Why a senior leader's calendar is the truest org chart.
Six diagnostic questions you can run on your own this week.
If you want to know what a senior leader actually values, do not look at their strategy deck. Look at their calendar.
The strategy deck shows what the leader has agreed to value. The calendar shows what the leader is choosing to value, every twenty minutes, all week. The two are almost never the same.
Six diagnostic questions you can run on your own calendar this week.
One. What percentage of last week was spent in meetings the leader scheduled, versus meetings someone else scheduled? If the second number is bigger than the first, the leader is operating downstream of the organisation, not upstream of it.
Two. How many of last week's meetings produced a decision? Count strictly. Information transfer is not a decision. Status update is not a decision. If less than 30% of meetings produced decisions, the leader's week is doing the wrong work.
Three. What is the longest unbroken block of unstructured thinking time in the calendar? Akasha — protected emptiness — is where original strategic moves are produced. If the longest block is under 90 minutes, no original moves are being made.
Four. Who is on the calendar most often? Sort the recurring meetings by participant frequency. The top three people are running the leader's organisation, regardless of the org chart.
Five. What is the ratio of one-on-ones with directs to one-on-ones with peers and stakeholders outside the team? If directs dominate, the leader is over-investing in the team and under-investing in the field.
Six. How many of the next four weeks contain at least one meeting that is intentionally on a topic the leader is uncomfortable about? If zero, the leader is calendaring around their own avoidance.
The calendar will tell you the truth that the strategy deck cannot. The audit takes ninety minutes. The redesign takes a quarter.
Which of the six questions did you flinch at?