Your calendar never lies

Time allocation is the clearest signal of what you value

I learned this lesson the hard way.

I had spent months telling my team that customers and people development were my top priorities. I believed it. Yet when I looked back at my calendar for the quarter, most of my time had gone into internal reviews, routine updates, and issues that belonged several layers below my role. My intentions and my behaviour were not the same. The gap was obvious once I saw it in writing.

That moment changed how I manage my time. I stopped treating the calendar as a reaction to incoming requests and started treating it as a tool for delivering my objectives. I blocked hours for customer visits, coaching conversations, and long-term planning. The shift was small but the effect was huge.

This principle has held true across every senior role I have taken. People watch where leaders spend their time. They look for signals about what matters. If your diary is filled with reviews and escalations, the organisation becomes review-driven and escalation-heavy. If your time goes into customers, people, and forward planning, the organisation follows you there. The calendar is one of the most powerful alignment tools a leader has.

It forces the question: does my time match my stated priorities? If the answer is no, the calendar needs to change before anything else does.

This principle is simple but reliable. Time is the clearest expression of what a leader values. A calendar that reflects those values keeps the organisation aligned with them.

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I write about Thematic Strategy - a method for leveraging drivers of technological and social change to achieve market dominance.

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