Liane Davey's Blog, page 9

How to Adapt to Interruptions in Your Schedule

How To Adapt to Interruptions in Your Schedule

You’ve optimized your schedule to get the most out of your time. (I’m imagining your color-coded calendar and prioritized to-do list—it’s a beauty!) You’ve removed distractions and enforced boundaries to stay on track (“No is a complete sentence,” you say as you repel their intrusions). But what do you do when there’s interference you can’t avoid? In that moment, you need a plan for how you’ll adapt to interruptions in your schedule.

Unfortunately, you’re probably not so hot at adaptation. Research by Erich Dierdorff suggests that adaptation skills are as critical as other time management skills (awareness and arrangement) but less common. That is a problem because being good at adaptation is the best predictor of how well you prioritize your activities.

Let’s review a few common interruption scenarios and consider the tactics to help you adapt your schedule and get back on track.

When You Need to Adapt Your Schedule

First, let’s admit that our beautiful schedules with tasks wrangled into time-boxed time blocks are often delusions based on what we hope to achieve rather than what we can deliver. We’re just not great at predicting how long an activity will take.

This is known as the “planning fallacy.” It turns out that when it comes to predicting how long it will take to do something, we don’t learn from experience and persist in being over-optimistic. In the workplace, these scenarios are common reasons why our time estimates are off:

A Task Takes Longer Than Expected. It seemed like you could knock off a proposal in 30 minutes, but your timer just beeped, and you’re only halfway done.It’s More Complicated Than You Thought. As you start to work on the stakeholder management plan, you learn about new issues that will expand the scope of the work.An Urgent Task Upends Your Priorities. You thought you would have the afternoon to sort out a new plan with the supply chain team, but now a shipment is missing, and you need to track it down first.You Have to Wait on Something From Someone Else. You’re raring to go, but the data you need to be able to build the presentation has yet to appear in your inbox.You’re Missing Something You Need to Complete the Task. You have most, but not all, of the information you need to build the forecast, but last quarter’s actuals aren’t ready yet.

What other schedule-smashing scenarios did I miss? Let me know in the comments so I can expand the list.

Core Strategies to Adapt After a Schedule Interruption

If we assume that one of those scenarios will negate your Monday morning plan by Tuesday afternoon, what can you do to get back on track? These approaches will help:

Schedule Buffer and Contingency Time

Ok, I’m cheating here because this is a scheduling strategy that belongs in my article about scheduling strategies. Still, it’s one of the best adaptation approaches, so it’s worth mentioning here. If you’ve built your schedule to include buffers around most tasks (e.g., assuming 45 minutes of work but not starting your next block until 60 minutes), you’ll have a 25% slush fund you can borrow from.

Similarly, if you’ve held a couple of contingency blocks in your week in which you’ve programmed nothing, you can use those to make up lost time. These small windows are not only great for your tasks that are taking longer than anticipated but also as a place to channel any requests of your time from colleagues.

Scale Back the Output

When you’ve found that a task is taking longer than expected, one option is to shrink the job by working toward a less ambitious outcome. If you’d planned to connect with six customers as part of an outreach, would four be sufficient? If you mock up a presentation, could you stick with the text and not include graphics for the first-round review?

Before you constrict your work, take a moment to consider whether changing the output will have a meaningful impact on the outcomes. If not, if a less ambitious version will still deliver roughly the same value, scale back.

Seek Efficiencies

Sometimes, you can’t scale back the output, but you can get there more efficiently. If I have all the time in the world to write a post, I submerge myself in Google Scholar and spend a couple of hours reading primary research before I write the first word. If I’ve had a schedule interruption and have to write something quickly, I start by reading articles where the author has already summarized the research, or I fire up ChatGPT. These techniques focus my attention so I can surgically dip into primary research.

What opportunities do you have to work more efficiently? Is there a YouTube video that would help you build spreadsheet reports more quickly? Could you take shortcuts in some areas that wouldn’t affect the quality of the final product? If you’re trying to write more efficiently, the secret is to write at full speed and edit later. If you want to push it, The Most Dangerous Writing App asks you to set the minutes you’ll write for and deletes all of your work if you stop typing before then. Gone. Lost. Irretrievable. That should get your efficiency up!

