A CEO who doesn’t spend enough time with
colleagues will seem insular and out of touch, whereas one who spends too
much time in direct decision making will risk being seen as a micromanager
and erode employees’ initiative. A CEO’s schedule (indeed, any leader’s
schedule), then, is a manifestation of how the leader leads and sends
powerful messages to the rest of the organization.
A crucial missing link in understanding the time allocation of CEOs—and
making it more effective—has been systematic data on what they actually
do. Research on that has tended either to cover a small handful of CEOs, like
the 1973 study in which Henry Mintzberg closely observed five chief
executives (some of whom led nonprofits) for five days each, or to rely on
large surveys that cover short periods (such as our HBS colleague Raffaella
Sadun’s 2017 study based on daily phone surveys with 1,114 CEOs from a
wide variety of companies in six countries over one week).
Our study, which we launched in 2006, offers the first comprehensive and
detailed examination of CEO time use in large, complex companies over an
extended period. To date, we have tracked the time allocation of 27 CEOs—
two women and 25 men—for a full quarter (three months) each. Their
companies, which are primarily public, had an average annual revenue of
$13.1 billion during the study period. These leaders were all participants in
the New CEO Workshop, an intensive program that every year brings newly
appointed CEOs of large companies to Harvard Business School in two
cohorts of 10 to 12 each. In total just over 300 CEOs have attended it.
In the study each CEO’s executive assistant (EA) was trained to code the
CEO’s time in 15-minute increments, 24 hours a day and seven days a
week, and to regularly verify that coding with the CEO. The resulting data
set reveals where, how, and with whom the CEO spent his or her time and
on what activities, topics, and tasks. Because it also covers what CEOs do
outside of work, we have visibility into how CEOs balance work and personal
life. In all, we collected and coded data on nearly 60,000 CEO hours.
Where and how CEOs are involved determines what gets done. It
signals priorities.
After CEOs completed the time-tracking phase, we shared their data with
them, comparing it with anonymized data of the other CEOs we had studied
up to that point. These intensive debriefings often included the CEOs’
reflections on the pressures they faced in managing time, and on their
mistakes and lessons learned. We also shared our accumulated data with
the participants in each New CEO Workshop. In our discussions, CEOs
routinely described managing time as one of their greatest challenges. The
observations, questions, and personal approaches to allocating time they
shared further enriched our understanding.
In this article we will do three things:
First, we’ll provide a descriptive analysis of the data. How much time do
CEOs spend at work versus on personal activities? How much do they spend
in meetings versus thinking and reflecting alone? How much do they rely on
e-mail versus face-to-face conversation? Do they spend more time inside
the company or outside, more with customers or investors? We’ll answer
those questions—and many more.
Second, we will offer prescriptions for how CEOs can manage their time
more effectively across their many responsibilities. One of our most striking
observations is that the way leaders allocate their time varies
considerably. Some of this variation reflects differences in their businesses
and management practices. However, many time allocation decisions, such
as participation in company rituals that offer limited return, reflect legacy
norms and cultures, as well as a CEO’s own habits. In our debriefings the
CEOs all acknowledged that there were important areas where they could be
using their time better. On the basis of these discussions and those with the
hundreds of other CEOs in our workshops, we are convinced that every
leader can improve his or her time management.
Looking Beyond the Averages
How much do CEOs’ practices differ? We’ve ranked the variation in their
uses of time from the lowest to the highest. ...
Finally, we will reflect on what our rich data reveals about the overall role of
the CEO. A CEO has to simultaneously manage multiple dimensions of
influence, which all contain dualities, or seeming contradictions, that
effective CEOs must integrate. Understanding this broader view of the role is
essential to success and also provides an important perspective for
managing time well.
While our research focuses on the CEO role in large, complex companies, its
findings have implications for all leaders (including executives of nonprofits)
looking for ways to use their time and influence more effectively.
The Job Is All-Consuming
CEOs are always on, and there is always more to be done. The leaders in our
study worked 9.7 hours per weekday, on average. They also conducted
business on 79% of weekend days, putting in an average of 3.9 hours daily,
and on 70% of vacation days, averaging 2.4 hours daily. As these figures
show, the CEO’s job is relentless.
About half (47%) of a CEO’s work was done at company headquarters. The
rest was conducted while visiting other company locations, meeting external
constituencies, commuting, traveling, and at home. Altogether, the CEOs in
our study worked an average of 62.5 hours a week.
