The Closer Podcast brings you the inside story of deals changing the world, told by the people who know how it all went down.

Understand the human motivations behind groundbreaking business decisions with host Amy Keene.

Listen to The Closer,cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. Busy people like to say that

time is money, but actually that's not true. If you spend money, you can earn more of it, but

time is always finite. Once's gone we can't ever

get it back and yet in our organizations we routinely squandered time energy and

talent in a way we would never waste cold hard cash.

Meetings run long and involve too many people, email chains

spile out of control, and projects drag on and on

even after it's clear they're not working. This is frustrating and motivating

for everyone involved, but it can be especially hard to watch as a manager or senior

executive when you're one step removed from the action and struggling to figure out how to intervene.

Today we'll tackle that problem with Michael Mankins, a partner at Bain and Company and the co-author of the new book Time Talent Energy,

overcome your organizational drag

and unleash your team's productive power.

Michael, thank you for joining us and welcome to the IdeaCast.

Thanks for having me.

I want to ask you about something that you argue in the book.

And organization's time goes largely unmanaged. What do you mean when you say that?

So if you think about the way money is managed at companies, how it's invested is carefully governed.

So there's business cases for every new investment.

There are hurdle rates that are established so that you have to exceed in order for the project to go forward and

...