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Yes, yes, yes, yes!

by Ron Potter

I almost always say “Yes” to anything that is asked.  I’ve been guilty my whole life, especially when it comes to church.  I figured that I was doing the Lord’s work so I should say “Yes” to anything and everything that was asked of me.

The problem was that I was beginning to resent the amount of work I was doing while others didn’t seem to be pulling their share.  Then a wise Christian friend gave me some advice.  He helped me understand that I was putting too much sweat into the projects and I was losing my joy doing them.  He noted that while my effort was appreciated, I may not have been the best person doing the job.  He also noted that by saying “Yes” to everything, I was likely preventing other people from participating.  Good advice!

From that day forward I limited myself to two major projects at a time at church (and elsewhere).  If I was asked to do more than that, my response was that I was happy to do it—which current project should I stop in order to take on the new project?  Often the answer was to not stop what I was doing; they’ll find someone else to perform the task.  Or if it made sense to take on the new job, the question became, “Who should take on the task I was doing in order for me to spend the time and energy on the new project?”  Either answer was good.  These questions often led to me doing the job that best suited me and also helped prepare other people to become more involved.  Win, win.

Value Your Time and Energy

I read an article in Entrepreneur magazine by Jess Ekstrom titled “The 6 Questions I Ask Before I Say ‘Yes’ to Anything.” Here are the six questions:

1. What purpose does this serve?

If the answer is “to serve,” that’s the wrong answer.  There should be purpose for what I do.  Why am I doing it?  Am I doing it because I believe the Lord is asking me?  Am I doing it because I like to see myself as the “go-to” guy?  After that talk with the wise friend, I began to think about the things I do and I began to think about why I’m doing things.  When you’re young, your personal resources seem unlimited.  They are not.  Over a lifetime, you only have the personal resources to do a limited number of things.  Make sure they count and there is a purpose for doing them.

2. Why am I afraid to say no?

I never wanted to offend people.  If they asked me to do something and I said “No,” it felt like I was offending them.  Then I began to analyze what happened if people said “Yes” but in the end didn’t do for me what they had said “Yes” to.  I was very offended.  Let your yes be yes and no be no…

3. What else could I be doing with this time?

What is your time worth?  I spent about 30 years of my career working with leaders and small teams.  Setting a price for my time was very difficult for me.  Every time I set a fee for my work, I had this sinking feeling that I had set it too high.  Would anyone be willing to pay that amount?  It seemed like every time I went through that process, there was no hesitation on the client’s part.

4. Can I delegate this?

This is a tough one for individual contributors like me.  After I retired, many people asked me if I had sold my business.  I told them there was nothing to sell.  My clients bought me, not some company.  Most of this work couldn’t be delegated.

5. What is stealing my energy?

This is an interesting one for me.  I traveled all over the world and always seemed to have plenty of energy.  But was there anything that seemed to be stealing my energy?  As I think about it there were two sources:

  1. The title of this blog.  Saying “Yes” to too many things sapped my energy.
  2. The second one I had to learn.  When I tried to do everything the business required.  Once I realized that I could have someone else do a lot of the work that took time, I had some of my energy back.  (Thank you, Chris.)

6. How do I refuel?

Refueling happens very simply for me.  We own a cabin in the North Woods of Michigan.  Once I’m there for a few days in the woods and near the water, I feel completely renewed and refueled.  You’ve probably heard me talking about how important nature is.  Even children who grew up in the “projects” on the south side of Chicago were happier and better adjusted if they simply had one tree outside their window.  How do you refuel?  This is an important question that helps us get through life better if we’ve taken enough time to understand that the thing is for us and if we use it regularly.

Do you pay attention to these six items in your life?  To me the most important and overarching one is, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.”  The biblical versions (Matthew 5:37) go on to say that anything beyond this is of evil origin.  Restrict your life to yes, no, and who else should be doing this other than me?  Beyond that, it’s of evil origin.

 

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BlogPersonal

Marriage

by Ron Potter

My wife and I have been married for fifty-three years.  It’s wonderful and rewarding but it’s not always easy.  It takes hard work.  I get upset by our media that tries to convince young people that if they just marry the right person, they’ll be happy.  When those difficult bumps in the road happen with that attitude, your first thought is, “I guess they’re not the right person for me because I’m not happy at the moment.”  Who (or what) you’re married to speaks volumes.

