One CEO’s Approach to Managing His Calendar

Tom Gentile spent 20 years as a senior executive at GE before becoming CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, a $7 billion aviation supplier. Seven months into the job, in 2017, Gentile and his assistant spent 13 weeks tracking his time as part of Harvard Business School’s CEO Time Study, and discussed his results with the people leading the research, Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria. Gentile recently spoke with HBR’s Daniel McGinn and HBS research associate Sarah Higgins about what he learned—and what behaviors he’s trying to change. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:

Earlier in your career, how did you learn to manage time?

Gentile: Back in the 1990s, when I was a consultant at McKinsey, I remember trying to use the FranklinPlanner calendar system. It was manual and cumbersome—it was too thick to fit in my briefcase. Later I used a PalmPilot and then a BlackBerry, and now I use Outlook. The tools of time management have become much more effective during my career. But I really learned time management from my mentors, especially at General Electric. I watched leaders who were good at it, and I emulated them. I remember one of my bosses, Dave Nissen at GE Capital Global Consumer Finance. He had so many demands on his time, but he set clear priorities, and he was ruthless about eliminating tasks that weren’t important. He went home at a reasonable hour every night and took all his vacation days. He was incredibly effective. That’s the model to which I’ve always aspired.

A Week at a Glance

For 13 weeks, Tom Gentile had his assistant record the way he spent each day across 60-plus variables, including whom he was with, where he was, and what he was focusing on. The charts below break his time use into seven core activities for one week. See the exhibit “What He Learned” for some of the recommendations on time management that Gentile received from the researchers.

Monday

He met a customer and a board member in London and then flew to headquarters in Kansas, working en route.

His average workweek, including commute and travel time, was 73.5 hours, compared with 62.5 hours for the average CEO.

Tuesday

He led meetings at headquarters, including an employee strategy session, a job interview, and several sessions with investment bankers.

He spent 33% of his meeting time with large groups, compared with 15% for the average CEO. He initiated 44% of his meetings (whereas the average CEO initiates 51%).

Wednesday

He held meetings at headquarters, including a media interview, a supplier meeting, and six sessions with employees.

He spent 35% of his working hours focused on people and relationships, compared with 25% for the average CEO.

Thursday

He flew from Kansas to visit two Midwest suppliers, golfed with a supplier in Oklahoma, and then took a weather-delayed flight to New York City.

He took 16 business trips during the 13 weeks.

Friday

He attended his company’s board meeting on less than three hours of sleep and then had dinner with his wife.

He spent 3% of his time with his board, compared with 5% for the average CEO. He spent 43% of that time talking with individual directors, compared with 38% for the average CEO, and half of his board time meeting with the full group.

Saturday

He spent time with family, with a few breaks for work e-mail.

He spent 62% of his nonworking awake time with his family, compared with 47% for the average CEO. During the study his family time was concentrated in weekends and vacations because his family hadn’t yet relocated to Kansas.

Sunday

He spent time with family until leaving for the airport en route to Scotland at 3:30 PM.

He did some work on 92% of weekend days and on 100% of vacation days, compared with CEO averages of 79% and 70%.

Did those methods work for you when you became a CEO?

They weren’t enough at first, because the job was so much bigger. When I was leading business divisions at GE, I faced a lot of demands, but it’s a different order of magnitude when you’re a public company’s CEO. All of a sudden you have board responsibilities, investor responsibilities, and many more media responsibilities. They take an inordinate amount of time. The requests keep coming in, and the schedule fills up so much faster.

What did you get out of tracking your time so closely for 13 weeks?

Having that detailed a record of how I use time and being able to benchmark myself against other CEOs was useful. Some of what I learned was quite surprising. For instance, I spend much less time one-on-one with my direct reports than the average CEO does, and I didn’t know that. When I talked about my results with Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, the Harvard Business School professors who are doing the study, it felt like a very intensive performance review. They were cordial, but they were very direct in their feedback.

Why do you spend less time with direct reports?

I tend to structure meetings with broader teams—people from multiple units or across geographies. So I do spend time with my direct reports, just not one-on-one time. I have monthly one-on-ones scheduled with every direct report, but they’re busy, and I’m busy, so my assistant often cancels them for something more important. Porter and Nohria think that if I have more one-on-ones with direct reports, I will delegate more and hold them more accountable. We had a healthy debate about that, and as a result I have stopped canceling the one-on-ones. We’ll see if that makes a difference. They also suggested that business trips would be a good opportunity for these conversations. Our headquarters is in Wichita, which has limited airline service, so we rely on a private jet for a lot of travel. That can be a great setting for a one-on-one conversation.

