CHAPTER 14
IMPLEMENTATION: GETTING THERE FROM HERE
CHANGING THE STATUS QUO
SPACE TRAVEL FOR ANTS
The light-year is a term used to measure distances in space, and refers to how far something traveling at the speed of light could go in one calendar year. Since light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second, a light-year works out to about 5,880,000,000,000 miles. Even light from the sun takes eight minutes or so to reach Earth.
Traveling across galaxies therefore poses a monstrous challenge, since the voyage would last much longer than any crew member’s lifetime. But that’s only true, say some scientists, if you look at space the way we look at everything else—in three dimensions.
Imagine yourself instead as an ant, standing on one end of a rubber mat. To get to the other end, there’s only one thing to do:
You walk along the surface of the mat until you get to the other end. But suppose that rubber mat were bent into a U-shape. As an ant, with no awareness of the third dimension, you would still be forced to walk the length of the mat, down into the base of the U and then back up the other side, unaware that a simple leap from point A to point B would be much faster and more efficient. That’s what many quantum physicists feel is the secret to space travel: Rather than crossing the horizontal distance, we must learn to see our galactic neighborhood in a different dimension, in which the shortcuts may be right under our collective nose.
Back here on Earth, the rubber mat analogy is an invitation for you to consider the third I-word, the one that turns ideas into action. That word is implementation. Implementation means practice and change, both of which can be formidable obstacles. It challenges the attitude of “That’s how we’ve always done it.” If meetings are a major source of time wastage (as many people say they are), then change how they’re run. If customers or colleagues expect you to work on three things at once, then change their understanding and expectations of you. If commuting is a daily horror, then change how it’s done. Possibly one of the most difficult things about implementing new habits is getting them accepted by colleagues, clients, managers, and family. A fear of rocking the boat or appearing strange is a powerful disincentive toward putting efficient techniques into action.
Cool Time gives you the power to break free of the two-dimensional rubber-mat status quo to look for new avenues of positive achievement and proactive thinking.
• If you are the chairperson of the next meeting, then start applying Cool Time meeting principles. If you are not the chairperson, then find out who is and ask that person “Where’s the agenda?” “Who is the timekeeper?” “Who are you inviting?”
• If you want to get more out of your day, then start using an I-Beam Agenda and keystone time, but make sure to let your people know what these things are and how they would benefit—what’s in it for them.
• Construct your voicemail messages to guide callers, to manage their expectations, and satisfy their needs without sacrificing your precious working minutes, even if you’ve never done it before.
WHAT“CHANGE” AND “TRANSITION” MEAN
Most people are af raid of new things. They’d rather stick with what they have. “It may not be the best system,” they say, “but we know how it works.” That’s human nature. It’s nature, period. No sense in sticking your neck out into the unknown when it’s perfectly safe here.
But at the same time, humans are inherently innovative. We experiment and we learn. Both forces are at work within your corporate village.
When new habits are introduced into the community, they often fail because “change,” which refers to the new external event—the new procedure, the new thing—is brought in with no accompanying plan for “transition,” which is the internal process of psychological reorientation that each human must now undergo.
When a new regime or behavior is introduced, let’s say the fifty-five-minute meeting concept from Chapter 8, the people who introduce it focus more on getting the changes accomplished than on getting people used to them. “From now on,” they say, “meetings will last only fifty-five minutes. There will be a timekeeper, and the chairperson will have to circulate the agenda a day in advance.”
That’s not going to work. It will fail.
You have to let people let go of the past gradually. They may be fearful and want to go back to the way things used to be. “We’ve always run meetings a certain way since before you came along.” They may move forward with your idea, but with reluctance, waiting to see what happens to you—the “you first” scenario.
It may be necessary to transition our colleagues to buy in and observe the benefits slowly for themselves. This is why this book puts so much emphasis on influence, conditioning, and payback. Human comfort is the currency of change.
Adaptive capacity is the single most important attribute of successful leaders.
