Twenty

Workplace

Periphery quiz item #20:

Stop the meeting. I want to get off!

The workplace is full of energy drains, even for people who work at home. You open Outlook and get sucked into the e-mail vortex. You open your Internet browser and spend an hour surfing, and then realize you have a headache. A coworker drops by to chat, and you can literally feel your energy drain as he drones on and on. You attend a meeting where minutes are taken but much time is wasted. Lo and behold, hours have passed, and you’ve expended precious energy without much return. In this chapter, you’ll look at how much you allow external interruptions to dictate your schedule. You’ll figure out how to keep your typical distractions at bay and prevent disruptions and disturbances. I’ll help you eliminate your excuses, build barriers, create preventive assertions, and challenge your thinking. We’ll try to create situations that are suited to concentrated, focused work without interruptions.

ENERGY BANDIT #1 | Understaffing and overcommitment

When my husband, John, and I had our first child in 2000, he left his job as a letter carrier at the United States Postal Service and came to work in our business. Admittedly, this was a difficult transition for him. As a letter carrier, your work is self-evident. In the morning, you have a big pile of mail. At the end of the day, it’s gone. And if you try to take your work home with you, they will come and find you. It’s finished. Complete. It has a beginning and an end. He worked hard, but if he had too much mail, it waited for the next day. Now, as the COO of our company, it’s tougher for him to “finish.” He now has a lot more ideas about what to do to grow our company than time to do it. How about you? Do you have more things to do than time to do them? Do your tasks seem to pile up faster each day? Have you ever finished? Most people haven’t. As a result, they often lie awake at night with all those to-dos running around in their heads.

Not only do you have a lot on your plate, but you often inherit the work of someone who leaves, is downsized, or goes on parental leave or short-term disability. Many organizations don’t replace those jobs but simply split up the tasks of people who leave and divvy them up among a few others. Or simply give the job to one person, requiring that poor sap to do the work of all three. It’s no wonder people don’t have the energy to drag themselves out of bed and head to the office each day. If you have too much to do and too little time to do it, your job is interfering with your personal life, you work on your own time, or the sheer volume of work interferes with how well you do it, you are on track for burnout.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Speak up when you have too much on your plate

Try the following verbal techniques to call attention to overwork:

• Negotiate to extend the deadline. Say something like, “Do you need that today, or would Monday be okay?”

• Simplify and try to reduce the scope of the task. “At what level of detail does this need to be done?”

• Communicate by being honest about what’s on your plate. “Here’s a list of the things I’m working on in priority order. Where would you say this falls?”

• Reduce quality. Can the task be done at 85 percent rather than 100 percent perfect? “What level of perfection is required here?”

• Delegate. Can you form a committee? Can you hire a contractor? “Can I get help on this, or do I need to do it myself?”

• Streamline by doing it more efficiently or changing a process. “Can we skinny this down a bit?”

• Get creative. How else could you meet the request? Suggest an alternative way to get the result, other than what the boss outlined or the way you’re doing it now. “It might be more efficient if I had access to your calendar, rather than sending you an e-mail or calling you.”

• Partial delivery. Can you do a piece now and pieces later? Set milestones for delivery. “I can get this first part done today and get the rest to you by Friday.”

• Redirect by asking the requester to send it to someone else if it doesn’t belong on your plate. “That request actually goes through IT; I’ll make sure they know about this problem.”

ENERGY BANDIT #2 | Wanting to feel needed

Everyone wants you in his or her meeting. You are the power broker. Your in-box is full of meeting requests, all of which you accept. Your calendar is so full of people wanting a piece of you that you have no time left to work. Sound familiar?

ENERGY BOOSTER | Be unavailable

That’s right. When someone says, “Do you have a minute?” it’s okay to say, “Not right now.” You don’t have to be rude or impolite, but you do have to be honest. Over the years, you have trained people how to treat you, and you’re giving a lesson right this very second. If your behavior shouts, “I’m available at all times, so bother me,” you will never have a moment’s peace; everything and everyone will be vying for your attention. How do you keep those distractions, pop-in visitors, and interruptions at bay? By managing your availability, you will gain the space of time and mind to complete your most important tasks.