Why such a grueling schedule? Because it is essential to the role. Every
constituency associated with a company wants direct contact with the
person at the top. As much as CEOs rely on delegation, they can’t hand off
everything. They have to spend at least some time with each constituency
in order to provide direction, create alignment, win support, and gather the
information needed to make good decisions. Travel is also an absolute must.
You can’t run a domestic company, let alone a global one, from
headquarters alone. As a CEO, you have to be out and about.
Making time for personal well-being.
Given that work could consume every hour of their lives, CEOs have to set
limits so that they can preserve their health and their relationships with
family and friends. Most of the CEOs in our study recognized that. They
slept, on average, 6.9 hours a night, and many had regular exercise
regimens, which consumed about 9% of their nonwork hours (or about 45
minutes a day). To sustain the intensity of the job, CEOs need to train—just
as elite athletes do. That means allocating time for health, fitness, and rest.
We paid special attention to the 25% of time—or roughly six hours a day—
when CEOs were awake and not working. Typically, they spent about half
those hours with their families, and most had learned to become very
disciplined about this. Most also found at least some hours (2.1 a day, on
average) for downtime, which included everything from watching television
and reading for pleasure, to hobbies like photography.
The CEO’s job is mentally and physically demanding. Activities that preserve
elements of normal life keep CEOs grounded and better able to engage with
colleagues and workers—as opposed to distant, detached, and
disconnected. CEOs also have to make time for their own professional
renewal and development (which our data showed was often the biggest
casualty of a packed schedule). And they must be careful, as our colleague
Tom DeLong puts it, not to become “like race car drivers and treat home like
a pit stop.”
They Work Face-to-Face
The top job in a company involves primarily face-to-face interactions, which
took up 61% of the work time of the CEOs we studied. Another 15% was
spent on the phone or reading and replying to written correspondence. The
final 24% was spent on electronic communications.
Face-to-face interaction is the best way for CEOs to exercise influence, learn
what’s really going on, and delegate to move forward the multiple agendas
that must be advanced. It also allows CEOs to best support and coach the
people they work closely with. How a CEO spends face-to-face time is
viewed as a signal of what or who is important; people watch this more
carefully than most CEOs recognize.
Avoiding the lure of e-mail.
In theory, e-mail helps leaders cut down on face-to-face meetings and
improve productivity. In reality, many find it ineffective and a dangerous
time sink—but one they have trouble avoiding. E-mail interrupts work,
extends the workday, intrudes on time for family and thinking, and is not
conducive to thoughtful discussions. CEOs are endlessly copied on FYI e-
mails. They feel pressure to respond because ignoring an e-mail seems
rude.
CEOs should recognize that the majority of e-mails cover issues that needn’t
involve them and often draw them into the operational weeds. Conversely,
e-mails from the CEO can create a downward spiral of unnecessary
communication and set the wrong norms, especially if the CEO sends them
late at night, on weekends, or on holidays. It then becomes easy for
everyone in an organization to fall into the bad habit of overusing electronic
communications.
That’s why setting proper expectations and norms for what e-mails the CEO
needs to receive—and when he or she will respond—is essential. Norms are
necessary for the others in the organization as well, to prevent e-mail from
having a cascading effect on everyone, wasting precious hours and
intruding on personal time. One way for the CEO to stay ahead of the digital
avalanche is to have an adept EA filter messages and delegate many of
them to others before the CEO even sees them. In the end, though, there is
no substitute for being disciplined about resisting the siren call of electronic
communications. This is a topic our CEOs were often animated about, and
best practices in this area are still emerging.
Some CEOs in our study have begun to use videoconferencing as an
alternative to face-to-face meetings, especially to cut down on travel for
themselves and for team members who might otherwise have to come to
see them. Although such efficiencies should surely be sought, CEOs must
never forget that at its core their job is a face-to-face one.
They Are Agenda Driven
CEOs oversee a large number of organizational units and work streams and
countless types of decisions. Our research finds that they should have an
explicit personal agenda and that most do. A clear and effective agenda
optimizes the CEO’s limited time; without one, demands from the loudest
constituencies will take over, and the most important work won’t get done.
A good agenda sets priorities for the CEO’s personal involvement over the
coming period. But it is not unidimensional; rather, it is a matrix including
both broader areas for improvement and specific matters that need to be
addressed, and it combines time-bound goals with more open-ended
priorities.
