Helen Major wonders how to deal with what seems at first to be mutual antipathy

We are delighted to welcome Helen Major as the latest guest author on Slow Leadership. This is her first article for us.

“We noticed that there were babies that we were drawn to and babies we didn’t like. Each of us had our favorites. There was no rhyme or reason for it; the babies were only days old and totally helpless. And the baby one of us found unattractive, another nurse would find adorable, so it evened out.”

That quotation is from my mother. Her experiences as a supervisor and instructor in Pediatric Nursing at St. Mary’s hospital during the early years of the Baby Boom convinced her that favoritism is innate and unaccountable. My mother believes that if helpless infants (whose appearance, cries, and capabilities are absolutely innocent, innate, and equal) attract or repel professional caregivers in a neonate nursery, then favoritism must be hard wired in humans.

I have been mulling this over the last few months, having inherited my predecessor’s staff and discovering that his favorites are not necessarily mine. My team includes a talented and abrasive employee who introduced herself to me by saying she didn’t trust me and didn’t want to work with me. Since she had no previous experience with me or contact with any one I have worked with over the years, it has seemed to me that she just didn’t like me on sight and I found I returned the favor. Interactions between us have been consistently strained, and I found myself communicating with her only when it was unavoidable. It came to a head last month when she accused me of ignoring her and favoring other members of the team. Read the full story

Time Management and To-Do Lists are less effective at coping with work overload

I have to draw this article by Linda Stone in The Huffington Post to your notice, because it gives one of the best explanations I have come across on how to be become truly more productive in times when you simply have too much to do (”Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?“). In a nutshell, she recommends.

In defining attention she quotes the psychologist, William James, writing in 1890. I have added italics to the most important part — at least as I see it: attention is “taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. . .It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”

That’s the key. You have to let some things go, permanently if necessary. Never mind all the fancy lists and GTD frameworks. If you have too much to do, do less — but make sure what you do is what counts for most. It’s that simple. Read the full story

Few people are as busy as those seeking to distract themselves from what really needs to be done

It’s easy to imagine that you are busy when all you are truthfully doing is attending to various social calls — especially when those activities can be indulged in without moving from your desk and computer. E-mails, instant messaging, and social web sites like Twitter all demand time and attention, and no other type of attention will do in our ‘instant world’ save the immediate kind.

For some time, I’ve made it my practice never to answer e-mails right away, unless they are so obviously urgent that nothing else will do. I’m not intending to be rude to those who contact me — quite the reverse — since my immediate response would have to be superficial and poorly considered. What I would have written right away and what I eventually write a day or so later are rarely even similar. The intervening period has allowed my mind time to take in what the other person wrote to me, mull it around, and produce something in return that is more worth reading.

Many writers on time management and productivity will urge you to check your e-mails and similar messages only at set times, rather than spending all day jumping to see what has arrived when the computer makes whatever noise signals a fresh e-mail. Few go the extra step and urge you not to reply until at least 24 hours have passed. But if refusing to break off whatever you are doing to read an e-mail when it arrives saves you from needless distraction, waiting a while to respond will often prevent you from writing what you may regret only a little while later. Read the full story

Lack of time is caused more by your values than any clock

There’s a joke that goes like this: “Which three statements are never true?” The answer is:

“My check is in the post;”
• “Of course I’m not simply trying to get you into bed;” and
• “I’m from Head Office and I’m here to help you.”

I want to add a fourth: “I didn’t have the time.”

What this pitiful excuse usually means is either “I didn’t want to,” or “I didn’t know how to,” or “I was doing something else more important to me.”

“Not having the time” is most likely to be an excuse

Lack of time is an attractive excuse, because it implies that you’re blameless — a helpless victim of stress, overwork, and external circumstances.

Of course, you may object that you truly do have far too much to do and something had to be left out; or that your boss sets your priorities and you have no real choice but to go along with that. Both may be true some of the time. What I’m asking you to consider is whether they’re true all of the time.

Unless you’re the helpless slave of some all-consuming power that decides how you spend every waking moment, there are quite substantial parts of every day when your decisions about what you do, in what order, and for how long are pretty much down to you. You set those priorities yourself. The more senior you are, the more choice you have about how to allocate your time. The same goes for professionals, who are typically expected to organize their own days to meet the objectives they have been set.

When you say,”I didn’t have the time,” what I hear is, “I decided not to give that any of the time that I was free to allocate.”

A good deal of overwork is a choice, not an obligation

In many ways, I’m less interested in what people don’t have time for than what they do. Despite all the pressure put on them by demanding employers, much of the overwork that people claim to suffer from is — fundamentally — their own choice.

