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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the upgraded CEO podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we are talking about how to do a CEO time audit because if you're feeling like you can't get any. Anything done and you're just running all over the place, this is the first thing that you need to do. We need to figure out where's your time going, and I guarantee if you do this this week, that you will find at minimum five hours back in your time.
Because if you can reclaim some of your time, then you can actually step in and start leading at that higher CEO level that I know that you want to be at. And maybe you're at sometimes, but. Things are just getting in the way, and we need to figure out what that is before we can start ensuring that your calendar has the right things on it.
We gotta figure out where, where's your time going right now? Because if you've ever been gotten to the end of your week and I'm like, man, what did I, what did I get done this week? I don't feel like I got anything done then you definitely need this [00:01:00] exercise. You definitely need this episode. This, so I know you are.
Here because you are ready to lead differently. You're ready to step into your CEO role, whether you own your own business or you are a corporate leader, or even just in your personal life. If you don't have the time to step into your CEO role, nothing else is gonna matter. Like nothing else is gonna shift unless you can start taking control back of your calendar.
So. Let's just get into just like some really simple, powerful exercises so that you can like really quickly spot where your time is leaking, frankly, where your time is leaking and you can start reclaiming that time immediately. The byproduct of this is you're gonna figure out where your energy's also leaking.
So it's not just your time, right? It we, we are not just managing time and frankly, we can't even really manage time that much 'cause time. It just is what it is. We all get, we all, we don't have the same 24 hours, but we all have 24 hours. It is what it is. But we can [00:02:00] also, um, manage our energy as well. So we gotta do it on it, on this first and foremost.
We gotta track it without judgment. We have to track it. So there's a couple of ways you can do this. The way that I like to do this is to look forward first, or, or look audit as you're going, right? So for the next week, five days, seven days, write down everything that you, that you did during your. Working hours, bonus points if you wanna look at your, if you look at your private life as well.
Um, for a lot of you, you probably also need to look at your private life as well and kind of figure out where you're spending your time there, because as we all know, we can't just only look at one aspect of our life, right? Probably have time leaking and energy leaking in both areas. And of course, you know, you don't just slice your shadow off like Peter Pan when you come into work or whenever you step into your business, right?
[00:03:00] Like you, your whole person come in, it's coming to that, right? So we need to look at all the things, but if we just wanna start looking at, at, at your work life, cool, we can start there. But for five days or seven days, I want you to write everything down. What did you work on? You, and just keep this simple, just use bullet points, right?
Just let go. I did this, I did this, I did this, and you know, how long did it take you? Honestly, I per, I mean, you could hand write this, that's totally fine, especially if that's faster for you. How I like to do this is actually in my calendar itself. I'll just put, I'll just. Put in little meetings in there about, well, I worked on website copy for 45 minutes.
I, you know, had three client calls. Whatever it is, right? Be honest about this. Note how many times you are checking Slack. Note how many times you are getting pulled into a fire. All of that counts [00:04:00] and. So does your social media doom scrolling? All of that time counts. Where is your time going during the day, during your workday?
And again, if your bonus points, if you're also looking at this in, at, at your outside of work time as well, but you're, you know, you're fixing team mistakes or you are reviewing projects or your hunting down status, like how long are you doing it? How often are you doing that, and how long is this taking you?
And then I want you to sort that into three buckets at the end of each day. 'cause I want you to do this actively as you're moving forward. At the end of each day, I want you to category, categorize each thing into three different buckets. I want you to look at CEO level work, which we're going to define as strategic decisions, vision, high impact leadership.
You know, um, maybe for some of you that's client delivery work. Maybe [00:05:00] for some of you that's no longer client delivery stuff. Um, again, maybe that's being in meetings with your, with the C-suite, with your, with your peer senior leadership team, whatever. So C-E-O-C-E-O level work. And you get to decide, let's, let's be clear, I'm giving you examples, but you get to decide what this looks like for you.
That's your first bucket. Your second bucket is manager work. This is where you're overseeing, you're fixing, you're delegating, but you're still really involved, right? Like you're managing the work here. Again, you get to decide what that, what that really is. But I've given you some, giving you some examples of where you're, you're still doing a lot of stuff.
You're still doing a lot of directing, doing a lot of that. That's manager level stuff. And then the third bucket is operator work. So this is the doing, right? This is the, I'm answering [00:06:00] admin emails, you know, simple questions. This is stuff that you know, in your heart of hearts can and should be handled by someone else or buy a piece of software, right?
Um. And the, the point here is to not get necessarily yourself to zero hours on the manager work or the operator work it's information. Right now we're just, we're we're just auditing. This is just information for right now. And the reality check here is if you are finding that if the majority of your time is packed with manager or operator work, it is time to start shifting.
It is because you cannot step into that upgraded CEO role that you know that you're ready for, that your team need, like your team needs you to step into that role. Your customers, your clients, need you to step into that role.
