New Research Study Examines How Leaders Spend Their Time

Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne from both the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and eePulse, Inc. released new research today examining how leaders spend their time and how that time spent is associated with firm performance. Results indicate that by spending more time on what she calls ìnon-core job roles,î firms see higher levels of overall performance, especially firms with less than 500 employees. Respondents included 378 senior executives who participated in the bi-monthly, Leadership Pulse study.

The basis for the study is a scientifically-validated method for assessing manager and leader performance based on five roles. These roles have been found to be critical for understanding overall, individual and firm performance and include:

- Job: Reflects the basic core job one is hired to perform and is often well described in the typical job description

- Team: Reflects responsibilities for ongoing and project-based teams

- Career: Includes responsibilities to enhance career and skills

- Innovator: Covers work spent to develop new ideas, create new routines or improve on process

- Organization Member: Reflects work done to support company overall, when it is not part of the other roles

The study indicates the average, overall percentages of time spent in each role, from high to low, as follows:


Job = 45%
Innovator = 19%
Team = 16%
Organization = 12%
Career = 8%

ìThe average time spent by CEOs in particular in the job role, within a high performing company, is 36% versus 46% for the low performing firms,î states Welbourne. ìThis is not surprising in that we know long-term competitive advantage comes from a workforce that is spending time doing things other than the ëcore’ job. If employees are focused only on the job, everything that your company does can be easily copied by your competitors and replicated easily. Long-term competitive advantage comes from the right combination of core job and non-core-job roles.î

Other noticeable differences regarding time spent on the job role:

TimeSpent

High performing firms (all jobs) = 44%
Low performing firms (all jobs) = 50%
Small firms (less than 500 employees) = 43%
Larger firms (greater than 500 employees) = 48%
C-level executives (all) = 39%
VP of Director = 47%
Senior managers/Managers = 50%
High level of change in firm = 44%
Low level of change in firm = 47%

The larger research report includes analysis of all roles in addition to more research on employee and company expectations about the importance of each role to both firm and individual performance. To learn more about the Leadership Pulse research study, please see http://www.eepulse.com/leadership_reports.html. To participate in the study, visit: