Is effi­cien­cy pun­ish­able?  Are you being pun­ished for your com­pe­tence, or worse, are you a man­ag­er who scolds oth­ers for their extreme pro­duc­tiv­i­ty?

If so, boy have I got a bone to pick with you.  Being penal­ized for my rock star skills is quite infu­ri­at­ing.  I don’t burn the mid­night oil.  I used to come in ear­ly, stay late and work week­ends.  I stopped that non­sense, not because I became lazy, but because I real­ized I was not being very effi­cient with my time and also because we live in a cul­ture that pro­motes long hours over results and that real­ly both­ered me. The per­son that comes in ear­ly and stays late, is in gen­er­al per­ceived as a “hard-work­er.” Some­one (a part­ner who is God awful with her time and who I have con­clud­ed only made part­ner because she start­ed the firm!) once com­plained to me that ‘so and so’ nev­er stays past 5:00 PM. She implied that one of her employ­ees was not a val­ued work­er because he did­n’t burn the mid­night oil.  She did­n’t cri­tique his work, she crit­i­cized his time! Per­haps the man is just much more dis­ci­plined!  We can­not assume that just because some­one is in their chair for 10 hours straight that they are work­ing away.  And if they are work­ing away, I per­son­al­ly am curi­ous to know what exact­ly are they work­ing on.

Being effi­cient means know­ing how to del­e­gate tasks to oth­ers who might have the skills to get things done faster and bet­ter than you can.  Don’t take this as a bad thing.  These are great lead­er­ship skills.  Here’s an exam­ple.  I love design and I enjoy work­ing on my own projects. How­ev­er, I’m still learn­ing these skills, so I’m much slow­er; I would­n’t pay me to do this work!  I would nev­er dream of charg­ing our clients by the hour for my lack of skills!  I also know what my hour is worth so I do my own per­son­al designs on my free time because they are fun for me.  But I would not attempt to spend 2 hours on a design task (or any task!) that could take some­one with more skills 15 min­utes to com­plete.

Being a great leader also means aban­don­ing tasks that are no longer work­ing.  Being an awe­some man­ag­er includes know­ing how to pri­or­i­tize and know­ing how to rank those pri­or­i­ties (decid­ing between two good things).  Being an effi­cient pro­fes­sion­al means focus­ing on results, not hours.

So I start­ed pay­ing atten­tion.  I noticed that the most suc­cess­ful peo­ple are also the most effi­cient with their time. They are pro­fes­sion­als who get paid for the val­ue they cre­ate through their knowl­edge.  I worked with an exem­plary executive–I’ve worked with many and trust me, they are not all cre­at­ed equal.  In fact, I often won­der how some of them are still in busi­ness and then I remem­ber that they inher­it­ed their posi­tion!  But back to my sto­ry.  This flaw­less mod­el of a man always had his inbox emp­ty, 2–3 short meet­ings per day–at the most, exer­cised dai­ly dur­ing lunch and spent qual­i­ty time with his fam­i­ly on the week­ends.  He is a top ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and clear­ly excel­lent at what he does, and no, he did not inher­it shit.

In my line of busi­ness, we get paid on results, although most ser­vice firms pro­mote bill­able hours.  I find that this unre­formed billing sys­tem can often cre­ate a con­flict of inter­est between busi­ness­es and their clients. Pro­fes­sion­als have an incen­tive to be less effi­cient with their time.  As a client, I would wor­ry about this!  So what we have done, instead is created–no, adopt­ed (this is not orig­i­nal) a sys­tem that rewards us for our effi­cien­cy.  We set clear goals and met­rics with our clients.  We then trust our team to do great, qual­i­ty work.

If you cur­rent­ly get paid by the hour and are effi­cient with your time, if you find that you are the type of super­star that grabs daunt­ing tasks by the horns and com­pletes them accu­rate­ly and in record-time, then you may want to have a dis­cus­sion with your man­ag­er.  If she’s a good man­ag­er she will appre­ci­ate your awe­some­ness.  If she’s not, you can always leave and go with a com­pa­ny that val­ues your extreme pro­duc­tiv­i­ty!

But, let’s say your desired goal is to become effi­cient, you’re not quite there yet, but you real­ly, real­ly want to be known for your great time-man­age­ment skills.  Start now; start right where you are.  Improve your effi­cien­cy skills, make it a fun game (it real­ly is!) and track your progress. After a few months you can then ask to meet with your man­ag­er about pos­si­bly increas­ing your hourly rate, pro­mot­ing you to a high­er posi­tion, allowed to leave ear­ly or come in late, or maybe make it a four-day work­week, instead. But you have to have sol­id evi­dence, exam­ples and ref­er­ences you can use to sup­port your fight.  So keep a jour­nal and track your progress.

I would also like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind you of the dif­fer­ent ways you can help change this bias.  Don’t be the guy that says, “hey, look who’s here, the girl with the banker’s hours” or don’t be the cat­ty girl that says, “she has time to look the way she does because she has no freak­ing kids, and she gets here at 9:30 am!”  Focus on the final prod­uct, not on the hours worked.  Judge peo­ple by their work, not on the time spent.  And if you’re a good man­ag­er, ask your clock-punch­ing employ­ees how they are pri­or­i­tiz­ing their work.  This style of billing may have been appro­pri­ate in the indus­tri­al age and it may still work in some stan­dard­ized work–although I’m hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty com­ing up with a good example–but it no longer works for pro­fes­sion­als and for those of us who get paid for our knowl­edge.  So help reform this anti­quat­ed sys­tem by imple­ment­ing more pro­duc­tive ways to get work done.  This is a win-win for every­one: your clients, your employ­ees, their fam­i­lies and for you, as a leader.