What is the medium of a manager’s forecast? It is something very simple: his calendar. Most people use their calendars as a repository of “orders” that come in. Someone throws an order to a manager for his time, and it automatically shows up on his calendar. This is mindless passivity. To gain better control of his time, the manager should use his calendar as a “production” planning tool, taking a firm initiative to schedule work that is not time-critical between those “limiting steps” in the day.
