We talk constantly about unmanageable workloads, but it’s actually the mental and emotional work that’s wearing us down. Learn how to reduce your thoughtload so you can get through your workload more efficiently and effectively.
“Help me understand what you’re trying to achieve.” Once upon a time, I encouraged you to use this phrase as a signal that you’re not connecting with someone’s point and you need them to clarify. Sadly, too many closed-minded, judgmental, passive-aggressive jerks commandeered “Help me understand” and now it’s a weapon. And that’s not the […]
I read an editorial by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian this morning about meetings crushing morale and killing productivity. Jenkins’ list of the perils of meetings touches the personal (meetings slow metabolism, lead to diabetes and cancer, and eventually kill you) and the professional (meetings waste cognitive resources, cause organizations to hemorrhage productivity, and eventually […]
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been called into an organization to help build a culture of teamwork, only to learn that people are measured, managed, and rewarded around individual performance. If success in your organization is defined exclusively by personal effort and achievement, don’t bother paying lip service to teamwork, collaboration, […]
Imagine that you need additional resources to finish your project on time. Or you’re lobbying to get your choice in a procurement process. Or you want the design of a new product to go a certain way. You need to influence the outcome of a decision and you think to yourself “I’ve got this one!” […]
I was talking with someone this morning about the sorry state of meetings. We spend so much time in the weeds and waste a precious opportunity to have valuable conversations about stuff that really matters. We talked about a few things, but the one that left me fired up was the amount of time we […]
When I was writing You First, I was looking for a subtitle that conveyed a strong message about the importance of team effectiveness to productivity. In a flash of insight, I came up with “Inspire your team to grow up, get along, and get stuff done.” That title still makes me smile. [Of course those […]
I’m on a bit of a roll on the topic of collaboration on teams. This little flurry of posts stemmed from three teams in a row that raised concerns about the lack of shared ownership for each other’s work. In the first post, I focused on the importance of getting input from teammates before […]
In three sessions with three different teams recently, the key theme has been the lack of shared ownership: A phenomenon one participant described as “everyone swimming their own race.“ This affects the value added by the team in two ways. First, when you’re focused on your own responsibilities, you’re unlikely to provide input on […]
Many of the team members I’m working with right now feel caught between two opposing forces. On the one hand, they’re living in matrix structures that require tightly aligned team behavior and interdependence. On the other hand, they feel the weight of the expectations for personal accountability and speed of execution, which are inadvertently driving […]
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