FOR years I have operated under the assumption that being well organised is a function of power. The more powerful you are the more control you have over your time and the more you can control the time of people who are less powerful than you.
There seems to be a pecking order, intuitively understood by most people, where the individuals with the greatest perceived authority - in their community, their profession, or their organisation - can get everyone else to yield to their schedule. If they exercise that authority to the maximum, they can go through any business day with split-second efficiency.
For example, if someone from the White House called up the chairman of, say, General Electric and said, ''The President of the United States would like to see you in Washington next Tuesday morning from 11.15 to 11.45. Can you be there?'' I suspect the meeting would take place exactly the way the President wants it. Everyone yields to the President.
Similarly, if the chairman of GE wanted to gather all his top managers for a 6 am meeting on Sunday, there might be some grumbling but the meeting would happen the way the chairman wants it. At GE everyone would yield to the chairman.
And so on down the chain of command in any organisation, to the office manager who wants to meet with the mailroom staff, one by one, in a series of meetings, the first at 9.25, the second at 9.38, the third at 9.55 . . . Within the office manager's fiefdom, every one yields to the office manager.
The most efficient people, I've found, are those who have the greatest appreciation of this dynamic and are not afraid to play with it. They exploit their control over their subordinates' schedule and consequently can accomplish more in five hours than the rest of us get done in five days.