Last week, I was in a meeting where we brainstormed ways to accelerate and increase throughput for our prospect management within the constraints of the limited headcount we have available. Like many operational flows, the problem boils down to a typical prospect maturity funnel: you have many prospects coming in, but only a few of them will make it all the way through to actual customers.
Don’t fix the problem – address the root cause
The initial inclination of the group was the same that countless other teams fell for: put most of the people where the majority of the work is. That’s wrong!
If you want to scale an operation, optimizing within existing constraints (e.g., headcount), you MUST put your resources where they have the most impact, not where you face the largest volume and amount of work. You must concentrate your resources at the BOTTOM of the funnel, not the top.
In an ideal world, your people would ever only need to focus on those prospects who will make it all the way through the funnel. They would guide them from prospect to customer. Unfortunately, in the real world, you don’t know which select ones out of the huge prospect pool will make it all the way.
Reshape the funnel and rebalance your resources!
The trick to scaling is to invest as little of your precious limited resources at the top of the funnel and instead deploy automation, crowd-sourcing, self-service, or even relaxing verification criteria. Reduce the funnel size as cheaply (in terms of your constrained resources) and quickly as possible and apply your constrained resources where they need to bring a select few across the finish line.
Think really hard about what compromises you can make at the top of the funnel in order to allow more focus on the bottom. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you put into the process – it only matters how much you get out on the other side.
In our example, we were looking at incoming college applications for prospective students. There are tens of thousands of those, and the staff processing them is limited. A way of solving the tension is to deploy automation (what amount of the applications is so cut and dry that an algorithm can move them forward), crowd-sourcing (what criteria can we share amongst the network of institutions instead of re-inventing everything), self-service (what information can we have students provide instead of us hunting it down with other institutions), and relaxing criteria (do we really need to check the complete set of details for prospects or can we delay that deep dive until someone became a student or is about to).
Designing for scale requires you to take a pause. You must look at the complete flow. You must decide where you can make compromises and where attention to detail and thoroughness matters. In many cases, it will require you to do the opposite of what your instinctive reaction would have been.
I read that book decades ago and then again just a few years past when I had to solve a challenging supply chain problem. However, I have to admit that I only fully understood then concepts when I had to build a hiring system at Amazon that supported more than ten million applications per year. The team worked hard across all dimensions of the problem space, and I learned a lot of valuable lessons through the process.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
A while back, I was asked in a 1:1 how one should decide where to put resources and effort.
There’s a pretty simple and basic framework to making those decisions, and it all comes down to ROI (Return on Investment): getting the most value out of the resources you are able to invest. This applies to decisions large and small: what product to purchase, what project to prioritize, how to plan your time.
While the framework is simple, it’s worth reminding us of it and bringing it top of mind for our daily decisions. Some of us are instinctively (or through years of training) following that model; others might consider putting a post-it note on their desk as a reminder.
ROI: the balance of Opportunity and Cost
Opportunity – The first decision criteria is the size of the Opportunity. If we do this project, if we buy this SW, what will we gain from it? What metrics will it change, and by how much? What is the impact on our overall operational cost? It comes down to quantifying the “Why” – and as you know, I am a big fan of always, always starting with the “Why”. Why do we do this, and what will we get out of it? How does that compare to other things we could do with our time? Steve Balmer used to say: “Show me the money!”
Cost – This one is easy: what does it cost to do the project? This includes headcount, fees, and future maintenance. We got all excited about the new opportunities and operational savings a solution will provide us, but what’s the flipside? What is the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of implementing this new solution now and in the future?
Having Opportunity and Cost gives you the ROI. As a first cut, you should rank all projects by their ROI – Which one gives you the most bang for the buck? Where should you invest limited resources?
Criteria that might override the ROI decision
Feasibility (and timing) – Feasibility is the criteria that should be checked first: do we have the prerequisites to even do this project or implement the new SW? Do we have the resources, or are they booked in other efforts? Is now the right time for this, given the other priorities for the organization, or should this be planned for a different time?
Risk tolerance – Of course, there is also a different category of projects that you just have to do, and this is where Risk comes in. Some work is required for compliance (e.g., new regulations) or minimizing threat vectors (e.g., increased security measures). In these cases, risk tolerance becomes an additional input to the ROI equation. What’s the cost of exposure, and how likely is it? How much risk are we willing to tolerate for a better ROI in this project or for putting our resources into higher-ROI projects? How much are we willing to forgo high-ROI projects in order to avoid risk exposure. Unfortunately, this category isn’t a hard science and usually requires informed judgment calls.