Who or What Are You Married To?

Over 40 years ago I hired a young man who had just graduated from university and had become very skilled at coding and writing software.  He was a wizard.  He could code on a computer screen faster than I could read it as it scrolled up.  An amazing young man.

I try to give him a call about once a year just to catch up and hear a little bit about his life.  He knows my family and my two daughters in particular because he used to invite them over to his home to play on his grand piano.

When I talked with him a couple of weeks ago he mentioned something about his girlfriend.  I stopped the conversation right there and asked more about this person because he has always been single.

As I probed about having someone else in his life, he said, “You know me, I’ve always been married to my work.”  That’s true, he always has been.  He started a company from the ground up, and has built it into a growing enterprise employing many people.  He has indeed been “married to his work.”

Who or What Am I Married To?

But after our phone call, that statement got me thinking.  Can we identify who or what we’re married to?  Yes, my marriage to a woman has produced children and grandchildren.  But were there other things I was “married” to—and what does that say about me?

As I began to reflect on that thought, one thing that came to mind was cars.  When we were married in 1969, I had a brand new (cheap) Pontiac Tempest.  There was nothing fancy about the car (rubber floor mats, straight six engine) but while I was getting married in the traditional sense, I was also getting “married” to the idea of always having a new car.  I have had a new car every three years (thanks to leasing) up to and through my current 2020 Buick Envision.  I love (am married to?) new cars.

For the last 30 years of my career, I consulted with corporate leaders around the world.  We built trust, got comfortable with each other, and talked about any and every topic.  I loved that work.  I was married to consulting with executives and would go anywhere in the world to help them.  I sacrificed other parts of my life because I was “married” to that work.

Boundaries

As a side note, there was one time when an executive I was working with in London asked me to come over and work with him and his team right now.  It was one of the few times I said No.  He tried everything to get me there but I said my daughter was getting married on Sunday and I was not going to be away.  I said I was sorry and we hung up the phone.  However, a little while later, he called back and asked if he got me a ticket for the Concorde on Monday morning, would I be willing to fly over and meet with him and his team Monday afternoon?  I said sure and I have great memories of flying on the Concorde supersonic jet.

Reflection

So I’ve been married in the traditional sense but I have also been married to my work and new cars.  I’m sure that if I spent more reflection time, other things would fit into that category.

I urge you to look at and reflect on your life.  Who or what are you married to?  Do you have things in the right priority?  Are you ignoring important things in your life because you’re married to something else?  No matter your age, should you and would you change priorities so that your life is in better balance than it is today?

This concept was new to me.  I would love to hear from you.  Share your experiences.  Tell us about getting priorities straight and how that has affected your life.  Let us know if you just came to the realization that you’re married to something else that is being a detriment to your love.

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BlogCulture

You’ll Never Be Caught Up!

by Ron Potter

Most people are list makers.  I’ve observed two types.

  1. Logical, structured lists, usually written down in chronological order.  Myers-Briggs refers to these types as Judging.  Don’t let the title throw you off course.  It simply means that they prefer to live a planned and organized life.
  2. Random list makers including anything that comes to mind at the moment.  Myers-Briggs refers to these types as Perceiving.  It means that they prefer to live more of a spontaneous, flexible life.

Each type deals with its own difficulties.  I’ve seen the logical list makers work hard on completing a task that was not originally on their list.  After the task is complete, they have a tendency to write down the task on their list and then cross it out as completed.

Adding it to their list after it’s completed means absolutely nothing but they experience satisfaction from adding it to the list and then checking it off as completed.

It’s a little bit like Fitbit users who keep track of every step they take.  If their device isn’t charged or they forgot to put it on before they leave for their walk, jog, or run, there is no record of the steps taken.  They often feel that the steps were not actually taken because there is no record to show the effort.  They still received all the benefits from all the steps but without a record, they feel like they never took them at all.

The random list makers have everything they can think of on their list.  From critical issues to totally random issues.  One question I often ask them is “How many lists do you have?”  The answer: too many to keep track of.