In our study we asked each CEO to describe the agenda he or she was
pursuing during the quarter being tracked and to highlight the hours
devoted primarily to advancing it. Every executive provided an agenda. We
found that the CEOs invested significant time—43%, on average—in
activities that furthered their agendas. Some were far more disciplined
about this than others: Time devoted to the core agenda varied widely,
ranging from 14% to 80% of leaders’ work hours. Most CEOs we talked with
agreed that the more time they spent on their agendas, the better they felt
about their use of time.
Overall, we found that an explicit agenda is one of the CEO’s most important
tools for making progress on multiple work streams simultaneously,
addressing differences in the rate of progress across priorities, and using
time effectively despite the need to respond personally to unforeseen
events.
Advancing the agenda.
Keeping time allocation aligned with CEOs’ top priorities is so crucial that we
suggest that every quarter CEOs make a point of looking back at whether
their schedule for the previous period adequately matched up with their
personal agenda. They should also update the agenda to reflect current
circumstances.
CEOs can benefit from making their personal agenda explicit to others. Their
EAs and leadership teams both need to know and understand it so that they
can stay aligned with it. This understanding will help team members assume
ownership of the goals and priorities of the work the CEO needs them to
drive.
Four Behaviors of Great Executive Assistants
EAs play a vital role in shielding CEOs from distractions and unnecessary
activities and ensuring that ...
Dealing with unfolding developments.
A good portion of our CEOs’ time (about 36%, on average) was spent in a
reactive mode, handling unfolding issues, both internal and external. For
many chief executives, it is not immediately clear when and how to address
such issues or how much time to devote to them. Say that a member of the
CEO’s senior leadership team leaves a meeting looking upset. Should the
CEO follow up with that person right away to make sure everything is OK?
Should the CEO just wait and let the team member cool off? Sometimes
emerging problems seem small at first but balloon into larger distractions if
the CEO doesn’t attend to them. In other instances a CEO’s intervention
makes an issue bigger than it might have been. It’s essential for CEOs to
figure out appropriate responses to these unfolding situations.
Every now and then, CEOs find themselves dealing with a sudden, full-blown
crisis—a product or safety failure, a hostile activist’s bid, a serious
cyberattack, or even an external catastrophe such as a tsunami or a
terrorist attack. Most of our CEOs (89%) spent some time on crises. Though
on average it was small (1% of work time during the quarter we tracked),
the total amount spent varied a great deal among the leaders in our study.
Crises can create make-or-break moments in a CEO’s leadership. In dealing
with them, CEOs need to be highly visible and personally involved; the
response to such events can’t be delegated. Showing genuine concern for
the people affected, avoiding defensiveness, holding everyone together, and
creating confidence that the organization will not only survive but emerge
stronger are some of the things CEOs need to do during these times.
Limiting routine responsibilities.
A surprisingly significant fraction (11%, on average) of our CEOs’ work time
was consumed by routine duties. Such activities varied considerably across
CEOs, running the gamut from review meetings to board meetings, earnings
calls, and investor days.
Operating reviews are a major component of a CEO’s routine tasks. Their
number, frequency, and length ranged widely across the leaders we studied,
and our discussions suggested that some CEOs—especially those who had
been COOs—overinvested in reviews that could be delegated to direct
reports.
The ability of CEOs to control what we term “have-to-dos” was also quite
variable. Have-to-dos include rituals such as giving welcome talks to new
employees. These can play an important symbolic role and help reinforce
the company’s values and culture. By thoughtfully choosing which of these
events to attend, CEOs can set the tone of their relationship with the
organization. Yet a CEO must be disciplined about ensuring that feel-good
activities don’t collectively take up more time than he or she can afford.
Our discussions suggest that CEOs need to take a hard look at every activity
that falls into the routine and have-to-do categories. They must ask whether
it serves an important purpose or is simply a company habit, something
instituted by the predecessor, or a carryover from the CEO’s previous role.
They Rely Heavily on Their Direct Reports
A CEO’s direct reports are the company’s most senior executives and
include some of its most skilled managers. They span all the key elements
of the business and offer CEOs the greatest opportunity for leverage. The
leadership team, working together, can be the glue that helps the CEO
integrate the company and get the work done.
In our study about half (46%) of a CEO’s time with internal constituencies
was spent with one or more direct reports, and 21% of it was spent only with
direct reports. The total time spent with direct reports ranged from a low of
32% of time with internal constituencies to a high of 67%. When we
explored that variation, we found that CEOs were more likely to spend time
with their reports present when they had greater confidence in them.
