So many people are just too darn busy to think straight.
Being busy is seen as a statement of worth, a badge of honor for how important, invaluable, or in demand you are. And yet, at some point, you start to see rapidly diminishing returns. Exciting and challenging work becomes draining or overwhelming. The once-manageable to-do list turns into an oppressive nightmare. Vacations are less desirable, because of how much you will have to pay when you get back. And there is just no time for the kind of thoughtful approach to making decisions or managing people that leaders really need to invest.
Read on for some suggestions that will provide a short-cut to raising your game as a leader, and could release some time too:
Performance
You may be good at driving yourself to perform, through a combination of willpower, goal-setting, and incentives. But when it comes to motivating and engaging others, I often hear leaders express frustration and disappointment at less than stellar performance.
Instead of wasting time fretting about under-performance, take some time to consider what conditions give rise to consistent high performance. In what ways can you contribute to creating those conditions? Having the right people in the right roles, and creating a culture in which people trust one another and collaborate to leverage strengths, is a more reliable way to achieve valuable outcomes. If you focus on understanding what empowers and motivates people, and help them get better at managing themselves and working productively with others, you will see stronger, more sustainable business performance and results.
Marissa Meyer’s recent talent management decision at Yahoo is an interesting example. Flying in the face of conventional thinking, she is insisting her dispersed teams come back to the office. Much as I strongly believe that offering flexibility is one way to improve workplace performance, I also applaud a courageous leader who looks at her own organization, and implements a controversial measure in order to create the conditions for better performance. When a corporate culture is flattened and morale is low, people need to come together again to rebuild. We don’t yet know how successful Ms Meyer will be, and she is of course working on many other initiatives to turn Yahoo around, but her experiments in performance management are worth watching.
Potential
How much time do you spend completing yesterday’s tasks, and not thinking about tomorrow’s? Are you so caught up with today’s challenges, that you fail to notice opportunities, resources and assets that are right under your nose? What do you continue to do, that, quite frankly, wastes time, and where could that effort be better spent? How much time do you spend developing the human talent on your team?
If you gave more thought to recognizing and unleashing both human and business potential, what difference would you see? Schedule an unassailable block of time with yourself each week to think about untapped potential that you could realize. If only you thought about it, you may make transformative discoveries.
Perspective
We have a tendency to get locked into our own point of view and to think that how we see things is the only way. What would change if you saw your own point of view as one belief among many? What if you looked at a dilemma you are currently wrestling with from a different perspective? Or if you applied different filters – for example, financial, pragmatic, emotional, or strategic – to your decision- making?
You can shift your perspective by imagining yourself at a different seat at the table. Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, you will see your responsibilities and choices from a different vantage point, which could be quite illuminating. Clients I have worked with on this exercise have been released from burdensome mental space-takers and time-wasters, and freed to concentrate on what really drives things forward.
Priorities
How do you resolve the ever-expanding problem of too much to do and too little time to do it in? Have you set criteria for knowing what is most important, or do you suffer under the tyranny of the urgent? Do you have a process for ensuring that you focus on what matters? Do you even know what really matters?
By investing a little time and allowing yourself to think about these issues, you will move more convincingly toward your goals and stop wasting time on distractions. Knowing what your priorities are, and communicating them repeatedly and clearly, will help others align with them and will get you to where you are going with less friction and greater ease.
Possibility
Work can be viewed as simply a completion of defined tasks. It could also be seen as a means to create a vision for the future. Sweating the small stuff and sticking with the known, may feel safer than facing the risks of the untried and untested, but is in fact more dangerous, as it prevents you from innovating or adapting to a changing world.
If you are curious, risk-tolerant, and adopt a forward-facing approach to work, you are more likely to engage in innovation and discovery, and to encounter ground-breaking possibilities that will drive growth for the future.