Category: Gleaner Jamaica

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Are you a Tit-for-Tat Manager?

As a company leader, you are probably interested in employees doing their best work. But most new staff members quickly lose the inspiration they had on their first day. How can you intervene so that precious employee motivation doesn’t get lost so soon?

An old man woke up one morning to the sound of stones hitting his zinc roof. He ran out to see a bunch of kids running away, laughing as he shook his fist and shouted at them to leave him alone. After several episodes in a row, he drew them into a conversation, from a distance: “Come stone my roof tomorrow and I’ll give you each some money.”

The following morning, they each received J$100 for their antics. But he apologized. He could only afford J$50 to repeat their performance. Deciding it was still a bargain, they returned the next day and collected their payment from the obviously senile senior citizen.

Shaking his head, he said: “There’s so many of you…I can only pay you J$1 tomorrow.”

“That’s all? Cheapskate…Forget it!” they complained as they stalked away for good.

While the old man was a master manipulator, there are managers who unwittingly produce the same result. Their employees start out being “transcendent”, but end up stuck in a “tit-for-tat”. The only difference is that everyone is unhappy with the outcome. Here’s why this happens.

  1. A Transcendent Beginning

Most employees are naturally motivated at the outset of a new job. When asked to give discretionary time and effort, they are often quite willing to do so. They are inspired.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last, but it’s not because of the circumstances. The transcendent state they initially enjoyed is one they can’t manage for very long. In other words, they are unable to explain why they feel the way they do. Also, they don’t identify the drivers of their positivity, fail to intervene when it slips away, and sometimes even regret that initial burst of motivation.

And most company cultures are unhelpful.

They don’t foster transcendent ways of being, let alone act to keep them alive. Toxic employees attack them with open cynicism. Those who are “too happy” have obviously “drank the Kool-Ade” – a snide reference to the suicidal Jim Jones cult.

In other words, companies allow this precious resource to fritter away as if it weren’t important. However, it’s actually critical.

In fact, most organizations do a good job of promoting staff to the executive suite, where transcendence is the norm.

Unfortunately, top leaders take their own motivation for granted. They also don’t realize that as they rose in the corporate ranks, they left the de-motivated behind. They no longer had to contend with the most embittered. Their amnesia leaves them unaware of the battle new employees face, made worse by a lack of help from their direct managers.

2. Why Most Leaders Become Tit-for-Tat Managers

Even though leaders may be transcendent, few have the ability to inspire their troops to extraordinary actions. Instead, the average manager devolves into a Tit-for-Tat: “No-one does anything if they aren’t being paid”.

While there’s abundant evidence this thinking is flawed, they cling to this explanation. It’s the ultimate escape from responsibility because there isn’t a single organization on earth with enough Tit (i.e. cash) to induce a meaningful Tat (i.e. a transcendent culture.) Why? Research shows that apart from short, physical activities, more pay does not produce motivated behavior.

In other words, ineffective managers surrender, then blame their staff. But is there an alternative? Yes – the fact is that transcendent cultures do exist.

  1. Prevent the Slip into Tit-for-Tat Relationships

The best interventions take place before the slip begins. Organizations can train employees to work with their habits of thought that often turn a dip into a landslide.

Eastern philosophies teach that joy is inside all of us. Unfortunately, its presence fades as we pick up defects in our thinking patterns.

However, mystics also argue that transcendence is merely a transformation away. If taught, we can learn how to become like the old man in the story: someone who coaxes a change with the right dialogue. In other words, we can pick up the kind of self-talk which transforms and returns us to a transcendent experience at will.

There are a number of effective methods to try, including affirmations, meditation, and journaling. More advanced approaches require fresh mental models picked up from coaches, books and therapists. (For more than a decade, I have used The Work of Byron Katie.)

The startling realization is that most organizations offer nothing at all. If they were to start, they would probably see that the high motivation present in the probationary stages never goes away completely. They just need to invest in helping staff remove the obstacles.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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Stop Your Brainstorming for Better Innovations

Where should good ideas for new products and services come from? Does the customer know best or not? Answer these questions correctly and your company could launch a series of winning offerings.

Is the customer always right? Steve Jobs argued otherwise: “By the time you build what they say they want, they have moved on and want something new.”

At the other end of the spectrum, customers were demanding better buggy-whips when innovators wanted to sell them cars. A survey of their needs would have been trapped within the limits of their thinking.

Here in the Caribbean, researchers complain about the challenge of customer surveys: people will often default to telling you what you want to hear. They are afraid of rocking the boat, or making you feel bad, so they alter their responses.