The point here is not the type of list maker you are.  The point is you’ll never be “caught up”.

You’ll Never Be “Caught Up”, Stop Feeling Guilty About it

This was a recent Harvard Business Review article titled, You’re Never Going to be “Caught Up” at Work.  Stop Feeling Guilty About it.  

As I write this blog my mind often drifts to the other tasks that I haven’t gotten to yet.  It can lead to guilt and even shame if I let it.  It’s a tough human dilemma fighting the issue of never being caught up.

Feeling Guilty Doesn’t Help

It is important to make sure you’re not just procrastinating from doing something that may be difficult but important.  Prioritizing your task list is important so that you do get the most important items first. And though there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything,  don’t feel guilty about it.  Feel good that you got to the important things.

One of the issues I’ve seen at play is many people’s ability to say no to someone else.  By promising to get to things that are really not going to be possible you’ll

  • Create guilt or even shame for not living up to your promise.
  • Overwork yourself by doing things for other people rather than those things on your priority list.
  • Do a poor job of accomplishing the task for them and at the same time not performing up to the standards that are expected of you.  Again, guilt and shame.

Be honest and straightforward with people.  If you can’t help them or realistically won’t get to the task they’re asking you to do, it is better for both of you to let them know that up front.

Give Yourself a Break

I’ve watched many people try to help others get past the feelings of guilt/shame by exercising self-forgiveness.  Give yourself the same break.  I know this can be difficult because we all want to perform at our peak so maybe you need that honest friend to help you with this issue just like you’re trying to help others.  Do you have that someone that will talk with you straight and you’ll appreciate it?  If not, that should be your number one priority.

Vacation or Break Time

I’ve noticed with myself that if I’m off work for a week, I actually get one day of rest and recuperation.

I may leave work late Friday night because I’m trying to finish off those things I feel are important to accomplish before I leave.  This may flow over into Saturday.  Sunday can be very active with church, friends, or traveling if we’re going someplace.  Monday I can feel myself start to let down and I usually get my best night’s sleep that night followed by a Tuesday that is often completely disengaged from work and very relaxing.

But by Tuesday night I can catch myself thinking about work again and the things I need to accomplish when I return.  That feeling increases Thursday and Friday and in the end, I realize I accomplished one day of R&R.  So I get one day off in a one-week vacation.  I need to take two weeks to get a week off!

Vacation and Break Time Killers

So what will destroy all of those efforts?

  • Not turning off your phone
  • Continuing to read texts and emails
  • Taking some work with you to get done before everyone gets up in the morning.

You’ve got to shut things off!  My personal experience is that even if I’ve been good at shutting those things off during my vacation/break time when I get back to the office I’ll find an email box with several hundred messages and feel immediately overwhelmed.

At first, I would take all of those emails and save them in another file intending to get them soon.  I never did.

After that, I simply deleted all emails in my inbox.  I found that if there was something important the person who sent it will reach out again looking for an answer.  If I simply said, “Sorry, I was on vacation, how can I help you?” most of the time the other person understood and then would get me caught up on the issue.

I don’t believe I ever experienced more than about one percent of follow-up on those hundreds of emails.

Get Your R&R

It’s up to you.  Only you can make sure it happens.

But our personal experiences tell us and research confirms if we don’t get adequate rest, relaxation, recuperation, and regeneration, our body and minds will continue to deteriorate over time diminishing our ability to perform.

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BlogLeadership

PREgret

by Ron Potter

Years ago I was thinking about the regrets in my life.  I was asking myself if there were things I should have or could have done to eliminate or reduce the number of regrets.  As I was thinking about the topic, I notice a familiar pain in my sternum.  I began to realize that I had a physical manifestation when I regretted something I had said or done.  I began to ask people I knew where their regret pain manifested itself.

Where is the pain?

Everyone seemed to have a different answer.  I heard locations like:

  • Neck
  • Shoulders
  • Forehead
  • The base of the skull
  • Forearms
  • etc.

The answers were many and varied, but the pain was a given.  No one questioned the pain itself, they just had different answers of where it was located.