—Warren Bennis
THE BEST PRACTICES MEETING
A best practices meeting is a great way to introduce change into the workplace, since it allows for description, then discussion, negotiation, and finally an action plan. It’s your opportunity to practice collective conditioning. Your colleagues can get used to the idea of a new habit, and their concerns can be acknowledged.
• Give it appropriate meeting time. Whether you call a meeting dedicated to the topic of changing a specific habit, or include it as an agenda item in an upcoming meeting, ensure that it is given the attention and time it deserves.
• Describe the intended change. What is it about current procedure you propose to change?
• Describe the reasons for the change. Why now? Why at all?
• Describe the expected benefits of the change. Tell the company, the client, and the individuals in the room what the benefits of the change will be.
• Identify case studies or examples to support your proposition. People don’t like feeling they are moving into uncharted territory. They need to see proof that it has worked for others.
• Describe your expected time line for change. Recognize that change doesn’t happen overnight. There may be a 100-day or more time line to consider.
• Ask for input, positive and negative, from the group. Addressing their concerns and objections gets them out on the table and is the first step toward acceptance and forward movement. This, by the way, is most effective when the meeting agenda has been sent out in advance of the meeting (as per the fifty-five-minute meeting guidelines in Chapter 8). Attendees will have time to properly channel emotions rather than deal with them for the first time during the meeting.
• Propose a pilot project. Sometimes it is best to define the change activity as a pilot project, which gives participants the security of knowing if it doesn’t work out, they can return to what they know. This type of “escape route” is common to many of the Cool Time initiatives, since it meets people’s basic comfort concerns.
• Form an action plan with a time line. Create a plan that outlines how the new habit will be rolled out. For example, if the department were to adopt keystone times for all of the team, how would that affect other meetings, phone calls, etc.? Adopting a policy in which keystone time can be reserved between 9:00A.M. and noon only, and meetings booked between 1:00P.M. and 4:00P.M. only might be a generally workable approach.
• Establish benchmarks and review times. It’s not enough just to set sail. Your team will need to regroup on a regular basis to review the success or challenges that this rollout has presented. All best practices, whether team-wide or just between you and your manager, need scheduled review and benchmarking. Similarly, without regular review, it is easy for people to revert to old habits before the new ones stick.
THE ROLE MODEL
Nothing succeeds like success in these matters. Look for a role model in your office—someone who has already adopted the same type of best practices, whether consciously or after years of experience. Have her present at the best practices meeting, or at least summarize why she does what she does.
At all times, when educating adults in new habits, it is always necessary to allow them to come to their own conclusions if buy-in is to happen at all.
EMOTIONAL BEDROCK: BUILDING ON STONE
Cool Time principles within this book are neither difficult nor revolutionary. They consist of straightforward techniques in planning, communication, and working within the constraints of life. They also require an investment in time as well as conviction. People’s expectations and emotions must be managed proactively if they are to buy into your plan. But, as with all good investments, the end result will have a greater payoff than the initial outlay; otherwise it would not be worth doing.
In the real world, stone has been used as a solid building material for thousands of years. From the foundation up to the turrets, it has always been one of our strongest resources. Yet stone can also be carved and manipulated to fit the needs of the builder. It can support, yet conform to new shapes.
Bedrock, for example, is a solid layer of dense rock just below the Earth’s surface, upon which large buildings can be reliably constructed. Without it, a structure can slowly sink.
For the purposes of establishing Cool Time, “emotional bedrock” refers to an inner conviction that what we are doing is right; that the techniques, such as project management, upon which this book is built are time-honored and proven. This solid conviction gives us the confidence to move forward, the stability to embrace change.
When it’s time to explain to your manager why you want to establish keystone time, or why your estimation of a project’s time line is longer than she’d hoped, or why you insist that a meeting start and end at its posted time, this is when you can stand on this rock-solid conviction, this emotional bedrock, this understanding that the principles are right and that they do work. You can remind your manager that you’re both on the same side. Your mutual desire is improved productivity without added cost. You can also remind her (and yourself ) that you are not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of professionals out there for whom a calculated, intelligent, and cool approach to time management has already enhanced their collective lives in so many areas, such as productivity, reduced absenteeism and turnover, quality of communications, management, morale, customer retention, and, of course, a healthier balance sheet.