People work long hours, not just because it’s expected or demanded, but because they believe it will lead to something they want rather badly: promotion, influence, job security, a larger bonus, a corner office. The choice to devote all that extra time to work is a real one. Nobody is holding a gun to their head. They do it because they want to: because they see it as necessary to get whatever else they want at the time.

I imagine cavemen were little different. They had to choose whether to hunt, or make pots, or paint pictures on the cave walls, or help with the children and tidy up the cave. And I expect some of them explained to their wives that they fully intended to make a new carrying board for the baby, but the hunting took so long, and the clan chief was such a bastard about helping him make a new headdress, and the dog needed more training before the next hunt . . . and so on.

What about your time away from work?

Who decides how you spend your own time outside of work? Sure, you have some duties and activities you really can’t avoid — or not for long — but I’ll take a large bet that you still have significant periods in which you have a free choice about what to do.

When someone says they don’t have time for family, or friends, or hobbies, or recreation, because they have so much work, what I hear is them telling me work is the most important aspect of their life. It comes first. Let’s be honest, it must do, or they wouldn’t accept living the way they do. If they choose to be at their desk by 5:00 a.m. and stay until 9:00 p.m., they are making success at work the only goal of their life.

Everyone makes time for what they believe is most important. We all have the same amount of time available to us, so how we use it shows what we value most. Of course we face decisions about what to do first. Of course we have to choose between competing claims on our time. Of course we probably have more demands on us than we have time to meet them. But the essential fact remains: how you spend your time is an accurate reflection of the values that you are using in your life. And these may be quite different from the ones you claim are most important to you.

It’s easy to say that you value something, especially if it’s the kind of thing that other people approve of. Most people say they value their family and their friends — and they do. But do they value them enough to set aside significant amounts of time to be with them? Or is that value one that may exist in their heads, yet fail to make it into their actions?

When you find yourself spending more and more time on work matters, it’s time to question your real values

Next time you find yourself saying you didn’t have time for something, take a moment to remember what you did find time for. Whatever you say to the contrary, that’s where your priorities lie at present.

If you’re continually telling people you’d like to improve your education, or set up your own business, or relax more, or sort out your life, but you don’t have time, you’re not telling the truth. Those things are lower down your list of priorities than whatever you’re spending all that time on.

Be honest with yourself. Admit who’s choosing to spend his or her time that way. And if you still want to do what you claim you want, push something else out of the way and make time.

If you don’t have time for what you say is most important in your life, what do you have time for?

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Technorati Tags: managing your time and priorities, time as an expression of value, how to spend more time on what you value most, getting your priorities right, what your actions say about what matters most to you, finding more time for what matters, how people choose to spend their time, balancing work time with other demands, why people spend so much time at work

Photo credit: Octavio Lopez via morguefile.com

What makes the difference between the work of a craftsman and the output of a hack?

Is it talent? That certainly has something to do with it. Is it application? Again, yes: though application won’t be enough on its own. Is it skill? Certainly, though skill again isn’t sufficient without the extra element that I am thinking of.

That Magic Ingredient Is . . . time.

Talent is a wonderful thing, but without the time to use it fully it will produce frustration and unhappiness. Hard work — application — is no substitute for time either. You may work long hours, but if those hours are filled with activities done in a rush, with no time to concentrate properly, all you will produce is a large total of mediocre work.

Skill too takes time: time to learn, time to develop through experience, time to apply.

Quantity is no substitute for quality

Today, conventional managers unthinkingly equate productivity with producing more in less time and at lower cost, pretty much ignoring what it is they produce that way. As quantitative productivity increases, qualitative output falls. You produce more and more of what’s less and less valuable.

What craftsman was ever concerned with simply producing more? What producer of basic commodities has time to be concerned about craftsmanship?

Cramming and cutting are the price we pay for speed and the search for our obsession with merely numerical, quantitative ideals of productivity. We cram more work into the same time (and yet more into those long, long hours); and we cut costs, resources, and time for thinking, creating, rest or enjoyment.

Time and quality are closely linked

Wine has to mature to become great. Cheese needs time to bring out the flavor. Gabble through the greatest poem at the speed of a sports commentator and you’ll be left with little but disappointment. In our attempts to do everything more quickly, merely for the sake of instant gratification, we too often destroy the very qualities that made us value the outcome in the first place.

Money isn’t a substitute for time either. However much you make, without time you can’t spend it and appreciate what you spent it on. Nor is wealth a substitute for love, happiness, or time to live a contented life. And making more money for the business is definitely no substitute for leadership.