But should you ignore your customers?

The fact is, there are more companies that have failed by following their instincts and intuitions than by doing surveys and focus groups. Fortunately, there’s some new thinking emerging that solves the dilemma. Here are the steps some of the best organizations are using to craft fresh offerings that win the hearts and minds of their audience.

1. Uncover Struggling Moments

A “struggling moment” is one which occurs when a customer can’t have your offering. It may not exist, or not be available to them. Some may complain loudly, but the ones you really need aren’t merely the unhappy and opinionated. Instead, you should focus on those who are so frustrated they are engaging in what Amy Jo Kim calls “Solution Seeking Behavior”.

In other words, they are actively trying to solve the problem by finding substitutes. For example, if you want to create a better car, find people who are already working to fill the void you have identified. You’ll know who they are because they are taking visible action.

They probably know more than you do about the problem, because they have been attempting to solve it for so long. Their actual experience of living at their wits’ end, praying for answers, is important information you can’t get elsewhere.

This discovery is a pivotal moment for you as a product or service innovator. You need to stop brainstorming internally, so you can hear real-life struggling moments from the outside. Unfortunately, most companies don’t reach this point and end up missing the mark. But yours could be different if it can be disciplined enough to make the switch.

  1. Find the Best Strugglers

But you are still faced with the problem of locating these rare people. This could be a matter of searching for them in social media communities, or making face-to-face invitations. Perhaps the most efficient way is to conduct a questionnaire or survey intended to weed out the least qualified. Do it well, and the most likely prospects will nominate themselves.

They will definitely be in the minority.

But once you have some prospects, conduct short interviews to select the few who will become your biggest fans. And they should be willing to participate. After all, they have been dreaming up solutions ever since they identified the problem, putting you in a coveted position.

And don’t worry if they add up to a motley crew which doesn’t represent the majority. Or if there aren’t enough of them to earn you a decent profit. That’s OK – their role is not to make you rich, but to teach you.

  1. Craft Strugglers into Co-Creators

While they won’t bring you lots of revenue, these high-quality strugglers will give you something more valuable: their energy and knowledge. Because they are highly motivated, they’ll work with you to craft the ideal offering that would solve their problems.

This small army of practical soldiers will also provide the impetus and inspiration you need to make your first wins. This sets you up to pivot. Next up? The group Geoffrey Moore calls the Early Majority. This is the segment of the mainstream audience that will adopt your offering.

But there’s a catch.

The product or service you eventually offer to the mainstream may not look like the one you crafted to win over the Strugglers/Co-Creators. That’s OK. Today, the average personal computer user looks nothing like young, mostly male nerds who fell in love with the technology in the late 1970s’.

Once you expect this to be the case, you can be patient. Working with customers is a must, but the entire journey requires a nuanced approach.

It’s just not as simple as asking people what they want or trusting your gut instincts. Dig deeper into the reason the Strugglers are so fired up and you’ll find the seeds of solutions that may take you to success.

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Personal Productivity Scorecard

What can you do in short periods which demand that you get a lot done, sometimes with overlapping deadlines? They are especially bothersome if your calendar is full and you feel as if you are already giving 100%. In those moments, you can’t defy time: you must ramp up your productivity.

As a Jamaican manager, January and September are probably a couple of your busiest months. Why? Both represent traditional returns from days spent away from the office. Projects which have been paused need to be resumed with gusto, energized by your downtime.

Some professionals fear or hate these two busy seasons, and others. They are forced to increase their productivity by several notches, but face a problem. They lack the methods. Believing their plates are full, they are actually mistaken. Here are some solutions the most effective people apply during their crunch times.

1) Tracking Personal Progress

What indicators of success do you use from one week to the next? While your company and department may have no problem measuring financial and operational metrics, there are few professionals who employ a personal scorecard.

If you’re like most, you probably have a vague sense of your performance, but it probably will not be enough. Certainly, those who perform at the highest level of any sport don’t rely on fuzzy feelings. But few professionals know how to create a scorecard showing their measurable accomplishments. And if they track one or two goals like sales or expenses, they almost never have a “balanced” scorecard covering the critical parts of their lives.

Consequently, even if they set ambitious goals such as a promotion or placement on a key project, they get lost. Instead of making progress, the daily grind buries them. A short-term focus driven by emergencies dominates.

Over time, their inattention leads to personal problems: unwanted pounds get added, technology skills wane and close friends drift away. Then, life intervenes with a dramatic, unexpected wake-up call. For example, the big plan for a relaxed retirement turns into a series of medical crises initiated by a heart attack. You failed to maintain your health at a younger age.

