The document discusses the challenges and importance of effective time management for consultants, highlighting the pressure from clients and the need for a balanced work-life approach. It outlines a phased approach to improve personal effectiveness through diagnostic analysis, better task allocation, and efficiency techniques. The document also emphasizes prioritizing tasks and utilizing specific tools like the Eisenhower matrix to enhance productivity.

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Boost your personal effectiveness
12

2. Introduction
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3. Consultants experience constant pressure on deadlines, maybe even more acutely than in
other industries
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Commitment to the clients,
themselves committed to their own
management
Profitability
constraints (‘time is
money’)
Necessity to conciliate
client delivery with
‘internal’ tasks

4. Effective time management comes with full alignment of the 3 categories of tasks you can
perform at work
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What I am asked
to do
What I enjoy
doing
What is
important
Waste Sacrifice
Free electron
Time to refocus on
more important
issues?
Are you are
doing the right
job?
You are probably building tomorrow but is it
on the expense of today?
The 3
categories are
aligned
This alignment is necessary but
far from sufficient and it is
common for consultants to work
over 60 hours a week

5. Time management remains a critical challenge for consultants as slow and steady may
sometimes win the race after all
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Consulting firms want to retain consultants in the 3-5 Y
range of experience as they offer the best cost to fee
ratio.
This is much more difficult to achieve when people feel
drained from their energy.
Clients benefit more from consultants with full possession
of their faculties, who think with hindsight and operate
at an acceptable level of stress.
It is in the consultants’ best interest, personally and
professionally , as it is important to preserve engagement
and motivation, to maintain the balance between
working hours and private life.

6. Unfortunately, this convergence of interest, is not sufficient to suppress all excessive, not to
say abusive, behaviours| Clients
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… or clients who spend 5 to 6 hours a
day in 1-to-1 meetings with the in-
charge to review the approach, which
nearly leaves the night to implement
it, knowing that priorities and
orientations shall be changed the next
day …
Clients who set-up 8:00 to 10:00 PM
progess meetings on Fridays
followed by touch points at 8:00 AM
on Mondays to see how things went
during the week-end even though
they agreed on a ‘no work on week-
ends’ principle …

7. Unfortunately, this convergence of interest, is not sufficient to suppress all excessive, not to
say abusive, behaviours| Partners & consulting firms
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Partners who commit to deliver studies
or reports for free on topics that are way
outside the team comfort and expertise
zone, appointing a trainee on their own
to do the job

8. Unfortunately, this convergence of interest, is not sufficient to suppress all excessive, not to
say abusive, behaviours| Consultants
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… consultants who work long
hours because it is well
considered and who findit
hilarious to ask ‘you’ve taken you
afternoon off?’ to people leaving
the office before 8:00 PM
Managers who impose
unreasonable hours to their team,
going as far as forbiding them to
leave the office before them while
they spend 2 hours a day in private
conversations

9. As procrastination threatens us all, optimising personal effectiveness is an absolute must-
have
To
accomplish
more
within the
same time
span
To
accomplish
the same
amount of
work but
quicker
To do more,
quicker
In order to to that you need to assess, and
improve, your time management abilities
Phase 1
Diagnostic
Phase 2
Actions
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10. Run a diagnostic
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11. Improving your time management ability requires an initial phase of analysis
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Collect actual time
spent over a week02
Compare ‘real’ vs.
target03
Draw your
theoretical task
map
01
Define your target
allocation scheme04
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12. ▪ Training
▪ Control
▪ Performance measure
▪ …
▪ All the tasks falling into your
personal job description
▪ Personal training
▪ Studies
▪ Meetings
▪ E-mail & phone calls
▪ Conversations
▪ …
Your personal organization
▪ Lunch & coffee breaks
▪ Personal matters
▪ …
Draw your theoretical task map, always including personal items in order to get a complete
picture
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Own
sphere
Environ
ment
Team
Personal
work
# hours per day or
week
# hours per day or
week
# hours per day or
week
# hours per day or
week
It is important to set
the total per day or per
week to the level that
is acceptable for you
given your personal
constraints and what
you consider as
adequate to preserve
your health and
balance
Total

13. Track your actual activities by trying to remember, hour per hour, what you have done during
each day of the week
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8:00 to
11:00
11:00 to
14:00
14:00 to
17:00
17:00 to
20:00
Day 1
Short description DurationCategory

14. Compare theory and practice and determine whether your time is adequately spent
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Total is within your own
limit but allocation is not
what you expected
Proportion is right but
total is way above your
limit
Neither total nor allocation
are in line with your
expectations
Total and allocation are
in line with your
expectations
improving your personal
effectiveness using a wide
range of specific
techniques

15. Take actions
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16. Define your target and improve your personal efficiency by using a combination of the 3
options below
Better allocate your time
Make things more
efficiently
Monitor your
time1
2
3
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17. Make things quicker and more efficiently
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Develop fast reading* &
typing abilities and
extensively use
templates
Use a consistent filing &
ordering system to
retrieve things and info
as quickly as possible
Avoid any time loss by
reading & reviewing
documents in planes
and trains …
Always get prepared,
in order to get it right
the first time
*http://fourhourworkweek.com/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/

18. A better allocation of your time implies a voluntary and conscious choice of what is
worth doing, in what order and how much time should be allocated per task
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Allocate your tasks a
priority number and
decide how you want to
handle each of them in
order to get a maximum
amount of them don
Tool: Eisenhower matrix
Note all the tasks you
must do and categorize
them
Tool: Eisenhower matrix
03
Note and categorize tasks
Prioritize tasks
Based on your prioritized
task list, establish your
planning
Tools:
To do list
Workplan
Establish a planning
0201
Keeping in mind that it is
not about collecting but
finishing tasks

19. Note all the tasks you must do and categorize them
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Ui UI
ui uI
Write your tasks of the day on
post-it notes
Split all your tasks into 4
categories:
▪ U: urgent
▪ u: not urgent
▪ I: important
▪ i: not important
Try limiting yourself to no more
than 8 tasks per category:
before adding another one,
complete the most important
one first.
U: urgent
Tasks that need to be done quickly
to respect a commitment
u: not urgent
Tasks that have no time constraint
(at least not in the immediate)
I: important
Tasks with a big impact (positive if
done or negative if missed)
i: not important
Tasks with no or limited impact
(either positive or negative )
Eisenhower matrix

20. Allocate your tasks a priority number and decide how you want to handle each of
them in order to get a maximum amount of them done
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1
2
3
5
4
Ui UI
ui uI
I delegate
I delay
I do if I have time & I
feel like it
I drop
I delay
I delegate
I do if I have time & I
feel like it
I do
I get help
I improve my efficiency
I schedule
I start ASAP
I delegate
I improve my efficiency
I delegate

21. Based on your prioritized task list, establish your planning (your ‘to do list’ of the day)
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UI
uI
Ui
ui
Priority #
Short description
Duration
Total
Date
It implies you develop an ability to reliably predict
task duration (start by adding a security coefficient
for example)

22. Regularly ensure that you have done what you had planned and if not, take
corrective actions
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Activité 1
Activité 2
Activité 3
Activité 1
Activité 2
Activité 3
Task list Workplan
Daily to do list
Most of time management best
practices have been
‘institutionalised’ and systematised
in project management techniques

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# Task description Categoey Criticality Deadline Status Commentaire
001 Assignment A In progress
002 Done
003
Not
started
004 On hold
High Medium Low
Regularly ensure that you have done what you had planned and if not, take corrective
actions

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