Tag: change

The narrative killer

Fabrizio2 Comments

A good way to stop being busy is to avoid saying that you are.

“How are you?”
“Busy.”

I did this many times myself, and it’s not really a nice way to move the conversation forward. Even more, busy is the narrative killer: if you repeat it long enough, that’s the the only story you and others will hear about yourself. It is a sticky one, very difficult to get rid of, even after some time has passed and, to be honest, you are no longer as busy as you were the first time you said it.

“How are you?”
“I am excited as I have just received confirmation that we will go ahead with the project.”
“I am disappointed as I have been told we are not moving forward with the hiring process.”
“I am exhausted as yesterday had to work all evening on the presentation for next week.”
“I am really looking forward to join your team meeting next month and present what we are working on.”

Busy is a common safeplace, and it shades us for taking responsibility for how we actually feel and what we are actually doing that is important. Stop saying you are busy and you will find yourself taking some time to discover how you actually are.

“How are you?”
“I am a little overworked at the moment, but it is fine, as I am working on things I love. What about you?”

 

Add or subtract

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What if the next Democratic candidate at the White House would start their campaign speech by saying: “I do appreciate the work the Trump administration has done so far, particularly for what concerns the boost to the economy, the renovated focus on national security and the efforts put into establishing a negotiating table with North Korea. And to further bring America towards the future, here is how my administration is going to build up and expand on the these and other themes.”

There is really no effective benefit in going one against the other, a part from reinforcing each others’ views and widening the gap that separate us. In politics, as well as in business, interpersonal relationships and society in general, you can either add or subtract to the work of others who came before you.

Adding is the path towards unity, forward motion, long-term and prosperity. It is about building bridges and building them together, trying to go somewhere nobody has been before. Consider this the next time you are asked to take on a new assignment.

I still go “ouch!”

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When things go bad, I still go “ouch!”.

When my daughter (rarely) or my son (more often) throw a tantrum, I still go “ouch!”. When my work gets rejected, the neighbour does not say “hi!”, a stranger cuts my way, the weather is not the way I had planned it to be, a bee flies a little too close to me, the canteen has nothing decent to offer, or somebody close tells me something that hurts, I still go “ouch!”. And sometimes, I go a little beyond “ouch!”.

What meditation is gently teaching me, though, is to stop there. To understand that disappointment, anger, anxiety, frustration, fear, loneliness are feelings that can be identified, appreciated and let go. That it is ok to complain (a little bit) when the grand scheme of things is not in line with your desires, and that you can still continue living and doing just as you were a moment earlier. And that no, nobody is plotting against my happiness or success.

Meditation is a great gift, and if you are as inclined as I am to see the dark side of things, it is going to help you appreciate that as well as the brightness that is just few steps ahead.

Developing

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Before you start implementing career development plans for your employees, or ask one of your team members to embark in a personal development plans, you have to sit with yourself (and your managers, and the board), and be honest about a very simple fact.

Are you ready to commit to helping your people to potentially change role, job and company?

This is a major scare for most leaders. They struggle to accept the fact that somebody might one day move onto biggest thing, a more interesting role, or even a more successful organisation.

But even if you are among those who fear people leaving, there are very good reasons why you should go ahead and be serious about helping them develop their careers.

First of all, whether you are or not involved, they are going to take care of it, and it might turn out to be a whole lot worst if your company is just a passive spectator. In a particularly unclear time for my development, I had asked my bosses to help me navigate the next steps. They were not responsive, hiding behind a “you can be whatever you want to be”, and eventually I took the lead. First by making a decision that should have been made more carefully, and then by leaving the company.

Then, the idea that people will stay in the job for more than a bunch of years is nowadays highly unrealistic. In the US, the median number of years a worker stays with a company is 4.3, and the pace at which people change job in certain sectors and companies (even the most successful ones) is quite amazing. How to motivate them to stay just a bit longer than your competitors’? Well, certainly not by feeding them shallow performance reviews and promises of promotions into jobs they’ll later find out they do not care about.

Finally, you might easily end up realising that by actually developing your people, you will give them a reason to stay with you longer. There are not so many companies out there that do that seriously, and yours could be a quite big competitive advantage in the search for talents, for a pretty long time.

Multimessing

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You can do different things at the same time, yet chances are none of them will turn out to be done particularly well.

Sure you can do the dishes while talking to the kids, or prepare food while talking on the phone, or drive while listening to a podcast. You’ll be a lot more tired in the end, but for basic and repetive actions, stuff our body does basically automatically, it is possible to add something else on top.

Try though doing the dishes while your son is talking to you about a deep matter that bothers him; or impress your family with a totally new recipe while your mother is guiding you through the schedule for her next visit; or navigate the streets of a neighborhood you have never been to before while the music is on.

In those cases you’ll have to tune something down, possibly stop doing it completely. It’s exactly when you are doing important work that multitasking becomes a myth.

If you are working on a report to present during the next board meeting, and you also answer a bunch of e-mails you’ve received in the meantime, send a text to your wife to say you’ll be late, and get back to your colleague on Slack, most likely some of that greatly suffered in quality (I bet it was the report).

Work as if you are not the 2%, and allocate enough time for things that deserve your full attention. Do not get distracted, be brutal when needed, and you’ll finish faster and have time for the rest.