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The Hidden Costs of Poor Calendar Management for Executives

A white analog clock rests on top of several overlapping calendar pages, symbolizing calendar management and effective scheduling of time and dates.

Every missed meeting, delay, or oversight chips away at your reputation. Discover how better calendar management protects your time, your brand, and your bottom line.

When you’re running a business, your time is everything. That’s why most executives rely on an assistant to manage their calendars. But managing an executive calendar isn’t just about planning meetings. It takes skill, attention to detail, and the right tools. If it’s not done well, it can lead to real problems.

Let’s break down what poor calendar management actually costs you and how to fix it.

The Impact of Poor Calendar Management

Your EA handles a lot of behind-the-scenes tasks that keep your business running smoothly. One of the key skills they need to have is good calendar management. But what happens if they’re not doing their job well?

You Could Miss Out on Key Opportunities

Being an executive is not easy. It’s taken a long time to build a strong reputation, but the real challenge is maintaining it.

If your EA forgets to confirm a meeting, sends the wrong time, or doesn’t account for travel time, you might show up late or not at all. 

Most clients and business partners might let it slide once or maybe even twice, if you’re lucky. But it doesn’t leave a good impression and makes you look unprofessional. If this keeps happening, it’s only a matter of time before it starts affecting business deals and relationships. 

Your Productivity Could Reduce

Your EA is your first line of defense when it comes to saving time. But they can only do their job well if they’ve got the right skills and tools to manage your calendar properly. Without that, you’ll probably end up spending hours every week just going back and forth with them to clarify meeting times and other details. 

On top of that, if your calendar is not managed well, you might end up with huge gaps between meetings that don’t really need to be there. Before you know it, your day feels way longer and more exhausting than it should be.

It Creates Avoidable Stress

Besides missing out on business deals and meetings, which are all major setbacks, a poorly managed calendar is incredibly stressful for everyone. You’ll find yourself scrambling to prepare for meetings at the last minute because you weren’t properly notified. All this stress makes it harder to focus and perform at your best. It’s mentally draining and unnecessary.

How to Improve Calendar Management

A well-managed calendar keeps everything running smoothly. Here’s what your EA should be doing to manage your calendar better:

  • Making sure your schedule reflects your top priorities.
  • Ensuring you have enough time for each meeting. This means getting to/ from, enough discussion time, and follow-up action time after.
  • Providing the key details you need to stay prepared for every meeting, even when you only have a few minutes to review.

If any one of these is missing, it can hurt your reputation and lead to missed opportunities. As the Executive, it’s your job to make sure your EA has the tools and support to do this well. 

What could really help your EA is investing in calendar management apps like VAST. VAST is specifically designed to manage executive schedules. The pages are fully customizable and can be built according to your needs. It’s super easy to use and integrates with Google and Outlook.

Don’t Let a Broken Calendar Damage a Brilliant Career

Poor calendar management can cost you more than just time. It can lead to missed opportunities, lost productivity, and a whole lot of unnecessary stress. If you want things to run more smoothly, your EA needs the right tools to maintain your schedule.

Calendar management tools like VAST make it easy to stay organized. It integrates seamlessly with both Google and Outlook. Try it out today.

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