Speaker 1: We're able to look at 27 different CEOs across a wide range of industries. The average size about 13 billion. So these are big complex billion revenue in some cases international companies. And we track them for 13 weeks or three months 24 7. So there's never been actually data like this before. We've never known what CEOs actually do. And now we have some really rich data that we

Speaker 2: can dig into. Real quickly 13 billion in revenue. Yes. And what did you find.

Speaker 1: Well you know of course we found a lot of things and hopefully the articles being released today and people will take a look at it. This this article is partly about time but it's also partly about what is the role of a leader. What is the role of a CEO. And we found a number of things. First of all we found that time is indeed the scarcest resource. See how it's less CEO has lots of help lots of money resources they can put to place. But their time and where they spend it and who they spend it with is enormously challenging because there's so many many many agendas so many things that they are responsible for. And they have they just can't do it all. So another critical thing we found is is an agenda CEO that's effective needs a personal agenda not just a corporate agenda that you know the standard corporate stuff but a personal agenda. Where's the CEO himself or herself going to dedicate their time for the next three or six months. What things did they need to be involved in to push along during the process. And a good CEO will spend about 40 percent of their time on their personal agenda. A CEO that's not very you know in control and might only spend 10 or 20 percent of their time on the things that they should be working on. But you get pulled into dozens of things. I want

Speaker 3: to go back and just say the amount of time that you found that they worked on workdays was only nine point seven hours. That's less

Speaker 1: than 50 hours a week. That shot. Well yes. Nine point seven hours is is what they is what they work during the week. But the average CEO works on 72 percent of all weekend days. An average of about three point nine hours. They work on 70 percent of all their vacation days. It's a very intense job. And what we find is that that CEOs also need downtime. And the whole way in which CEOs protect enough time to get exercise and to have a decent amount of sleep and to stay connected to their family. So going home isn't a pit stop before they go back to work. All those things actually proved to be very very important to success. As you probably know in this study we had access to these CEOs because we work with newly appointed CEOs when they first take over and we spend a lot of time with them and get to know them. And we have a chance to talk intensely to them about the job. Michael though but but to this

Speaker 4: point one of the things that once you're at the very top you do get to manage your time in a way that most other employees don't which is to say you can organize around your family. You can organize around sleep. You can organize around exercise. How are employees down the line those working more hours 10 11 12 hours who don't control their own time supposed to feel and how are they supposed to think about that as a model.

Speaker 1: Well first of all I think Andrew what you're sort of not putting into the equation a typical employee working down the line has a very limited job. The CEO is responsible for literally everything. Every constituency internal external all the management jobs all the functional issues strategy process you're dealing with crises. What you what the thing is overwhelming when you look at this data is just how many different agendas a CEO has to juggle. And there's always people that want to see them every second of every day. So actually the amount of complexity of just deciding what to do who to see who should be in the room how many people should be involved. How much time should we devote to this versus that. Turns out to be really challenging. And you know we have CEOs that work you know more than nine point seven hours a day. But we actually in conversations with these people I think what we've come to understand is the ones that are not purposeful about protecting some time for themselves and actually what we call alone time. A good CEO has alone time. They they carve out time during work time and even other time where they actually are alone. There's nobody else there. They're not on e-mail. One of the critical things we found is e-mail is becoming poisonous in managing large organizations. It's it's overwhelming people. People are getting caught. It's overwhelming.

Speaker 3: Everybody thinks they have not just the CEOs. Yeah I would say there are lessons we can all take from this because I think e-mail is overwhelming not just to CEOs but to anybody who's trying to do their job. Yeah it's absolutely true. And the CEOs have assistants and

Speaker 1: the assistants will handle stuff. But but it is so what we're finding is there's going to be a new movement I think in in companies to actually have a lot more rigorous rules about e-mail and you know when you can use it and when you have to reply and who should be copied and what are appropriate times and subjects. CEOs have to stay away from e-mail also because it drags them into the weeds into operational stuff that actually they shouldn't be doing. They have direct reports that should be you know kind of driving most of the more routine things. And they've got to stay at the at the level of strategy. One of the biggest findings from this overall body of work that we've been doing on what CEOs do and how they succeed is CEOs can't think of their job as doing things themselves. They work primarily indirectly through others. They have to and they need to have the ability to first of all have great direct reports. One of the most most common problems we see with CEOs is that when they take over they they don't really change out enough of their direct report so that their direct management team is truly excellent. You know pound by pound. That's their best leverage. If a direct report isn't the best they could possibly be. This is going to just be a drain on the CEO. So so CEOs work through others and they need to think they need to use tools like strategy and culture and organizational processes in order to get other

Speaker 4: people making their decisions. Did you find anybody wasting enormous amounts of time along your way. I'm curious if you saw some

Speaker 1: agenda and you thought wow this guy's got zero among the CEOs we studied. This is an overwhelmingly intense job. It's hard to imagine and hopefully your readers will read the article. It's it's fascinating.

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