Swap the Order

If you planned to be doing a task that you can’t accomplish at the moment (maybe you have no inspiration or you’re waiting on someone else to get you the raw materials you need), letting go of your original plan and moving to something later in your day or week might do the trick. This might be another work task or, alternatively, something non-work related that you can cross off your list.

If your meeting with your boss has been pushed to 5 pm, can you sneak in some exercise in the middle of the day so you’re not tempted to cancel it because you can no longer make the 5 pm slot?  When your muse is not with you for building a killer marketing plan, could you bring forward some admin work you had planned to do later in the week? The idea is not to stall but to switch gears and keep moving.

Signal the Delay

One important thing to do if your schedule is going to the dogs is to let your colleagues know. Unfortunately, I see too many conscientious people who pride themselves on delivering on time and who wait to share their concerns in hopes they can miraculously get everything done. That’s a risky strategy.

If you miss deadlines without warning, you erode their trust and cause them to question your reliability. When you signal the delay, you create an opportunity for a Plan B. That revised approach might even help you get back on track. Your colleague might tell you that the deadline is flexible, that only certain aspects of the work are urgent, or that they can pitch in.

Solicit Help

Finally, if you can feel the deadlines slipping away, asking for help is entirely reasonable. You might need help with the task you’re working on. It’s also possible that the best help would be for someone to catch a different ball that’s about to drop, so at least you don’t have to worry about that.

Help doesn’t have to be directly related to the work either. If you’re heads down, working as efficiently as possible to get something done, help can come in the form of someone grabbing you lunch and bringing it to your desk or running interference with colleagues who come around looking for you. Now, if only someone else could pee for you!

Schedule interruptions happen. The key is to have a variety of tactics you can use to minimize how much time gets wasted. Bob. Weave. Adapt. That’s good time management.

Additional Resources

8 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed by Your Workload

10 Helpful Things To Do When You’re Overwhelmed

How to stop the cycle of micro-management

 

The post How to Adapt to Interruptions in Your Schedule appeared first on Liane Davey.

How to Protect Your Time

Some days, it feels impossible to carve out time and mental space to get through your work tasks. Sure, you might have built a beautiful plan for your week, but it’s only noon on Tuesday, and that plan is out the window: interruptions, urgent requests, shifting priorities. How can you protect your time so you stay productive?

Before we talk about protecting your time, make sure you’ve read my previous post about how to structure your time for maximum efficiency and ease.

Enemies of Efficiency

If your orderly schedule is constantly being intruded upon, who or what is to blame? Let’s look at the top offenders and see if we can implement strategies and techniques to protect your time.

Meetings

Depending on which study you trust, you’re probably spending between 7.5 and 23 hours a week in meetings. Some of those hours are great and considerably more efficient than talking to a group of people independently or wasting time misinterpreting people’s emails and getting frustrated. But some meeting time is a complete waste. To protect your time from low-value meetings, try the following:

Talk with your team leader about how to build a better meeting structure. While you’re at it, consider which topics you’ve been covering in meetings would be better suited to an asynchronous approach.Assess whether you’re using your time on the most valuable topics using this Weed-o-Meter tool.Triage whether you need to attend a meeting, and if so, for how long, with these strategies for politely declining an invite.Email

Email is right up there with meetings as the second most significant black hole in your calendar. When I think back to the trickle of emails I received early in my career when the inter-office envelope was the primary mode of communication; I wonder what we’re doing to ourselves today.

Many people I know have completely given up trying to process their email. Some have declared email bankruptcy, while others have just learned to live with the little bubble that shows 35,723 unread messages and the constant low-level anxiety that neglecting one of them was a career-limiting move.

Rather than giving in, try these approaches to wrangling your email:

Set standards for communication on your team, particularly about what gets communicated to whom and the expectations for how responsive people need to be.Run a workshop with your team on better email practices where emails are crafted to help the receiver efficiently process and respond to information.Open Workspaces

Open-layout offices have become ubiquitous, but the research on their impact on productivity and morale is not good. Even more bizarre, face-to-face interactions are 70% lower in open offices. Whoops! [To be candid, I advocated for an open office layout as a leader and always enjoyed it, but I know now that it was not great for most of my team.]