Follow-through – The last important criteria to consider are follow-through and sunk cost. It’s easy to chase the new shiny object. However, if you do that before you finish a project that you already started, you are on the path to wasting a lot of resources and frustrating a lot of people. Switching priorities can be necessary in (very few) cases, but it usually comes at a high cost. Whenever possible, follow through and finish what you have started – don’t waste effort by frequently switching priorities. The big exception to that rule is when you learn that your initial assumptions were incorrect. For example, the benefit might not be as high as anticipated, feasibility might have turned out to be questionable, or cost might be skyrocketing. In those cases, you need to reassess the whole project ROI. As for investing, don’t cling to a losing stock only because you already have sent a lot of money on it.
While ROI is a fairly simple financial calculation, the criteria in this bucket are less quantifiable. In most cases, it comes down to looking at all the facts you can collect and making an informed decision and judgment call.
As you do so, make sure to document the man decision criteria for that judgment call so that you know to revisit your decision if any of those criteria should change further down the road.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
How do you make things real for your audience? How do you move complex work forward swiftly?
Easy: you go from wishful thinking to concrete and tangible. You “Show, don’t tell”, and you “Tell, don’t ask”.
The first quote is an old saying, and I’m sure you’ve heard it many times. I made up the second one, but I like it just as much. 😊 Here is what both of those approaches mean to me:
Show don’t tell
If you want to have an impact and drive action, it often matters more how you say something than what you say. As you try to convince your audience and convey your thoughts, you must make them clear and real for your listeners.
Make it specific – “Specifics eat generics for breakfast” (I made this one up as well). Be specific! Provide examples, explain the specific impact, concrete next steps, dates, and owner. Instead of “we are trying to complete the project through summer”, say “Sam will complete the exploration phase by July 15th, after which Tom is responsible for implementation completion by September 21st”. Instead of “let’s regroup and follow-up on this”, say “we will meet next Wednesday and make a final decision on this – let the group know of any additional information you need to make that decision”.
Specifics eat generics for breakfast.
Make it real – Show a visual if you can. We can talk about how we should do things all day long, and everyone will make up their own pictures in their heads, circling around the discussion and misunderstanding each other. Show an image, flow chart, demo, UX mock-up, and your discussion and decision-making will leap forward. Give your attendees something to hold onto and react to – it will dramatically change the discussion’s dynamic. The same applies to agendas and meeting notes. Show them to your audience as you are in the meeting. Share your screen as you type the notes, provide your audience an artifact to look at, and anchor the discussions through that artifact. Extra points if you share those notes in real-time with the group.
Provide artifacts to anchor discussions.
Speak confidently – Last but not least, speak confidently. Say it like you mean it. If you’re not confident in your opinion and plans, take some extra time to think them through, but then step up and make an impression. Avoid softening words like “wish”, “hope”, “want”, “could”, “should” and instead use clear and confident language. “We will” convinces and wins your audience. Saying “I hope we can get this done by the end of Fall” is a recipe for failure; putting a stake in the ground and stating “we will do whatever it takes to go live on October 1st” gets your team focused.
Say it like you mean it!
Tell don’t ask
If you want to make progress, you need to put stakes in the ground. If you wait for others to make decisions for you, you will spend a lot of your time waiting…
Open-ended questions – I hear open-ended questions in the decision phase of many project discussions. “What do you think?” is a great question for brainstorming – and only for that! I am by no means downplaying the value of open-ended questions. They have their place in discovery, brainstorming, reflection, coaching, mentoring, and even in critical and contentious discussions. They are terrific to foster learning, information sharing, and broadening understanding and perspective. Unfortunately, they are terrible for coming to decisions.
Closed questions – Closed questions and “tell, don’t ask” come into play when it’s time to establish a common base and move on (“Any objections?”, “Is there anyone who doesn’t agree?”). They are also your tool to drive decisions. For example, don’t ask “What do you think?” when it’s decision time, instead tell and verify: “Alright, the plan is to roll this out by August 8th – are there any blocking issues with that?” Btw, don’t ask for “concerns” – voicing concerns is a tactic that is often (unconsciously) used by risk-averse team members to push away responsibility for unknown risks. It will not help you to advance a decision – ask for “blocking issues” instead.
Be deliberate about when you want to widen the discussion funnel (ask and listen – open questions) and when you need to narrow it (tell and confirm – closed questions).
Turn silence into an advantage – Have you ever said “Please come back to me and let me know if you agree or have concerns”, only to never hear back from anyone and not knowing if you had support or opposition for the plan? I certainly have. I learned to switch to “default approval statements” (not an actual terminology, I made that up as well) instead. Give a clear timeline by which you need to hear any objections and define what silence (i.e., lack of feedback) automatically triggers at that date. A good way of establishing a decision is to say “Unless I hear any blocking objections by the end of day tomorrow, we will move forward with the plan as proposed”.