What are you worth?

How much of other people’s time are you worth? A few minutes? An hour? A day? How long should they take to appreciate the full flavor of who you are as a colleague and a person? Would giving you less time mean they sold you short? If your boss spends almost no time with you, could he or she still appreciate your abilities and worth?

Fine, so that’s how much of their time you’re worth. Now, how much of your time should you give others to be able to see their worth properly?

“Slow” is the secret key

Strip away the time and the greatest vacation destination becomes a blurred image from the window of a speeding vehicle. The most wonderful music is turned into a ringtone on your cellphone; a breath-taking love affair is reduced to a quick fumble behind the filing cabinets. The most talented and skilled person is reduced to turning out only what can be done quickest, with most of their attention already elsewhere. If it can’t be done in five minutes or less, forget it. No time.

The stuff of greatness? I don’t think so.

Slow Leadership isn’t slow for the sake of it. It’s slow because that’s what it takes. Time is the magic ingredient. Take it away and what’s left is worthless.

Rushed, frantic leadership is no leadership at all. A life lived at top speed leaves no time to appreciate its joys and savor its experiences.

Why rush? It’s the only life you have. Do you want it to be over so soon?

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Technorati Tags: time, time to concentrate, time to learn, time to develop, craftsmanship, quality, time to appreciate,

Another simple approach to saving untold amounts of time

Do you need to save time and money? Do you want to lower costs and increase productivity? Do you face problems of getting enough done, even though you work long hours on a regular basis?

Would you like to know how to do this within the normal working day — and with no budget cuts, no lay-offs, no outsourcing, no forced savings?

Cut out waiting time.

How do you do this?

Act like a true leader, stand aside, and let people to do what they’re paid for.

Even in our frantic, rushed and frenetic organizations, people spend an inordinate amount of time simply waiting.

• Waiting for information from others.
• Waiting for the paperwork.
• Waiting for someone to make a decision.
• Waiting for permission.
• Waiting for agreement.
• Waiting for certainty.

The old military wisecrack that the order of the day is “hurry up and wait” has rarely been nearer the truth.

While managers nag

Bosses wait for their people to “get it” and start doing what they want. They nit-pick and micro-manage, in a vain attempt to get things to happen as they want.

Wouldn’t it be quicker and easier to start a conversation and find the real cause of any problem? Wouldn’t it be simpler to trust people to get on with what needs to be done, instead of over-burdening yourself with details and forcing them to keep stopping and waiting until you have time to tell them to take the obvious next step?

Team members wait for others to take the lead, in case they do something the boss might not like. People wait to see what the boss will say or do, because today’s macho managers cultivate the impression that only they can make decisions correctly. Those with urgent needs are told to wait until the new budget (why let your accounting package run the business?). Everyone waits to see what will happen next (why not make something happen now?).

When times are uncertain, or when petty tyrants take charge, waiting increases dramatically. If you’re not sure, or fear the results of getting it wrong, what do you do? You wait. And you make others wait too. Maybe even customers, who may decide they won’t wait — and take their business elsewhere.

How much time is wasted around you by people who are forced to keep stopping and waiting? How much time and money could your organization save if it instituted just these changes?

• Management trusted people and let them make more of their own decisions.
• Management worked to make it less and less necessary to ask for permission before taking action.
• Management made sure everyone everyone was clear about what to do — and knew they would be trusted to do it without waiting to check with someone else.
• Management cut out all needless paperwork and meetings — which is probably 90% of both — and made needed information freely available to all. (Most paperwork .and even more meetings, are only there to cover someone’s ass .)

Stop wasting time with unnecessary meetings

Probably more time is wasted by meetings than anything else. Most have no point, other than to act as a means to covers someone’s butt and spread responsibility for decisions widely enough to make sure nobody has to take the rap if they go wrong.

Let’s stop pretending that consensus is needed before any and every action, merely because it’s fashionable (and politically correct). If it’s someone’s job to deal with a particular area, let them get on with it, without having to stop and check with everyone else in a meeting first. If they need to make others aware of what they intend to do, let them pick up the phone. If they want ideas, let them ask for them from those they believe might have something useful to contribute.

And if they are afraid to make a decision without asking Tom, Dick, Harriet, Mary Lou, Jose, Gertie, and Franz first — and covering their butts by claiming it was a team decision — maybe you should gently encourage them find employment elsewhere in a job that demands less courage and acceptance of responsibility.

Eradicate useless waiting wherever it exists

Waiting time is nearly always wasted time. If waiting is inevitable, at least encourage people to use it productively by reading, thinking or just noodling around with a creative idea. Put yourself in the forefront of the “eradicate waiting” movement.