So I want you to do this for, again, about five days, maybe seven days. [00:07:00] Especially if you're adding in your personal, your personal time in there. Maybe seven days makes the most sense. But then I really want at the end of each day to really just see where is my time going? And also at the end of the day, I want you to talk about how you were feeling during those times.
How was your energy? How was your attitude? You know, how, how are you feeling during the times when you're doing CEO level work? During the times where you're doing manager level work during the times you're doing that operator work? And once again, the, the, the purpose here is not to get to absolute zero necessarily.
Maybe for some of you that is the goal, and we need, and we need, you're at that place where we need, we definitely need to get you to get you there. But the reality is we're not, reality is we're not all going to get to the zero bucket in the operator work or even the manager work. But it's important for us to understand where our time is actually going.
Yeah, because now, now that you've tracked it and you've sorted it into your buckets, now what I want you to think about is [00:08:00] are there things in this operator category that very clearly need to be either deleted, frankly, like doesn't need to be done, that needs to be delegated to someone on your team or maybe to another colleague, or maybe there's a piece of software that can replace.
This, maybe this is a, an, an AI bot that can be, can replace some of this manual work. So I want to challenge you to find at least one thing in that operator place to delegate or automate or delete immediately. Today, I want you to find at least one thing on that list. Then I want you to look at that manager category.
This manager category can sometimes get a little bit tricky, especially depending on where you're at with your team evolution and, and all of that, and just how you've structured your business as well. Um, if you have a business or how you've structured your [00:09:00] team, um, you know, in your, in your company. I want you to look at some of this manager work that you're doing and I want you to.
Uh, start thinking about how can I step back on some of this, on some of the overseeing, on some of the fixing and empower your team? I want you to think, I just want you to think about that, and that might look like, again, delegate. That could just be straight up. I just need to delegate this to someone. It could be I need to put a system and a process in place.
In order to, um, in order to step back from this a little bit more, so I have a client that I've been working with. She's got, she has a really big team. She's got like 30 people who are on our team, and she feels like she's constantly nagging them to give them status updates, like constantly nagging to give, to get status updates.
And that's take, that's not great for her energy. Like that's not great Times time well spent for her. So we've been working to put various SOPs, [00:10:00] processes, timelines, expectations, all these things into place so that she's not having to pull this information. Her employees are pushing it to her, she is just receiving it, and then she can go off and do with it what she needs to do with that status.
But she doesn't have to like constantly oversee and nitpick and, and ask. It's like, here are the clear expectations. I need your updates by Thursday, Thursday end of business. And in this, and in this format done. And I actually had the opposite conversation with a different client. Um, um, I have a client who, um, works in venture capital and she is like at this like really interesting cusp of her, of her career where she's like, really like trying to get to partner.
And she's at this place where she's like trying to navigate what she needs to push and what she needs to pull from her own manager. And so we talked about her just taking it upon. 'cause like he's always asking for updates on things [00:11:00] and things are unclear for her about like what he's looking for and what he's, what he needs.
So we decided, let's just put. A system in place for you to give him status updates so he's not nacking you all the time because you know, clearly he, he wants or needs this information for reasons, right? But instead of him just like interrupting your day all the time with, Hey, what's, what's happening with this?
What's going on with this? That you just put a system in place where you're updating him in, in regular increments and in regular. Um, regular formats so that that trust can get built between you and him that he knows like, oh yeah, she's got it, she's got it. So where again, in this manager category, do we need, again, a system, a process, or just straight up delegation or just straight up, I just need to let go of this.
That might just be a mindset shift. In this manager bucket, in this manager work bucket that like, I just need a mindset shift on this one. [00:12:00] And that will free up time and will free up energy and will free up space. Because once again, and I've said it, I've said it before, you've heard it on this podcast before.
The fastest way and the best way to, um, build a team that takes accountability and takes ownership for their work is to build trust. And how do you build trust by trusting them. You do it by trusting them. Now, obviously if they break your trust, right, that's a different conversation and we can address that as well.
But until we just say, Hey, I trust you to get this done. They're gonna constantly be waiting for you. They're gonna be constantly expecting, even if it's subconsciously waiting for you to give them further direction or, or to. Uh, you know, nitpick at something to ask them for something. What you continue to tolerate is what you tolerate is what will continue, is what I'm trying to say here.
So maybe there's just a, a mindset shift on the manager [00:13:00] stuff. And then on the CEO level work, I want you to just really think about, again, how are you feeling when you're doing that CEO level work? Are you loving that work? Is that, is that the work that you wanna make sure that you're continuing to do?
And this is an important distinction. Yeah, because maybe there's some stuff in there that you're like, Nicole, I don't like making all of these decisions. You know, maybe I'm not, you know, maybe this isn't, I just don't like doing this type of work. Well then that's a clue that maybe we, again, we need to make even bigger changes or bigger shifts in your role and in.
What you're doing, and there's all kinds of ways that we could, we could address that, right? If, if we were working together privately, we could really dive deep into that. If you were coming to some realizations that, Hey, this CEO level work I actually don't like, and there's, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with that.
