Charlie Brown: “I can’t stand it. Every time I think I can take a day away from my chores, I have to keep looking at this thing.” (He looks at his wireless PDA.)

Lucy: “Hmmm. Maybe your problem is rooted in a deeper fear. Do you think you have a fear, Charlie Brown? If you have a fear of neglecting duty or responsibility, you have paralipophobia. If you have a fear of sitting still, you have cathisophobia. Or do you fear being forgotten? If you fear being forgotten you have athazagoraphobia.”

Charlie Brown: (Leaping up from his stool, but not letting go of his PDA.): “That’s it!”

A Counseling Example

I ask the people I work with and coach privately a series of questions. These questions are not intended to prove that there is one single approach to work and one single schedule that everyone must follow. The role of the questioning, as with much in the world of analysis and therapy, is an exercise in slowing down. During our sessions, the client herself can hear her own statements. No longer drowned out by the emotional rush of pressure and speed, she can therefore judge them more objectively.

• I ask a client what would happen if she were out of the loop from say 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. (supper and sleep time). Would her business collapse? Would she lose her job? Sometimes the answer to this question is “yes,” or more precisely “yes, I think so.” More often, though, the answer is a reluctant “no.”

• I ask her to elaborate on how any potential job loss might happen and who is in charge of making it happen.

• I ask her what her definitions of her role are.

• I ask her how closely her definitions of her roles coincide with the definitions her manager has of them, and when they last checked in with each other on this issue.

• I ask her to state how long she plans to stay in this position, and what her mental, emotional, and career-oriented breaking points might be.

• Most important, I ask her to write down my questions and her answers.

It’s fair to say that certain jobs are different, and there are requirements particular to each. If a client’s job requires her to be on call for certain periods, that’s fair enough. Maybe a lot of business gets done on Mondays and Tuesdays between 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. But for those clients who profess to be on call all day and night every day of the year, I ask them openly: What is driving this level of expectation, this willingness to put in a superhuman amount of on-call duty? Is it the company? The job? The boss? Or is it fear?

The Cost of Globalization

Sometimes the fear of being out of the loop is not internally driven but actually has its roots in the external world, specifically the global business world, where clients, suppliers, and co-workers from different hemispheres and time zones demand attention. It doesn’t even have to be a “global” thing. Many North American workers struggle with the logistics of satisfying the needs of their colleagues on both coasts of their own country. When I see companies with global time allocation problems of this sort, I ask to see their standards manual or time zone policy. Usually they don’t have one. And that reminds me of the good old days when email was just a pup.

When email technology was unleashed upon the world in the mid- to late-1990s, very few companies had any sort of operations guidelines. They were quick to legislate rules regarding personal use, the dissemination of confidential material, as well as a ban on pornographic and other hostile content, of course. But they offered very little guidance as to how the medium should be used.

To this day, there are hundreds upon hundreds of organizations that have not established comprehensive email policies. Nor have they quantified the cost, in dollars, hours, and productivity, that an underdeveloped email policy has wrought. The simplest example of this was described in Chapter 1, in which we saw how so many knowledge workers spend their prime productivity time responding to emails simply because they are there. To me that’s like parking your car on the office flowerbed simply because it’s closer to the door. Any company that has a global reach in terms of clients and/or suppliers needs to find the time to implement a time-zone strategy that ensures top-quality service from its head-office staff. That’s obvious, of course. But let’s look at an example.

Case Study: Time Trials

Joe works for ABC Company based in Boston. He puts in a full day of work and tries to get home by 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. most nights. The problem is, ABC’s West Coast office has recently downsized some of its staff, and as a consequence, Joe has been assigned to take care of the needs of this team. Joe knows that every night he will receive two or more calls from the West Coast, since 8:30 p.m. on Joe’s watch is only 5:30 p.m. Pacific time. Joe says he doesn’t mind this, as he considers it to be part of his job, but he is starting to resent the imposition upon his personal time.

Given what you’ve learned about the chemistry of sleep and presenteeism, what might the prognosis be for Joe’s ability to maintain top-level service both in the Boston office and for his colleagues in the West?