People hurry too much today. Why? Because work is like a series of mad dashes, interspersed with long periods doing nothing. If it proceeded at a steadier pace, there would be no need for so much haste and more time to think constructively.

If all the wasted time were available for productive activity, there would be more than enough time for everything within a normal working day. Much of the reason for excessive hours comes from the amount of time that is wasted, or blocked off, by pointless activities.

If managers hound people to do it yesterday, then keep them waiting on something you should have done, how do you think they feel?

Quite right — only with several more expletives.

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Technorati Tags: save time and money, lower costs, increase productivity, getting enough done, waiting time, waiting, get things to happen, trust people, what the boss will say, time is wasted, wasting time,

Today’s driven, macho managers have lost the idea of how to use others properly

Here’s a little story — a true one — from the time when I was working with a major European organization. Sally P. was overworked, burned-out, stressed and exhausted — the whole nine yards. So her boss asked me to talk to her and see if I could help. It didn’t take long to discover the truth. Sally routinely stayed at her desk until 9.00 or 10.00 p.m., though she started work before 8.00 in the morning.

“What do you do?” I asked her.

“All day I’m busy with meeting, customers and staff matters,” she told me. “It’s madness. I only get to do the stuff I need to do after everyone else goes home.”

“And what’s that?”

“Reading through things. Checking everything has been done correctly. Sorting out tomorrow’s schedule. That kind of thing.”

What it came down to was this. Sally checked nearly all the work her subordinates did, even down to correcting typos in their reports and re-ordering “faulty” priorities. When I suggested this was a total waste of her time, she got angry.

“Not at all,” she said. “It’s essential. You’ve no idea the mistakes I find. It would be dreadful to let things like that slip past.”

“And what do you say to your people?” I asked.

“Well, I tell them, naturally. I get cross with them.”

“And…? Has it changed?”

“Not really. I mean, you can’t get good people today, can you?”

Delegating upwards

It took a while to get Sally to admit the truth. Her staff didn’t check their own mistakes because they knew she would do it anyway. And they didn’t change because they knew she didn’t trust them to do better. In fact, she treated them like naughty children, so that’s how they saw themselves.

Lack of trust is probably the single greatest cause of overwork amongst leaders at every level. Because they don’t trust others:

• They can’t delegate anything other than the most mundane jobs.
• They have to attend pointless meetings, in case something is said or decided behind their backs.
• They have to be on every circulation list for the same reason.
• They have to re-do, vet, double check and edit their subordinates’ work, because they don’t trust them to do it properly.
• They have to devote time to regular boot-licking, because they suspect no one trusts them either.

Organizations are full of pointless activities that are only needed because nobody trusts their boss, their colleagues, their subordinates, their suppliers and, least of all their customers. Whole departments exist entirely on the assumption that, if you didn’t have them, idleness, corruption, embezzlement, petty theft, and misappropriation would be general. Then, of course, you need another group to make sure the first aren’t abusing their position to do all those things themselves. Look how HR departments — supposedly there to help find, train, and develop good employees — are being slowly transformed into corporate police: another branch of compliance and legal services.

Yet these same employees, who aren’t trusted to behave reasonably in working hours, are apparently worthy to choose a government, act on school boards and in positions of public trust, bring up children, handle their own finances, and fight and die for their country.

If you pay peanuts, the saying goes, you get monkeys. Well, if you treat employees like naughty children, congenital idlers, or incipient criminals, that’s pretty much what they’ll become — at least during working hours. And you’ll be like Sally: overworked, stressed, burned-out and neurotic — the typical image of the harassed executive of today.

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Technorati Tags: how to use others properly, pointless activities, trust, delegation, overwork

Impatience merely wears people out and induces yet more stress

Events in our lives and our businesses are much like rivers. They flow at their own pace, depending on the geography of the circumstances. Sometimes they sweep us along in a torrent and we feel close to drowning; at other times, their progress is agonizingly slow and turgid. Occasionally, like our desert rivers here in Arizona, they go underground or dry up completely.

Yet we humans are impatient creatures. We want events to go at our pace, not at their own. So, if things aren’t happening as we want, we try to push the river along faster.

Companies set themselves goals and raise expectations in their investors. Often they do this with virtually no regard to circumstances. Profits rose by a certain amount last quarter, or last year, so they must rise by more in the year to come. Sales must increase, so let’s find ways to make people buy. And, since you’re a leader, it’s your job to make this happen, on time, every time.

The river isn’t flowing fast enough? Get out there and push it. Push harder.