“Listen” to the pain

If the pain always shows up somewhere,  become familiar with it.  The pain can and will become very familiar.  If the pain is present and identifiable, you will “know” you are in one of those moments that will result in regret.  Here’s the key, “will result in regret”.

Regret Pre-Indicator

Through experience, I began to learn that the pain was a precursor of regretful actions.  I eventually read some science about how these neurotransmitters work and indeed, there is an early warning system.  That means that the pain you become familiar with is actually a precursor to the thing you’re about to do or say will cause regret— PREgret!

I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad thing but I have become so aware of my “regret pain” that it often triggers a debate in my head:

You’re about to say something that you’re going to regret.

I know, but I think it needs to be said.

But you will regret it!  Maybe you should just back off a minute.

But it needs to be said.  I’m going to say it anyway.

REGRET

Where does it hurt?

Become familiar with your “regret” pain.  If you tune into it, you’ll have a lot fewer regrets in life.

 

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Blog

Coronavirus and Deep Work

by Ron Potter

I know, I know, enough of the Coronavirus already.  We’ve been self-isolated and at this point have no idea what to believe is true and what is hype.  What I do know is the interesting journey I’ve been on in relation to Deep Work.

Deep Work

The COVID-19 virus may be offering the opportunity that you’ve been looking for to stand-out in a crowded world.  In his book Deep Work by Cal Newton he makes some great points about Deep Work and the lack of it.

One of the things that Cal says is:

To remain valuable in our economy you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind as technology advances.”

“A McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.

This state of fragmented attention cannot accommodate deep work, which requires long periods of uninterrupted thinking. At the same time, however, modern knowledge workers are not loafing. In fact, they report that they are as busy as ever. What explains the discrepancy? A lot can be explained by another type of effort, which provides a counterpart to the idea of deep work:
Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”

How not to be replaced by a computer

The “easy to replicate” emphasis is my note.  Why did I highlight that particular statement?  Because when something is easy to replicate it means that a person who makes less wages can easily to the same work.  More importantly, a computer can be taught to do easily replicable work.  Your job is in danger of becoming computerized if you don’t shift from shallow work to deep work!

How do you counter this danger of being replaced by either cheaper labor or a computer?  You learn, practice, and become good at and known for your deep work and deep thinking.

Cultivate Deep Work (Thinking)

You can pick up almost any article, magazine, podcast or post that will tell you how to survive working from home.  These sources talk about

  • Get started early (don’t let your day get away from you before it starts)
  • Act like you’re going to the office (wrong, take advantage of doing things differently)
  • Have a dedicated workspace (good idea, but focus on making it a non-interruptable workspace)
  • Go to coffee shops, libraries, public lounges (may not be a bad idea but discipline must tag along as well.  You can’t go to a coffee shop just so you can enjoy your favorite drink)  And during the pandemic, many of these public places are not even available to us.
  • Stay off the public media! (great suggestion.  Regardless of where your working from, stay off public media.

What you really need is the discipline and focus for deep work.

Living a life of Deep Work and Thought

As Cal Newton closes his book he says

Deep work is way more powerful than most people understand. To leave the distracted masses to join the focused few, I’m arguing, is a transformative experience.
The deep life requires hard work and drastic changes to your habits. For many, there’s a comfort in the artificial busyness of rapid e-mail messaging and social media posturing, while the deep life demands that you leave much of that behind.”

Take advantage of the opportunity being offered

We’re all looking for a silver lining to the isolation caused by our current pandemic.  Take advantage of the forced isolation to become a deep worker and deep thinker.  It will pay rewards that you can’t even think of at the moment.

 

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part III: Stress and Health

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last couple of blog posts (Balancing Act and High Wire), I’ve introduced that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore Stress and Health.

Stress

The biggest issue in dealing with stress is founded in the ancient Serenity Prayer:

  • God grant me the serenity to ACCEPT the things I cannot change,
  • the COURAGE to change the things I can,
  • and the WISDOM to know the difference.

It’s the wisdom to know the difference that contains the real power of the Serenity Prayer. In their book “Performing under Pressure – The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most” Hendrie Weisinger, J. P. Pawliw-Fry do a great job of helping us distinguish between pressure and stress. (See the TLC Short Book Reviews)

Stress refers to the situation of too many demands and not enough resources to meet them: Time, money, energy, etc. In a stressful situation, reduction is the goal.