Don’t trap yourself in an undetermined waiting loop – make default approval statements with a clear deadline.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
I was going to write about asking “Why not” instead of “Why” – which is advice I’m hearing often – but then I decided differently. While well-intentioned, I think that advice might drive the wrong behavior if it’s heard and understood the wrong way.
In many meetings, we tend to focus our time on why things won’t work, why they are hard, and why we cannot do them right now. We are guessing what might (!) hold us back or make things complicated.
Well, anything that is worth doing and any problem worth being solved tends to be hard and complicated. The easy stuff had already been done a long time ago.
Instead of looking at the challenges, we need to look at the opportunities: what do we gain, what can we enable if we solve this problem? Is it a worthwhile endeavor? How does this rank against the other things we could be doing with our time and energy?
Once decided, we need to stop thinking about why it’s hard and instead start focusing on how we CAN do it. For every problem, there is a solution. It might not be easy, it might not be quick, but there is a way to get it done. Dwelling in the challenges will only discourage us and waste both time and energy.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for ignoring challenges and problems to be solved. I’m instead saying that those problems need to be identified, acknowledged, written down, and then tracked to resolution. That is the productive approach to deal with challenges. Reiterating, discussing, and dwelling on them without concrete action is the unproductive approach. Once you identified a problem, you write it down, find a time and owner and move on.
Once we decided that something is important, we must only be concerned about how we can get it done and finding a realistic approach, plan, and timeframe. We must not waste our time discussing why it’s hard, and we cannot waste our resources looking for easier projects that we can tackle instead. The important stuff tends to be hard.
Back to the “Why not” advice that I poo-pooed earlier – It’s actually well-intended as it challenges us to instead of asking “why do we need to do this” rather get in the mindset of thinking, “yes, why in the hell would we not do this”. Always starting with the “Why” and assuming that there is value in a new project, initiative, or change is a good thing. Dwelling in reasons not to do something that is useful is wasted energy.
Just for the fun of it, here’s a list of a few things that were impossibly hard at some time: personal computers for everyone, finding stuff on the internet, a smartphone for everyone, streaming the movies you like to watch, getting an online order delivered the next day, electric cars, GPS for everyone, online banking,… – well you get the idea. All of those were solved by people who chose to focus on how to overcome hard problems instead of discussing why they are hard to solve.
Since we’re talking about starting with the “Why”, here’s a recommendation for one of my favorite business books:
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Simon Sinek ISBN-10: 9781591846444
Everything always starts with the “Why”. If you know your “Why”, you know your purpose and motivation. If you know the “Why”, it will be easy for you to enlist others for your cause.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
I was recently asked: “How do you optimize your productivity hours?”
My answer was clearly not what the person had expected: “You don’t. You optimize your impact!”
When we think about productivity, we often look at the wrong metric: the hours spent and the effort taken, not the output and impact of what we did. However, how busy we felt or how hard it was, doesn’t matter with regards to our productivity. We can be very busy, work extremely hard, and still not achieve anything.
Therefore, “hours” is the wrong metric. It’s not about the hours we spend and the effort we put in – it’s about the output, deliverables, and impact we achieve through our work. So the real question is: “How do we maximize the output and impact we have?”
The answer is to put our energy to its best use, invest our time where it matters most, and keep ourselves healthy and balanced so that we can operate at peak performance for those deliberately selected areas.
Three simple shifts in your mindset will get you there:
Focus on the things that matter most
Invest your time where you get the most bang for the buck. Don’t spend all your time in “busy work” – it’s easy to fall into that trap as we feel so accomplished if we were busy with lots of stuff all day.
Instead, we need to develop the discipline to look hard at the impact of our actions and have the courage to say “No” if some work and priorities don’t make sense.
Of course, we also need to communicate early, proactively, and clearly to our stakeholders if we decided to deprioritize a given task. No surprises!
Remove distractions
Multitasking doesn’t work – period. As endless studies have shown, multitasking doesn’t work for anything that requires our conscious focus on two things at a time. You can brush your teeth and reminisce about your day – however, you cannot solve a logical problem and check your email simultaneously. The switching cost to get back on task after an interruption (multitasking) is surprisingly high – often up to 20 mins.
Knowing that every distraction can cost you up to 20 mins of your focused time, you need to eliminate all distractions. Switch off notifications, don’t have email counters on your phone, kill all notification sounds or pop-ups – better even, close all apps aside from the one you need for your current task and put your phone on mute. Don’t even listen to music; our brain immediately zeros in on the lyrics – if we like it or not (white noise is ok).
Allow your brain to get into “the zone”, find your “flow” and be sharp, focused, and effective. When you’re done, you can leave “the zone” and follow distractions for a little while.
Protect your recovery times
The third piece of advice actually does go towards optimizing your productivity hours (although that’s not my primary purpose): ensure that you can be at your A-game when you’re on task.
