A comprehensive Harvard Business School study tracking 60,000 hours of CEO time has revealed a troubling pattern: executives spend up to 55% of their unscheduled time managing email alone.
For UK founders earning £150,000 annually, this administrative burden translates to approximately £84,000 in lost productivity each year.
The research, conducted by professors Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, followed 27 CEOs over 13-week periods, recording their activities in 15-minute intervals around the clock. The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that busy founders are necessarily productive founders.
The hidden cost of hands-on management
When founders spend 20 hours weekly on administrative tasks – calendar management, email sorting, travel booking, and invoice processing – they’re not just completing necessary work. They’re displacing high-value strategic activities that only they can perform.
The mathematics become stark under scrutiny. A founder earning £150,000 annually costs their business approximately £72 per hour. Administrative work that could be handled by support staff at £25-35 per hour creates a £40-50 per hour opportunity cost. Over 1,040 hours annually, that differential approaches £50,000 – before accounting for the strategic work that never happens.
But the real damage runs deeper. Investment decisions sit in limbo while the founder sorts through travel receipts. Promising partnerships never materialize because follow-up emails languish in an overflowing inbox. Product innovations stay on the back burner when calendar chaos consumes strategic thinking time. Factor in these missed opportunities, and the £84,000 figure becomes conservative.
Where founder time actually goes
The Harvard study found CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours weekly, including 79% of weekend days and 70% of vacation days. Despite this intense schedule, 60-72% of their time goes to meetings, many of which prove ineffective.
Tom Gentile, former CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, spent 137 hours over 13 weeks managing email – time he later acknowledged could have been better allocated to direct communication and strategic planning.
UK founders report similar patterns. Calendar coordination consumes 3-5 hours weekly. Email management takes 6-10 hours. Meeting preparation, travel arrangements, and basic follow-ups add another 5-7 hours. The total often exceeds 20 hours – a full working week lost to tasks that don’t require founder-level expertise.
The delegation gap
Research shows CEOs who delegate effectively achieve 33% higher growth rates and generate 33% more revenue compared to those who don’t. Yet many founders resist delegation, citing familiar concerns.
“It’s faster if I do it myself” proves true exactly once. By the 50th occurrence of the same task, founders have invested 50 times the explanation effort without gaining the long-term return.
“I can’t trust anyone with this yet” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. Trust isn’t something to wait for – it’s built through clear processes and iterative delegation.
“Delegation is for bigger companies” creates a paradox. Without learning to delegate early, many companies never grow large enough to need it.
The task-doer versus thought-partner distinction
Most delegation attempts fail because founders hire task-doers when they need thought partners. A task-doer waits for instructions: “Tell me exactly what you need, and I’ll do it.” This creates a bottleneck because every micro-decision still requires founder input.
A thought partner anticipates needs: “I noticed you have three investor meetings next week. I’ve prepared briefing documents consolidating market feedback, competitor moves, and financial projections. Should I also schedule follow-up calls with the investment team?”
The difference is measurable. Task-doers reduce workload by 20%. Thought partners multiply effectiveness by 3-5x because they manage outcomes, not just complete assignments.
This distinction explains why generic virtual assistants trained for basic administration often fail to meet founder needs. Businesses require support that understands strategic context, not just task completion.
Specialized services like virtual assistant agency DonnaPro focus exclusively on training executive assistants for CEO and founder support, ensuring they operate as strategic partners rather than simple task executors. Their model addresses the specific challenges of startup and scale-up environments where traditional corporate support structures don’t fit.
The build versus buy decision
Once founders recognize the need to delegate, they face a critical choice: build internal support systems or leverage specialized providers.
Building in-house offers advantages – full control, potential cultural fit, dedicated focus. But it requires significant investment. Full-time executive assistants in the UK market command £40,000-60,000 annually plus office space, equipment, payroll taxes, and benefits. The hiring process typically spans 3-6 months. If the hire doesn’t work out, the business faces a single point of failure.
Specialized executive assistant agency providers present a different model. Part-time professional support typically costs £2,000-3,000 monthly with no long-term contracts. Assistants can start within days rather than months. Built-in backup coverage eliminates single points of failure. Most importantly, assistants arrive pre-trained on founder-specific needs rather than general corporate administration.
For early-stage and scale-up founders, the economics increasingly favor specialized providers. A full-time executive assistant makes sense when businesses consistently need 30+ hours weekly of support. Below that threshold, part-time professional support delivers better value without long-term employment commitments.
Implementation without disruption
Successful delegation follows a predictable pattern. Founders who achieve the best outcomes start by tracking their time for one week, categorizing activities by whether they require their specific expertise. Most discover 40-60% of their time goes to tasks others could handle.
High-frequency, low-expertise tasks transfer first. Calendar management, email triage, and travel booking typically yield immediate wins. As trust builds, more complex work follows: meeting preparation, research, client communications, project coordination.
The goal is shifting from reactive task assignment to proactive need anticipation. This requires investing time upfront in knowledge transfer and system documentation – an investment most founders resist because it feels slower than simply doing the work themselves.
The transition typically takes 4-6 weeks. Initial progress feels slow as the assistant learns systems and preferences. But by week 8-10, most founders report reclaiming 15-20 hours weekly for genuine strategic work.
Regional considerations
Adoption patterns vary across UK regions. London and the Southeast lead, with higher percentages of businesses using professional executive support. Scotland follows, particularly among Edinburgh’s financial services sector and Glasgow’s tech community.
Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds show accelerating adoption among manufacturing and professional services firms. The Midlands and North of England increasingly recognize that executive support represents competitive advantage rather than luxury overhead.
The bottom line
As Filip Pesek, founder of DonnaPro, notes: “If you don’t have an assistant, you are an assistant.”
For UK founders still managing their own calendars, booking their own travel, and spending evenings sorting email, the question isn’t whether to delegate. It’s whether they can afford not to.
The businesses that scale successfully aren’t led by founders who do everything themselves. They’re led by founders who ensure everything gets done – which proves fundamentally different from doing everything personally.