We found that it’s critical for each member of the leadership team to have
the capabilities to excel and earn the CEO’s full trust and support. Any
weaknesses in this group significantly reduce the CEO’s effectiveness,
because dealing with work that reports should have handled, and cleaning
up after them, eats up valuable time. In fact, when our CEOs gathered as a
group across cohorts to see how things were going after they had been in
office awhile, their number one regret was not setting high-enough
standards in selecting direct reports. Many CEOs told us this was because
they focused too much on the present and not enough on the future when
they first stepped into the role. Direct reports who could manage the status
quo were often not the ones who could help the CEO take the company to a
new level.
The more CEOs can delegate to their leadership team, the better they
generally feel about their use of time. It eases the burden of needing to get
personally engaged, following up, and asking others to report back. Since
CEOs see their direct reports so frequently, it is also easy to stay in touch
with how things are going with matters they are handling.
Staying connected to other managers.
The CEOs in our study also spent considerable time (32% of their time with
internal constituencies, on average) with a broader group of senior leaders,
often called the top 100 (plus or minus). Many in this group report to the
CEO’s direct reports. We found that time with this next level of leadership
was well spent. The top 100 are often the driving force for execution in the
organization, and direct contact with the CEO can help align and motivate
them. These leaders are also key to succession planning: Some will be
candidates to replace the company’s most senior executives. Given that the
people at this level are often a generation younger, a few may eventually
even be candidates to succeed the CEO. So getting to know them personally
can be very useful.
Not surprisingly, the CEOs in our study spent less time with lower-level
managers (14%, on average) and even less time with rank-and-file
employees (about 6%, on average). However, our research suggests that
effective CEOs need to be careful to maintain a human face in the
organization. They must stay approachable and find ways to meaningfully
engage with employees at all levels. This not only keeps them in touch with
what is really going on in the company but helps them model and
communicate organizational values throughout the workforce.
Direct human contact with the rank and file also grounds CEOs and helps
them understand employees’ reality. CEOs face a real risk of operating in a
bubble and never seeing the actual world their workers face. Relationships
with employees at multiple levels also build a CEO’s legitimacy and
trustworthiness in the eyes of employees, which is essential to motivating
them and winning their support.
Knowing what is going on.
Spending time with the rank and file, and with savvy external frontline
constituencies, is also an indispensable way to gain reliable information on
what is really going on in the company and in the industry. This is a major
CEO challenge. Some CEOs get frontline contact by walking the hallways
and factory floors, and using mechanisms like periodic lunches, unscheduled
visits, and carefully designed field trips to customer and company sites.
Others use group interactions, such as town halls, to foster genuine and
open conversations with a large cross section of employees (rather than
present slide decks). Our data indicates that CEOs have varying success in
carving out time for such steps, however.
They Manage Using Broad Integrating Mechanisms
CEOs must avoid trying to do too much themselves. It just isn’t possible for
them to make or even ratify most decisions directly. Instead, effective CEOs
put in place well-designed structures and processes that help everyone else
in the organization make good choices. These inform, support, enable, and
integrate the work of others while building the organization’s capabilities.
The most powerful integrating mechanisms include strategy (on which CEOs
in our study spent an average of 21% of their work time), functional and
business unit reviews (25% of their time), developing people and
relationships (25% of their time), matching organizational structure and
culture with the needs of the business (16% of their time), and mergers and
acquisitions (4% of their time).
Harnessing strategy.
The CEO’s single most powerful lever is ensuring that every unit—and the
company as a whole—has a clear, well-defined strategy. Strategy creates
alignment among the many decisions within a business and across the
organization. By spending time on strategy, a CEO provides direction for the
company, helps make its value proposition explicit, and defines how it will
compete in the marketplace and differentiate itself from rivals. Strategy also
provides clarity on what the company will not do. A compelling strategy—if
well understood throughout the organization—is motivating and energizing.
And without clarity on strategy, the CEO will be drawn into too many tactical
decisions.
In large, complex firms, CEOs can almost never spend enough time on
strategy—they must constantly be working to shape it, refine it,
communicate it, reinforce it, and help people recognize when they may be
drifting from it. CEOs must also ensure that the strategy is renewed from
time to time and based on changes in the environment. Portfolio choices
such as divestitures, mergers, and acquisitions are critical to strategy, and a
CEO must be personally involved with them.