Pressure is when you perceive that something at stake is dependent on the outcome of your performance and there are good and bad consequences. In a pressure moment, success is the goal.

It’s when we don’t balance these two and assume that everything is stressful that we begin to fail in performance and health. Knowing the difference between stress and pressure (wisdom) has a tremendous impact on our health.

Work-Life Balance

I’m going to toss this topic into the Stress category because I see them as interconnected in our work lives. Because of the stress, or by turning even pressure situations into stressful ones, it seems we begin to lose our work-life balance.

Nigel Marsh, author of several books on developing a good work-life balance says “Work-Life Balance is easy when you have no work!” Nigel says it’s too simplistic and destructive to think that it’s simply work vs life. Life is made up of many aspects:

  • Career
  • Family/Friends
  • Significant Other/Romance
  • Fun & Recreation
  • Health
  • Money
  • Personal Growth
  • Physical Environment

It’s when we make the small investments in the right places at the right time that our life feels balanced. Allowing our lives to get out of balance and sacrificing one or more of these areas leads to poor health and a shortening of life.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

Health

Microsleep is defined as a period of mere seconds when

  • Eyelids will partially or fully close
  • The brain becomes oblivious to all channels of perception including visual
  • There is no awareness of any event that occurs during a microsleep

The main victim of microsleeps is concentration. It’s impossible to concentrate when your brain is using microsleeps to recover from sleep deprivation. How much deprivation causes these microsleeps?

  • One night of missed sleep (pulling an all-nighter) causes a 400% increase in microsleeps.
  • Four hours sleep per night for six nights causes the same 400% increase in microsleeps. Eleven nights of 4-hour sleep is equivalent to two back-to-back all-nighters.
  • Ten days of six hours sleep per night is also equivalent to an all-nighter.

Eight hours of sleep per night provides nearly perfect levels of concentration with no microsleeps.

Being awake for 19 straight hours (5 am to midnight) produces the same impairment as being legally drunk.

Long hours of “dedicated” work seems to have gained a level of admiration in corporate circles. It shouldn’t. Longer hours of impaired work and concentration is dangerous for the company and dangerous for the individual. Let alone the shortcomings that are created with the work-life balance issues listed above. Stop doing it. Stop encouraging it. It’s healthier too:

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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BlogLeadership

Worn Out Leaders

by Ron Potter

This was a high-powered team successfully leading a highly valued company. But you’d never know it by their faces. I could see the rings around the blood-shot eyes, hair turning prematurely gray, gray ashen color in their faces. Yet here I was, a smile on my face, full of energy, ready to help them become better leaders. When I looked at those faces I knew this day wasn’t going to turn out well but I didn’t know what else to do. So off I went, talking about leadership models.

Even though they were game to learn, it didn’t take long before one of them said, “Ron, we can’t focus on your leadership model until you can save our lives. We’re spending so many hours working we’re ruining our lives, our families, and our health. Help!

All those wonderful PowerPoint slides I had prepared for this retreat now looked useless and meaningless. This team needed help far beyond what I had prepared for. We needed to talk.

The projector was turned off, the laptop was closed, the phones shut down. What was going on? One person began to talk. He spoke of the excitement, motivation, and dedication he had for the company and its purpose. Others nodded in agreement. But…. he had missed several of his children’s events, hadn’t had an evening meal at home with his family in weeks, didn’t remember the last Saturday he took off or when he had taken his last vacation. He was dying.

I listened to several other stories that were each different but were all the same. They had to get off this treadmill. They were destroying the lives their work and accomplishments were meant to enhance. What could we do?

I remembered Steven Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Habit three was “Put first things first.” Figure out where your time is going and plot it on the 2X2 grid of Urgent and Important. The four quadrants then become:

  1. Important and Urgent
  2. Important and not-Urgent
  3. Not Important but Urgent
  4. Not Important and Not Urgent

His observation was that all successful people did indeed work on Quadrant 1, Important and Urgent, but the highly successful people then worked on Quadrant 2 rather than being lured into Quadrant 3, Not Important but Urgent.