Use these techniques to protect your time and focus in an open office:

Create what Professor Linda Lai calls a fourth wall using a physical or symbolic barrier to signal you’re not open to distractions. These might include wearing headphones or having a sign on your workstation that says, “Do Not Disturb.”Use private or quiet spaces in your office for periods of focused work. Most open offices have small stations where you can close a door or open areas like the cafeteria that are mostly deserted at off-peak hours.Why You Need to Protect Your Time From Yourself

It’s easy to point fingers at all the inefficiencies from your environment, company processes, or manager’s behaviors. It’s important to reflect on the self-inflicted efficiency issues slowing you down. Do any of these sound familiar?

FOMO

Are you letting yourself be distracted by activities that are not mandatory but they’re interesting, captivating, or exclusive? Perhaps fear of missing out is the biggest issue you have to address if you’re going to protect your time. If you’re ready to address your FOMO problem and embrace what Anil Dash calls JOMO (Joy of Missing Out), this article by The HT Group has some promising evidence-based approaches.

Distractions

If your work environment exposes you to more bells, shiny objects, and temptations than a Vegas casino, no wonder you’re having trouble protecting your time. What is it that you need to change? Start with this list.

Remove notifications from email, Slack, Teams, etc. Don’t allow the interruptions or even the little badges that tally what you’re missing.Set up different versions of focus mode on your phone, tablet, or computer for deep work, regular work, and private time. Turn on the appropriate mode for how you’re spending your time (that includes blocking personal notifications while you’re working, blocking work notifications on your downtime, and blocking both when you’re trying to get into focus and flow)Use different spots for different work to signal to your brain what you’re supposed to be up to. Make your deep work spot as distraction-free as possible, including leaving your phone in another room. It turns out that having your phone in sight (even if it’s off) decreases your cognitive capacity.Set up email filters so that when you have dedicated work email time, you’re not getting distracted by the NYT 5 Weeknight dishes newsletter or some fantastic new vacation destinations curated for you by Pinterest (totally hypothetical examples, of course). Have those go directly to a folder so you have to go find them when it’s the right time.Fear of Saying No

One last suggestion. If you value someone else’s priorities more than your own, your mindset will never allow you to be maximally productive. Look at this graphic to see why you say “yes” to requests for your time. Some of them are healthy, but many others aren’t.

Once you’re clear on the most significant opportunities to say “no,” this guide will give you five options for how to do it while maintaining your reputation as a good team player.

Effective time management isn’t just about having a beautiful, optimized plan for how you hope to spend your time. It’s also about setting and enforcing boundaries for how you will protect your time so you can invest it in the most critical work.

If you do, you’ll be the primary beneficiary. A study by Mark, Gudith, and Klocke suggested that interruptions don’t stop you from completing your work on time or with decent quality. Still, they do cause you to work faster, exert more effort, and experience more stress and higher frustration. Those are problems worth avoiding.

In the next post, I’ll suggest techniques for the third and final aspect of time management: adapting your time. Stay tuned.

Additional Resources

1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

Enough is Enough!–Tips and Tools for Saying NO

Protecting Your Time by Setting Better Boundaries by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

 

The post How to Protect Your Time appeared first on Liane Davey.

How to Manage Your Time

 

Are you trying to get more done in the time you have? Do you need to get more done in less time so you can cut back on evening and weekend work? Managing your time more actively, more proactively, will make a huge difference.

Here are seven steps that you can take to manage your time efficiently and effectively.

1. Revisit Objectives

First, start by revisiting your objectives. Effective time management involves more than simply checking off to-do lists or tackling tasks as they come up in your inbox or during meetings. One of the most important things we miss in time management is actually using our time to prioritize and accomplish the most important things.

