Successful fashion buyers do all this and more, and even find time for some of that creative daydreaming that occasionally gives birth to ideas so fresh and so right that they make merchandising history.
The not so secret weapon of these outstanding buyers is simply good organization.
Organizing Time
A first step toward effective utilization of time is to place a realistic value upon it. In doing your work, the one irreplaceable asset at your disposal is your time. It is the one asset of which you never have quite enough. It demands careful management.
Effective time management is instinctive among a few rare souls. The rest of us learn the techniques -and there are definite techniques.
Knowing Where Time Goes
Time, like money, can be budgeted, but first one has to know where working time goes.
The human sense of elapsed time is quite unreliable. Tension makes hours seem endless; excitement makes them vanish.
Memory Alone Does Not Serve
To find out where your working time goes, keep a log, no matter how rough and ready, for a few days. This is the executive's equivalent of the time and motion studies that factories undertake in their effort to increase the productivity of labor's time.
Jot down such points as that from 9:00 to 10:00 you were checking the mail and reports on your desk, or that from 4:30 to 5:30 you were assembling notes and exhibits for the next day's sales staff meeting.
Convenient for the purpose is an appointment diary that has been set up for half-hour or quarter-hour intervals. Then you can simply mark on each line how the period was spent - conference with the advertising department, checking of a section of stock, and so on.
Eliminating Avoidable Time Consumers
Analysis of your log for a few days will show where you have used your time less than efficiently. For example, it is quite likely that you have spent some time on tasks that do not require executive judgment and that should have been delegated to assistants or salespeople.
There is nothing lazy or selfish about proper delegation of work. On the contrary, this is the mark of a good executive.
Your log may also show that there were occasions where a single errand or conference could have done the work of two or more. Perhaps you asked your merchandise manager for advice or approval on one buying decision and then, an hour later, went back to him with another. Each time, you waited for him to finish with a previous caller. Those minutes count, too.
There may be notes in your log of interruptions - some that you couldn't avoid, and some that you could have forestalled.
If only a single hour a day can be saved by eliminating meaningless errands, delegating tasks that do not require your personal attention, and finding ways to avoid unnecessary interruptions, you will add more than half a day a week to your working time.
Arranging a Schedule
Draw up a schedule, within the framework of the demands of your job, and with consideration also for the demands of your own working habits.
Consolidate ''free" time. Some periods of your day are relatively free of outside interruptions.
Such solid chunks of working time are precious. Avoid breaking them up by interruptions of your own devising - placing telephone calls that require other people to call back, sending an assistant to collect information and report back, and so on.
Use uninterrupted time for tasks that require intense or prolonged concentration. Your list of such tasks will not necessarily be identical with those of other buyers. Each person is different. You know your own needs. Save the bits and pieces of your time, and the periods when interruptions are most likely to occur, for tasks that you can complete quickly, for those that are routine, for those that you find yourself able to interrupt and resume easily.
It isn't always possible to plan and live by an ideal schedule. But every effort in that direction is a step toward better time organization.
Allow a Safety Margin
A familiar error in planning a schedule is to make it so tight (and so apparently efficient!) that there is no room for the unexpected. Emergencies do arise. Sudden conferences are called. Assistants report sick. Allow a safety margin.
Assign priorities. That's a special form of safety margin, because it tells you and the people who work with you that certain tasks must be done on a given day, and that others, if necessary, can be carried over to another day without disaster.
Do first things first, in so far as your job permits. Once the urgent jobs with immediate deadlines are out of the way, you will find it easier to proceed with the rest of the day's work without that tension-building, error-breeding feeling that is generated by a pile-up of must-do jobs.
Revise Your Schedule at Intervals
Jobs change. Conditions change. People change. Activities that now take formidable amounts of your time may require less, once you gather confidence and acquire speed. New responsibilities may come along and make additional demands upon your time.
Analyze your use of time. Not regularly, at intervals. How often? Whenever you get the feeling that you can't possibly get through the day's work. Keep another log. Weed out tasks that do not require your personal attention. Draw up a new schedule.
Possibility: You may find that organization alone gives you relatively little help. Perhaps your job has grown faster than your staff; perhaps you are trying to get along with incompetent or inadequate staff. Get the facts. They will help point up and correct the fault.
Reaping the Benefits
More than other buyers, the fashion buyer needs a pattern of operation that permits quick adjustments to emergencies and to those changes of pace that are part and parcel of fashion itself.
There may be extra market weeks to cover; there may be new markets to be explored; there may be store conferences to assess a new trend that shows signs of developing.
You can make time for such emergencies if you know from day to day, and almost from hour to hour:
- what is urgent
- what can be postponed
- what can be reassigned, and to whom
- how to use your remaining time effectively.