Over the next few weeks I had this team record where all their time was being spent (they were averaging over 70 hours per week). After helping each other identify which Quadrant their time had fallen into, the horrible truth was that only about 20% fell into Quadrant 1 and about 80% fell into Quadrant 3. One leader, nearly in tears, said: “Did I spend nearly 60 hours last week working on unimportant items?” Yes.

How do good people fall into this trap?

I recently saw the Covey Time Management Quadrants identified as the Eisenhower Box. Covey may have also credited Eisenhower but the Eisenhower Box added an important element. What should be done with each Quadrant?

  1. Important and Urgent – DO, Do it Now
  2. Important and not-Urgent – DECIDE, Schedule it
  3. Not Important but Urgent – DELEGATE, Pass it on
  4. Not Important and Not Urgent – DELETE, Eliminate it

I think the reason most people get into this overworked state is they treat Quadrant 3 (Delegate) like it’s Quadrant 1 (Do it). Instead of delegating it, their ego gets in the way. It’s faster to do it themselves than teach someone else to do it (or some similar excuse). They don’t trust others to do it as well (usually called perfectionism). And the excuses go on and on.

Get out of Quadrant 3 (Urgent but Not Important). It’s killing you. It’s killing your family. It’s killing your relationships. It’s killing your company.

 

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BlogCulture

Can you Ignore the Obvious?

by Ron Potter

A 19th-century Russian author challenged his brother “Don’t think about a polar bear right now.” Our modern version might be:

Don’t think about:

  • That email right now
  • Your next meeting right now
  • The project that’s due on Monday right now
  • Any other obvious thing that occupies your mind right now

The point is, it’s very difficult to clear our mind of the many present and urgent things so that we can get into deep thinking and deep work. Interruptions, mental and otherwise get in the way.

I’ve written a few blog posts about the technology and “always connected” habits that we’ve gotten into that deplete our ability to think deeply about important issues. But, even if we eliminate the technology of the day (our Russian lived over 100 years before an internet browser existed) we still have difficulty avoiding the distractions of the moment.

I’ve been working at understanding my own distractions and how I can avoid them long enough to do some deep thinking. One model that comes to mind is the Kubler-Ross stages of grief.

I’ve used these stages as a model for dealing with difficult feedback. Maybe they can help us with distractions as well.

Stage 1: Denial

  • I can handle this.
  • It will only take a minute.
  • It doesn’t really distract me.
  • I can get back to my thoughts immediately.

The first stage is to get real about the impact of the distraction. Study after study tells us that if we divert our mind to another topic, it takes a great deal of time to get reoriented and back on track. Don’t kid yourself. Distractions are costly.

Stage 2: Emotion

With the Kubler-Ross model, we’re usually thinking about anger. But it’s not just anger, it’s any emotion. I think the distracting emotion here is elation.

  • It will be fun to just check Facebook for a minute.
  • I just want to see what last night’s scores were.
  • Connecting with my friend cheers me up.

Caving into your emotions is costly.

Stage 3: Bargaining

  • It’s only a few seconds.
  • This won’t take long.
  • I need the fix to keep my energy up.

You can bargain all you want but it’s still a distraction. Even the time it takes to bargain is costly.

Stage 4: Depression

  • What’s the point, I’ll never get good at this anyway.
  • What makes me think I could generate a good result simply by avoiding distractions.
  • I’m just not that good.

Avoiding time for deep thought for any reason is costly. Convincing yourself that you’re not good enough even if you give yourself the time becomes self-fulfilling.

Stage 5: Acceptance

  • I can get better at this.
  • I may stumble to start with but I’ll get better over time.
  • Each time I avoid the distractions helps me get better at doing it again next time.

Believing that you can do this and accomplish it in small steps is rewarding and avoids the cost.

Stage 6: Action

Once you get into the habit of avoiding the distractions you’ll be amazed at the productivity and joy it provides.

Kubler-Ross tells us that we go through all of these stages when it comes to grief. It’s just that each person goes through them at a different pace.

