Cool Down (8 page)

Authors: Steve Prentice

BOOK: Cool Down

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This is because reaction, especially when done in self-defense, is quick, candid and innocent. By its very nature, reaction happens when a living being responds to a stimulus in an attempt to maintain the stability of its situation. When we react, we are not seeking to control a situation but merely to protect our existence within that situation. If, by contrast, you seek to control or change that situation, especially when it's to your benefit, then you are no longer reacting. You are proacting.

Hopefully, you might never get robbed by a pickpocket. But do you attend meetings? Do you meet with other people one on one, in groups, or on the phone? If you do, the same type of theft may be taking place.

When a meeting is called, the top priority often becomes the identification of the earliest date and time in which all team members (as well as a suitable room) are available. Assuming, then, that all people involved have agreed upon the meeting's necessity, who needs to attend, and the duration of the meeting, the event is then calendared and mentally shunted aside since there is too much else for everyone involved to do in the interimâtoo many other meetings, messages, and crises. When the time for the meeting rolls around, people arrive, perhaps on time, perhaps late. They receive the agenda, read through it, and slowly warm up their minds to the issues at hand. The odds are that such a meeting will be okay but will likely not meet the productivity potential (and cost) of all those people in attendance.

A chairperson's primary obligation is to recognize that all the people around a meeting table are expensive and that the chief objective of the meeting is to produce something that will justify the cost of these people. No matter what their hourly fee, whether it's $20 or $250, if people are sitting around a meeting table, they're not doing their other work, so, in fact, whatever their hourly rate, it's going to cost the company twice that (the cost of them being at the table plus the cost of what else they're not doing). As a result, it would be desirable to have all of these expensive people producing something that has a value greater than the double cost of their bottoms on the chairs.

Now, if we took all of these people around the table and morphed them, metaphorically, into one athlete, let's say an NBA player or an Olympic swimmer, it would be foolish to ask this player to hit the court or the pool without warming up first. Muscles might tear, ligaments might snap if we were to skip the tedious, slow ritual of stretching and warm-up. Yet in many organizations, meetings just start when they start and proceed as best they can, partly because we're too busyâthere's too much to do during the week to strategize beyond the immediate.

But what if we were to
cool down
a little and take some time to ensure the meeting actually pays for itself? For example:

â¢ What if the chairperson were to prepare and distribute the meeting agenda (an agenda that identifies the topics that are to be discussed, and therefore what is not to be discussed) a full day or more before the meeting? What might that do to help warm up the mental muscles? How much more productive might a meeting be if the attendees had had time to mull over these issues, even subconsciously, for a time, rather than reading them for the first time upon sitting down at the meeting table?

â¢ What if the meeting chairperson were to choose who should attend, and who need not attend, and perhaps even position certain personality types at select places around the table (through the use of name tent cards), so as to dilute the potential for disruptive behavior or power cliques?

â¢ What if the invitees were reminded and encouraged to slow down enough to actually read the agenda a full 24 hours prior to the meeting in order to capitalize on the warm-up described above and to re-instill in them the sense of importance surrounding the event?

â¢ Similarly, what if we were able to create a culture where consecutive meetings were never scheduled back to back to always allow time for travel and recuperation between each, so that people arrived more prepared, more relaxed, and already mentally tuned in to the objectives of this event?

Such approaches aren't just feel-good practices any more than stretching and warm-up are for an athlete. That's not what they're for. They're there to bring about progress, profit, and success. Careful planning and production of a meeting also allows for more subtle, cerebral leadership skills to work their magic; ones that otherwise might get lost in the rush. Skills such as:

â¢ Recognizing that just getting through a meeting's agenda does not constitute a successful meeting. A shrewd chairperson listens to what is being said
and
to what is not being said; she takes note of eye contact, body language, subtle and not-so-subtle gestures, and steers the meeting accordingly.

â¢ Allowing silence for reflection, in order to allow ideas to percolate and to counter the actions of aggressive or domineering speakers. Silence is a scary concept for speed-oriented professionals. The desire to fill the air with words seems to soothe the high-speed mind by providing it with evidence of apparent progressânot always accurate evidence. This is a term that I call
ambient momentum
, and it will crop up again in a different situation in the next chapter. Silence, by contrast, allows creative thought to crystallize and grow. For example, a chairperson should be sure to count to seven after asking if anyone has questions or comments. Seven seconds is a painfully long time to spend staring at the faces of people around a table or in an audience. But that's how long the average person needs to both think of something to ask and to marshal the courage and/or energy to ask it.

â¢ Factoring in time for the preparation of minutes. This overlooked and seemingly tedious part of the meeting process is essential to its ultimate success. Since the candid, reactionary nature of modern business forces all people, including the chairperson, to think “event to event,” it is easy to envision a meeting that is scheduled to end at 2:00 p.m. to run the full length of that time, possibly more, after which everyone scurries off to their next appointment. By contrast, a chairperson who schedules an extra 15 minutes for herself and the minute-taker after the meeting has concluded to go over the minutes together, to keep them short, clear, and accurate, stands a better chance of seeing the meeting's action items actually come to fruition.

Do we have the right to such luxuries? To take the time to plan meetings, to browse the agendas beforehand, and to allow time for follow-up? Yes. Both a right and an obligation. We must push through the dust cloud that the culture of speed has thrown up and recognize that far from being luxuries, these techniques represent a realistic follow-through and prioritization of the workload. When we don't
cool down
and prepare for meetings, they run longer and are less focused, resulting in reduced productivity and greater overall expenseâjust as it is with so many areas of life.

