© Copyright 2014 London Business School

Clocking inMeetings, emails, thinking? How do business

leaders spend their working days?

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 2

CEO time60% of CEO time is taken up by meetings; CEOsspend 25% of their time on phone calls and at publicevents; only 15% of CEO time is spent working alone.

bnet.com

60% 15% 25%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 3

Work-related56% of managers visit work-related websites duringtheir free time and 30% read work-related books.

Chartered Management Institute

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56% 30%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 4

Time with othersCEOs spend the majority of their time with other people(83%). Of these, most are employees of the same firm,but many are not. On average, CEOs spend 42% oftheir time with insiders only, 25% with both insiders andoutsiders and 16% with outsiders alone.

hbs.edu

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42%INSIDERS ONLY

0% 100%50%

25%BOTH INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS

0% 100%50%

16%OUTSIDERS ALONE

0% 100%50%

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TIME SPENT WITH OTHERS

83%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 5

Workouts85% of CEOs say they exercise daily. 70% begin theirday with a workout of some kind while 15% exercisebetween meetings or during a lunch hour.

Yahoo!Finance

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70%

15%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 6

Unpaid workManagers spend an average of 2.5 hours a weekdoing unpaid research in their own time.

randstad.co.uk

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BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 7

Lunch breaksExecutives take an average lunch break of 35 minutes, though they also work through lunchthree days a week.

keyorganization.com

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BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 8

Information searchesManagers spend up to two hours a day searchingfor information; yet the same managers felt half theinformation they found to be useless.

academic-journal.org

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BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 9

Industry breakdownAcross industries, managers spend 30% to 60% of theirtime on administrative work and meetings and 10% to 50%on non-managerial tasks (travelling, participating in training,taking breaks, conducting special projects or undertakingdirect customer service or sales themselves). They spendonly 10% to 40% actually managing employees by, forexample, coaching them directly.

forbes.com

AD MINISTRATIVE WORK

NON -M ANAGERIAL TASKS

MANAGING EMPLO YEES

30% 60% 60%

10% 550%

10% 40%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 10

TwitterJust 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs have Twitter accounts.Only 50% of the accounts are active.

personneltoday.com

550%ACTIVE ACCOUNTS

0% 100%50%

5%

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW 11

PaperworkOn average, paperwork and related tasks consume11.6 hours per week of a manager’s time, with seniormanagers both spending more time on these tasks andfinding it more disruptive than middle managers.

getmoredone.com

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This was first published as part of the‘What a day looks like’ special report,

Business Strategy Review

Volume 22 Issue 4 2011

Visit our website www.london.edu/bsr