Strategic Scheduling

Strategic scheduling is knowing where you want to go and using your time wisely to get there. If your budget is your strategic plan put to numbers, then your schedule is your strategic plan put forth in dates, times, and locations.

Strategic scheduling is:

• Proactive: You don't just respond to requests: you decide where you need to go, who you need to see, and who needs to see you.
• Goal Oriented: You don't spend a minute more than necessary on those activities that aren't going to help you achieve your goals.
• Creative: Your district/state trips aren't an endless stream of disconnected events that you attend at the request of others, but are a seamless expression of your strategic plan.
• Inclusive: The schedule is created not just by the Member or Scheduler alone, but with a team to ensure that needs are balanced and various viewpoints are heard."

Why You Should Do This

Jordan Wilson is the Scheduler for Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA). In this video, Jordan discusses his role in ensuring that meetings are productive for his offices' priorities.

What We Learned

Develop a scheduling framework that advances the office's strategic goals. Given the wide array of stakeholders who are all jockeying to get on the Member's schedule, up to 70% of a Member's time is determined by others. The most effective offices institute a logical process to evaluate these requests, following these steps:

• Define office's goals
• Evaluate the impact of office goals on scheduling
• Communicate goals to staff
• Assemble the scheduling team
• Develop scheduling criteria
• Conduct a strategic review

Address the scheduling problems that many offices face. Addressing the challenges that confound even the most adept scheduling operations will allow your team to successfully manage what time is available:

• Excessive travel time – due to distance of district from D.C., remote or large district, even weather or traffic – is unavoidable. The best you can hope to do is make the time as productive as possible.
• Overscheduling – Recognition that the Member's time is the most valuable asset the office has is key to avoiding overscheduling and this means not accepting all invitations.

Conduct a strategic review of your scheduling operation. Strategic scheduling works because you keep your eyes on the prize. By evaluating where and how the Member spent his or her time, the office can tell whether scheduling decisions support the Member's goals. This scheduling "audit" will help keep the office on track and ensure that problems in the scheduling process are corrected before they grow.