The remedy is simple: treat your entire life as if it were a precious resource whose well-being must be actively fostered. Pull out a spreadsheet and begin tracking. The cost? $0.

2) Creating a daily start-up routine

Most professionals who start personal tracking eventually stumble across another powerful technique: the morning ritual. Each single practice, which is a component of the ritual, may be ordinary, but the power lies in completing them as a group, over and over again.

Follow this habit and you’ll find it easy to scale to weekly, monthly and annual rituals. They all serve a similar purpose: at the beginning of a time period, you simply follow your own instructions.

But this is more than a convenience. Research shows that your mind requires a great deal of cognitive energy to innovate a brand new activity. However, when there is an existing script or checklist to follow, you can execute without pausing to re-think. So a periodic ritual saves precious time and effort.

You’ll also find that adding data to a scorecard is easy when it’s part of your daily ritual. The two practices are perfect complements.

3) Recognize Your Own Progress

New recruits from school to most companies often have a difficult time making the transition. The reason? Their former learning environments are highly gamified, but the new one isn’t. What do they find instead? Poor feedback, vague performance reviews, unclear goals and internal politics, which trump objective standards. Disillusionment sets in, blamed on the opaque, unfair nature of corporate life.

If you want to become more effective, you must learn to be content with self-recognition. This may take some maturity to achieve, but it’s the key to accomplishing important goals, even when others may not understand or approve.

This doesn’t mean you should be a hermit: it’s just that outside feedback is just one input, not a final judgment. Retain that ultimate power: as the decision-maker, you can ride far above circumstances and opinions.

Now, you’ll be playing an entirely different game of your own creation. You won’t be relying on the ones other people try to enforce using society’s popular yardsticks. With your scorecard and rituals, you’ll determine success, especially in those moments when your workload spikes upwards.

This should leave you confident. You’ll never be stuck wondering how to respond to a situation that demands more from you than ever before. For you, it will be a matter of adjusting your tracking and rituals before proceeding.

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The unending new-tech learning curve

What can you do in short periods which demand that you get a lot done, sometimes with overlapping deadlines? They are especially bothersome if your calendar is full and you feel as if you are already giving 100%. In those moments, you can’t defy time: you must ramp up your productivity.

As a Jamaican manager, January and September are probably a couple of your busiest months. Why? Both represent traditional returns from days spent away from the office. Projects which have been paused need to be resumed with gusto, energized by your downtime.

Some professionals fear or hate these two busy seasons, and others. They are forced to increase their productivity by several notches, but face a problem. They lack the methods. Believing their plates are full, they are actually mistaken. Here are some solutions the most effective people apply during their crunch times.

1) Tracking Personal Progress

What indicators of success do you use from one week to the next? While your company and department may have no problem measuring financial and operational metrics, there are few professionals who employ a personal scorecard.

If you’re like most, you probably have a vague sense of your performance, but it probably will not be enough. Certainly, those who perform at the highest level of any sport don’t rely on fuzzy feelings. But few professionals know how to create a scorecard showing their measurable accomplishments. And if they track one or two goals like sales or expenses, they almost never have a “balanced” scorecard covering the critical parts of their lives.

Consequently, even if they set ambitious goals such as a promotion or placement on a key project, they get lost. Instead of making progress, the daily grind buries them. A short-term focus driven by emergencies dominates.

Over time, their inattention leads to personal problems: unwanted pounds get added, technology skills wane and close friends drift away. Then, life intervenes with a dramatic, unexpected wake-up call. For example, the big plan for a relaxed retirement turns into a series of medical crises initiated by a heart attack. You failed to maintain your health at a younger age.

The remedy is simple: treat your entire life as if it were a precious resource whose well-being must be actively fostered. Pull out a spreadsheet and begin tracking. The cost? $0.

2) Creating a daily start-up routine

Most professionals who start personal tracking eventually stumble across another powerful technique: the morning ritual. Each single practice, which is a component of the ritual, may be ordinary, but the power lies in completing them as a group, over and over again.

Follow this habit and you’ll find it easy to scale to weekly, monthly and annual rituals. They all serve a similar purpose: at the beginning of a time period, you simply follow your own instructions.

But this is more than a convenience. Research shows that your mind requires a great deal of cognitive energy to innovate a brand new activity. However, when there is an existing script or checklist to follow, you can execute without pausing to re-think. So a periodic ritual saves precious time and effort.

