Build Back a Better Workplace

June 9, 2021

With any crisis comes opportunity. The crisis of COVID-19 provides the opportunity to take what we’ve learned and make appropriate changes to build back a better workplace. A way to do this is by becoming more focused on tasks, strengthening our work relationships, and embracing a work ethic based on results.

Companies—large and small—around the world were challenged during the past 16 months in order to stay afloat. Many, especially in retail and hospitality, were unable to make it and had to shut down either temporarily or for good. Others were able to utilize technology and many were able to work remotely alongside children, who were learning remotely.

Regardless, while productivity may have been relatively stable for many of these companies, in the long run, we’ll need to find a way to come together again in the same physical space—at least occasionally. That’s because things like creativity, innovation and a sense of belonging are vital and more likely to occur when we are together in the same room.

The workplace may have been forever changed by this pandemic. In many industries, it may no longer be necessary to come into the office every day. Employers may therefore require less office space while employees may need a home office. Once children are back in school again, parents may be much more effective working from home than when they were sharing space and bandwidth with others.

When we do return to the same physical space, it will be important to incorporate the good that came from those who were able to work effectively from home. Here are some things to consider.

Focus on task at hand

One of the first things employers discovered was that many employees actually became more productive while working from home. Though the initial transition may have been challenging to some, others were able to find focus without the disruption that can be so rampant in the office. It may have taken awhile before back-to-back meetings and continual interruptions interrupted our workday again. Though family members, pets and other interruptions may have replaced them, many may have found a way to better focus such as:

  • Maintain control over your time. Strategic thinking, completing a complex assignment, researching a new methodology, learning a new technology and many other things require focus. Take control of your schedule to guard your time.
  • Cut down on task switching. When you allow emails, text messages, Slack, news alerts, phone calls, etc. to interrupt what you’re doing, they greatly impact your ability to focus. Reject multitasking as it is completely counter to effectively focusing.

Strengthen relationships

When we become slaves to our technologies rather than simply treat them as tools, we became more disengaged from each other. No matter what social media companies say, when you choose to spend time interacting with a screen instead of a person, you are creating distance. When you can safely return to the office, do what you can to strengthen your real time relationships with co-workers.

  • Talk in person whenever possible. Rather than message someone down the hall, deliberately choose to interact face-to-face. This will build trust and rapport much better than any electronic substitute.
  • Help make your team more effective. Things like psychological safety, trust and a shared sense of purpose and belonging are critical to high performing teams. Do your part to optimize your teamwork.

Embracing ROWE

In many cases remote work meant managers could no longer micro-manage their workers. Overly oppressive bosses needed to let go of controlling how the work got done. While this could have been taken advantage of, many workers demonstrated just how effective they were in completing the work while unencumbered by an overly watchful eye. Results Only Work Ethic (ROWE) is all about what you deliver and not necessarily how or where you do it. To maintain agency over how and when you do the work, keep in mind the following:

  • Complete what you say you’ll do. It’s quite simple that when you can be trusted to complete your work on time and accurately, others will likely provide more latitude for how and where the work gets done. Do your part to follow through on tasks.
  • Allow your results to dictate your performance. Don’t look for excuses or others to blame when you are unable to complete your work. Take responsibility for what is yours and focus on achieving results that demonstrate your value.

Going back to the office can be a source of renewed engagement. It can bring about changes that enhance your experience. See if you can adapt how you show up so you contribute to building back a better place to work.   

Rebuilding a Sense of Community

July 29, 2018

In this age of constant distraction and limited face-to-face time, I decided to drop some of what I call “anti-social” media and join real-time groups to help restore a sense of community. I suspect this lost sense of community has contributed to many of us no longer fully engaging with others in real conversations and the opportunity for civil discourse.

Though I was not directly responsible for Facebook’s $120 billion loss in shareholder wealth last week, I did stop using the social media platform as part of my plan to disengage from such distractions and engage in more meaningful activities. (To those of you who followed me on Facebook, I hope you will continue to do so on LinkedIn or Twitter.)

When I witness a group of teenagers hanging out with each other while staring at their cell phones, I can’t help but think that they are missing out on important opportunities for meaningful and deeper connections. How will they establish real intimacy? Where will they learn to demonstrate empathy for others when their feelings and concerns are concealed with and misinterpreted by abbreviated text and emojis?

Perhaps I sound like a curmudgeon, but when an extremely useful tool such as a cellphone becomes a barrier to truly connecting with others, it is no longer a tool but a crutch.

“Our civilization, like every civilization, is a conversation,” writes author Jonah Goldberg in Suicide of the West. “Therefore the demise of our civilization is only inevitable if the people saying and arguing the right things stop talking.”

And David Brooks of The New York Times has written in a number of columns that “social fragmentation and social isolation are the fundamental problems afflicting America today.”

For me, I’ve chosen to monitor the number of times I check my cellphone and extract myself from meaningless and mindless activities in order to make room for more meaningful ones. In the past year, I joined two different groups and they’ve provided more meaning to my life. Though I didn’t join them with this specific purpose in mind, they have helped me engage in rebuilding a sense of community.

Round Table

The first community I joined is called Round Table and it’s a group of about 50 business people who meet for breakfast every Thursday morning at 7 am in order to support and learn together. Each week a different member or his or her guest presents a topic that would be of interest to the group. This could be about a company, a product or service, or—what has become increasingly popular and beneficial to all—an update on their personal lives along with lessons learned.

Many members have been meeting for more than twenty years and continue doing so because it provides them with something they can get nowhere else in their lives. One long time member refers to it as his “church” because he finds spiritual fulfillment from the regular discipline.