You can say, “I do want to talk with you about this, and I’m buried in another deadline right now. Can I call you at ten o’clock tomorrow?” Or you can push back by saying (without sarcasm), “I have just one minute. Are you sure that’s all you’ll need?” Do not smile. When the person says, “Oh, uh, well, actually, maybe ten minutes,” then you can say, “Oh, in that case I’ll need to ask you to set up some time to chat. I’m right in the middle of a train of thought and want to give my full attention to what you’re discussing.” Unless it’s your job to be interrupted (receptionist, customer-service phone operator, administrative assistant, and so forth), then it’s acceptable not to respond to everyone’s beck and call. Come up with some sort of signal with your team that indicates to everyone else that now is not a good time. It can be a flag, a sign, a banner, or any other physical cue that tells coworkers you’re busily concentrating on a task. Have an understanding that if there’s an emergency, coworkers can still feel free to interrupt, but if they were simply coming by for a little social interaction or a question that isn’t pressing, the signal tells them to please come back later. Here are some other methods to manage your availability:

• For meetings, unless you see a clear agenda with the objectives and outcome and the specific reason you are being invited to it, decline the request (unless it’s your boss). Don’t let people get away with inviting you just in case. Make sure the meeting purpose is a good return on your time investment. Get out of as many meetings as possible.

• If your presence is required for only a small portion of the meeting, call the meeting leader. Ask for your report to be first on the agenda. After speaking and answering questions, leave.

• Push the value of the meeting down to the lowest common denominator and send your assistant, if at all possible, in your stead. First, think about the length of the particular meeting you’ve been invited to. Second, think about the cost of that meeting, given your salary level. Third, think about the opportunity cost, in terms of what you could do instead of attending the meeting. Fourth, think about whether your assistant is capable and knowledgeable enough to sit in on the meeting. Fifth, contemplate whether you’ve given him or her enough authority to be able to take an agenda item off the table. It’s frustrating for meeting attendees to hear from your delegate, “I’ll have to check with so-and-so and get back to you.” They would much rather hear, “I can absolutely ensure that will happen and can have the results to you by Thursday.”

• I once taught a seminar where someone told me he is invited to meetings because people don’t want to hurt his feelings by not including him. He just sits there with no input and can’t figure out why his presence was requested. There should be open communication about attendance; when necessary, say that you don’t feel you need to be there and ask if your attendance is required.

ENERGY BANDIT #3 | Being unprepared for meetings

My favorite Chance card in Monopoly is “Get out of Jail Free.” Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a “Get out of a Meeting Free” card? That would be worth a mint.

Meetings and social events at work are a central fact of organizational life. As a vehicle for communication, they can be extremely valuable mechanisms for disseminating vision, crafting strategic plans, and developing responses to challenges and opportunities. They can also be helpful for gathering ideas, brainstorming, and generating higher levels of employee involvement. But too many meetings, where time is wasted and no decisions are made, are a source of energy drain.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Prepare to have a great meeting

The productivity of any meeting actually starts before the meeting begins. These planning elements determine whether or not the meeting will be a success:

• Require an agenda twenty-four hours in advance, with the responsible person and the time listed next to each item, in order of priority. A statement of the purpose for the meeting should be included.

• If it’s a conference call with participants in different time zones, put people in later time zones at the beginning of the agenda.

• Ensure that all invitees really need to be there.

• Send a delegate in your place if the person is capable of making decisions and can sign off on or take responsibility for completing a task. Let the leader know you’re sending someone.

• Distribute materials twenty-four hours in advance. State what people are expected to bring or report on.

• Meetings should end fifteen minutes before the top of the hour, to allow people to get to the next meeting without being late.

• Match the importance and complexity of the issue to the length of the meeting.

• Meet for issues involving discussion only, not FYI items.

• Come prepared and read advance materials.

ENERGY BANDIT #4 | Chaos during meetings

The meeting drags on too long. There are side conversations. People are tapping e-mails on their BlackBerries while someone is talking. The discourtesies abound. You spend ninety minutes in what should have been a forty-five-minute meeting and leave with your energy flagging and frustrated.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Create a meeting code of conduct

The next time you attend a staff or committee meeting, request the opportunity to lead an exercise aimed at making meetings more productive and less draining. Tell the group you would like to discuss some guidelines and protocols about meetings. Standing in front of a flip chart, ask the group, “If you were king or queen of the world, what rules would you make about meetings, to make them as productive as possible? What makes you crazy about our meetings? How do we waste time?” and list the statements people make. Type these up, title it “Code of Conduct,” put it on a piece of 8¹/2 × 11-inch paper, and take it to a print shop to be blown up into a poster-sized piece of paper. Frame it and hang it in the meeting rooms to remind people about proper behavior in a meeting. Following are some sample guidelines:

• If the leader or key decision maker no-shows, attendees may leave after ten minutes.

• Use a timekeeper (appointed by the leader) to keep the meeting on target and follow the agenda.

• Appoint a scribe for the meeting. When something comes up that’s not on the agenda, the scribe records it on the flip chart. If there is time at the end of the meeting, those items can be addressed. If time runs out, they roll over to the next meeting agenda.

• Action items are recorded as “who/what/when” on a flip chart. The scribe types these up after the meeting and distributes them within forty-eight hours.

• Meetings will start and stop on time, unless all in attendance agree to extend the time.

