People & Exec SupportFree
Executive Calendar Time Audit Report
Reads the calendar export and reports the hours each stated priority really received, plus the recurring meetings whose own organiser marked attendance optional.
River's executive calendar audit reads the raw export rather than a summary of it, so the hours it reports are the hours that were actually booked. It prices every recurring series by its own recurrence rule, separates the instances that were accepted from the ones that were declined, and attributes each meeting to whoever called it. Then it runs the comparison the whole exercise exists for: hours by category, against the priorities the executive said the year was about.
Unlike a time-tracking dashboard, which reports what each category consumed and stops there, this ends on a ranked list of specific recurring series and the hours each one would give back. And unlike a manual audit in a spreadsheet, it reads the three fields the export already carries and nobody opens: who organised the meeting, how it recurs, and what role each attendee was given. Those turn a chart into a decision, because they name who owns the meeting you want to leave.
Chiefs of staff and executive assistants run this before a planning cycle, when the question on the table is what the executive stops doing. Heads of people run it across a leadership team when the same eight names sit on every invite. It pairs with meeting notes and action extraction for the meetings that survive the cut, and with survey comment synthesis when engagement comments keep returning to leadership availability. For the recurring reviews themselves, calibration session pack handles the one that has to stay.
Why the calendar and the plan disagree
The standard version of this exercise categorises meetings and stops, which is why it changes nothing. A category chart tells an executive that internal reviews took a third of the quarter, and the honest reply is that internal reviews are the job. The comparison that lands is narrower. Of the hours that went anywhere at all, how many went to the handful of things the executive themselves wrote down? The calendar can settle that, and the answer is reliably worse than anybody guessed.
Halberd Instruments exported thirteen weeks for its chief executive: 573.0 scheduled hours, of which 32.5 were instances she had declined, leaving 540.5. Only 227.0 of those mapped to any of her five stated priorities, so 58 percent of the calendar answered to nothing in the plan. Inside the mapped block the split was not the one she named either. Hiring the leadership bench drew 26.5 hours against a 20 percent claim, 58 percent of its stated weight, while investors and the board took 2.4 times theirs.
What makes this actionable is the next step, and it comes out of the export rather than out of a conversation. Five recurring series accounted for 65.0 hours across the same thirteen weeks, and on every one of them the person who sent the invite had set her role to optional. That is 5.0 hours a week already conceded by the organiser, against an 18.9-hour hiring shortfall. The meeting nobody has to be talked into leaving is the one to leave first.
How it works
Hand over the export
Paste the ICS or CSV, and the priorities this executive committed to for the year
Hours get costed
Every series is priced by its recurrence rule, and declined instances split from accepted
Plan meets calendar
Hours per priority land beside the share claimed, with the unmapped remainder shown separately
Work the list
Ask for a delegation script, a different category split, or the memo for one organiser
What you get
- A sheet of hours by category, attendee, recurrence and initiator, costed from the export itself
- Declined instances separated out, so the hour count is what was attended rather than invited
- Every recurring series priced per instance and per quarter, ranked by the hours it returns
- The role each invite assigned the executive, which is who already agreed they were optional
- Actual hours per stated priority beside the share the executive claimed it deserved
- A cut-or-delegate memo naming the organiser of each series, because that is who has to agree
Common questions
Does this work with an Outlook export, or only Google Calendar?
Both. The format matters rather than the vendor, and both write ICS as defined by RFC 5545, so the organiser, the recurrence rule and each attendee's role are all present. A CSV export works too, though CSV usually drops the role field, which costs you the optional-attendance ranking.
How does it decide that a meeting belongs to a priority?
It proposes a mapping from the titles, attendees and series names, then shows you that mapping before doing arithmetic on it. Anything it cannot place goes into an unmapped block rather than being forced into the nearest category, because the size of that block is usually the finding.
Is the optional-attendance ranking reliable, or do people set that field carelessly?
Carelessly is rather the point. The optional role is set by whoever sent the invite, so a careless optional is still a written statement that the sender did not need the executive there. The audit reports who set it on each series, which turns this into a two-line conversation with a named person.
What if the executive's priorities were never written down anywhere?
Then you get the category and recurrence analysis without the comparison, which is worth less. Dig out the priorities in whatever form exists: a board slide, the annual plan, the last performance conversation. The weights matter less than the list, because the gaps show up at any reasonable weighting.
Will it tell me which meetings to cancel?
It ranks them by hours recoverable and names each organiser, then leaves the call to you. A meeting can be an obvious cut on hours and an obvious keep on politics, and no export can see the second one. What it removes is the argument about how many hours are actually at stake.
Can I run it across a whole leadership team rather than one person?
Yes, and the result gets sharper, because the same recurring series turns up on several calendars with a different role each time. A series marked optional for four of six attendees is a different conversation from one everybody is required at. Run each calendar, then ask for the overlap. The gaps left between what survives are where a briefing schedule places its reading.
Executive Calendar Time Audit Report
Fill in the form and your workspace opens with the work already underway.