You cannot be the best version of yourself if you worked through the night or weekend and come into the office already exhausted in the morning. Take your breaks, take time to recharge, don’t push beyond the point where you are focused and effective. You need to recharge, you need to balance, you need to come back the next day with your A-game.
Observe yourself and your focus and notice the point where you aren’t productive anymore. I learned that it is better to call it a day then, rather than trying to push through a little more – most times, your work will get sloppy and faulty when you get tired, and you will spend more time cleaning up the mess you created than if you had just waited for the next day. Trust me, I’ve been there many times.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
My first real job was 24/7 onsite support for mission-critical data center servers that ran national credit card processing.
As part of the job, I got a brand new Nokia cell phone, which was a big deal then – none of my friends had anything fancy like that. We were at a party at a nearby lake, and I proudly showed this gadget around – then it rang, and I had to jump in the car, leave my friends and drive 100 miles to the customer site. From there on, whenever I was on call, I didn’t sleep well, couldn’t fully enjoy what I was doing, and felt miserable.
What I learned from that is that I don’t do well in jobs where I get phone calls at home. I am telling this story because, for me, being called for work-stuff during my off-times is a deal-breaker. I walked away from jobs that I otherwise loved because I didn’t want this boundary to be crossed. On the other hand, I am totally ok to work into the night if it’s required – as long as the endpoint is in my control. Others don’t mind being on call and enjoy the extra money that goes with it.
Values and boundaries are personal and unique – there is no one size fits all!
Close encounter with burnout – too close
Since that eye-opening moment, for one reason or another, I ended up working in high-stress burnout roles for the coming 25+ years, and for the most part, had a lot of fun doing so.
I started my career with HP/Tandem in that 24/7 onsite support role that I talked about in the intro. I then went to Microsoft, where I had different roles, such as being the national spokesperson for crisis-PR – right in the midst of the Open Source and Linux wars and the DOJ monopoly investigation. After 17 years, I looked for new challenges and found them with Amazon, where I had several leadership positions, amongst others, leading product strategy for a 250+ people engineering team. It was always “more” and “faster” at Amazon, and after five years, I decided to prioritize my family and move to Bozeman – where I arrived right with the start of the global COVID pandemic.
Life has not been boring, and I actually like it that way.
While you’re young, you can do a lot of things that are not sustainable but are fueled by pure energy and naiveté. There was always a lot to do – more than one could humanly achieve – and I had to learn to prioritize and be more effective. That got me quite far and is a key component of achieving anything. You need to learn to make the most out of your time and have the most impact with the resources you have. Cut out the slack, ignore the distractions, simplify what you do, and focus on what matters most.
However, things get harder when you add responsibilities for others. Eventually, being effective wasn’t enough as there was always so much more to do. I also felt the increasing tension between spending time at work (up to 60 hours a week) and wanting to be there for my family and kids. I started to feel tired, lacked drive, and felt bad for not connecting enough with the areas of my life that I really cared about. I didn’t realize it right away, but I slipped deep into burnout. Luckily, I noticed the slippery slope before it was too late, and I decided to take action. I needed to rebuild how I work and learn how to set boundaries while still performing at the highest levels. I had to fix the engine while flying the plane, and I had to do it quickly before serious damage was done.
All along this journey, I’ve been a manager and people leader. I tried to create those spaces of flexibility for my team and appreciated it if team members took full ownership of their areas. It’s easy to grant autonomy when you see true ownership. However, what I learned is that you cannot do that job for other people. You cannot make others happy – only YOU can make yourself happy. You cannot define values or boundaries for other people – they are personal and unique. Everyone is different, and you can not “carry” someone to happiness – everyone has to define their own path and take charge and full responsibility for it.
There is a Zen proverb that captures this well: “The teacher can only show the door. The student has to walk through it.”
What you will find below are some essential principles and rules that helped me protect my boundaries while still performing at high levels at work. It helped me balance work and life by taking full ownership and responsibility for both. It’s showing the door – you need to decide if you want to walk through it, and if you do, you need to make every single step yourself.
Taking charge, taking ownership
Three main principles are key for work-stress management and happiness (in my experience):
Your values are personal. What works for the person next to you doesn’t necessarily work for you. You are the only one who knows them, and you are the only one who can implement them. No one can carry you to happiness.
You only gain autonomy if you prove ownership and accountability first. Good leaders love to delegate – but only if they are confident the job gets done.
Achieving 1 and 2 is hard work and requires constant engagement. If you drop your focus, they will slip.
Understanding and protecting what matters to you
It all starts with YOUR values | What matters to you?