Going back to your objectives, one strategy I find helpful is to visually display my top three goals on a poster right behind my computer monitor. This serves as a constant reminder of my priorities. I’m always able to look at them and assess whether a task is aligned with or advances one of them. Being able to look at and revisit your goals helps you stay connected and focused on what matters most.

2. Prune Your Calendar

Second, before you add more tasks to your already busy calendar, consider this alarming statistic: The average North American employee now spends about 22 hours a week in meetings! So before you try to shove anything else in, take the time to prune your calendar.

Open your calendar, review what’s on it, and identify tasks or commitments that you can remove or delegate to someone else. Do you have a lot of meetings? Consider attending only those meetings that are necessary, or attending for half the time instead of the entire time. Are there any volunteer activities that are draining your energy or no longer align with your goals? Consider eliminating them. Try to prune back what’s in your calendar as much as possible before adding new commitments.

3. Administrivia

The third step may seem counterintuitive because we often view administriva as time-wasting. However, as part of an organization, administrative tasks like answering emails, helping colleagues, and doing compliance training videos are necessary. If you don’t put a fence around those tasks, set boundaries, they’ll consume all your time. It’s surprising how many emails and requests for help can come your way. That’s why it’s important to build that boundary around those tasks at the beginning of the week.

Something I’ve found helpful is to schedule these tasks as recurring events on my calendar. For example, block out an hour in the morning to catch up on emails, respond to clients, and help colleagues. Another option is to set aside time right before lunch when you might be feeling burnt out from your own work. This is a great time to take care of administrative tasks. Or consider reserving every Friday afternoon for any corporate needs, such as performance management tasks or uploading data to Salesforce.

Counterintuitively, when you carve out time for these administrative tasks, when you put a very solid fence around them, it helps you manage your time. By setting aside specific time slots, you’re acknowledging that you’re going to do these things efficiently, but you’re limiting the time you spend on them to just one hour a day.

4. Focus And Flow

Step four revolves around what I call focus and flow time, or F and F time. This is my favorite time of the week because it’s a block of time where I can focus and get work done, whether it’s drafting an output report for a client or writing my next blog post. Everyone needs think-time and time to work. F and F time is dedicated to both contemplation and productivity. I like to set aside three hours at least twice a week for writing, and when I’m in my focus and flow time, I intentionally turn off all notifications and put my phone out of sight—we all know that even without its bells and whistles going off, our phones can distract us.

Now, everyone’s schedule is different, and three hours may not fit your job or responsibilities. In my case, it’s essential for tasks like writing and so on. But I recommend setting aside at least 45 minutes, preferably split in two 45-minute blocks with a short five-minute break in between for movement and hydration. If you can carve out more F and F time, even better, but building focus and flow periods into your week will make you happier and more productive. It feels great to do meaningful work.

5. Identify Concerns And Consequences

Okay, on to step five. With your administrative time fenced off, and your focus and flow time set, now look for any commitments you have that won’t be done as planned. Is someone counting on you to do something that’s not going to happen? If something doesn’t align with your schedule or priorities, acknowledge it and make necessary adjustments. Identifying these kinds of concerns or consequences is really important when you’re on a team.

You may need to validate your prioritization with your manager. If so, present your weekly time allocation, highlighting your tasks and concerns. For example, you might say, “This is how I’ve allocated the week. I’ve got this and this, but I’m afraid I won’t get that performance review done by Friday. Is it okay if I push that into next week?” Your manager may be fine with it. They may say no if it’s something that will affect a colleague or customer. They may also suggest alternatives, depending on the urgency. Just make sure you’re communicating so that people have a heads-up instead of a big last-minute surprise.

6. Play It Like A Game

Now that you’ve got your week mapped out, let’s move on to step six: play it like a game. This is where we can have a little fun and to give you an idea of what that looks like, I use something called a Time Timer. It’s a quirky timer with a big red dial that looks like a toy. I set it for each task, whether it’s email and collaboration time or administrative tasks. When the timer goes off I move on. For example, if I’m doing invoices and the timer beeps, then that’s it—time’s up. I’ll come back to it later because I’m protecting my focus and flow time.