• Try to finish early if possible; don’t stretch the meeting.

• Attendees may get up and leave at the stated end time.

• Eliminate any discussion that involves only two people.

• Don’t stop meetings to bring latecomers up-to-date.

ENERGY BANDIT #5 | Coworkers constantly interrupt your flow

You’re right in the middle of a great train of thought on a creative-writing project, and a peer pops his head into your office and, without waiting to be acknowledged, starts talking. You glance up, about to ask if he can come back, when you realize you have lost your idea anyway.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Schedule your interruptions

Perhaps one of the reasons you’re being interrupted so frequently is you’re never around and available. This is especially true of people who travel for a living or spend most of the day wrapped up in meetings. It’s understandable that you’ll be pounced upon by your assistant when you suddenly emerge, because she’s been waiting to ask you questions for two days. Here are some ways you can actually plan for and around interruptions:

• Schedule regular check-in times. If you have an assistant, you’ll want to set up a regular time (or several times) each day or week to touch base. Have your assistant save up all the questions he or she has and ask them all at once during your regularly scheduled meeting. This process keeps your assistant from interrupting you ten times a day to ask you one thing and instead uses one meeting to ask you ten things. Similarly, if your boss is the one you aren’t able to pin down, suggest this process for yourself.

• Block out interruptible times. One human resources director I worked with figured out that she was interrupted every eleven minutes. Although talking with employees was important, she had to work late just to get her work done because she couldn’t get the space of mind to finish a task through completion. I suggested she block out several time periods each day and ask people to “sign up” instead. She scheduled an “Interruption” block in her Outlook calendar from 9:00 to 11:00 and 1:00 to 3:00 each day, printed her calendar sheets, and taped them to the counter of the reception area. Her assistant fielded interruptions, telling employees she now scheduled discussions by appointment, and people willingly checked the blocks of time and signed up for a thirty-minute meeting. If it was an absolute emergency (the HR director had already briefed her assistant on what issues were deemed an emergency), the appointment was waived. Perhaps you won’t block out four hours a day as she did, but you can use the concept to communicate to peers, internal customers, and subordinates the times you’re willing to be interrupted. Think of it as a limited “open door” policy: only open at certain times. You might think it won’t work, but would you expect your hairstylist to allow you to drop by when she’s not working? Would you then get upset that she didn’t respond to your beck and call? Believe me, people will get used to it.

• Set aside downtime. One architecture firm I worked with established a firm no-interruption time during the hours of 9:00 to 10:30 every morning. How would you like to have ninety minutes of complete concentration every day, when meetings aren’t allowed, instant messaging is disabled, phones are forwarded to voice mail, no interruptions are allowed, and the e-mail servers are turned off? Drastic? But wildly popular for the people who could actually focus on completing an important task without being distracted. You probably won’t be able to swing this policy company-wide, but you could try to work it out with those whom you work with most. You are probably interrupted by a core group of people throughout the day, so work with your team to establish this downtime, dedicated to real work.

• Attach a big STOP sign to your cubicle entry and wear your headset (possibly without any music—people will think you’re listening to something). When crunch time comes, all you have to do is turtle up and leave a note on your door explaining the situation. Or tape a big X with masking tape across the entry with a sign saying, IF YOU INTERRUPT ME, THERE HAD BETTER BE BLOOD INVOLVED.

ENERGY BANDIT #6 | Being unwilling to challenge things that waste your time

Many company policies don’t make any sense but still waste inordinate amounts of time and energy. It reminds me of the story of the little girl who was watching her mother prepare their holiday ham. She unwrapped and cleaned it, sliced the ends off, and put it in the pan. She put cloves, pineapple, and cherries on it and put it in the oven. The little girl asked, “Mommy, why did you cut the ends off the ham?” The mother replied, “Because my mother always did. Let’s call her and find out.” So they called Grandma and asked the same question. “Hmmm, that’s a good one. You’ll have to call Momma and ask.” So the mother put in a call to the elderly great-grandmother of the little girl. “Nanna, why did you cut the ends off the ham?” “Why, dear,” replied the old woman, “my pan wasn’t big enough to hold it.” Do you ever hear “That’s just the way we’ve always done it” at your company, even if it defies all logic?