My feeling is the prognosis is poor. Sooner or later Joe will make a mistake and will have to pay for it. He is acting out of the fear of being left out of the loop in conjunction with an imposed expectation that he will answer these coast-to-coast calls.

My suggestion would be for him and his manager to draw some time maps. I suggest that he create an image that tangibly highlights the optimum overlaps of time that will ensure that the needs of the West Coast office can be met without requiring Joe to stay awake until midnight. This approach requires compromise, but more importantly, it will help influence and guide the actions of the West Coast team, to know that, with the exception of true emergencies, a distinct envelope of time exists for live communication.

Such a technique might not please everybody fully, and that’s where a lot of the fear comes in. But what it will do is to draw up an accepted and understood plan of operations. This will help dissolve the fear of the loop and replace it with clearer, more productive thought.

The Achilles Heel of the U.S. Dream Team

The fear of being out of the loop, and the resultant desire to answer emails and other surface-level messages at any time of day or night puts the vast productivity potential of the North American workforce at a profound disadvantage precisely at the point in world history when it needs depth and creativity more than ever.

How to Prevent Superficial Attitudes from Creeping into the Workplace Culture

• First, recognize that such a danger exists. Recognize that speed generates a greater potential for complacency and error.

• Take a page from the world of project management in which all actions require closure: Allow time to review key activities, to perform post-mortems or debriefs before moving ahead. Track both positive and negative developments as they happen.

• Practice Management by Walking Around (MBWA) and empower others to do the same. No one knows better the advantages and disadvantages of a system (or its replacement) than the people on the front line.

• Quantify the current culture of fear in your workplace. What are you afraid of? What are other people afraid of? What is being done to make these fears tangible so that they may be confronted?

• Allow time to review what competitors and the marketplace are doing. Check with mentors. Observe and communicate new pest practices.

• Remember the old phrase: There is only one way that a person (or company) can coast, and that is downhill.

To illustrate this, observe Thomas Freidman’s analysis of the U.S. Basketball “Dream Team” of the 2004 Olympic Games from his book, The World Is Flat.²This was the team that was trumpeted as the Goliath of the Games. It consisted of physically huge, talented, and experienced players from what was supposed to be the best, most powerful, and certainly the richest basketball league in the world, the NBA. Yet they were trounced by countries such as Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina. Their defeats were made more humiliating by the players’ international celebrity. It was a fiasco.

What went wrong? Freidman argues that the attitude of the NBA had changed over time from a team sport in which players drilled on team plays, which included strategy, planning, and a certain degree of anonymity, to one in which the sole important factor was the individual’s way-cool lay-up or the nothing-but-net dunk. In other words, they went for the basketball equivalent of the sound bite or photo-op: fast, intense, and impressive, but lacking the substance of a winning strategy.

If corporations, Freidman says, could remember failures of this nature, in which the strategy for victory ends up being based on the superficial and in which the energies of players end up being used for short-term turnaround of strategically insignificant components, then they might be able to foresee and avoid their own demise. This, I believe, applies to people like Joe and to the people who employ him as well as to all the companies and individuals who believe their own star status when it comes to staying in the loop. By assigning Joe the responsibility of taking all calls, his employers opted for a superficial solution: one that seems to solve the problem, but instead sets the stage for error and failure, which might still take management by surprise. Whether due to fatigue, overload, or error, more and more companies are going to start losing more and more games to upstart teams from lesser-known countries. That’s a big price to pay.

FEAR OF SAYING NO

Next on people’s big list of fears is that of simply saying no, whether to the boss, to a client, or to a colleague. This fear predates the advent of high-speed technology, of course, but it has certainly been compounded in an age where it is not only quicker and easier to avoid having to negotiate, but one in which people have lost the ability and the know-how to do just that. It’s a lot easier to simply say, “Put it on my desk; I’ll get to it when I can,” or “Send me an email on that.”

