Efficiency Experts

A look at how some executives have found the high-tech tools they need to add time to their busy days.

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Executives can't buy more time, but with the right tools and strategies they can do more with the time they have

Karen Settle, president and CEO of Keystone Marketing Specialists, is about to engage in a bit of high-tech multitasking. Keystone, a $5-million company based in Las Vegas, provides retail-employee training for computing and electronics vendors such as IBM, Acer, and Kodak. With a staff of 15 at its headquarters, the four-year-old company relies on some 300 independent contractors nationwide to get the job done--and on state-of-the-art conference calls to motivate and train them.

Settle has just kicked off one such conference call, during which 30 far-flung contractors get the lowdown on new PC products from a Keystone trainer. Settle hits the Mute button on her phone and logs on to America Online. A former sixth-grade teacher well versed in the art of writing on the blackboard while monitoring a class, she listens to the conference call "with one ear" as she clicks on the first of 30 waiting E-mail messages. She prints out some for future reference and types brief replies to others. One message, from a project manager, is about a potential new employee. Settle responds with a couple of questions, receives satisfactory answers a few minutes later, and sends another E-mail with the hiring approval. All of this takes place as the coast-to-coast conference call continues on her office speakerphone.

"There's no question that my personal productivity is crucial to the fast growth of this company," says Settle, who gained start-up savvy as hiree number 80 or so at Compaq Computer Corp. back in 1981. "Because start-ups tend to run skinny on people, and there are only so many hours in the day, you have to do a lot more or you won't survive. The pace is too fast. I'm always looking for new technology to increase productivity. I live technology."

Settle is hardly unique, either in her problem or her solutions. Along with cloning themselves, a fantasy that must rank high on most CEO wish lists, the thing harried entrepreneurs want most is more time. But since that's not possible, many fall back on the next-best thing: better time management. Toward that end, they are quick to try the latest techniques and technology, anything that might make them--and, by extension, their companies--more productive. They strap pagers onto their belts, tote cellular phones, boot up palm-sized personal digital assistants (PDAs), and run their companies via voice mail, E-mail, and fax.

Tools like those are selling at a tremendous clip, and anecdotal evidence suggests that they are helping executives shave time off activities and cross items off to-do lists. The question remains, however, whether the personally reengineered CEO necessarily sits at the helm of a better-run, more productive organization. We already know that it's possible to have too much information. Is it also possible to be too accessible? To overregiment your time?

The most effective executives appear to have considered these questions and, in response, have developed personal productivity regimens that exploit technology while clearly setting limits on how much they let it control their lives. Settle, for example, shudders at the thought of trying to run her business without her two favorite tools--her Motorola cellular phone and SkyTel SkyWord pager. Stand in line to use a pay phone and then, counting access code and calling-card number, punch in 36 numbers to make a call? ... No way! But still, Settle rarely leaves her cell phone on, limiting its use to outgoing calls. Clients, employees, and family members know to dial her 800 pager number and dictate a brief message, which minutes later scrolls across a tiny screen.

When Settle is out of the office, the pager is clipped to her skirt and set on "vibrate." The 240-character limit on messages (spaces and punctuation count, too) helps keep them short and sweet, a virtue fast fading from E-mail and voice mail. And since one efficient employee--even if it's the CEO--does not a successful company make, Settle has equipped all of her key employees with pagers as well.

Thanks to the pager, Settle is always available--emergency or not. Unfortunately, that hasn't done much to foster employee independence. Settle admits that she is often overbeeped by her staff. But that's happening less frequently now, as she's been able to demonstrate examples of unnecessary pages and urge employees to think carefully before making a call. Her lone guideline: if it's a client issue, use the pager.

Similarly, Settle has devised a strategy for dealing with the growing problem of E-mail overload. To avoid wasting time opening and scrolling through junk mail and unimportant messages, she has created a subaccount, analogous to an unlisted telephone number, whose address she gives out sparingly. Knowing that important E-mail comes into that account, she checks it first. An assistant monitors her general account, which Settle peruses herself when there's time.

While some people complain that such an abundance of technology is depersonalizing, Settle says she finds her high-tech communication links actually nurture relationships with clients and employees. "I'm a great believer in touching people, giving them support and accolades," she explains. "With today's technology, you can do that." Using the robust conference-call capabilities in Keystone's Meridian phone system, for example, Settle has addressed and motivated as many as 70 geographically scattered contract employees with a single call. And when a pat on the back is merited but not physically possible, she'll often praise by pager: Good job. I like how you handled that.

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