One-on-one with CFO Tania Thiebach: why is time an important asset?

What tactics do you personally use to ensure good time management?

Tania Thiebach: I start the day checking the tasks and decide what is most important and how to tackle them. Additionally, I try to avoid any distractions while focussing on tasks. For example, I defined time slots which I use to read emails per day (and only then).

I also categorise emails subsequently and focus at first on answering the most important emails. As 71% of the leaders say that their meetings could be more productive, I always try to find other ways to proceed with topics.

How could tracking the time spent in meetings help leaders tackle meeting madness?

Tania Thiebach: Unfortunately time is not yet seen as an important resource within a company. Not yet. 65 billion Euros is the cost of unproductive meetings per year in Germany alone. This significant number demonstrates the importance of time as a resource. Tracking the time spent in meetings will help companies to rethink their meeting culture.

To reach more productivity, leaders should spend their time working on the most relevant topics. Some basic rules are that every meeting topic needs to be well prepared by all participants in advance. Sticking to the given time frame per item and not getting lost in details is also important to achieve a productive meeting.

What immediate steps can leaders take to improve their leadership meetings in 2020? If you were to give a piece of advice to other directors, what would that be?

Tania Thiebach: Time management and agility is key. Leaders should focus on combining three crucial aspects:

• first, train people in managing their meetings in a productive way
• second, define clear and agile meeting management processes
• third, make use of meeting technology to support these processes.

Tania Thiebach

About the author

Tania is a tech-focussed finance expert with more than 25 years of experience. She holds a MAS degree in Accounting & Finance.