BUILDING A STAIRWAY
It is easier to climb a staircase than scale a wall. Similarly, success in implementing change will come through incremental advancement rather than a single wholesale adjustment.
Any of the Cool Time techniques you choose to undertake will be best achieved in small steps. At the gym, for example, your instructor will point out that the secret to a successful workout schedule, especially one that is brand new to your lifestyle, is one in which you start small—using lighter weights, shorter running distances, and briefer workout periods—gradually increasing and building on prior victories to allow your body and your schedule time to adjust and truly benefit.
If you were to go back to your office tomorrow and start to make major changes to the routine, there would probably be great resistance, not because the ideas are perceived as bad, necessarily, just that they’re different from what currently exists. Such rejection would be difficult for you, too, deflating your newfound optimism, putting yet another good idea out of reach, leaving another how-to book upon the shelf.
So start small. Make your improvements slowly over time, constantly communicating and sharing the “win-win,” appealing to the comfort concerns of your colleagues, and selling the benefits at every turn.
The same applies to you. Even if a Cool Time concept makes great sense and you can hardly wait to get started, it may be better if you take your time. If your calendar is booked solid for the next month, then small changes may be possible, but there may be no opportunity to make major changes such as regularly scheduled opportunity time, or establishing regular I-Beam Reviews and I-Beam Bases. But you can at least mark them into your calendar for the upcoming month and, in the interim, attempt smaller victories to start getting into the habit of defending your time against the current internal and external pressures of your life.
TEST AND MEASURE
In building a stone structure, a craftsman uses certain tools, including a plumb line, to constantly check and recheck that the stones are perpendicular and conforming to plan. This is not done just once, but constantly throughout the building process.
So it is with the establishment of new habits: At all times, remember to test and measure. How do you recognize progress unless you have something to compare it to? And how can you compare it if you do not give yourself time to do so? This is why the I-Beam Base exists—to allow time for continual improvement. And why the benchmarking meetings need to be scheduled after the best practices meeting—to actively seek additional benefit for yourself by reviewing which of the Cool Time principles work for you, which don’t, and which need adjustment. This is why even the most successful athletes spend time in practice—to ensure that improvement is always a top priority, as they measure how far they have actually come.
DEVELOPING HABITS: THE TWENTY-ONE-DAY RULE
THE CATAPULT
If you’ve ever operated a pocket catapult or a slingshot, the type with a Y-shaped handle and an elastic band for launching, you already know one simple fact of operation: To propel an object forward, you have to start by pulling backward. To make the tool work effectively, you have to move back one step, that is, by pulling and tensioning the band before you can propel the object forward.
To make use of a practical plan, to win back your time, to influence others, we need to take a couple of steps back first by planning, explaining, selling, or influencing. One step back for many steps forward. Without it, your plan—your projectile—will fall limply at your feet.
It takes twenty-one days for an action to move from a conscious undertaking to force of habit. This is another reason why people often fall off the wagon when it comes to making changes in their lives: They don’t stick with it long enough. Twenty-one days is a full working month—four five-day weeks. This is why pilot projects and benchmarking make such great sense. You might want to choose a quieter month of the year, if there is such a thing, to roll out your changes. Remember the principle of the reserved activity in Chapter 3. Enter your keystone times and your I-Beam Agenda activities now into your calendar for each business day into the future. Even if you have to edit or reschedule them, they’ll be there, waiting for you, ready for the work that is to come.
THE POWER OF RITUAL
Once new practices have been introduced and “sold” to your community, you can allow the procedures to settle themselves, like mortar, holding stones in place. You can take full advantage of the human preference for rhythm and ritual to establish a comfortable sequence of activities, such as an I-Beam Review scheduled for the same time each day, or an hour of keystone time assigned to every afternoon of the week.
Ritual not only makes action consistent, it has also been shown to manipulate moods. This goes back to our very first weeks of life when rituals of feeding, playing, and bedtime were first introduced, laying a strong foundation for the people that we were to become. Ritual and repetition make us feel secure. Energy and enthusiasm are more readily accessed when activities are planned, anticipated, and made to fit into a routine. This, in turn, delivers the mental energy required for top-level performance. It taps once again into the age-old core of our being.