You’ll never avoid them but if you get good at speeding through them you get better. Just to make myself clear, speeding through them doesn’t mean caving into the distractions quicker. It means to get beyond the temptation of each stage quicker.

God speed.

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BlogCulture

Three words that struck fear in the heart of many corporate denizens

by Ron Potter

Zero Based Budgeting

The trend

This approach to annual budgeting has swept through many industries over the last few years. The old way of doing annual budgeting was to start with what your budget had been last year and then explain how much your budget was going to increase this year (it seldom went down) and explain the reasons for the increase with all kinds of documentation to justify the increase.

The new approach isn’t much different except for the starting point. Now, instead of starting with last year’s budget, you’re starting point is zero. Zero Based Budgeting. Now the justification includes everything and everyone from the ground up. If fact, the really disciplined versions start with the purpose of your group, department or project itself. Every expense from paperclips to the senior vice president must be justified.

Meeting madness

I think the verdict is still out on how this idea will fare over time but for now, it’s certainly in vogue. But there’s one aspect of corporate life that I haven’t yet seen this applied where I think it would be particularly useful: Meetings!

The average corporate life these days seems to be; arrive at the office, grab your coffee and get to the first meeting of the day, followed by back-to-back meetings for six, seven and often eight straight hours or more. People are burnt out and suffering. Ah, but there’s more, they still need to get their work done. When does that happen? Early mornings when the office is quiet or at the coffee shop before you hit the office or get in an hour before the rest of the family wakes up. Staying late, get home when you can see the kids off to bed, get in a few more hours before you collapse. Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, vacations! All because meetings are taking up the entire work day.

The proposal

But what if meetings were required to take the approach of Zero Based Budgeting? Start by justifying the purpose of the meeting itself. Then justify the resources you need; materials, equipment, people and time. Why do we need 12 people in the room when three of them will make the decision? Why do we need to sit through one or two hours when the only piece we needed to be there for happened in the first or last ten minutes? Why do we schedule in full hour increments? Why not 17-minute meetings? All meetings fill whatever time is allocated to them.

A client of mine put together one slide that explained the Vision and Mission of the company followed by the three key initiatives that needed to be accomplished that year for them to be successful. All meetings were required to start with that particular slide along with an explanation (justification) of how that particular meeting contributed to one or more of the key initiatives. If the meeting couldn’t be justified on those terms, the meeting was not allowed to be scheduled. Zero Based Meetings! That approach provided two great benefits. One, the purpose and goals of meetings became abundantly clear and two, they eliminated about 40% of the meetings from the calendar. Zero Based Meetings!

Zero-based budgeting for meetings.

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BlogCulture

Flow

by Ron Potter

Daniel Pink spoke often of getting into the flow in his book Drive. You know you’ve been in flow when you look up and you’ve completely lost track of time. You’re so engaged in your work that time is not a consideration. You’re in the flow.

Even though I experience it on a regular basis I hadn’t heard the word recently until an article by Srinivas Rao titled “What it takes to lead an extremely high flow life” caught my eye. The hints that it took to get into high flow included:

  • Avoid Interruptions
  • Work for long enough to get into flow
  • Do deep work

Sounds simple enough. Every team I work with lately is telling me how wonderful it is to avoid the interruptions of their daily routines. Avoiding the interruptions rewards them with the time they need to really get into some deep work. NOT!

Every team I’m engaged with is asking me to help them with the stress and pressure of their business lives. I’m observing mental stress, emotional stress, and physical stress. People are getting sick, losing touch with their family and friends and feeling that they never have enough time to get into the work that they’re good at, enjoy and have been hired to accomplish.

Why have we allowed these things to happen to us? Everybody seems to understand that it’s happening and it’s destructive but there seems to be a sense of helplessness to get out of the tornado, plant your feet on the ground and get some work done. Why?

I believe one of the reasons (maybe the main one) is that we’ve lost our ability to say No! I just finished reading “The Power of a Positive No”. It’s good to understand why we’re hesitant to say No. The book offers what it calls the Three-A Trap:

  • Accommodate: We say yes when we want to say no.
  • Attack: We say no poorly
  • Avoid: We say nothing at all

And The Combination is the deadly mix of all three. Our reasons for not saying No are powerful; I don’t want to lose my job, I don’t want to damage our relationship, I don’t want to look ignorant, and the list goes on. But what are we doing by not saying No? Destruction and falling short of our goals. Not good things.