You’ll also find that adding data to a scorecard is easy when it’s part of your daily ritual. The two practices are perfect complements.

3) Recognize Your Own Progress

New recruits from school to most companies often have a difficult time making the transition. The reason? Their former learning environments are highly gamified, but the new one isn’t. What do they find instead? Poor feedback, vague performance reviews, unclear goals and internal politics, which trump objective standards. Disillusionment sets in, blamed on the opaque, unfair nature of corporate life.

If you want to become more effective, you must learn to be content with self-recognition. This may take some maturity to achieve, but it’s the key to accomplishing important goals, even when others may not understand or approve.

This doesn’t mean you should be a hermit: it’s just that outside feedback is just one input, not a final judgment. Retain that ultimate power: as the decision-maker, you can ride far above circumstances and opinions.

Now, you’ll be playing an entirely different game of your own creation. You won’t be relying on the ones other people try to enforce using society’s popular yardsticks. With your scorecard and rituals, you’ll determine success, especially in those moments when your workload spikes upwards.

This should leave you confident. You’ll never be stuck wondering how to respond to a situation that demands more from you than ever before. For you, it will be a matter of adjusting your tracking and rituals before proceeding.

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The Perfect Work Day

How do you design an inspiring day’s work? Is it a matter of luck, or chance? Or can it be engineered and turned on like a switch?

Let’s begin by defining what your “ideal” work day looks like. It probably doesn’t mean sitting in meetings dominated by others. Neither does it involve hours responding to electronic messages that should never have been sent in the first place.

Some employees don’t even try: they have resigned themselves to deliver a half-hearted effort. It’s the very opposite of a great days’ work.

Instead of following their example, let’s imagine that you have set a personal standard for top quality performance. In your best moments, you are solving unique problems using your finest abilities.

However, you can’t be successful without committing a major portion of your attention. In peak episodes, you tackle challenges which cannot be solved while watching television, or browsing YouTube.

But the structure of the modern office does not lend you much help, and this carries over to working from home. As such, these miracle days need to be consciously created, and may benefit from the following three elements according to the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and other experts.

  1. Uninterrupted Time to Hit the Flow State

It takes about 20 minutes to “get into the groove” and achieve the high-performing Flow State. In this mode, time flies as you give a challenging task your complete attention.

You have blocked all human, audible, visual or other interruptions to stop you from staying in a deep problem-solving mode. Here, you are using all the expertise you can muster to create a unique solution.

Your mind should also be free of distracting concerns that threaten to take you away. Handle them by scheduling time to deal with them later in your calendar and you’ll be shielded from their intrusion.

Given the priority nature of this work, your time in the Flow State must be pre-scheduled. This protects it against other activities which may crop up.

  1. Condition Your Environment

Unfortunately, your boss may not agree. Some of the worst managers believe they have a right to impose their priority-of-the-moment on you at a whim, disrupting whatever plans you had.

This is often little more than a power play.

Over time, you must make it your duty to train your boss to get what he/she wants in a different manner. In other words, there should always be a conversation to discuss the outcome wanted and its priority relative to other commitments.

The sooner you both realize that an unthinking habit of random switching won’t work, the better off you’ll both be. Your top quality work will give him/her improved results.

Consider the case of an employee I met who is managed this way. In a class she reported that she doesn’t make plans – she just does whatever her boss tells her to do that day. She arrives at work each morning as a blank slate.

Unfortunately, this kind of staff member is the first to be fired when budgets are cut. Why? She brings nothing unique or distinctive to the workplace, and learns little over time. Anyone can replace her.

If you work from home, you must be even more careful, as you should also turn off disruptive technologies and train family members to leave you alone when you’re doing your best work. But the principle remains the same. People in your life need to know when you are deeply engaged.

  1. Coffee and Stimulants

I never grew up a coffee drinker and only tried the stuff for the first time a few years ago. After some experimentation, I learned that it helps me do my best work, but there’s a caveat: like many good things in life, it needs to be carefully rationed.

As such, I drink only a single cup every one to two weeks, just when I need to enter the Flow State. In these rare instances, it does its job very well, allowing me to continue focused work for three times as long.

I’m not addicted, and my body is not accustomed to a daily dose. In addition, I only use it on weekends where I have more control, due to the fact that most offices are closed. This reduces the chance of emergencies and interruptions.

COVID-19 hasn’t changed the need for us to do great, inspiring work, but most agree that a traditional office isn’t required. In many cases, it only makes things worse.

