Tackling the Time Thieves!
Reduce bottlenecks, improve delegation and cut the work draining school operations
Time thieves are rarely just personal habits. They sit in how work moves between people: unclear ownership, duplicated tasks, slow sign-off, meeting creep, and decisions escalating upwards. It gets harder when you manage teams across sites or support multiple settings. The result is constant chasing, capable colleagues waiting for direction, and leaders stuck in the weeds.
This session keeps the practical time management focus, but adds the leadership layer. You will identify the biggest time thieves in school operations and use diagnostics to spot where your own behaviours may be reinforcing them. We cover delegation under pressure, coaching through complexity, and shifting from symptom firefighting to root-cause fixes.
In this session we explore
• The most common time thieves: duplication, unclear ownership, slow approvals, inbox churn
• Leadership impact and unintended consequences, where bottlenecks are created
• “It’s not them, it’s you” diagnostics, accidental disempowerment
• Delegation that sticks: outcomes, authority, guardrails, follow-up
• Coaching through complexity, building capability not dependency
• Diagnosing root causes, reducing recurring issues and rework
• Collaborator vs decisive leader, matching approach to the moment
• Boundaries, triage, batching and clearer comms across teams and sites
Take home points
• A diagnostic for time loss and bottlenecks
• Delegation techniques that speed up delivery
• Coaching approaches that reduce escalation
• Simple changes that cut rework and repeat chasing
• A clearer way to protect time for strategic work
This session is for
School business leaders, SBMs, CFOs, COOs, operations leads and senior leaders managing teams and delivery in school settings, including where work is shared across sites or locations.
Helen Burge
About the speaker
Helen Burge brings over 25 years of experience in operations and strategic management within the education sector. She is a Fellow and Trustee of the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL) and holds a Master's degree in Strategic Educational Leadership.
A strong advocate for school business leaders, Helen also serves as a tutor and assessor for Best Practice Network. She is passionate about sustainability in education. She co-founded the UK Schools Sustainability Network (UKSSN) Operations Group, where she leads initiatives focused on driving impactful, long-term change across the sector. This has included creating the ISBL Sustainability Professional Standards and the Zenergi Greener Schools Index.