“Your goal is to make it all happen according to your schedule?” I continued. “Sounds easy. Can’t you just make up a schedule and tell everyone they have to follow it?”

Taylor chuckled and shook his head. “I wish. No, my schedule has to meet the Contractor’s schedule and it has to mesh with all the sub-trades on the job. And most importantly, my schedule has to be tight enough to match the budget and man-hours in our original estimate. There are a thousand things that have to go right. By the way, we have 30 other projects that will happen during this same twenty two months.”

“So, let’s talk about the decisions that go along with your goal. Every role has decisions that must be made. That’s the work that must be done. Your effectiveness in managing this schedule depends on the decisions that you make. When I look at the Time Span of your Goals, I also look at the Time Span of your decisions, the Time Span of Discretion.” -TF

“Tell me, what is your longest Time Span goal?” I asked.

Taylor sat across the conference table. He was in charge of project scheduling. At any given time, his company has 30-35 projects in play. Some of the projects only last 4-5 weeks. Others last 12-15 months. Yet, every project is important. No details can be dropped, no matter how small.

“What do you mean?” Taylor asked. “I mean, I work with a Project Management software. I spend time meeting with all the Project Managers, looking at their contracts, their change orders, the deadlines in their project segments.”

“What is your longest project?”

“The longest one, is the Phoenix project. We got the contract last week. I have already been looking at it for a couple of months though, ever since it came through our estimating department. It’s a big project and we had to see if we could even mobilize to do it. Twenty two months it will take.”

“And what is the Goal, what is your Goal?” I asked.

“At the end of the project, all of the materials showed at the job site, all the crews showed up to do the production. The equipment required, whether we own it, or rented it, was on-site. All the trades that we had to coordinate with, everything happened according to my schedule. That’s my goal.”

The other day I checked to see how many posts I had tagged related to Time Span. The number was 153. Time Span, as a concept, comes from the most basic thing we do, as a company, the most fundamental thing we do, as managers. Time Span comes from Goal Setting.

What is a goal? Take all the ornaments off. A goal is a “what by when.” Often, we focus on the “what” and rarely pay much attention to the “by when.” But it is the “by when” of every goal that determines the Time Span.

Time Span is the length of time a person works into the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgment to achieve a specific goal.

Three weeks ago, fifteen of you, began work in our online platform (www.workingleadership.com). The first Subject Area was Goal Setting and Time Span. The discussion now shifts its attention from the Goal to Discretionary Judgment.

In the pursuit of any goal, we have to make decisions. We make those decisions using our discretionary judgment. The Time Span of the Goal (the “by when”) has a direct relationship to the Time Span of Discretion.

An important discussion, for managers, surrounds the decisions that must be made to achieve a specific goal.

What is your most important goal? What are the decisions you have to make to achieve that goal?

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