However, there are principles which you can’t violate wherever you pull out your laptop. Customize them for your emerging hybrid situation and you can be more productive than even ever before in any environment.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

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Why “We’re Number One!” Goals Have Become Useless

In times past it was fashionable for corporate leaders to craft vision statements with commitments to be “number one” and “world class”. Lately, these have become less popular, with good reason. They are a sign of lackluster thinking which signals a lack of detailed planning.

Corporate leaders tend to fit a particular profile. They show strong Type A tendencies: energetic over-achievers who are time-sensitive and impatient. They drive themselves hard to accomplish great things, often bringing others behind them for the ride, ready or not.

However, if you have this trait, there may be an added one which gets you in trouble: your tendency to be competitive. If you get a lot of juice from beating other people, this approach works when goals are simple. It stirs up lots of extra effort and leads to reliable, continuous improvements.

Most CEO’s use this characteristic to grab the corner office ahead of others, at which point they often shift their focus to defeating other companies. This compulsion to be the captain of a winning team creates three kinds of problems.

Challenge #1 – CEO’s Play Games Employees Find Irrelevant

Part of being an effective executive involves learning the language of the C-Suite. Over time, this new lingo separates leaders from lower-level employees.

But the big problem is that what excites you, a Type A executive, is unlikely to inspire others. While staff knows there is a connection between EBITDA and their job security, it’s all a theory. Certainly, they feel no emotional bond.

As such, when you conduct a town hall you’re likely to speak glowingly of achievements in words that don’t resonate. You staffs’ needs are far more human, and it’s easy to lose track of them.

To build engagement, you’ll need to uncover employees’ actual aspirations, in order to satisfy them. For example, if getting their kids a decent education and making ends meet is a major part of their lives, you must start there.

Challenge #2 – CEO’s Craft Imaginary Competitions

The world is changing so rapidly that the old ways of thinking about competitors have become stale. In the past it was easier: ultra-competitive CEOs would find similar companies to compare themselves against. Then, they’d choose metrics such as profitability, stock price or revenue to be their yard-stick of accomplishment.

However, in a fast-changing landscape, your “competitors” are actually imaginary: made up. As industries and circumstances evolve, it becomes impossible to find other companies which are just like yours. There may be some overlap, but no perfect fit. Your orange ends up racing to a make-believe finish line against their apple.

As such, your claims to be (or plans to become) “Number One” are increasingly empty. They are a simplistic way to motivate yourself that may suit you, as a Type A executive, but no-one else.

Even aspirations to claim a “World-Class” standard look silly in today’s world. Anyone who cares can achieve this goal by defining a narrow standard. But even then, customers don’t care about such claims.

Challenge #3 – CEO’s Forsake Customers

While most MBA programmes are built around competition, that approach is becoming a distraction…at best a sideshow. It’s far better to develop a sharper focus on meeting customer’s unmet needs.

But this is no solid target. Customers’ needs are evolving due to new technologies so it’s become harder than ever to discover a customer’s “Job-to-be-Done”. (The term refers to the actions a customer takes to meet their unmet needs.)

The pandemic has led to shifts in many customers’ Jobs-to-be-Done, as they adopted new behavior patterns. Many companies unwittingly fell out of touch, and haven’t re-established a unique understanding. They run the risk of missing the mark.

Just observe the way Uber and AirBnB disrupted their respective industries before the pandemic. They used modern technology to tap into idle, low-cost resources (i.e. people’s cars and rooms). Now, they are shifting their processes to accommodate the new customer need for sanitized environments.

In short, they have been adjusting their companies’ business models, in concert with changes in their customers’ needs.

There are other ways your company can meet unmet needs, but when it happens, don’t be confused by your success. Definitely don’t claim it as proof of being “Number One” or “World Class” to start a new round of chest-beating.

Instead, use it as fuel to fire up a fresh cycle of customer research which, in the end, is the best insurance policy against disruptions of all kinds.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

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Misapplying Psychological Solutions to Practical Problems

Employee Productivity – Are you searching for psychological solutions to practical problems?

As an executive, have you fallen into the trap of looking for psycho-emotional solutions to issues of employee productivity? If so, you may need a fresh lens.

“I just don’t understand these people!”

While this is a common complaint in management ranks, it’s a bit of a racket. The complainer is going down a dead-end…a little like blaming one’s extra pounds on the abundant choices in the supermarket or juicy mangoes on the trees.

