I’m so busy that I’m not spending enough time with my employees and customers. Help!

I’m so busy that I’m not spending enough time with my employees and customers. I know I need to connect with them but how can I fit it in?

I’m a great fan of cross-pollination – of being inspired by the workings of one industry to help improve another – and so I was delighted to stumble upon this great example.

When I was at university the professors held “office hours” during which time students could drop in and talk to the Professor about pretty much anything. I had forgotten about “office hours” (probably because I was having too much fun to take advantage of them) until I read that the CEO of 37signals (a funky web-based software company that’s well worth a look at) had started holding “office hours”.

Office hours at 37signals is a two-hour window twice a week that the CEO publicly sets aside for employees and customers. During this time employees and customers can speak to the CEO on the phone or drop in to see him: no appointment, no agenda, no hierarchy of importance.

So why is the guy at 37signals doing this? Well I’m sure that you have heard over and over again that the most effective way to improve your business is to listen to your employees and customers. But let’s be realistic, who actually makes the time to do this? Most CEOs probably intend to but are so busy, busy, busy, that their only interactions with customers and employees are when they are working on important and urgent issues.

It makes good business sense to set aside some time to devote to interactions with customers that aren’t big or urgent but are certainly, to someone, important. But isn’t the two-hour-twice-a-week standard set by 37signals a rather huge chunk of time to block out of the diary? Well yes, until you realise how much you have to gain from doing this.

On a practical level, office hours is actually likely to save you time. Imagine how much more effective you will be when employee drop ins occur in a two hour block rather than randomly throughout the week at the whim of the employee.

But of course, office hours is much more than that, on a strategic level it may be the best investment you ever make. The winning ideas for many great businesses have stemmed from insights gleaned in unscheduled conversations with customers and casual conversations with employees; businesses have even changed their entire business model on the strength of customer insights. But if you are not making time to have those casual conversations then you are not being inspired by the themes and you are missing opportunities.

So here’s a useful, practical and commercial take-away from Professors: office hours.

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Julia Bickerstaff’s expertise is in helping businesses grow profitably. She runs two businesses: Butterfly Coaching, a small advisory firm with a unique approach to assisting SMEs with profitable growth; and The Business Bakery, which helps kitchen table tycoons build their best businesses. Julia is the author of “How to Bake a Business” and was previously a partner at Deloitte. She is a chartered accountant and has a degree in economics from The London School of Economics (London University).