What else did the data show?

We noticed that my meetings are predominantly one or two hours. The good news is, I don’t have many six- or seven-hour meetings, and I have fewer long meetings than the average CEO. But Porter and Nohria asked a good question: Why do you need an hour? Why can’t your meetings be 45 minutes or even less? So we have started scheduling 45-minute meetings, from 1:15 to 2:00 PM, for instance. And we’ve continued our practice of having my executive assistant come in five minutes before the ending time to tell us to wrap up and keep us on schedule. I’ve found that if a CEO’s meetings start running long, it creates scheduling problems for everyone in the organization.

The data shows you spend a lot of time on e-mail. Is that a problem?

Porter, Nohria, and I talked a lot about e-mail. I do spend too much time on that. E-mail is impersonal and reactive. CEOs have to stay human and be authentic, and you can’t do that via e-mail. Professor Porter and Dean Nohria—who by the way was my organizational behavior professor when I was at HBS!—encouraged me to have more face-to-face time, more time to walk around. That was one of the big takeaways from the study. I also need to spend more time alone, thinking and being proactive. My blocks of unscheduled time are too short for me to be reflective about big issues, and I tend to just go to my in-box. It’s been hard to detach from the in-box, but I’m working on it. And I have been walking around our headquarters more.

Do CEOs really need lots of alone time? Aren’t you always thinking about the business during idle moments—while driving or exercising or waiting for flights?

I do have time to reflect when I’m driving or when I’m on a plane without Wi-Fi. Setting aside time for thinking can be valuable. I do come up with ideas during those hours. And Porter and Nohria’s broader point isn’t just about time for reflection—it’s about preserving time for spontaneity and not being overscheduled.

You can’t let time management be a reactive process.

Can’t your executive assistant help prevent overscheduling?

One of the things I learned from this process is that your assistant has to be a strategic partner. I now try to sit down with her on a regular basis, to make sure she knows what my priorities are. She also does small things that help. For instance, she blocks out all my time so that no one can look in Outlook and recognize that I have a free half hour and then request a meeting. She makes appointments at other people’s offices, which forces me to get out of my office. She also schedules lunch for me every day. I always have a half hour. That’s a healthy habit, so I don’t miss meals, and it also allows me to grab somebody to talk with informally about an issue.

Next In

The Leader’s Calendar

How CEOs Manage Time

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Time is the scarcest resource leaders have. Where they allocate it matters—a lot.

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Speaking of healthy habits, did Porter and Nohria give you grief about lack of exercise?

Yes, they beat me up a little on that. I do need to schedule in time to exercise, which I haven’t done in the past. I spent only 4% of my personal time during this period on exercise, which was lower than average—and to be honest, I’m lucky it wasn’t 0%. They also pointed out that I don’t spend enough personal time on hobbies. At this point, my only real hobby is golf, and I tend to play it mostly with customers and at industry events. I certainly wouldn’t object to playing more!

What He Learned

Analyzing how he spent time allowed Gentile to recognize and correct patterns.

E-mail time

During the 13 weeks Gentile spent 137 hours (or 55% of his unscheduled time) tending to e-mail. He recognizes this isn’t the best behavior and is trying to spend more time communicating face-to-face.

Alone time

One reason he spent so much time on e-mail is that 65% of his alone time is in blocks of just 30 minutes or less, compared with 28% for the average CEO. He’s trying to allow longer blocks of uninterrupted, unplugged time for deeper thinking and reflection.

One-on-one and direct report meetings

Just 5% of his time with internal constituencies was spent only with direct reports, and 16% of his meetings were one-on-ones, compared with CEO averages of 21% and 42%. After learning that, he stopped canceling monthly one-on-ones with his top team.

Partner meetings

He spent more than twice as much time with customers, and seven times as much time with suppliers, as the average CEO did. That’s excellent behavior, which he intends to continue.

You spend more time with customers than the average CEO does. What do you sacrifice to do that?

My focus on customers comes from my years at GE—leaders there spend a lot of time with customers. Jeff Immelt was a role model in that regard, the best I’ve ever seen. Our industry has a lot of events—association meetings, air shows—that everyone attends, and they can be a convenient way to see a lot of people. Going to them means spending less time at headquarters and delegating more to my team, but that’s probably a good thing.

What do you tell up-and-coming leaders about time management?

Think about time very strategically, because it is part of your strategy. You can’t let it be a reactive process that bubbles up from the bottom. You have to manage it from the top down, and you can’t delegate it. And even in an age when e-mail is prevalent, you must be disciplined about communicating face-to-face in a way that lets people see you as genuine and approachable.