‘Burning the Midnight Oil’: Making Productivity Personal - April 2012
KnowledgeBrief concepts referenced:
Leadership
Psychological Contract
Transformational Leadership
Theory X and Theory Y
Organisations are being forced to do more with less. This ‘tug and pull’ dilemma affects people at all levels of an organisation and consequently, work-life balance has become a utopian ideal. But if work pressures are not going away, how then should we redress this balance? Psychologists believe that we explain the world by making attributions about our own and others’ behaviours. When others falter, we often attribute the cause to the person’s ‘internal’ personality; but when we slip-up, we blame external or situational factors. Our attributions are self-serving: they protect our self-esteem, making it is easier to blame external factors than suffer personal recrimination. (HBR)
By re-attributing some causes of low productivity to ourselves, work-life balance may seem more attainable. Some basic principles may help:
1. Think first, read or write second: when faced with copious amounts of reading, spend more time thinking rigorously in advance about what you want to find out. Prime your cognitive faculties to focus on the key issues, while filtering out peripheral details.
2. Prepare your plan, but be ready to change it: Planning ahead is essential, but filling every hour with meetings and phone calls isn’t. Leaving at least one hour open each day allows room to deal with unanticipated developments.
3. Let others own their space: Meetings should encourage debate, not mere conformance to the leader’s initial objectives. If you don’t value the ideas of your employees, why did you hire and invest in them in the first place? To close a meeting and encourage ownership, ask: “What are the to-dos, who will take care of them, and when will they be delivered?”
4. Know your “time bandits”: Emailing is a classic example of an activity that steals valuable time; often a phone call is far more efficient. It is hard to get the EQ (emotional intelligence) right in emails; they often promote reactive responses, rather than progressive action; and worse, emails can prolong or escalate debate.
Conclusion
Consider the following questions:
1. When did you last conduct a calendar audit? How could you prioritise/reschedule tasks and events to allow one hour of ‘free’ time each day?
2. What are your top 5 “time bandits” and what can you do personally to address these?
3. How could you make meetings more efficient and productive?