When I first joined Round Table last year, I expected it be primarily for networking and participation would be beneficial to expanding my business. However, I now also see it as a support system that truly feeds my soul in a way that has been missing in my life. It is so much more than social or business interaction; it is sharing and learning in a supportive community.

Better Angels

The second community I joined is an organization called Better Angels. It was formed in 2016 after the presidential election that made it clear “we’re becoming two Americas, each angry with the other, and neither trusting the other’s basic humanity and good intentions.”

Better Angels is a bipartisan citizen’s movement that was created to help unify our divided nation. By bringing red and blue Americans together into a working alliance, they are helping to forge new ways to talk to one another, participate together in public life, and influence the direction of the nation.

Earlier this month I attended a “Red/Blue Workshop” as an observer where seven conservative-leaning and seven progressive-leaning people participated in moderated activities and discussions that clarify disagreements, reduce stereotyped thinking, and begin building the relationships needed to find common ground. It was fascinating and encouraging to watch participants learn to fully listen and respectfully engage in civil discussions with those they oppose politically.

In sum, Better Angels aims to help Americans learn to engage in respectful real-time, face-to-face conversation in order to connect on what unites rather than divides us. This will hopefully serve as a counter measure to what is often the opposite in social media. And Russia will have a tougher time interfering.

I’m currently in the process of becoming a facilitator for Better Angels in order to deepen my engagement and encourage my fellow citizens to participate more fully in civil discourse.

These two groups—Round Table and Better Angels—are helping me to feel more engaged in a way that stretches beyond friendships and family. These groups are rebuilding the sense of community that I feel is missing not only in me, but also in American society. I am finding fellowship and this is rewarding because I believe I am engaging in a way that demands more of me and delivers more to me.

Rebuilding this sense of community may be the antidote we need for our distracted attention and lack of civil discourse.

(Precious) Time Management

November 9, 2017

There’s not enough time. Right? We’re all too busy in our personal and professional lives to squeeze in everything to make us feel happy and successful.

But what is sucking away our precious time and how much control do we actually have over it? Turns out the answers are: 1) distractions and 2) a lot.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about how to better maximize my time in order to accomplish more, reduce my stress, and increase my overall satisfaction in life. In this pursuit, I’ve read a couple of new books that help address this.

In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less author Greg McKeown writes that the way of essentialism isn’t about getting more done in less time and it’s not about getting less done. Instead it’s about getting only the right things done and challenging the assumption of “we can have it all” and “I have to do everything” and replacing it with the pursuit of “the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.”

McKeown suggests the way of the essentialist requires doing less and doing it better, so you can make the highest possible contribution in your personal and professional life.

In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport describes deep work as the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that enables you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Newport doesn’t argue that distraction is necessarily bad; instead he wants us to honor the massive benefits of focused attention.

This deep work, according to Newport, requires following four rules:

  1. Work deeply – The trend of open floorplans to engage greater collaboration and serendipitous encounters is helpful only when it includes a hub-and-spoke model where individuals can seclude themselves or their teams in areas to focus for regular long periods of uninterrupted time as well.
  2. Embrace boredom – Structure your time to reduce multitasking and your addiction to the little dopamine hits from reacting to text messages, emails, phone calls, etc. Consider an Internet Sabbath or digital detox in order to recharge yourself regularly.
  3. Quit social media – When you analyze the benefits you receive from using social media, many of us will find it is not really supporting our long term goals for productivity and happiness. Isn’t this virtual form of connection more anti-social anyway?
  4. Drain the shallows – Reduce the amount of shallow work you are currently doing that is not essential. Email is a big component and needs to be managed more effectively. Non-essential meetings are wasteful to individuals and companies. Schedule your entire day into 30 minute blocks and stick to this routine to help you focus on what’s important and eliminate much of the shallow work.

Now as a blogger who actively promotes this post via social media, I cannot justify fully quitting social media. However, I can choose to regulate how and when I interact with this tool. Simply calling social media a tool provides an important clarification regarding its overall value to me.

As an independent consultant, I should have the ability to take control over my time. But I also want to be responsive to my clients’ needs, react to new client requests, and be able to shift my schedule in order to accommodate shifts by others. On the personal side, like many of you, I have the usual demands and desires with regards to my family and friends that often run counter to my efforts to control my time.

Nevertheless, managing my time is entirely up to me and I can be successful if I choose to be intentional and disciplined. I suspect whether you work for yourself or someone else, you also have this opportunity to a large extent.

For me, managing my time effectively requires:

  • Maintain my priorities. The health and well-being of me and my family comes first. All my work and activities stem from what helps support these, and this means I can then choose how and when to attend to everything else.
  • Important and hard things first. I make time in the morning to work on the projects that require the most concentration and focus. I try to remove or delay distractions and less important tasks until later in the day.
  • 90-minute timeframes for focused work. Much like the importance of complete REM cycles when sleeping, a minimum of 90 minutes is required in order to go deep into focused attention. Keep away from multitasking as it undermines focus.
  • Take breaks to recharge. This can include the shallow work of writing and responding to emails and texts, taking phone calls as well as eating healthy meals, exercising, and chatting with co-workers.
  • Reduce web surfing and social media. In this age of distraction, we have the choice to either rule over the tools at our disposal or let them rule us. Judge for yourself whether time on these activities is helping or harming your ability to reach long term success and happiness.
  • Setting and maintaining boundaries. This is perhaps hardest for me as I want to say yes as often as possible. The trouble is I am undermining my effectiveness when I let people and projects permeate the important boundaries necessary for me to remain focused on one important thing at the expense of many other possibilities.

The older I get the more precious time becomes. I want to make the most of it and therefore I choose to be more intentional and disciplined about my time. I hope you can too.