The apprentices just don’t manage their time = "You're fired..!"

Regular watchers to BBC will know that The Apprentice is back on the television for the umpteenth series. This time Alan Sugar is looking for a partner to start up a new business, rather than an apprentice to work in his existing empire. Beyond that the formula is the same and – if you like that sort of thing – highly entertaining.

Each week a group of talented individuals are asked to perform business tasks. In a recent episode, they had to make money from rubbish by collecting, for example, debris from building works and selling on the valuable scrap.

What was amusing about this episode was the way one team elected their project manager (PM). Looking like they were about to spend at least an hour on just this initial task, one of them – Zoe - stepped forward and said words to the effect of  “I’ll do it, because I can’t bear this time-wasting any longer”. She wasn’t, as it turned out, the best person for the job and her team lost, but Lord Sugar admired her attempt to get on rather than waste time.

Our annual Timepower survey of the most commonly reported time management problems, reveals that the issue highlighted in The Apprentice is very, very common...

The Lack of objectives, priorities and planning came in at number 2 in the list, and we’d argue that the lengthy debate among the would-be apprentices about who would be PM is a perfect example of not proper planning and losing sight of the objectives and priorities. Attempting too much and setting unrealistic time frames came in as number 1 and you might argue that also was an issue in this example.

A good PM is vital, and part of their success, and the success of any project or task lies with setting objectives, prioritizing and planning carefully. Spending an hour on selecting a PM, and then ending up with someone ill-suited is not good time management, especially when in this project – as in so many – there was a very tight deadline.

So how should we avoid the problem of lack of planning and prioritizing? Sorry to state the obvious but it’s to DO some planning and prioritizing. People avoid planning because it takes time; we often think we'd be better just heading off and taking action. They is known as "headless chicken mode" ~ The benefit of planning is that it makes things happen more quickly, better and more cost-effectively; one minute of planning is worth two or more of headless chicken.

If the TV candidates had planned their first meeting – perhaps allocating 15 mins to selecting a PM then following an agenda for the rest of the meeting, making it last no more than an hour they could have mapped out their entire project including working out that you can't easily cross from North East to South West London in the one day..! – In fact, they may even have won. Instead, this particular team ended up in the boardroom and Zoe just escaped being fired.

If you would like to talk about time management issues, how to plan, how long to plan and all those challenging project management problems please get in touch.