How do top business leaders spend their time? Being fascinated by this topic, I collaborated with Chris
Stowell, vice president of the International Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness in
Sandy, Utah, to survey 267 C-level executives (all at the vice president level or higher) at Fortune 500
companies.
The respondents to the email survey, completed over the past two months, came from 163 companies
including Adobe, American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, BP, Delta, DHL, Federal Express,
GE, Google, HP, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, Kelloggs, Motorola, Rio Tinto and Twitter.
The survey research showed that the typical corporate leader wakes up at about 6:15 a.m., exercises
for 45 minutes and commutes 25 minutes each way. Every workday, he or she spends two hours and
25 minutes on email and texting, 25 minutes on strategy and planning, and 30 minutes on personal
development. The infographic below, created by Stowell, my
summarizes the findings.