“No” is a bad word. We were taught its negative connotations way back when we were infants. But those who take the time to investigate the value of a cool approach will recognize that “no” comes in shades, not just black and white. There is room for negotiation under the canopy that stretches between yes and no; there is a mutually acceptable mid-ground. But finding it is a practiced art. If using no in your answer, you must factor in the necessary footholds that allow a requestor to accept your response.

Footholds for Negotiation

When confronted with a request, what are the alternatives to yes? Could you:

• Negotiate to do the task at a later time?

• Suggest a different person who might be able to take it on?

• Offer to do part of the task instead of all of it?

• Offer to trade one task for another?

• Assist the requestor in locating possible alternate solutions?

Could you negotiate for any of these alternatives, or do they seem too confrontational, too uncomfortable? This is the type of skilled human interaction that the age of email has eroded. How many of us, after all, are comfortable with haggling task for task, face to face? Very few.

The objective of this section is to state firmly that a yes without reservation does nothing but condition the requestor to expect the same deal every time. It sets the stage for a moral debt of servitude that compounds an already crowded day. And that’s not healthy.

Case Study: Could You Say No to This Person?

Alan comes by your desk and drops a folder in front of you. He puts on a pained and helpless expression. “This is a copy of my report to the Development Committee,” he says, “I just need you to proofread it, maybe add a little bit to the recommendations, you know—your usual magic. But I do need it back by 11:00. That’s when the committee is meeting.” It’s currently 9:15 a.m. What do you do?

If I were the person approached by Alan, here’s what I would not do. I would not say “no” to him outright. After all, he is a co-worker. Even though he’s in the wrong in expecting me to drop everything at such short notice, I will still have to work with him on a daily basis.

But assuming none of the footholds for negotiation outlined in the list above is possible, what then? If I were to say yes, without reservation, I would be conditioning Alan to know that he could make the same request again, at any time. That wouldn’t be good.

So what I would do is this: I would use the power of slow to think through a better solution. “I will do this proofreading for you, Alan,” I would say, “but my price is 15 minutes of your time, for a follow-up meeting, this afternoon.”

The objective of this 15-minute meeting would be to discuss a more appropriate approach to the planning and proofing of his documents. Perhaps, if Alan needs me to play a part in his future projects, I can get him to agree to give me a minimum 24-hours’ notice. I do not intend to scold or belittle Alan by doing this, but I do need to demonstrate to him that time is money, and my time, just like my money, is not something I give away freely. I intend to remove any preconception of my unlimited ability and replace it with an understanding, a business relationship.

Such is the strategic value of slow. The meeting will require 15 minutes from my afternoon. But that slow interlude will allow for a better use of my time whenever Alan and I need to work together again, and will likely reduce the number of times he asks for favors. If I had been too preoccupied with my wireless PDA at the time of his initial request, I would have set myself up for years of similar last-minute requests, with no-one to blame but myself.

The Bag of Guilt

I have met many people who have sought different ways to handle the guilt or frustration they feel for either saying no—or for not saying no. Some will try to dilute the sensation of guilt by taking home a loaded briefcase full of work that either didn’t get done during the day because they took on additional requests, or full of new work that they took on out of an inability to say no. This briefcase travels home with them, full, but it does not get opened. It sits overnight full of work and returns next day to the office, still full of work. Somewhere in the act of carrying this extra burden, the briefcase owner derives a certain liberation, as if by carrying the work to and from his home he alleviates the guilt he would feel if he left the work behind at the office.

I applaud these people for not allowing work to chronically take over their home lives. I applaud the fact that once both the briefcase and its owner arrive home, the pleasure of home takes over and the briefcase stays in the hall—full, fat, and no longer important. The fact that it comes back the next day in the same condition, while its owner continues to hold her job, to do well on the annual review, to get bonuses, and to be seen as a team player is testament to the fact that much of what we do at work can wait.