It all starts with understanding YOUR values! A solution that works for the person next to you might not work for you or make you happy. For example, I am perfectly happy dropping lunch to get things done or working late (occasionally) when it’s crunch time. However, try to make me work on a weekend for no good reason, and you’re up for a hard time. Others appreciate the opportunity to catch up on things during the weekend.
You have to understand your values and what is really important to you. It’s personal. It’s not what the other person has. A good way of doing that is to write down all the things you care about (your values) on little cards. You will end up with some 20-30 values. Now give the ones away that you care less about. Repeat that until you’re down to three – those are the ones that really matter to you. Align your life and decisions such that those values are not violated by what you’re doing.
Those values are the guiding stars for you, not to show around. They can be grand, like changing the world, but they can also be as down to earth as having fun or achieving financial stability. There is no right or wrong – there’s just what matters to you. Those values are personal, and there is no need to share them, although it can be helpful if others understand them.
My values are family, integrity, and autonomy. In that order. That is why it’s important to me that I don’t get unplanned interruptions in my off time – it feels to me like breaking a promise I made to my family. On the other hand, I’m ok to plan for extra time to get the job done, as it supports my integrity value and is done within the boundaries of autonomy.
Set YOUR boundaries | What are your non-negotiables?
Like our values, our boundaries are different for each of us. My big boundary is that when I’m home with my family, I want to be home. Period. I don’t check emails in the evenings, weekends, or on vacation. Others do appreciate the flexibility of today’s merged work/life arrangements. For some, it’s a big deal to be able to go out for a walk during lunch. You might need to come in a little later to drop your kids at school or leave a little earlier for your Yoga class.
Whatever it is that is an important line in the sand for you – it’s not one size fits all!
As you think about your boundaries, you can do a similar exercise as the one for values. Write down the boundaries that you care about. Then give up the ones that are less important to you. Work-life balance is always a tradeoff, and you need to know what you’re willing to trade and what you’re not. Know your negotiables and your non-negotiables. Don’t ‘die on the hill’ or get yourself all worked up for the former.
Compartmentalize | When you’re on, you’re on. When you’re off, you’re off.
Don’t spend energy on things you cannot fix at the moment. Once you’re off work, don’t ruminate about things that concerned you at work. Focus on the environment you’re in at the moment, enjoying the activity you’re doing, fully tuning in to your kids or friends, or just taking brain time off. You don’t win anything if you keep thinking about that work task you need to do the next day – it just ruins your time and attention for other things.
Make a clear distinction between working and being off work. Use the time off work to follow your other interests, passions and recharge. Be off. Then when you’re on again, you need to be fully on. Care deeply about work when you’re at work. Be as effective as you possibly can. Forget about work when you’re at home. Focus on the things that matter personally to you.
Give both aspects of your life your fullest instead of dabbling in inattentive mediocracy for each of them. Multitasking doesn’t work, and it burns a lot of switching energy.
Think about doctors: they need to give the best possible care to patients when they are on shift. However, if they keep worrying about them once they’re home, they will not be able to bring on their A-game the next day.
Earning autonomy and flexibility
Autonomy only comes with accountability | The work still needs to get done. You need to own it. Fully!
Everything we talked about above – living your values, setting boundaries, and compartmentalizing – boils down to work flexibility and autonomy in one way or another. However, autonomy is something that is not and cannot be granted lightly – after all, the job needs to get done, and we all have a critical function for the organizations we work in.
Instead, we have to earn autonomy. We do that by consistently demonstrating that we are on top of things, that we think forward, act responsibly, don’t drop commitments, and are accountable and reliable. We demonstrate ownership.
Ownership and accountability mean being clear about the priorities in your work, communicating those clearly, and focusing your time at work on those. It means tracking your timelines and deliverables and not getting surprised by looming deadlines. It means getting started early and not waiting until the last minute. It means proactively planning how you get the work accomplished by the deadline. Work is NOT the place for procrastination!
Ownership also means looking for better ways of doing things or proactively engaging other people who can help relieve pressure. Ownership means making good suggestions to improve your work area.
No surprises! | Communicate clearly, proactively, and early.
One of the first and biggest lessons I learned was: “No surprises!”
There is almost no problem that cannot be fixed if people are made aware of it early enough. There is absolutely no fix to a problem if you learn about it after ‘the ship has sailed’.
If you cannot accomplish what you had promised, you need to give early proactive heads-up. It’s ok that things change, it’s ok that you get other priorities, it’s ok to have unforeseen complications. It’s NOT ok to not tell anyone about those changes or risks immediately. Be proactive and give people an early heads-up if things stray from the agreed-upon plan.
If you cannot do something that you had promised, don’t just throw your hands in the air and hope that no one will notice – rather, look for solutions.
Pace yourself | Life and career are marathons, not sprints.