To wit, if you were to become magically capable of understanding your employees’ psychological drivers would you be able to motivate or better lead them? The answer might still be no, if the findings of reports such as Why Workers Won’t Work: A Case Study of Jamaica by Kenneth Carter are to be believed. Their performance has much to do with your actions, not their psychological state. Furthermore, due to COVID, we know that staff emotions are a roller-coaster.

Instead, try this: look for practical structures you are failing to craft. What are some actionable steps you should attempt? Here are 3 suggestions.

1 Construct Games at Scale

Many executives mistakenly believe that their employees won’t give discretionary effort. For them, the only thing that wakes them up is more money. Here’s a different twist: top leaders ruin engagement by diminishing gamified structures.

For example, on her way to the MD position, Rose had a mentor who helped her set one goal after another. Their regular meetings kept her on track, especially when she didn’t feel like giving an extra effort.

While it’s impossible to assign everyone a mentor, that’s not the point. The gamified approach to working unknowingly provided that added push Rose needed to stand out from her peers. In retrospect, she finds this hard to see, until she becomes a student of gamification.

Now, the game mechanics which she was lucky to benefit from are easier to appreciate: the measurable goals, the useful, timely feedback, the repeated challenges to hit the mark. And it’s not hard to notice where they are missing for employees, and where opportunities exist to insert them at will. In this context, luck plays a smaller role; intentional design becomes a tool.

Fortunately, in 2021 employees love gamified structure. When surveyed, they might not report this fact. But the most interesting parts of their lives are filled with the mechanics of good games: whether via sports, Instagram, or the church they attend. As such, they are living increasingly gamified lives, except for one place: their jobs. In MBA programmes, managers aren’t taught to manage a workforce of gamified employees.

As the CEO, teach your leaders how to set up games without using psychological language. With some creativity and commitment, they could become just as “sticky” as gambling addictions and video games.

2 Test Games

Managers who try gamification for the first time often adopt examples found in other environments. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find initial success being a copycat. Each corporate culture has its own dynamics which you must respect. But that’s no reason to surrender: instead, gamify your own gamification.

In other words, treat your effort to engage staff as a game for managers to play at the individual and collective levels. For example, within a particular department, encourage employee engagement experiments by supervisors. Reward the one who makes the most attempts, and the ones who succeed.

At the corporate level, promote games between departments to engage employees. But the intent here is not to crown a winner, but to determine which techniques work best. The fact is, the way to discover the handful of successful approaches is to learn from lots of failed experiments.

At a loss for what to gamify? Look for aspects of your work such as meetings and email that are hated across the board. When you construct your games around such public defects which affect everyone, you’ll be starting with areas of high commitment. They should sell themselves and have an impact because they are actually well-disguised improvement programmes. (Definitely don’t focus on pastimes or distractions such as dominoes, which are not included in business processes.)

If this all sounds like it’s easy, I assure you that this is not the case. In Caribbean companies, the challenges around engagement are deeply embedded in our region’s history and culture. However, the solutions do not require additional psychological insight, just strong doses of courage and creativity.

Why? In this case, the pathway to discovering what works runs through a thicket of things that don’t. You must be brave to deal with lots of failure in this area on your way to success. The good news is that if you endure, you’ll be creating practical solutions.

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Scheduling an Ordinary Strategic Planning Retreat? Cancel It.

Is your company preparing to conduct it’s customary annual retreat? You may want to scrap it and instead create a breakthrough event.

In the best of times, companies fall into a strategic planning rut. They follow the same routine each year, lulled into complacency by their accomplishments. The company’s leaders go through the motions, staying well within their comfort zones. Maybe this approach has worked for your company until now.

Consider the following: what if your pre-pandemic success occurred despite your lack of strategic planning? In other words, there could be other reasons your organization was successful. Perhaps the founders made smart choices, you exist as a monopoly or your competition is incompetent.

If you are “winning” over your competitors, there could still be a problem. Your entire industry might have lost its way and be under an invisible threat. Therefore, you could be renting video-tapes or making buggy-whips when the world is about to turn away from your offerings.

A very different approach to your strategic planning would be to start with the disruptions that COVID-19 has wrought. While it’s easy to fixate on the enormous obstacles on the road back to business as usual, here’s a thought experiment.

What if the pandemic were a room you have always lived in, with several doors? Suddenly, a number of them have opened while others have slammed shut. A few have remained the same.

Most companies are likely to treat this once-in-a-lifetime disruption as an obstacle to overcome. But what if you were to see it as a collection of doors: opportunities and dead-ends? If you were to do so, you may seize to chance to plan a new strategy in the following two ways.