Aligning organizational structure and culture.
To foster appropriate decisions across the company, the organization’s
structure needs to be aligned with its strategy. Otherwise, the CEO will be
drawn into endless adjudication among units. It can also become a big drain
on the CEO and others if the organization is constantly lurching from one
structure to another.
Culture—which encompasses an organization’s values, beliefs, and norms—
is another key CEO lever for reinforcing strategy and influencing how the
organization as a whole goes about doing its work. CEOs can shape a
company’s culture in many ways, from the time they spend talking about it
at various forums, to personally living the valued behaviors, to recognizing,
rewarding, and celebrating those who exemplify the desired culture while
taking corrective action with those who don’t. It is the CEO’s job to
champion the organization’s culture and constantly look for opportunities to
strengthen it.
Designing, monitoring, and improving processes.
CEOs must ensure that the company’s strategy is being well executed. This
will occur when the organization has rigorous processes through which work
—such as marketing plans, pricing, product development, and strategy
development itself—is done. Good processes bring together the best
organizational knowledge and keep the CEO from continually having to
override decisions.
Formal reviews are essential to monitoring whether the company is
delivering the required process performance. Though these consume a
quarter of a CEO’s total work time, they allow CEOs to track progress,
provide regular feedback, uphold high standards, and ensure timely course
corrections. Reviews are also necessary to make sure that lessons learned
are used to enhance the various processes through which work gets done.
However, excessive participation in reviews can get the CEO too involved in
the company’s operations and mired in unnecessary details. We talked a lot
with the CEOs in our study about this problem. We have found, again and
again, that many have a hard time shedding the COO or president roles they
may have previously held. Some also forget that their senior team should
bear the primary responsibility for many reviews and keep the CEO informed
on a regular basis.
When CEOs fail to delegate reviews to direct reports who can handle them,
they erode the autonomy and accountability of their management teams.
That doesn’t help CEOs get the best out of others.
Developing people and relationships.
Building the company’s leadership pipeline is an important CEO function in
its own right. We have found that CEOs must be personally committed to
and be involved in improving the quality of the company’s leaders. They
cannot just leave this task to HR. Leadership choices are also pivotal in
shaping the company’s culture. Who gets hired, promoted, or fired signals
what is truly valued by the CEO and the company.
CEOs need to get the most out of an organization’s talent, and to do that,
they must forge personal connections. Our CEOs spent another quarter of
their total work time in meetings that focused on building relationships.
When trust is mutual, delegation comes more naturally, agreement is easier
to reach, and less monitoring and follow-up are necessary. Good
relationships also make people more likely to give you the benefit of the
doubt when you need it—and to tell you the truth, which is invaluable at the
top.
The time CEOs spend building social capital through a network of personal
relationships has many benefits and is time well spent.
They Are Always in Meetings
CEOs attend an endless stream of meetings, each of which can be totally
different from the one before and the one that follows. Their sheer number
and variety is a defining feature of the top job. On average, the leaders in
our study had 37 meetings of assorted lengths in any given week and spent
72% of their total work time in meetings.
Making meetings shorter and more effective.
CEOs need to regularly review which meetings are truly needed and which
can be delegated, and to let go of ones they were accustomed to in previous
roles.
They should also take a hard look at meeting length. In our study, meetings
that lasted an hour accounted for 32% of a CEO’s meetings, on average.
Meetings that were longer accounted for 38%, and shorter meetings, 30%.
We found that the length of meetings was often a matter of organizational
or personal habit or both—a default length (like one hour) was the norm.
“Standard” meeting times should be revisited with an eye toward shortening
them. Doing this can significantly enhance a CEO’s efficiency. In our
debriefs, CEOs confessed that one-hour meetings could often be cut to 30 or
even 15 minutes. Another good way to streamline things is to reset meeting
norms: Every meeting should have a clear agenda, and to minimize
repetition, attendees should come prepared. Effective CEOs spread these
meeting norms throughout the organization.
Some CEOs were worried that they might appear standoffish if someone
asked for an hour and the CEO (or the EA) offered 30 minutes. But we have
found that meeting length is worth confronting. “Whatever they ask for, cut
it in half,” said one CEO.
Another important meeting attribute is the number and composition of
attendees. One-on-one meetings were the most common (accounting for
42% of CEOs’ meetings, on average), followed by meetings with two to five
participants (21%). Although every CEO had meetings involving large groups
of 50 or more—like town halls, leadership off-sites, or all-company meetings
—these were infrequent (5% of meetings).