Sometimes we need to sprint to get things done and achieve the desired goal. Sometimes it’s crunch time, and we need to let go of our boundaries for a little while for the greater good – the challenges the global COVID pandemic brought upon us are a great example of such a time in which we need to go above and beyond for prolonged periods of time.
However, we need to also deliberately slow down afterward. Humans have a way of getting used to pressure and not noticing it until something pops. Like a sprint, you keep running until you’re out of breath, and then you drop to the floor and pant.
Instead, life is a marathon, and so is your career. Notice when you have times where you can recharge and regain your energy. Use those times! Push hard during crunch time and then focus a little more on yourself, your values, and your passions during the times in-between.
Life is a marathon, and muscles grow while we rest them! However, when it’s go-time, you need to be on your A-game.
If I can leave you with three things
1. You need to take care of yourself first!
This includes your health, the things you care about, and time for your purpose and passion.
2. You need to know what matters to you.
It’s different for everyone, and what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for the other. Don’t look at what flexibilities the other person has – be clear about which ones matter to you.
3. Autonomy, accountability, and ownership go together. Always!
You can only set boundaries if you own the expected outcomes and if you hold yourself accountable for the promises you made. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help – it means YOU need to be the one who proactively brings up issues early and helps identify solutions.
If you master the tension between boundaries and ownership, you master your stress. Trust your team and help your team! In the long run, you win as a team – you can only lose as the lone warrior.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
We all have a lot on our minds – juggling different responsibilities, complex project dependencies, competing priorities. The risk of keeping so many things in our heads is that we will miss a bunch. We had a great idea, go to bed, and poof, it’s gone.
The solution to this is to get those ideas, questions, challenges out of your head and into what a former manager of mine called his “Worry list”. If you learned formal project management, you would call it an Issue tracker, but I like “Worry list” better.
The idea of a Worry list is to 1) get things out of your head to free up mental space, 2) collect all issues and questions in one place, so you don’t miss any, 3) have a way to systematically “burn down” the number of issues until you are ready to launch, and 4) see a glide path that lets you predict if you are on-track or off-track.
Add to your Worry list – This process is ongoing until the end of the project (and usually into the sustain phase afterward). If you discover a new issue, challenge, or question for a project, you add it to the list. No curation, no prioritization, no nothing – just capture the thought before it eludes you. Have one place and one tool where you do it and just drop things in right when they come to your mind. I like Microsoft To Dos, others use OneNote or paper, and if you want to go fancy, you can build an Excel issue tracker. The most important piece is that you keep your tool simple enough so that you will use it consistently. If you add too many bells and whistles, the maintenance effort will be too high, and you won’t follow through.
Burndown – This is the fun part. Instead of wondering what you need to take care of next, you look at your list and pick the most important or most urgent question or action. You solve it. You move on to the next. You can prioritize your list ahead of time or pick what is appropriate for the moment. This is “burning down” the list of issues (or bugs if you are in SW development).
Glide path – Looking at the glide path lets you determine if you are on-track or off-track. If a plane is within the prescribed glide path during landing, it will smoothly touch the runway. If it’s off the glide path, bad things could happen, and the pilot needs to take immediate action. The same is true for your worry list: if you solve 5 issues per day, have one week to go until launch, and 40 remaining items on your worry list, you know that you need to take action and change course. A glide path can be mathematical science (linear or polynomial regression) or just a rough temperature check (oops, still ten issues left for the week) – it’s up to your preference. In either case, it’s critical to know if you will be ready in time or not.
Punting – The hidden secret for shipping any product or project is to determine what not to tackle when you are running out of time. Some things must be done before launch, but others can wait until after. Solving issues is not the only way to burn down your Worry list – you can also decide to punt some issues for later. SW companies do that all the time and for good reasons – see this famous (and misleading) article on Windows 2000 https://www.zdnet.com/article/bugfest-win2000-has-63000-defects/. When launch day comes close and you run out of daylight, decide what really needs to get done and what is nice to have and can wait for another day.
Get your worry list started now! You will see that you will worry much less once you have it (you effectively delegate your worries out of your brain and into the list).
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
If you want to build strong relationships with your partners, you need to build trust. Trust comes from being open and honest. It also comes from saying what you’re going to do and then following through on your promise. Every time!
If you have strong relationships and trust, the sky is the limit to what you can achieve. If you don’t have that basis, you will forever be the lone warrior and limited by what you as an individual can do.
Value your partner the same way you would like to be valued. If you need them to do something for you, explain why it’s important. Give real deadlines when you need something back, not sandbagged ones that will make life more comfortable on your end but put the other person under unnecessary pressure.
Assume maturity in their planning and hold them accountable against their promises.
Own your promises
On the flip side, your partners need to be able to trust the promises you have made. Don’t let things slip, don’t have them check back in and remind you of something you said you would do.