1. A breakthrough event

Companies whose leaders long for a return to the “good old days” are the least likely to get themselves out of a strategic planning rut. They are probably accustomed to treating the activity as an everyday, low-stakes ritual. If this strikes a chord, use the opportunity to declare your next retreat, the one that creates proactive, game-changing plans.

While this may not be possible to achieve every year, there should be a clear distinction between major and minor opportunities. When there’s a big disruption, as there is now, go for a breakthrough retreat. If nothing much has changed, cancel the event. Pull out last year’s plan and perform some minor adjustments, showing your executives that there is a difference. But above all, make the decision early.

In the case of this particular pandemic, you probably may not have a choice. When multiple disruptions (e.g. health and economic) coincide, you must act differently. By design, move your leaders into a fresh zone of discomfort by putting them together in breakthrough planning sessions. Carefully arrange the activity so that a business-as-usual strategy becomes the most unlikely result.

This teaches your executives that all plans are not equal, and there are moments when a fresh initiative must be launched.

2. A technology refresh

Many executives prefer to have cozy, collegial retreats on the North Coast that resemble mini-vacations. However, important planning involves a series of difficult, high-stake conversations. They can be stressful, purposely throwing a spotlight on simmering disagreements.

When companies give in to the temptation to keep the peace, important decisions are just not made.

For example, many local firms still need to be convinced that the IT department should play a vital role in strategic planning. But this is understandable. Their ordinary IT employees may be preoccupied with issues such as laptop security. Big challenges like digital transformation remain out of reach. Consequently, it’s often difficult to incorporate IT, and doing so makes leaders uncomfortable.

However, today most agree that breakthrough strategic planning must include a view of technology. Unfortunately, it’s awkward to have digital transformation discussions at this level. Board and executive members are usually uninformed. But these vital discussions cannot be avoided.

In fact, the future will include more explorations of hard-to-understand technologies. Not less. And designing retreats to emphasize this reality has become mandatory. As such, your company must use long-term horizons of 10-30 years to take into account the full effect of new innovations.

This requirement frustrates many executives who find it painful to think in such terms. But planning for the distant future is essential in smashing the status quo with immediate actions.

If your organization doesn’t intend to produce a breakthrough plan at its next retreat, cancel it and modify your old one. Save your energy for when it’s really needed: a game-changing meeting of the minds that rethinks your company and industry. This activity could be the one that takes you into a new, unprecedented future.

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How to Say No and Become More Productive

Is there a way to turn down requests from other people and thereby increase your productivity? In the changing world we live in, you may have to say more No’s.

“If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” This old saying has an element of truth: there are certain people who are able to manage scores or hundreds of tasks at a time, without a single one falling through the cracks. If they agree to add your task to their list, consider yourself privileged: there’s a high chance it will be done with quality.

However, experience suggests that the quote should be changed slightly to add a coda: “…but they are likely to say ‘No’.” The fact is that these busy people are black and white with their Yes’s and also their No’s. In order to reliably deliver, they must say “No” to many requests. Even worse, as their reputation grows, they turn down far more tasks than they accept.

As such, their calendar might be full. But what is it full of? Carefully curated tasks which they juggle with precision. They have balanced all the demands in their life and chosen the right blend of commitments. How are they able to pull off this trick?

1. Manage Tasks Using a List or Calendar

As you imagine, they don’t use memory to manage their tasks: there are too many. Instead, they have a system set up using lists and/or a calendar. They treat their tasks with importance and their time as a limited and precious resource. When someone asks them to complete a task, they don’t accept right away…they pause.

Their pregnant pause is not meant to be rude, but to consider, as a serious professional, what they should commit themselves to. Which prior commitments should be denied or postponed?

It’s a bit like visiting the doctor. Your medical practitioner doesn’t just tell you which medication to take based on your (supposed) list of symptoms. Instead, he/she performs a trained diagnosis. Their professional code of ethics guides them.

If there were such a code for the rest of us, it could be: “I don’t dispense time without careful consideration of all my commitments”. With a boss, for example, you may include the requestor in the decision, while showing him/her your calendar: “What should I put aside in order to complete this new task?”

This code-driven pause separates the novices from the practiced professionals.

2. Build Relationships

However, most of us are afraid to say “No” because we are taught, as children, to be nice or good, giving away our power to adults. We still fear the supposed fallout.

I have worked with top executives who routinely tell their ill-tempered bosses fake “Yes’s”. The result? Chaos. Eventually, the boss adapts by asking several people to do the exact same task.