On a personal level, start by establishing great sleep rituals, then add exercise and eating rituals; going to bed the same time every night; getting up the same time every morning; exercising at the same time each day; eating meals at the same time each day. These are the types of beneficial activities that your body will pick up on and will gravitate toward. You will find that benefits come quickly to the forefront—benefits such as greater stamina, greater energy, better digestion, better sleep, a greater sensation of well-being. These all make you feel great, and also vastly improve your productivity, expertise, and attractiveness.
Use the patterning and planning techniques in Chapter 3 to map out your weeks as far in advance as possible, to allow time for these rhythmic elements to become part of, and then influence, your calendar and everyone who is involved with it.
WRITE YOUR PLAN
Just as the architect arrives before the stonecutter, so should your plan be committed to paper (or on screen). As we have discussed, hazy notions are no match for real, hard copy plans since they offer no chance for revision and reality.
Have you ever noticed just how many problems can be solved just by telling someone about them? Professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and coaches certainly have their own expertise to deliver, but a great deal of the catharsis and healing can simply come from hearing yourself describe it to another human being. This is what a plan can do. It’s your opportunity to “speak” your thoughts and hear yourself say them. Many of the problems or obstacles will then be revealed for your own diagnosis and resolution.
Commit your plan and your goals to paper or on screen on your computer. Allow yourself the opportunity to make your new habits real in your mind by seeing them scheduled. Whether it’s planning an I-Beam Base at the end of each workday or writing down your five-year goals, this is your blueprint for satisfaction and success.
THE CREDIT CARD
If you have a credit card with a large balance and you make just the minimum payment every month—let’s say $100—what are you actually doing? You are taking $100 out of your paycheck to service a debt that continues to grow. For as long as that $100 is being used to pay interest on an existing debt, no progress is being made. Now let that $100 represent your creative energy—energy that could have otherwise been used to make the difference between a good job interview and a winning job interview; a good proposal and a great proposal, a good mark on an exam or a top mark on an exam. As long as your creative energy is being used to keep track of existing tasks and priorities, it is just servicing a time debt; it is not free to be used to its maximum potential, to move your thoughts, plans, and activities from adequate to outstanding.
To break free, you have to commit to a change, to eliminate debts of all sorts as fast as possible. At the early stages, your goal will seem very far away. It seems too different, too radical, the benefits too distant. And that’s what holds so many people back from achieving so much. The benefits will come, and they will start to reveal themselves, slowly at first but with greater and greater solidity as your debts decrease and your power increases. Success can happen, but one step at a time.
THE OPEN-DOOR POLICY
One of the most pervasive and well-intentioned traditions in the workplace is the open-door policy (ODP). Whether you have an office with a real door or a cubicle with three walls, the mantra is that you should be available and accessible to your colleagues at all times. Well, too much of a good thing quickly turns into a bad thing. An open-door policy that exists for the full day turns people into doormats for whom no control over time and work exists. Uncontrolled interruptions mean they must make up for lost time after hours.
There has to be a happy medium, one in which your door is open for most of the day, say 80 percent, but closed for the other 20 percent during your keystone time so that real work can get done.
Keystone time is described in Chapter 6, so there’s no need to repeat it here. But how do you introduce a revised open-door policy? By communicating it to those it will most affect—your subordinates and your boss—and by introducing change over time.
Such gradual development will allow the status quo to change slowly and confidently, which means the only impediment left to successful time management will be you.
You walk along the surface of the mat until you get to the other end. But suppose that rubber mat were bent into a U-shape. As an ant, with no awareness of the third dimension, you would still be forced to walk the length of the mat, down into the base of the U and then back up the other side, unaware that a simple leap from point A to point B would be much faster and more efficient. That’s what many quantum physicists feel is the secret to space travel: Rather than crossing the horizontal distance, we must learn to see our galactic neighborhood in a different dimension, in which the shortcuts may be right under our collective nose.