Vicariously Living Out Our Fears

In my previous book, Cool Time, I mentioned how I believed the success of the various “Survivor” shows on television was due in large part to the cultural era of schadenfreude in which we now live. Schadenfreude is a German word meaning “taking pleasure in the misfortune of others,” as happens each time a tribe member is booted off the island or an apprentice is fired. Our collective sense of powerlessness that comes from being so time-stressed requires an outlet, and reality TV provides the perfect venue. Why else is so much camera time given to the reactions of the losers at the moment of their ultimate humiliation? If the shows were just about adventure, the losers would not be shown to such a degree. But that’s not the case. We need to see them suffer in order to feel better about ourselves.

It seems now that these schadenfreude shows are evolving, continually keeping pace with the frustrations felt in real life by their viewers. A cooking show, for example, features a superstar chef who explodes with rage and actually assaults his hapless interns with the very food they’re trying to prepare. Through this exercise, we viewers can experience vicariously the type of “no” we would really like to say, or perhaps the reactions that we fear might come our way if we ourselves were to use that word.

People have been throwing Christians to the lions in one form or another for thousands of years. It would be incorrect to attribute the success of these schadenfreude shows exclusively to the fears and frustrations of high-speed life, but I think their huge popularity can be attributed in part to the motivations and tensions that we all experience.

How to Foster Creativity in Your Workplace

• Given that fear of slowing down is the greatest obstacle to encouraging creativity, the first step is to recognize that creative thought, experimentation, and blue-skying are not excuses to get away from work but opportunities to develop new innovations. In other words, eliminate the fear of silence and view it as action in its own right.

• Identify patterns in the work week or month in which time could be assigned to creative activities without losing out on current productivity opportunities. Is mid-month quieter than month-end, for example? Are Fridays before long weekends as busy as a typical Tuesday?

• Create a “war-room” or creativity room in which ideas can be shared visually on wall charts and other devices. This not only acknowledges and reinforces creative behavior, it also allows for a meeting of minds, where synergy can truly happen.

• Ensure that senior management participate in creativity exercises. Give workers concrete knowledge that management is behind them. Eliminate the fear that may be holding other staff members back from innovation.

• Adopt a policy by which each staff member can qualify to use a certain percentage of company time for tinkering. Consider that this was how a number of major inventions (such as 3M’s Post-It note) happened.

THE FEAR OF EMPTINESS

The final fear to consider here is that of emptiness, the idea that space or time with nothing in it is somehow wasted, that continuous stimulation is the pulse of society. Fear of emptiness is natural. It stems from the fear of the unknown, one of the most primal of all fears. Fear of emptiness fuels our desire for constant stimulation, and the electronic world obliges.

But emptiness is not to be feared. Natural apprehension can be consciously overruled without the need to become a monk or a hermit.

• In Chapter 2, I highlighted the power of the seven-second silence as a key tool for eliciting creativity from people.

• In Chapter 5, I described the value of staring at your shoes during an elevator ride, staring at your coffee in the coffee shop, and staring out of the window during the train ride. All are examples of emptiness that yield great fullness.

• In Chapter 7, I addressed the concept of active listening, which refers to the art of staying quiet in order to allow your conversation partner to do most of the talking.

These are all examples in which emptiness yields greater power. People fear emptiness in action. Busy-ness, it seems, satisfies the desire to feel busy. But what if you were allowed, as part of your job, to not be busy, at least for a while? What if you were allowed to tune out, to doodle, to think with no outside distraction? What might come of it?

The Ben Franklin Forum on Innovation, presented by Knowledge@ Wharton, at the University of Pennsylvania, describes the well-documented retreats that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is famous for taking every year at his cottage in Washington State. His strategy has allowed Microsoft to stay “a giant with a market capitalization of nearly $300 billion… [yet]…it retains the agility of a startup when it comes to introducing new products and improving old ones.”³ Imagine. The world’s richest businessman, with so much pressure and so many things to occupy his time allowing himself to disappear and think like that.

