I know this isn’t practical, but what is practical – or at least accepted / expected today isn’t working.
A few weeks ago at the Strata Community Association (VIC) Annual Symposium, an audience member asked me, “What percentage of time should managers spend with their teams?”
I answered honestly: 80%.
There was an audible gasp.
Before you write me off, hear me out. The point of this post is to challenge conventional wisdom and get us thinking differently about the manager role — because the “do more with less time” approach we’ve normalised for decades is now showing up as:
- Shallow one-to-ones that never get past status updates
- Firefighting over coaching — urgent crowds out important
- Missed early warnings on burnout, performance, and customer pain
- Rework, handoffs, and silos that slow delivery
- A revolving door of talent because people don’t feel seen or developed
In short: we starved the manager role of time with people, then wondered why engagement, performance, and retention took a hit.
Why I said 80%
Managers are multipliers. Every hour they invest in clarity, coaching, and connection compounds across a team’s output and morale. If we were designing the role from scratch, we’d weight it heavily toward people and performance conversations, not email, decks, and status meetings.
What’s a practical version you can implement?
If 80% feels impossible, use this ladder and climb one rung at a time:
- Floor — 35% team-facing time: the minimum viable level to stay connected and stop surprises
- Target — 50% team-facing time: where you’ll feel the performance and retention lift
- Ideal — 80% team-facing time: the design principle that keeps the role honest
Make the time without working longer
Try this 4-week reset:
Week 1 — Time audit: Track where your hours actually go. Kill or consolidate low-value updates and duplicate meetings.
Week 2 — Cadence reset
- Lock monthly 1:1s (45 – 60 mins) that focus on BAU – and them! *
- Add a weekly 15-minute stand-up or checkpoint for shared work
- Replace status meetings with async updates
Week 3 — Manager “office hours”
- Two 45-minute blocks where the team can raise issues before they become fires.
Week 4 — Systemise the boring bits
- Templates for briefs, decision logs, and after-action reviews. Standard in, standard out — fewer meetings, clearer decisions.
- Let AI give you 5–10 hours back a week
- Use Everyday AI to strip out admin that drags you away from your team. Keep it simple:
Automate
- Meeting notes → actions: Auto-capture summaries and next steps, then push to your tracker.
- Status reporting: Turn project docs and task boards into weekly roll-ups — no meeting required.
- Inbox triage: Draft replies, summarise long threads, and create to-dos from emails.
- Documentation: Generate first drafts for briefs, role expectations, performance notes, and after-action reviews.
- Scheduling: Offer three windows, let AI handle the back-and-forth.
Augment
- 1:1 prep: Ask AI to surface wins, risks, and open loops for each direct report so you hit the ground running.
- Decision support: Feed in options and constraints, request trade-off tables and risks, then decide faster.
- Coaching cues: Paste a tricky message and ask for a clearer, kinder version with next-step options.
Embed
Create two reusable prompts you use every day:
- “Summarise this thread in 5 bullets, list decisions, and propose next actions by owner.”
- “Draft a 1:1 agenda for Jamie from these notes. Include priorities, blockers, growth, and one career question.”
30-minute setup
- Pick one meeting type, one report, and one email workflow to automate.
- Save the prompts, test them once, then reuse. Consistency beats complexity.
Guardrails
- Keep sensitive data ringfenced.
- Sense-check outputs — AI drafts, you decide.
- Measure the win: hours saved, meetings removed, faster decisions.
Guardrails that protect your new cadence
- Meeting triage — if there’s no agenda or decision, decline
- Batch comms — one daily window for inbox and chat, not all day drip
- Delegate and elevate — push ownership down with clear guardrails
- Upwards reset — agree with your leader on outcomes, not optics
The mindset shift
Stop treating “people time” as a luxury you squeeze in after the “real work.” For managers, people time is the real work. It is how your team delivers, learns, and stays.
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Try this prompt with your managers
“What would have to be true for you to spend 50% of your week directly enabling your team — and what could we stop, start, or simplify to make that happen?”
If this challenged your thinking, I’d love to hear your reality: What’s your current percentage — and what gets in the way of raising it by 10 points over the next month?
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- * If you’re interested in learning how to plan, prepare and conduct monthly 1:1s using a framework based on over 5,000 exit interviews please join me at World Business Forum Sydney on the 11th. Just type “session” in the comments and I’ll give you a code to attend my session for free.