If you're like, I don't even like this type of stuff, totally fine. We just, let's figure out how to take, how to get you position well positioned to [00:14:00] doing the work that you do like, and that leads to your strengths. So if there's anything that you, anything else that you're like, I don't know why I'm doing this, what is it that's just like not moving the needle that you, that maybe it was before or maybe it was useful before.
That is a clue to immediately cut it ruthlessly. So that's the time audit. I want you to figure out. Again, what is it that you're working on? What is it that you're doing for just five days? Write it all down. Keep it simple. You don't have to, you know, do all kinds of crazy, you know, crazy recording. You know, this isn't, this isn't like a law firm where you're like recording meticulously down to the minute your billable hours.
I'm not that. Um, again, I like to do this right into my calendar. I think it's, the visual just works for my brain. Um, but just a bulleted list works as well. And then I want you to sort it into buckets. What's that? CEO level work? What's that? [00:15:00] Manager level work? What's that operator level work and where are you really, you're spending, where are you spending your time?
I. And once again, the, the point here isn't necessarily to get you to zero operator work or zero manager work. Maybe that's the goal based on, based on where you're at in your business, but that might not be where you're at today, and that's okay. The goal is just to, to slowly and intentionally start removing some of that operator and manager level work off of you and either deleting it all together.
Or automating it or figuring out a way to step back and empower your team so that they can be doing it so that because your team is just a few rungs behind you on this ladder up to their, up to the CEO, up to their own CEO level role. Right? So how are we helping empower our team to take on more and more of this?
The last thing, um, that I'll want you to do here is just, just very simple, just very, very simply, again, looking at the meetings that you're in. [00:16:00] So this was a, an exercise that I did with my clients a couple months ago where we literally just opened their calendars and I did this with multiple clients, literally just opened their calendars and was just like, let's just look at what meetings you're in.
Like even just skip, if you wanna even just skip over the whole, like, what am I working on? What am I doing? Just for good grief, just even just bare minimum and look at your meetings because I guarantee you there are meetings in there that you don't need to be in. I guarantee you there are meetings in there that don't need to be an hour.
That can probably get done in 20, 20 minutes or less. I guarantee you're sitting in meetings. That could have been an email. I bet you you have emails in your email box that could have been solved in five minutes if you all just got on the phone. And I bet there are meetings in there that you can combine.
And that was one of the specific things that we did with, I did with one of my clients. They are the head of customer success at a small tech company. And they were just back to back to back. Which, you know, again, if particularly in the corporate [00:17:00] world we're, we love our back to back meetings. Right. And they were so frustrated 'cause they're like, I'm not working out, I'm not taking time for lunch.
You know, I just, I can't, I can't even get the work done. I'm struggling to get the work done and. We immediately saw, I'm like, what's this meeting and what's this meeting? I feel like these are two things, like the same thing. I feel like we could combine these meetings and like save an hour right off the top of the, right off the bat.
And they were like, oh my god. Yes. And they did that. So, you know, this might take a little bit of time to, to really clear out your calendar, but. If you do nothing else, just seriously look at your calendar and see where, where does a meeting does, does a meeting need to be every week? Could we shift that to every other week?
Does this meeting need to be again, does this meeting need to be an hour? Do I even need to be in this meeting? I think a lot of times, especially if you're coming from the, from a corporate place, and I see this too in small businesses as well, that like, you know, we're a small lean team, we're just all gonna get on this call together.
Um, [00:18:00] not everybody needs to be in the call. Some people just need an update. Some people just need action items. Not everybody needs to be in the actual meeting itself, right? So I was telling this particular client, I was like, this meeting, does this need to be you? Do you need to be in here? Or could you delegate this to your team?
And we're like, well, my team member's already in there. I'm like, okay, well that's a great clue that if you already, if you're showing up to a meeting and you're, and you have a team member already in that meeting, that's your first clue to be like, do I actually need to be here? And likely. If the answer is no, only one of us needs to be in this meeting, then I would say, you defer to that person and let them take it and, and update you or, and again, pull you in if there's an escalation or a specific decision that requires you.
But if you stay in that meeting and just say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just listening. You know, just let them go. Like, everyone's still gonna defer to you 'cause you're, 'cause you're the leader, right? So empower your team. Empower that team member just to be [00:19:00] in that meeting. So we've done the CEO time audit, we're taking a look at our meetings on our calendar, and I encourage you to stand up and say, I'm the freaking CEO of my business, or I'm the CEO of this department and I'm gonna, I'm gonna take some of these things off my calendar.
I'm gonna take some of this work off of my plate and I'm gonna figure out a different way for it to get done because you can. So. If you loved this episode, if you loved this type of mini training or information, I drop. One of these every month inside of my new free community, the upgraded CEO circle, I do monthly power moves.
This was our power move for March, the CEO Time audit. So if you love this, I know you're gonna love being inside of my free community. I will drop the link in the show notes and in the description below. I'd love to see you inside of there. Thank you so much for joining me today [00:20:00] on this episode. I'll see you next time.
And remember, your career serves an upgrade.