The Wharton School forum also cites this example. “After becoming boss of Xerox in 2001, Anne Mulcahy wanted to pump up that company’s innovative abilities even as she pared away costs. She sought out the advice of one Xerox researcher responsible for a large number of patents. ‘He said that most innovation happens by accident and experiment, not design,’ she recalled in a recent speech at Wharton. ‘It’s allowing people to push barriers.’”⁴

The thinkers at Wharton don’t advocate that people wander around aimlessly, of course, but they do suggest strongly that a structure be put in place that encourages creativity. And this is another place where the benefits of cooling down become tangible. To me, the poster child for this type of approach still remains 3M, with its policy of encouraging their staff to spend 10 percent of their time tinkering, experimenting, and generally blue-skying. Just such an approach was eventually responsible for the invention of the Post-It note.

Fear of any sort is not to be feared. It is a reaction, and as such can be anticipated and refined. Fear is a living thing. It feeds on speed, and it is contagious. But the good news is it can be starved if people take the time to cut off its supply. And the best news of all is the opposite state of fear, that of being calm and cool, is also contagious, and equally abundant—yours for the taking.

KEY POINTS TO TAKE AWAY

• One of the most significant human abilities to have been drowned out is the ability to confront fear.

• You can deal with the fear of losing your job first by writing out your fears and their resolutions and identifying your value statement.

• The act of writing out thoughts, ideas, and worries is a powerful antidote to fear.

• The Art of War is not a book about rushing into conflict headlong and without due preparation. It’s about victory through the principles of slow.

• The fear of offending the client can be countered by reinforcing the relationship through trust and time.

• People read books and people meet because tangible connection outshines high-speed communication.

• The fear of being out of the loop represents a possible fear of being left out.

• If a company is to embrace globalization and 24/7 accessibility, it must create a policy for its practical deployment, including time allocations for answering multi-time-zone phone inquiries.

• “No” is often perceived as a bad word and this fuels our fear of saying no. Those who slow down can learn the art of negotiation, which seeks a mutually acceptable mid-ground.

• The fear of emptiness looks at the discomfort some people feel with silence and inactivity. There is a strategic advantage in allowing silence to enter into conversations and meetings. Silence and inactivity are usually key watersheds in the development of creative ideas.

HOW TO COOL DOWN

• How has the fear of losing your job (or losing a promotion) influenced your approach to implementing change?

• When you feel fear, what do you do about it?

• Have you ever written your fears out and analyzed them “as an outsider?”

• Remember that written “Fear Statements” can be used as part of a discussion with a manager or customer. Tangible demonstrations of your plans and concerns can go a long way towards identifying a mutually acceptable solution.

• What irks you at work? What small or large sources of friction can you identify? What approach might you take to ensure this friction does not fester? Consider, for example, having a meeting with the person who is the source of the friction, possibly with a third person (a mediator) in the room.

• What fears do you have about your clients? In what ways do you fear offending them? Use the following checklist to help with your answers:

• In what way do I fear my actions will offend my customer?

• What is my customer expecting of me?

• Why does the customer do business with me in the first place?

• What do I believe will drive the customer away?

• What can I do to counteract this?

• Have I recently taken the time to ask all of my customers these questions?

• When you feel conflict or other uncomfortable issues coming along, what is your chosen method of communication? Why? Could you identify a better means to communicate?

• When you feel obliged to say “yes” to another person’s request, how many other options do you consider before agreeing? For example, could you:

• Negotiate to do the task at a later time?

• Suggest a different person who might be able to take it on?

• Offer to do part of the task instead of all of it?

• Offer to trade one task for another?

• Assist the requestor in locating possible alternate solutions?

• Say yes to the requestor on the condition that she observes, learns, and takes accountability for this task next time?

• Have you ever feared emptiness/silence? Why? What does it represent to you? What might emptiness/silence do for you if it were given a chance?

Friedman, Thomas, L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Farrar Straus Giroux, Expanded and Updated edition (April 30, 2006), pp. 324-325.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=1398Feb 27, 2006

Ibid.

BUSY AS YOU ARE,
THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT
TO CARVE YOUR FUTURE.

FEAR OF OFFENDING THE CLIENT

Why Do People Read Books?

FEAR OF BEING OUT OF THE LOOP