ENERGY BOOSTER | Challenge the status quo

Some of the company rules you must abide by don’t make any sense. For years, I’ve heard employees in my productivity seminars complain about their information technology (IT) departments. I believe some of these complaints have valid justifications, and in those cases I stick up for IT. For example, “IT won’t let me load personal software on my machine or visit the sites I want to see” has a justified reason, since doing so would create a staffing nightmare as workers seek help on nonsupported applications. It could also create security concerns and open the door to system viruses. Restricting certain Internet sites makes sense, as I just can’t think of a good reason why employees would need to watch X-rated videos at work. However, not having a desktop printer is a major pain, an energy drain, and a productivity sucker. Having to walk down the hall to the printer is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard of in a while. Holy cow, I print continually. Even those with handheld devices still have piles of paper all over their desks. It’s crazy to think about how much people make per hour times the number of employees in an organization, all walking down the hall to the shared printer, where of course they’re likely to stumble into Chatty Suzy, who wants to tell you about the latest flowers blooming in her garden. You get to the printer—darn it, it didn’t print out; someone accidentally took my stuff with theirs; it’s not what I thought I printed; the margins are cut off; and so forth—BACK to the office to print again. I don’t care about how hard it is to service all those printers. Get a contractor to handle it. Printers are cheap. The cost of not having a printer on the desktop of every employee is a huge productivity and profitability drain. If they won’t buy one for you, bring your own. Keep yelling. Keep complaining. I know of several employees who made enough of a fuss that the policy was actually changed just for them.

ENERGY BANDIT #7 | Not having the tools you need to get the job done efficiently

Although you don’t want to be checking your BlackBerry constantly while you’re at home with your family, it does come in handy while you’re traveling. I love being able to get my e-mail while I’m in a taxi on the way to the hotel and clear out my in-box. When I return to my office after the trip, I don’t have hundreds of e-mails piled up. But perhaps your job description doesn’t fit some predefined requirement on who gets a handheld and who doesn’t.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Argue for the tools and equipment you need

Due to the nature of your job, you might be far more productive if you had instant access to your company’s e-mail, calendar, and contacts when you’re on the road. You will need to build a business case about how a handheld will improve your productivity level and present it to your boss. Upon your return, you would have more energy to do other work rather than wade through your e-mail. Additionally, if your personality and job situation are more suited to electronic means, you’d waste less time and energy searching for things than in a paper system. You might be forced to print your Outlook calendar, schlep it home, write on it manually, and carry it back to work to update it again, just to keep things organized. If you absolutely can’t get your boss to buy you a handheld, suck it up and buy it yourself.

Many organizations are out of touch with the business reality of what their workers are dealing with. For example, I’ve actually seen a policy where employees were not allowed to load personal information in Outlook. Ridiculous. People don’t simply turn off their private lives when they walk through their office door, and they don’t stop thinking about work at home, either. Keep stamping your feet and speaking up loudly until you’re heard. The expression “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” is very true here. If you’re sick of hiking down the hall to the shared printer to get your printouts, request your own local printer. If they say no, go to your boss, then go to his boss, then go to the IT manager—go to anyone who will listen. When you provide a valid business justification and show how much money they are wasting by making you walk to your printouts, you’ll be far more likely to get your way.

ENERGY BANDIT #8 | Repetitiveness and redundancy

Once you’ve performed a task several times, you have the luxury of trying to figure out how to do it more efficiently with less energy exerted.

ENERGY BOOSTER | Become more efficient and get things done more quickly

Some tasks that are done over and over again can be done more efficiently. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Can you create a checklist to handle repetitive tasks quickly? Before I leave for a speaking engagement, I have to know that certain things are in place: books are shipped, travel arrangements are made, workbook copies have been produced, an LCD projector will be available, and so forth. So we automated the process of providing this information to me. At the time of the booking, each staff person includes a checklist in the central client hard-copy file and marks things off as they are accomplished and put in the file. I simply have to pull the file, scan the checklists, and see what’s been done and any exceptions. It ensures that each person completes all the necessary tasks prior to an engagement, and I don’t have to ask whether things have been completed.

• Can you lower your standards? Does it have to be done perfectly? I worked with the president of a car manufacturing company who called someone in IT to get a figure to put into his presentation. The president was thinking the guy would spend fifteen minutes on it and be able to quickly ballpark a number to drop into his speech. Turns out the employee spent ten hours coming up with an exact number to seven digits, when the president was looking for only a high-level guess—5 million or 50 million? Both of them were at fault. The president should have said, “I’m looking for this type of number, and I’m thinking it will just take you fifteen minutes or so to ballpark it plus or minus a few million dollars. Does that sound reasonable?” Then the employee could have told him how much time it would actually take to come up with that figure and the president could have decided if it was worth it for that particular speech.

• Can you use a shortcut? How about a standard response template? I found myself responding to the same types of e-mails and providing the same information over and over again, such as replying to media requests for quotes, thanking people for kind feedback to a presentation, sending invoices, and so forth. I used to keep standard templates in Microsoft Word and cut and paste them into Outlook. But I have saved SO much time by setting up the standard templates as “Signatures” in Microsoft Outlook and titling them by the type of response or letter. I simply create or reply to the e-mail, hit insert, then signature, then pick the name of the signature, customize a couple of things, and hit send. Simple! What a great shortcut.