Chartered Management Institute (CMI)’s study of 2000 employees across the UK reveals 75 per cent of workers waste almost two hours out of their working week due to inefficient managers.

Worst management practices responsible for time lost include unclear communication (33 per cent); lack of support (33 per cent); micro-management (26 per cent); and lack of direction (25 per cent).

Plans by the European Union (EU) to introduce a tax in areas such as financial transactions, carbon emissions and aviation have been hit with heavy criticism.

The taxes which have been proposed to reduce member state contributions were shot down by the senior member states who described them as “ill-timed”.

The UK Treasury tax minister Lord Sassoon also said that the British government would be opposed to any direct taxation by the EU.

EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski has aimed to put the legislation forward for review in September in a bid to reduce the amount of contributions that EU states must make.

Germany have also rejected this proposal saying that their coalition government agreement does not allow EU involvement in their tax system, The French government also described the plans as “ill-timed”.

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Chairman of the BBC trustees Sir Michael Lyons has denied the corporation should be the subject of an examination by the National Audit Office (NAO).

The statement, in a letter to The Times newspaper comes on the back of the Coalition Government announcing that they are willing to push ahead with the examination.

People have been campaigning for years to get the BBC to adhere to NAO scrutiny but the unique position of the BBC  has always prevented it.

The BBC has been criticised recently being described as “self serving”. Currently the BBC only has to answer to the BBC Trust which could be described as leaving Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

Rupert Murdoch obviously has a keen interest in the BBC being privatised and this could be the first step in that direction, his link with the Cameron campaign will be heavily stressed if the BBC do end up in a battle with the NAO.

Personally I do not think that the BBC should be submitted due to the fact that it is an exception and a national institution, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is in a similar position of regulation as the BBC but with the obvious funding differences.

If it did come down to the de-nationalisation of the BBC then I don’t really see how it would work as I cannot see licence fees being scrapped so then who would they go to? Also it is not really money that is having an effect on the government budget. Good business auditors and accountants should be able to advise their clients on the best accounting strategy, avoiding any of the BBC blunders, or interference by competitors with alternative agenda.

The fundamental question to ask oneself is, “How badly does one want to learn how to manage one’s time well, and how much effort is one willing to put into it?”

According to Brian Tracy, the long established US management consultant and motivational speaker who recently overcame cancer after an illustrious consulting career, suggests that all successful people do things differently than the average person

What is the difference between a successful person and the rest of us that we meet every day in the office, at meetings or in business? Tracy claims to have invested many years investigating the subject and pursuing personal research to discover what in essence these (success) differences might be, and the impact on ‘Average Joe’s’.

We can presume that he started with himself.

So, why do some people become more successful than others? What’s your take on it? Are you as successful as you would like to be? Tracy lists the benefits of mastering one’s time:

• earn more money
• have better jobs
• get promoted more often
• live healthy lives
• live longer

Drucker suggests that managing oneself is the key to effective time management. Tracy says that many people privately admit that they live lives of ‘quiet desperation’. Is this true for you. If I am honest there is some truth in it for me. Tracy appears to share the view of other business experts and personal development gurus when he states that anyone can learn how to be a successful time manager and then by practicing it over and over again will eventually succeed themselves.

Tracey emphasises that

All successful people (winners) use their time well, losers do not.

Good time managers know that time management is really about ‘Life Management’ or Personal Management. Peter F Drucker best known as the ‘Father of Management’ and the inspiration and foundation About the Drucker Institute, Claremont Graduate University famously wrote a paper published by the Harvard Business Publishing – the not for profit organisation entitled ‘Managing Oneself’, which details the key focus which lies at the root of time management and personal productivity.

Successful time managers can eagerly anticipate benefits and improvements to their personal and business performance, which can be considerable.

Tracy says good time managers can

• Gain 2 hours a day in productivity
• Increase one’s income
• Rate of promotion
• Increase life satisfaction

The fundamental question one must ask is, “How badly does one want to learn how to manage one’s time well, and how much effort are you willing to put into it?”

The key to time management is self discipline, in action, and self discipline is the key to success.

Instilling good time management in one’s business would need an external HR management consultant or firm of business human resource consultants. Instilling good time management in senior managers is more a question of coaching and training using the services of a leadership mentor.

“What the people in the business think they know about customer and market is more likely to be wrong than right. There is only one person who really knows: the customer.”

–Peter Drucker, Managing for Results

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted recently that Facebook had “missed the mark” failing to deliver adequate privacy measures for the social networking site’s nearly 500 million users.

Facebook have tried to resolve the issue introducing a variety of measures to simplify controls.

“We don’t pretend that we are perfect,” Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying, “we try to build new things, hear feedback and respond with changes to that feedback all the time.”

“The unique ability to touch tomorrow” was a key attribute of Drucker according to Jack Welch, who credits Drucker’s influence on him for GEC’s spectacular success in the US.

According to Welch Drucker saw the unique benefits of outsourcing, and today outsourcing is a massive net creator of jobs in the US, Europe and the Far East.

DRUCKER INSIGHTS INTO OUTSOURCING

“Make your back room, someone else’s front room.”

“What is a low priority of your business is a top priority and foundation of success for another business”

“If you weren’t in the business you were in today, would you enter it?”, Drucker famously asked Jack Welch. This led Welch to only enter businesses and sectors where he could be No1 or No2 in the market.

What would Drucker say about Facebook?

He would have commended the approach “only by asking the customer, by watching him, by trying to understand his behaviour,” Drucker wrote, “can one find out who he is, what he does, how he buys, how he uses what he buys, what he expects, what he values, and so on.”

The jury is still out figuratively speaking with Facebook and the media are questioning whether the company has succeeded in protecting each user’s privacy.

Personally, Facebook has become such a phenomenal success, and almost unparalleled, and an excellent track record. I believe it is time to outsource the issue and bring in management experts, legal professionals and business advisers to manage the next stage of their spectacular growth.