The emphasis on one-on-one and small group meetings makes sense for
enabling delegation and relationship building, and allows confidentiality. But
leaders should also look for opportunities to bring the right people together.
An essential part of the CEO’s role is to align various internal and external
constituencies around a common understanding of issues, decisions, and
action agendas. Having the right people in the room is a powerful way to
build that alignment and avoid the need for repetitive, time-consuming
interactions to bring everyone along.
Allowing for accessibility and spontaneity.
The vast majority of our CEOs’ time (75%, on average) was scheduled in
advance. The CEOs initiated more than half (51%) of their meetings
themselves.
While controlling the nature and number of meetings is essential, we also
found that CEOs need to regularly set aside time for more spontaneous
interaction (which represented 25% of their work time in our study). This
frees up space for same-day appointments initiated by others, for opportune
conversations or meetings, and for responding to unfolding events.
The amount of time our CEOs allowed for spontaneous meetings varied
considerably, ranging from 3% to 61%. In our debriefings, CEOs who
discovered that they had left little room for spur-of-the-moment meetings
were often surprised and quick to recognize the need for change.
Spontaneity and accessibility enhance a CEO’s legitimacy. Leaders whose
schedules are always booked up or whose EAs see themselves as
gatekeepers and say no to too many people risk being viewed as imperious,
self-important, or out of touch. EAs play a key role in finding the right
balance here.
Carving out alone time.
It’s also vital for CEOs to schedule adequate uninterrupted time by
themselves so that they can have space to reflect and prepare for meetings.
In our study, CEOs spent 28% of their work time alone, on average—but
again, that varied a great deal, from a low of 10% to a high of 48%.
Unfortunately, too much of this alone time (59% of it) was fragmented into
blocks of an hour or less; too little (18%) was in blocks of two hours or
longer. CEOs need to cordon off meaningful amounts of alone time and
avoid dissipating it by dealing with immediate matters, especially their in-
boxes. This proved to be a common problem among the CEOs in our study,
who readily acknowledged it.
Given that time in the office is easily eaten up, alone time outside the office
is particularly beneficial. Long-distance travel out of contact with the office
often provides critical thinking time, and many CEOs swear by it. To
capitalize on it, CEOs should avoid traveling with an entourage.
They Juggle Many External Constituencies
While the CEOs we studied spent the majority of their time (70%, on
average) dealing with internal constituencies, a good chunk (30%, on
average) was spent with outsiders: 16% with business partners (such as
customers, suppliers, bankers, investors, consultants, lawyers, PR firms, and
other service providers), 5% with the company’s board of directors, and 9%
on other outside commitments (service on other boards, industry groups,
dealing with the media and the government, and community and
philanthropic activities).
External constituencies can be just as demanding as internal ones. Everyone
wants to talk to the CEO, and dealing with external stakeholders is time-
consuming. It often involves longer workdays and time away from
headquarters and from home. There is a risk of drifting toward outside
commitments less tied to company success.
Finding time for customers.
Most of our CEOs were dismayed to discover how little time they spent with
their customers—just 3%, on average. It surprised some even more to learn
that this was less than the amount they spent with consultants. The scant
time devoted to customers is partly a function of the huge scope of internal
responsibilities: As an executive ascends from managing a line of business
(which involves more-frequent customer contact) to the job of leading the
entire company, it is natural for customer-facing time to decline.
Nonetheless, the CEOs in our study clearly felt that 3% was too low.
Customers are a key source of independent information about the
company’s progress, industry trends, and competitors. In the B2B space,
meeting with customers’ CEOs is highly valuable, since peer conversations
can be very candid. In B2C companies, there are also rich opportunities for
customer contact. For retail CEOs, for example, store visits—especially
unannounced ones—are an indispensable way to talk to regular customers,
not just the company staff.
Some CEOs systematically schedule time with customers. The CEO of a
financial services firm in our study, for instance, aims to meet face-to-face
with one customer a day. A manufacturing CEO allocates two days a month
to customer visits. Other CEOs try to build customer visits into their travel. A
habit of some type seems to be the most reliable way to ensure enough
customer time.
Limiting time with investors.
On average, our CEOs spent only 3% of their total work time on investors.
Most of them found this surprising; they tended to believe they spent more.