To get past the fear at the root of the problem, author William Ury suggests the following approach to decline requests from anyone.

Step 1 – concretely describe your interests and values, while being as positive as possible

Step 2 – explicitly connect your “No” to your values/interests

Step 3 – explore other options to satisfy the request

For example: “This year I have committed to living a balanced life and making sure my son passes his GSAT’s. Tonight is set aside to help him, so I can’t be at your Zoom call. How about another night this week?”

For those who are productive, either a “Yes” or a “No” can build relationships. However, it takes skill to bring this off in real-time, under pressure from someone who is in power.

A long-term commitment to deliver better quality “No’s” only leads to more skill in this area.

3. Disavow Lesser Channels

In today’s remote environment, we receive requests via a number of channels. How do we respond effectively via text, video or audio when face-to-face communication is impossible?

The answer is to use the most interactive medium possible. If it means a video-chat or phone call, take the time needed. More interactive channels allow the opportunity to react in real-time.

However, if you must use text (the least preferred option), follow Ury’s formula. Do so and you’ll not only be protecting your calendar, but showing the respect that demonstrates your professionalism.

When they return to you with a future request, they’ll remember: you don’t play around with your commitments and you take care of people who approach you for help.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

Posted on

How to Say No and Become More Productive

Is there a way to turn down requests from other people and thereby increase your productivity? In the changing world we live in, you may have to say more No’s.

“If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” This old saying has an element of truth: there are certain people who are able to manage scores or hundreds of tasks at a time, without a single one falling through the cracks. If they agree to add your task to their list, consider yourself privileged: there’s a high chance it will be done with quality.

However, experience suggests that the quote should be changed slightly to add a coda: “…but they are likely to say ‘No’.” The fact is that these busy people are black and white with their Yes’s and also their No’s. In order to reliably deliver, they must say “No” to many requests. Even worse, as their reputation grows, they turn down far more tasks than they accept.

As such, their calendar might be full. But what is it full of? Carefully curated tasks which they juggle with precision. They have balanced all the demands in their life and chosen the right blend of commitments. How are they able to pull off this trick?

1. Manage Tasks Using a List or Calendar

As you imagine, they don’t use memory to manage their tasks: there are too many. Instead, they have a system set up using lists and/or a calendar. They treat their tasks with importance and their time as a limited and precious resource. When someone asks them to complete a task, they don’t accept right away…they pause.

Their pregnant pause is not meant to be rude, but to consider, as a serious professional, what they should commit themselves to. Which prior commitments should be denied or postponed?

It’s a bit like visiting the doctor. Your medical practitioner doesn’t just tell you which medication to take based on your (supposed) list of symptoms. Instead, he/she performs a trained diagnosis. Their professional code of ethics guides them.

If there were such a code for the rest of us, it could be: “I don’t dispense time without careful consideration of all my commitments”. With a boss, for example, you may include the requestor in the decision, while showing him/her your calendar: “What should I put aside in order to complete this new task?”

This code-driven pause separates the novices from the practiced professionals.

2. Build Relationships

However, most of us are afraid to say “No” because we are taught, as children, to be nice or good, giving away our power to adults. We still fear the supposed fallout.

I have worked with top executives who routinely tell their ill-tempered bosses fake “Yes’s”. The result? Chaos. Eventually, the boss adapts by asking several people to do the exact same task.

To get past the fear at the root of the problem, author William Ury suggests the following approach to decline requests from anyone.

Step 1 – concretely describe your interests and values, while being as positive as possible

Step 2 – explicitly connect your “No” to your values/interests

Step 3 – explore other options to satisfy the request

For example: “This year I have committed to living a balanced life and making sure my son passes his GSAT’s. Tonight is set aside to help him, so I can’t be at your Zoom call. How about another night this week?”

For those who are productive, either a “Yes” or a “No” can build relationships. However, it takes skill to bring this off in real-time, under pressure from someone who is in power.

A long-term commitment to deliver better quality “No’s” only leads to more skill in this area.

3. Disavow Lesser Channels

In today’s remote environment, we receive requests via a number of channels. How do we respond effectively via text, video or audio when face-to-face communication is impossible?

The answer is to use the most interactive medium possible. If it means a video-chat or phone call, take the time needed. More interactive channels allow the opportunity to react in real-time.

However, if you must use text (the least preferred option), follow Ury’s formula. Do so and you’ll not only be protecting your calendar, but showing the respect that demonstrates your professionalism.

When they return to you with a future request, they’ll remember: you don’t play around with your commitments and you take care of people who approach you for help.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com