29th FVI Expert Breakfast

Topic: "The Time-Waster Check" – How leaders escape operational chaos.

In this session, Ivan Sub presented a radical approach to ending the "meeting hell." Many leaders believe they are leading, but they are actually just firefighting and sitting in meetings without an agenda.

• Leading means having time: Ivan emphasized: "Only when I have time for reflection and people can I lead." Anyone who is stuck in the operational swamp for 10 hours a day is not a leader, but an expensive clerk.

• The Time-Waster Tool: The solution is simple: An Excel tool where employees record for a week where they lose time (e.g., "Waiting for spare part," "Searching for documentation," "Pointless meeting"). The result is often shocking: Of 480 minutes of work time, only 90 minutes remain for real value creation. The rest is waste.

• Transparency creates pressure to act: When the boss sees in black and white that the team waits 180 minutes a week for approvals from sales, he must act. The tool turns "feeling" ("We are stressed") into facts ("We lose 3 hours").

• Meeting culture: Mike (participant) reported how he saved a young master by saying: "Lock the door! You can't be disturbed every 5 minutes." Structured meetings (e.g., 15-minute daily standup) instead of constant interruptions are key.

• OKR conversations: Marcel Hahn recommended having monthly 15-minute check-ins instead of an annual conversation ("Where are the difficulties? How can I help you?"). That is agile leadership.

Classification: Automation creates leadership time

This episode shows that lack of time is often a symptom of poor processes.

• ADAM as a time-saver: When Ivan says that employees spend hours searching for documents, it's a penalty for ADAM. Our RAG search reduces this search time to seconds. That is the most direct ROI: time.

• Automated reports: Instead of sitting in meetings to give updates ("What did you do yesterday?"), ADAM can automatically generate a daily report. The leader reads the summary in 2 minutes instead of sitting in a meeting for 2 hours.

• Enforcing processes: Mike reported that employees often don't know who is responsible. ADAM's workflow engine clearly assigns tasks. There are no more "hallway conversations" ("Can you just...?"), but clear tickets. This brings calm to the system.

Conclusion: Anyone who wants to lead must free themselves. ADAM is the lifebuoy that takes away the operational burden, freeing the mind for strategy and people.