But while more time is likely to be better when it comes to customers, the
same is not true with investors. Too many meetings with investors can easily
become a time sink and can draw the CEO into trying to manage the stock
price rather than focusing on business fundamentals. Staying in touch with a
few key buy-side investors, doing quarterly calls, and holding an annual
investor day may be all a CEO needs to do—unless, of course, the company
is dealing with serious investor unrest or activism. By and large, the CEOs in
our study seem to have discovered such focus over time, after getting
caught up early in their tenures in too much investor relations.
Limiting unrelated outside commitments.
There is a real risk that CEOs will get distracted by outside activities not
directly connected to the business, where they are in high demand and
which often involve worthy community and social issues. Such activities
consumed an average of almost 2% of the work time of the CEOs in our
study. While CEOs should give back to their communities and play the role of
business statespeople, they should carefully restrict the hours they
personally spend on such activities and on participating in business groups.
Though the CEO’s presence can be important, overseeing and managing
such work does not require the CEO and can be delegated to direct reports,
for whom it is motivational and provides professional development
opportunities.
Finding time for directors.
All our CEOs understood the importance of spending time with their boards.
In our study, interacting with directors accounted for 5% of CEOs’ total work
time, or 41 hours a quarter, on average. But again we saw significant
variation: One CEO spent six hours with directors; another spent 165.
A CEO must never forget that the board is his or her boss and that
“managing up” is vital to success. However, that involves more than board
meetings, committee meetings, and board retreats; CEOs must find time to
build meaningful one-on-one relationships with individual directors. This is
essential to take advantage of each board member’s particular expertise
and perspective. At board meetings, it’s often not clear where each director
is coming from, but that knowledge is crucial in crises and when dealing
with controversial topics. CEOs also need to keep the directors well informed
and engage with them between meetings through newsletters and updates.
A common understanding and alignment with the board is important in
periods of stress or market challenge.
Dimensions of the CEO’s Role and Influence
The data on CEOs’ time use reveals that the sheer complexity of their role—
the myriad types of work, activities, and constituencies—is much greater
than has previously been documented or perhaps even understood.
In examining the CEO’s role, we have come to see that their work entails six
dimensions of influence. Each involves a duality—a seeming contradiction,
akin to yin and yang—that CEOs must manage simultaneously in order to be
effective.
Managing the Dimensions of CEO Influence
Chief executives exert influence along six dimensions, each of which
involves a duality, or seeming contradiction akin to yin and yang. Managing
these dualities simultaneously is a hallmark of effective CEOs.

DIRECT INDIRECT
The CEO is directly involved in The CEO also exerts much influence
numerous agendas and makes many over the work of others, using
decisions. integrative mechanisms, processes,
structures, and norms.

INTERNAL EXTERNAL
The CEO works with the senior team The CEO also engages myriad
and with employees at all other levels external constituencies, serving as
to get all the organization’s work the face of the company, and must
done. bring these external perspectives to
the organization.

PROACTIVE REACTIVE
The CEO must articulate a sense of The CEO must also respond to events
purpose, have a forward-looking as they unfold, from daily issues to
vision, and lead the company to full-blown crises that will prove to
greater success. have a major impact on the
company’s success.

LEVERAGE CONSTRAINTS
CEOs’ position and control of CEOs are constrained by the need to
resources give them immense clout. build buy-in, bring others along, and
send the right message.

TANGIBLE SYMBOLIC
The CEO makes many decisions about Much of CEOs’ influence proves to be
concrete things like strategic intangible and symbolic; their actions
direction, structure, resource set the tone, communicate norms,
allocation, and the selection of key shape values, and provide meaning.
people.

POWER LEGITIMACY
CEOs hold formal power and authority CEOs’ influence also rests on
in the company that is reinforced by legitimacy that comes from their
their competence and track record. character and the trust they earn
from employees through their
demonstrated values, fairness, and
commitment to the organization.

First, CEOs clearly have direct influence over many issues and decisions, as
their numerous reviews and one-on-one meetings reveal. However, the
inherent limits on CEOs’ time and knowledge mean that much of their
influence must also be indirect. Good CEOs are very much in charge but
work through others using strategy, culture, and effective organizational
processes that drive sound analysis and alignment across the organization.
CEOs need to learn how to marry direct and indirect influence.
