After a recent full-day workshop, the VP who hired us said something that stayed with me: it was the best day his team had spent together since they began working together.
He didn’t call it productive. He didn’t talk about efficiency or ROI. He called it the best day.
Organizations have become remarkably good at accounting for time—hours worked, meetings attended, deadlines met, revenue by quarter. But we rarely stop to ask whether the places we’re putting that time are actually worth going.
That question carries particular weight for leaders. When you call twelve people into an hour-long meeting, you aren’t simply spending an hour. You’re asking for twelve hours of human life.
Perhaps our calendars deserve to be considered accordingly—not simply as scheduling tools, but as expressions of what we believe deserves our finite attention.
Join me as I explore:
✅ Why “the best day” means something different from the most productive one
✅ What leaders are really asking for when they ask for people’s time
✅ How trust creates the conditions for meaningful work
✅ Why a well-designed experience can never guarantee a well-lived one
✅ What our calendars reveal about our actual priorities
Key Takeaways:
• A full calendar tells us where our time went, but not whether it was worth going there.
• Leaders are responsible for more than their own time—they influence how others spend theirs.
• Trust can create the conditions for impact, but meaningful participation cannot be forced.
• What repeatedly receives our time eventually creates our lives.
• Our calendars may reveal our real strategy more clearly than our stated priorities do.
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#Leadership #OrganizationalCulture #Trust #TeamDevelopment #TimeWellSpent
Steven Morris, CEO of Matter Consulting is an ever-curious life-seeker, brand and culture building expert, advisor, author, and speaker.
With over 27 years of entrepreneurial experience, he has served as a trusted advisor to over 3,000 business leaders and evolved more than 250 brands and cultures, including Google, Habitat for Humanity, Samsung, and Disney.
His best-selling book, "The Beautiful Business," and his widely read Insights blog are a testament to his consulting expertise in creating unignorable, magnetic, and sustainable companies.
His diverse interests, including meditation, fine art painting, surfing, and beekeeping, infuse his work with creativity, soul, and a deep understanding of the human experience.
You can find more podcasts and join 30,000+ other brilliant and soulful readers of his weekly INSIGHTS blog at MatterCo.