Expecting the impossible

Of course, you can’t really push a river. It’s flowing already and nothing much will change that rate of flow, save a thunderstorm or days of torrential rain. Can you produce that? I thought not. You can push and push, but all you’ll do is make waves and wear yourself out.

That’s exactly what too many business leaders are doing today — demanding the impossible. To content those who expect them to change geography or generate a thunderstorm on cue, they push and they push, making lots of waves and accomplishing nothing at all — except exhausting both themselves and their staff. “Hey, look how hard I’m pushing. Look at the waves I’m making.” Futile labor indeed.

Instead of waiting on events and allowing results to come naturally, they try to generate more explosive growth. Since no normal means will bring this about, they are forced to resort to artificial sources of stimulus, up to and including direct dishonesty. From the current unraveling of the sub-prime mortgage mess, it’s clear that all commonsense about lending standards and the management of risk was set aside to produce an unnatural growth in loans and accompanying fees. In the same way, pundits in the dot-com boom loudly proclaimed that all previous ideas about how markets behave were wrong, and should be set aside to prevent them limiting the fantastic valuations being placed on unproven companies and products.

The pundits were wrong and reality come back with a bang, just as it has done in the past few months. No amount of pushing at the river made any difference. Bad loans are still bad, however quickly you pile them up and sell them to unsuspecting investors.

The lesson of King Canute

In Britain, there’s a well-known story of a Norse king called Canute. When his courtiers flattered him and claimed he could cause the world to bow to his will, he had them set his throne on the seashore. As the tide came in, Canute ordered it back. The king got wet feet and the courtiers, hopefully, learned something about setting realistic expectations. It’s a shame more CEOs don’t share Canute’s clarity about the limits of human endeavor.

Don’t push the river. Things will happen in their own time. Be wary of artificial means of hastening outcomes, since reality has a habit of reasserting its dominance when you least expect it. Only those who adjust themselves to the natural pace of events are likely to survive, more or less intact, the next correction of mankind’s inflated notion of its power to hasten the future.

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Technorati Tags: impatience, wasted effort, stress, exhaustion, burnout

If time is opportunity, why are you spending it on things that don’t matter?

 
Occasionally you come across an article on a blog that makes you stop and re-think some of your basic assumptions. This is such an article, posted by Tom O’Leary on LifeGoalAction.

It reminds us that the flow of time is never-ending. The opportunities it allowed us in the past are over and gone, whether we used them or not. Future opportunities have yet to arrive. Many we expect never will, while unexpected chances may well take their place.

In neither case — past or future — can we seize those opportunities. Only the ones available to us today are open to be used.

As Tom writes:

We can drastically slash back the quantity of moments that we expect to perform in. No longer is there any need to perform in the past. Historic opportunity has closed as soon as the moment has passed. There is also no need or possibility of performance in any future opportunity. These opportunities don’t exist, and they may never exist as we expect them to. Our only cares need be for this very moment. All that is left is to use the opportunities in front of us now, in a way that puts us in the right place for the next wave of opportunities that are slowly rolling out.

 
A great deal of needless stress comes from misunderstanding the nature of time: guilt for past mistakes (over and done) and anxiety about the future (may never happen). As a result, too many people pay little or no attention to the only time that they can do anything about: the present. They’re so busy going over and over the past, or obsessively planning for the future, that they have no time left to act today.

No amount of planning can guarantee a specific future outcome. No amount of guilt and remorse can change the past. Let them go and focus on the present instead. At least action there is still possible.

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Technorati Tags: time, opportunity, opportunities, stress, nature of time, planning,

Thoughts about commemoration and utility

Here in the USA, today, October 8th, is Columbus Day. According to a friend of mine, this commemorates the day that the indigenous people of North America discovered a European sailor wandering around in the Caribbean, hopelessly lost and convinced he had arrived somewhere near India (hence the name West Indies).

Most countries have such commemorative days—sometimes to recall battles or national events, sometimes based on religious festivals.

What is their purpose? Are they simply an excuse for a holiday? Shouldn’t we use them for true recollection, if not of the original battle or person, then for something else?

You can find my answers to these questions in my article today for Lifehack.org (Next Saturday (or maybe the one after that) is �€œDoing Nothing Day�€�).

It seems to me that we should have such days whenever we need them—not to remember events long past or religious stories, but to give ourselves time to think about who and what we are and our choices in life—to take pleasure in being alive and contemplate what it might mean to live a life worthy of the miracle of even being here.

This, to me at least, is truly something worth commemorating.

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Technorati Tags: commemoration, recollection, time to think,