Close the loop on any actions you have. Do what you said you would do. Deliver in time and with the expected high quality.
Earning trust is one of my three favorite Amazon leadership principles. Here is how the official definition goes – however, in my opinion, it misses the accountability piece:
Earn Trust
Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
Here’s a simple framework to ensure accountability
Establishing ownership
If you need something – If you need something, establish explicit ownership. Get an explicit commitment. There is no half-commitment. Ownership is digital – either you own it, or you don’t.
If you are asked to do something – If you are asked to do something, usually commitment is assumed. If that assumption is wrong, you must explicitly say NO. It can be ok to deprioritize or postpone something, but you have to SAY it explicitly to the requestor.
Pretending ignorance doesn’t give you a free pass – Haven’t seen a task or request is not a good excuse if you did get the information. Pretending not to see something is not ok.
Following through on ownership
Owning means owning – You own it, you do it, you fix it. Don’t just drop a task last minute because you have overcommitted yourself. Once you own something and realize that you cannot deliver it, YOU are responsible for finding a way to get it delivered, not the person who has asked you in the first place.
Accountability is a part of the performance – Work is not a place where you make promises and then fail to meet them. When you miss something once for good reasons, people will work around it. When you miss your promises repeatedly, then you will lose trust and support. You will run into performance problems.
If you don’t get support, escalate effectively – If a deliverable from someone else holds you back, you need to escalate quickly. Waiting for someone else but not letting anyone know is not a good reason for not delivering. If you need something, say it right away!
The flip side of the accountability expectation
Some organizations drive themselves into a culture of non-accountability. They do that by frequently changing priorities and not following through on things that previously have been the most critical thing to do.
If priorities change all the time, employees cannot be accountable. Period. Employees learn this quickly and resort to ignoring tasks and promises unless they serve their own needs. After an employee has missed their promises often enough and without consequence (because the leader’s mindset has moved to the next shiny object), they will have learned that accountability doesn’t matter and that they can’t control their ability to deliver what the leader wants anyway.
If requests become too much, too unpredictable, or too random, people will disengage and stop owning things. They will lose their sense of connection and accountability
If you ask for something, you need to follow through, and you must value the deliverables you get back and take action on them. If priorities do change, tell the people who are working on tasks for you about the change early enough so that they don’t waste their time and energy.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
Too much on your plate? Feeling busy and overwhelmed? Getting nowhere fast?
It might be a good time to pause, take a deep breath, rethink what’s a top priority and what isn’t. It might be a good time to become more intentional about how you spend your time and energy and what you pay attention to.
It’s all too easy to add stuff to your plate (or get it added by someone else). We start to get busy, and the busier we get, the more we focus on ‘getting stuff done’, rather than thinking about what outcomes we want to achieve and how we can best get there. The more we get into that ‘busyness’, the less time we have to stop, pause, think, and the more ‘normal’ the tactical busyness feels. Ever noticed when you come back from a vacation and you are so much more organized and focused, only to fall back to seemingly random busy-work after a week or two? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Heck, it might even give us comfort and validation to ‘be busy’. However, busyness is not the same as impact. Busyness is not the same as achievement. Busyness is not the same as providing value. It’s just busyness, nothing else. If you want to make a change, if you want to make ’a dent in the universe’ as the silicon valley types like to say, you need to be intentional about where and how you invest yourself. Busyness is not a value. It’s a cost. Outcome and impact are the values.
Don’t be busy, be impactful!
So how do you get more intentional? Start with gaining clarity on what outcomes you want to achieve and what actions will be most impactful to get there. Then invest your time intentionally in those outcomes and actions. Don’t just go with the flow.
Here are some examples:
Meetings – Decide if a meeting provides value to what you want to achieve and if you can provide value to the meeting and group. Then go or don’t go. If you go, you must make it worth your time and everyone else’s time. Don’t just hang around in the meeting. Don’t multi-task – it doesn’t work anyway. Turn your webcam on for virtual meetings. Be there and engage. If you don’t feel the meeting is important to you, better invest your time in something else and avoid dragging down the energy of the whole group.
Tasks and emails – When you go through tasks and emails, force yourself to be focused. Limit the time you have available for those tasks. You will see that allotting a limited amount of time to getting something done will make you more focused, more efficient, and happier. It will also avoid that you keep working on something beyond the point of diminishing returns (remember the 80:20 rule). Give yourself a challenging time limit, and then force yourself to get all planned work done in the allocated time. Don’t allow any distractions – single-task!