And when I’m in my F and F time, I reset the timer for the first of three 45- to 50-minute intervals. When it beeps, I turn on my Spotify Dance Break playlist, get up, shake my booty, get a drink of water, and get back to work. My timer keeps me honest. It makes me feel like I’m on a game show where I have to beat the clock, which not only keeps me on track but turns my work into a fun challenge. Playing it like a game works wonders!

7. Evaluate

Lastly, it’s important to schedule regular evaluations into your week or perhaps your month. During these blocks, reflect on where your time estimates went wrong and what lessons you can learn from them. Ask yourself questions:

For which tasks did my time estimates differ significantly from the actual time required, and what lessons can I learn from this?What did I learn about which meetings and tasks from other people were useful? Which were not? And how do I reset accordingly?

Take time to reflect and learn from your own behavior. Identify the best time of the week. What was the most productive time and what did you do differently? Can you replicate those conditions in future weeks? This self-awareness is also really valuable for time management.

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These are the seven steps to proactively manage your time to get the most out of it. Make sure you reassess your goals, prune back your existing calendar, protect your time, put a fence around administrative and email time, block really important chunks of time for focus and flow, identify concerns or consequences of your prioritization on other people, then make sure you play like a game with time, have fun with it, beat the clock, and finally evaluate your performance and identify what you can do better next time.

All right, for other tips on how to be more productive at work, check out 5 Ways to Say No.

More On This

How to Protect Your Time

How to Structure Your Time Better

Is it time to start saying “no”?

Video: When to Say No at Work

The post How to Manage Your Time appeared first on Liane Davey.

How to Structure Your Time Better

Time management is an effective strategy for increasing productivity, enhancing wellness, and reducing stress. (More on that here.)

We know it works, but what does it take to manage your time, attention, and energy? Research shows three components to time management: structuring, protecting, and adapting how you use your day, week, or month. In this post, I’ll share some strategies and techniques for structuring and organizing your time. In the following posts, we’ll get into protecting and adapting strategies.

Understanding How You Use Your Time

Before investing in some new-fangled system for organizing your time, it’s best to get a sense of how you’re using it now. (We’re creatures of habit. Ignoring your existing practices might make you more likely to slide back into them.) Do a bit of an audit so that you’re aware of the current state before you start tweaking your approach.

There are a variety of time-tracking apps available to make this easier. I’ve been trying out Toggl Track and finding it simple to use. I particularly like how it is linked to my phone, iPad, and desktop, so I can seamlessly track work and personal activities from whichever device I’m tethered to. Here’s a list of some other options.

Using these apps helps you create what Erich Dierdorff calls a “time budget.” I love the idea that you can make difficult trade-offs in how you use your time, just as you do with your money. When you realize you’re spending $325 monthly on Uber, you’re more likely to take public transit. Similarly, only when you know you’re spending 7.5 hours a week doing email will you be motivated to streamline your system.

When you know how you’ve been investing your time, you can set new targets and change the pie chart of your week. (I realized that I am spending more time than I want reading newspapers and doing puzzles in the morning; I’m going to scale that back.) Set targets for the biggest blocks of time, such as meetings, deep work, email, managing, administration, etc. Do the same for your personal time if you’d like to be more deliberate about how much time you spend exercising, sleeping, being with friends, or calling your mom.

Building a Framework to Structure Your Time

Once you know how you want to invest your time, create a base structure for your week.

Start with the non-negotiables; put them in first. That might include the days you do drop-off or pick-up at the daycare, your team’s standing meeting, or an exercise class you always want to attend. The non-negotiables are the immovable pillars you need to work around.

Then, move to the negotiable activities. That’s where you can optimize how you use your time. Slot your activities in based on the following criteria.

Group Similar Tasks

One of the first lenses through which to view your calendar is to try to group similar tasks in what productivity experts refer to as task batching. Grouping like activities reduces the context switching you need to do. That’s important because each time you toggle from one type of activity to another, you pay what Dr. Sahar Yousef calls a “switching tax.” That tax comes in the form of reduced efficiency and increased errors.