The simple word decide can be an answer. Think of all the words you know that end in “cide”. Cide in Latin means “put to death”. When we decide, we’re not supposed to keep saying yes to everything. We’re supposed to declare what we’re not going to do so that we can accomplish the important things.

Have you decided what you’re not going to do today? It’s the only way to get into deep work and flow. Enjoy the journey.

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BlogCulture

No!: The key to success

by Ron Potter

You’ll be seeing a few posts from me around the concept of a good No. It’s critical to decision making, prioritizing and a general sense of wellbeing.

Today I want to pick up on a blog post written by Gustavo Razzetti, MD. His post is titled “How to Focus on What Really Matters to You.” His six step process is:

  1. Write down 10-20 things that you want to achieve.
  2. Divide your goals in three groups:
    1. Group 1: most critical
    2. Group 2: doubts and not sure how critical they are
    3. Group 3: can live with or live without
  3. Eliminate Group 3 and all its content
  4. Take a stand with Group 2. Eliminate those closest to Group 3. Move those that really matter to Group 1.
  5. Rank the items in Group 1. Make time for those that really matter
  6. Accomplish or initiate the top 3 priorities next month.

This is a pretty good list in a pretty good order. But the key to it is right in the heart, steps 3 and 4.

Eliminate Group 3 and all of its content! You need to De-Cide what’s important.

The word decide doesn’t mean figure out what you’re supposed to do, it means to figure out what you’re NOT supposed to do. It means to figure out what to kill.  Forcing yourself to finally decide and eliminate some of the options that you’re holding open is a main key to success.

Step 4 continues the same process but gets even tougher because these are items that you have doubts about or are not sure. There’s a fear of letting go of something that might be valuable to you in the future. Let it go!

The other key to the list is step 6. Start now. Do it this month. Don’t delay any more.

An old Chinese proverb says that “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.” But the real power of the proverb is in the second sentence, “The second-best time is today.” Plan the 3 priorities you’re going to tackle next month. Then plan which one you will do in a given week. Then plan which day of that week you’ll set aside time to accomplish your goal. Put it on your calendar and when other demands pop up, simply say “Sorry, I’m already scheduled for that time. Let’s find another option.” Enjoy your new found success.

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BlogLeadership

Email Overload

by Ron Potter

Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon, Dilbert recently said on CNBC’s Squawk Box,

“I’m pretty sure [email] has destroyed my soul.”

He described email as a job in itself, which no longer enhances productivity. Although still useful and productive in many ways, Scott’s point is all too obviously valid.

But here’s a trick that will quickly eliminate a substantial portion of email overload and will improve your team at the same time.

You’ve gotten to be a leader because you’ve been good at what you do. You’re a problem solver. You’re efficient. You see the issues clearly. You’ve been the go-to person. You’re the leader.

So when that email comes in, what’s your first instinct? Solve the problem! Give the answer! Clarify the issue! Do what you’ve always done to be successful! But none of that is leading. All of that is doing. You need to lead!

Image Source: BuzzFarmer, Creative Commons

Image Source: BuzzFarmer, Creative Commons

So here’s the trick that will eliminate a large percentage of email very quickly. Your first reply should be, “Why are you sending me this email?” You’ll quickly see that many emails are sent to you because people don’t want to be accountable for their actions. And they’ve discovered if they send you an email, you quickly solve the problem; Clarify the issue; direct the resources; etc.: instant solution. Problem solved. They don’t have to do any of the heavy lifting. If things go wrong, they have the email showing that you took the action. And at review time, they claim credit for the successful completion of projects.

Your first reaction to any email is to ask yourself (and them) why am I receiving this email? If you simply solve the problem by answering the question, you’ve accepted the accountability. You’ve “lost your soul” to email, as Scott says, and your people have not developed because they’re not accepting accountability. You’re a doer, not a leader.

How have you used (or stopped using) email to develop people or increase productivity? Or if you just want to vent about email, send us a comment.

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