Second, much of a CEO’s work necessarily involves internal constituencies
and managerial tasks, and our data verifies the overwhelming amount of
such work to be done. However, CEOs are unique in the degree to which
they must also engage and influence numerous external constituencies and
represent the company to the world. Effective CEOs connect their internal
and external roles by bringing outside perspectives into the work of the
company. They also need to make sure outside constituencies understand
the company’s work and value.
Third, much of a CEO’s work is inherently proactive: It involves anticipating
problems, gathering the facts, conducting analyses, and making sound and
timely choices. Here, the CEO sets and drives the agenda.
However, reacting well to unplanned and unforeseen events and crises is
some of the most important work CEOs do. Choices here, and the CEO’s
personal presence or lack of presence, can have major consequences both
outside and within the organization. Such periods can make or break a
company and the CEO’s own capacity to lead.
Next In
The Leader’s Calendar

What Do CEOs Actually Do?

A look at the data on how CEOs allocated their time among various
activities, places, priorities, constituencies, and meetings

It’s vital for CEOs to block off meaningful amounts of uninterrupted

time alone.
Fourth, while CEOs have a great deal of leverage to exert because of their
position in the hierarchy and access to resources, they also face numerous—
and often unrecognized—constraints and complexities in exercising that
leverage. They are constrained in how often they can overturn decisions
that have been brought to them for approval or how quickly they can drive
changes without securing the support and buy-in of their senior team and
board of directors. They must identify the group or people who are needed
to bring about a change and then figure out how to win over the leader that
will mobilize them. CEOs must find the right balance between taking full
advantage of the leverage they possess, while being equally sensitive to the
constraints they must navigate and the constituencies they must bring
along. Otherwise, resistance will emerge and come back to bite them.
Fifth, while much of the CEO’s influence is highly tangible, involving
decisions about things like strategic priorities, budget targets, and people
selection, some of the CEO’s greatest influence is symbolic. This comes from
the meaning people attach to a CEO’s actions. What CEOs do (and don’t do),
including everyday things like how they dress, what cars they drive, where
they park, where they eat, and whom they talk to and how—always sends
implicit messages to the company and its constituencies. Everything a CEO
does affects what the organization focuses on, its norms of behavior, and its
culture and values. The symbolic effects of CEOs’ choices can reach even
further than their specific actions.
Sixth, CEOs hold a great deal of formal power and authority, and exercise it
in the many ways we have described. However, power, authority,
competence, and even results are insufficient to truly ensure their success.
Effective CEOs combine formal power and authority with legitimacy. CEOs
achieve legitimacy when employees believe in them as people and as
leaders. They earn legitimacy in multiple ways—by demonstrating values,
ethics, fairness, and a selfless commitment to the company and its people,
among other things. Legitimacy gives rise to motivation that goes far
beyond carrying out orders and can lead to extraordinary organizational
performance. CEO time allocation, then, is not simply a matter of what
happens in meetings and decision-making processes. It reflects the far
broader set of ways in which the CEO as an individual engages with the
organization and its people.
In managing across these six dimensions of influence, it is easy for CEOs to
overlook the less direct, less top-down, less tangible, and more human
aspects of their work. Without this awareness, though, CEOs give up some
of their most powerful levers for driving change.
Why Good Leaders Matter
Countless concepts, tools, and metrics have been developed to help leaders
manage well. However, our study of what the CEOs of large, complex
organizations actually do—as manifest in how they spend their time—opens
a new window into what leadership is all about and into its many
components and dimensions. Being the CEO is a highly challenging role, and
it is difficult to do it well.
The success of CEOs has enormous consequences—good or bad—for
employees, customers, communities, wealth creation, and the trajectory of
economies and even societies. Being a CEO has gotten harder as the size
and scope of the job continue to grow, organizational complexity rises,
technology advances, competition increases, and CEO accountability
intensifies. The ideas we have introduced here aim to provide current and
future leaders, who must bear this enormous responsibility, with a broader
understanding of their role and how to best use their most important
resource: their time.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2018 issue (pp.42–51)
of Harvard Business Review.
Read more on Time management or related topics Leadership
qualities and Leading teams
 Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University
Professor at Harvard Business School. He has served as an adviser to
governments and campaigns around the world on the advancement
of social policy and economic policy, including Mitt Romney’s
presidential campaign. His latest paper is The Role of Business in
Society. He is an academic adviser to the Leadership Now Project.
 Nitin Nohria is the George F. Baker Jr. and Distinguished Service
University Professor. He served as the 10th dean of Harvard Business
School, from 2010 to 2020.