Though this chapter has used meetings and email as primary illustrations of the Silo Effect, the concept goes far beyond just these at-work scenarios It applies to the way we plan projects, the way we do homework, and the way we make purchases. It impacts greatly the life of professional relationships, such as between a manager and her employee, or a supplier and a client. There is a great temptation, for example, to hide behind email during situations of conflict, discomfort, or when we are just pressed for time, and to leave voice mails when a discussion would be more appropriate. Ultimately such shortcuts diminish the skills of clear communication that professionals of all stripes need to draw upon if they are to keep up.

KEY POINTS TO TAKE AWAY

â¢ Michael Eisner identified how technology is starting to erode the ability to understand human contact.

â¢ The Silo Factor happens as a result of speed and results in significant intellectual isolation.

â¢ Information Overload can lead to
infomania
, which results in lost productivity.

â¢ We have a professional obligation to slow down and weigh the cost of immediate response against its benefits.

â¢ The cost must be viewed in terms of all client relationships, not just specific ones.

â¢ The need to stay in the loop is another human obsession based on a fear of being left out or of losing out.

â¢
Presenteeism
refers to people who expect to be able to work even though they are fatigued, ill, overstressed, or distracted.

â¢
Intellectual isolation
refers to the danger of ignoring or losing the sentient components of human communication, such as body language and speech rhythms. Teleconferences and videoconferences are somewhat less efficient for this reason.

â¢ Pickpockets can teach us the value of not falling into reactive mode and being proactive whenever possible.

â¢ The Tachometer represents the idea that people's mental state of energy and alertness is not always where we think it will be. If we had actual tachometers on our foreheads to measure our effectiveness, our awareness of the cost of speed and the value of
slow
would be much easier to accept.

â¢ Meetings are a day-to-day example where speed and event-to-event thinking diminish the productivity of the meeting itself.

HOW TO
COOL DOWN
: THE SILO EFFECT
Putting Email Aside

Though email is an essential tool of business, it comes with a false illusion of priority.

â¢ How possible might it be for you to close down your email for an hour? Or two? Or two separate hours in the day?

â¢ What benefits in productivity might this deliver to you?

â¢ What dangers might this pose?

â¢ What might the reaction be from colleagues?

â¢ What might the reaction be from your clients or customers?

â¢ What might the reaction be from your boss?

â¢ How might you sell this idea to these different types of people?

Responding to Email After Hours

â¢ Have you felt the need to respond to a client after hours?

â¢ Have you ever stopped to consider the deeper implications of doing this? What message do you think it sends to the client?

â¢ Have you ever asked your clients about the perception it gives them of you?

Consider the types of communications you send by email each day. How many of them might have come to a quicker resolution if a phone conversation had been arranged instead?

Staying in the Loop

â¢ A wireless PDA can actually be turned off. Are you willing to turn yours off? Why/why not?

â¢ By succumbing to the temptation to read and respond to messages far outside of work hours, you will be conditioning others to expect the same behavior consistently and forever. How does this sit with you?

â¢ Would it be possible for you to establish parameters for the times that you are available and not available to communicate, and to discuss these parameters with the people who need to know (clients, managers, etc.), being sure to reinforce in their minds the value this will bring to them in terms of having your undivided attention?

â¢ How much do you fear being left out of the loop?

â¢ What might happen if you were to take a day off from work? Do you have any fears about what you might miss?

â¢ How about a week's vacation?

â¢ What can you take from your fear statements above that might help eliminate your fears? Who might you talk to about them? What would you say?

The Sound of Silence

â¢ How often do you reach for a phone or PDA when silence or downtime hits?

â¢ Is this the best use of your downtime?

â¢ If you didn't have any of these tools, not even change for a payphone, what would you do?

Human-to-Human Communication

â¢ What is your own preference for communicating with others? Do you prefer email, voice mail, live phone conversations, or face-to-face meetings?

â¢ Why do you prefer one over the other?

â¢ Why do you think that is?

â¢ What fears or reservations (if any) would you have if it were suggested that you deal with most work issues face to face from now on?

Escalation Issues

â¢ Have you ever experienced a situation where a client called your boss because you did not answer promptly enough?

â¢ What were the repercussions?

â¢ What could you do to deal with escalation in the future?

Fire Your Weakest Client

There is an old adage taken from the 80/20 rulebook that suggests that people in sales should regularly review their client list and fire their “weakest client.” The weakest client is the one whose demands and needs outweigh the value of the business they bring in.

â¢ Regardless whether you are in sales or not, how might this principle apply to you?

â¢ What are the “weakest clients” in your world, e.g. tasks, colleagues, technologies, expectations?

â¢ What could you do to rearrange your daily structure to eliminate or at least minimize your weakest clients?

Presenteeism

â¢ Have you ever been at work at a time when you really should have been home? For example, when you were ill, jetlagged from a recent trip, or just mentally overloaded from too many projects?

â¢ What are your reasons for coming in under these conditions?

â¢ What did you achieve?

â¢ Might there have been alternatives?

â¢ What would your boss say if you were to ask him about strategies for reducing presenteeism in other employees as well as yourself?

â¢ Have you ever called in sick when you weren't sick but were just too tired or stressed to work?

â¢ Have you ever called in sick just to play hookey?