Working after hours – Sometimes we need to get something done in time for a deadline, and work will bleed into the evening or weekend. Those should be the very rare exceptions, though. Be aware of and intentional about those exceptions. Know why you make them if you decide to make them. Don’t let working in the evening become a habit just because you did it the previous evening. It’s easy to get sucked into bad habits if you don’t observe closely what you’re doing. Today there’s a lot of excitement about being always connected, about moving in and out of work and private times, and blended models. I may be old-school, but I don’t believe in that. If you take your work home and don’t set boundaries, you disservice yourself and your loved ones. Be fully at work when you’re at work, and forget all about work when you’re not!
Downtime – This is so critical for our balanced well-being! Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Be conscious and intentional about taking downtimes. Plan them, appreciate them, and protect them. Don’t feel bad for not doing anything (‘do nothing days’ are a real thing). However, don’t waste your downtimes either. Don’t get lost in browsing the web or playing video games. There is a huge difference between planned downtime, or me-time, and mindless procrastination. Don’t get me wrong, if you like videogames, that’s awesome. Enjoy them for the time period that you have decided to spend on them. However, don’t find yourself looking at your clock, wondering where the time has gone, and feeling guilty about it. Being intentional avoids feeling guilty.
Family and friends – Put that smartphone down! Tug away your work problems! Listen, share and engage! Don’t let anything distract you from paying attention to your loved ones during the time you spend with them. It might be annoying at times (yes, let’s be honest, distractions from our kids can be annoying), it might go against your planned task, but you won’t’ regret it in the long run. The number one wish of people in nursing homes is to have spent more time with loved ones. Having gotten more tasks done never comes up in those conversations.
Be intentional about what you do and how you spent your time. You will have more impact, and you will be happier.
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
Today I’m going to talk about a difficult subject: daring to fail.
It’s a difficult subject because deep down, no one wants to fail, no one want’s to lose, and no one wants to look stupid. We all want to shine, be flawless, and be the hero that saves the day all the time (at least I do, if I’m honest).
However, that’s not how things work. You have to take risks if you want to achieve something. If you play everything safe, you won’t get anywhere.
Every day in life, we are presented with new but scary opportunities, times where we should speak up, or situations where we would love to try out a new approach. However, often we’re scared to fail, to lose something along the process, or to just be embarrassed in front of others. The truth is, if you are too scared of negative outcomes or of losing something, you won’t move forward. Being too scared leads to analysis paralysis, endless discussions of the same topic, and ultimately decision aversion.
We need to remind ourselves that very few decisions are as critical as they feel to us. Our minds are primed to focus and over-index on the risk and negative – after all, for our ancestors, the impact of being eaten by a lion was much more dramatic than the impact of losing out on juicy fruit. Being overly scared made our species survive in the early days when we were some of the weakest animals out there. There are very few real dangers to us in today’s world, and we need to make sure that our minds don’t apply live-or-die frameworks to much more mundane decisions. We need to make a conscious effort to see the opportunity and the positive instead of being paralyzed by perceived risks.
Sometimes it helps to ask yourself what could really go wrong if you make a wrong decision. In most situations, the outcome is far less dramatic than what our subconsciousness wants us to believe. Most decisions we are making are reversible, and very few have a life and death impact.
Put things into perspective and move forward!
Embrace risk, be bold, and contribute to your full potential: voice your opinion, take the leap and try out the new process, push back against authority if the facts are on your side, don’t let the loud voices in a meeting (or email thread) drown you out, make bold decisions that move things forward (you can always test it in a pilot if you’re not sure)! Don’t wait, don’t fall prey to analysis paralysis!
Looking at my personal experience, I was always the best, most effective, and received the most positive feedback when I didn’t worry about losing. When I felt I had nothing to lose, I made the best contributions and had the biggest impact. In a nutshell, I was most valuable to the team when I was willing to lose everything. In times when I was scared to fail or worried about the future impact, I ended up not contributing much at all, as I was waiting things out, trying to determine where the safest path would be. Leaps forward always happened to me in times where I was most willing to embrace risk.
As many of you know, I’ve been practicing martial arts for many decades, and one of the key principles that stuck we me from early on is this:
You cannot win if you’re not willing to die.
That sounds extreme, but to put it in words that are more fitting for modern times, if you are not ready to lose (everything), your mind will hold you back. Your moves will be half-hearted and not bold enough, and your mind and heart will not be fully into it.
My martial arts teacher used to say:
There is no half-pregnant. Either you do it, or you don’t.
Dare to be bold, dare to take risks, dare to lead!
Did you like this post? Want to read more?Check out our newest book!
Thriving in High-Pressure Environments Lessons from Amazon, a global pandemic, and other crazy times By Alfons and Ulrike Staerk ISBN 9798718017663
If you like what you’re reading, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. If you don’t like it, please tell us what we can do better the next time. As self-published authors we don’t have the marketing power of big publishing houses. We rely on word of mouth endorsements through reader reviews.
Tai Chi, Wellness & Life Coaching | Keru Uma Budo 