If you’re leaving your email and Slack open while trying to write an important document, you’ll be paying hefty switching taxes. Instead, pick two or three times a day when you’ll respond to emails in bulk. The same applies to batching invoicing, writing performance reviews, or making customer calls. You get on a roll when you do several similar tasks in succession.

Match Your Energy Levels

Take note of your natural ebbs and energy flows during the day (and the week). Are there times when you’re more creative? If so, block that time for anything you need to build from scratch. Are you more social at certain times of the day? Fill that time with check-ins, client calls, and coaching.

Be just as deliberate about putting the right tasks in your natural downtime. If you need to do administrative duties, review reams of documents, or run errands, how can you slot those chores in where you wouldn’t have been very productive anyway?

And don’t just think about your daily rhythms; consider your weekly, monthly, and quarterly phases, too. Do you like to have protected time on Friday afternoons to close one week and prepare for the next, or do you do that on Monday mornings (or Sunday nights)? Are there opportunities to distribute developmental activities throughout the quarter when things might be less rushed than toward the quarter’s end? Build yourself a calendar that matches your energy to the task at hand.

Set Limits for Completion

Another effective technique is to time-box your work by setting a period during which you must complete a given activity. For example, you could allocate 45 minutes in the morning to triage and respond to your most important emails; you stop when the time is up. Timeboxing increases your motivation to work efficiently and reduces the likelihood that you’ll over-invest in an activity.

While time-boxing is valuable for defining what you will do in a given period, it’s equally effective in specifying what you won’t do. When you’re in a time box, turn off any distractions and focus exclusively on the task you need to accomplish.

One study demonstrated that participants who time-boxed without distractions were 43% more productive.

Switch Gears for Relief

If you’re tempted to build a 4-hour time box hoping you’ll get four times more work done than in a one-hour box, you’re probably dreaming. There are different estimates for the optimal length of time to work before taking a break.

The Pomodoro technique uses 25 minutes of focus with five-minute breaks repeated four times, followed by a 20-minute break.A study by employee productivity tracker DeskTime concluded that the most productive people work for 52 minutes, followed by 17 minutes of complete breaks (walking, eating, chatting, watching funny videos).Andrew Huberman recommends matching with your ultradian cycles to do work in 90-minute blocks followed by 10-30 minutes of what he calls “idling,” where you deliberately defocus or do tasks you can do without much effort.

Choose a length of time block that works for you, and then use the time in between to give your brain a break. Ideally, get up, move around, refuel, and give your body and your butt a break too.

Invest Time to Save Time

One other strategy worth noting. Sometimes, it takes time to save time. Prioritize tasks with time ROI (return on investment). I spent an entire Sunday working through my emails to unsubscribe to many of the messages that had stealthily crept into my inbox and build filters for other messages I wanted to receive but not be distracted by. That day was a great investment because it has made me much more efficient ever since.

Now that you’ve built new structures to use your time more efficiently and effectively, fire up that time-tracking app and see the difference it’s made. And take a moment to reflect on whether you’re feeling more motivated, creative, or effective. Ask yourself whether you’re feeling greater satisfaction about your work or your life. Check-in with your stress levels; are you feeling less anxious? You will likely feel the benefit of bringing better structure to your time.

Next time, we’ll explore approaches that help you protect your time when demands impinge on your carefully crafted structure.

Additional Resources

1 Yes and 3 Less – A Different Way to Look at Prioritization

Practical Advice About How to Prioritize Your Workload

How To Tell Your Boss You’re Overwhelmed

I was impressed by Asana’s resources on time management. Start with this article by Julia Martins and follow the trail (but definitely timebox this, or you could be down the rabbit hole for ages!)

The post How to Structure Your Time Better appeared first on Liane Davey.

5 Different Ways to Say No

 

One of the most important things you can learn if you want to be more effective, more productive, and less stressed is how to say “no.”

Some people will tell you that “no” is a complete sentence, but I don’t think that’s the best approach if you want to be a good team player, maintain a positive reputation, and come across as someone who’s thoughtful and deliberate.

Instead, I’m going to share with you five different ways to say “no” based on the different reasons you might want to say no. What’s more, I’m going to share with you the techniques you can use to, hopefully, get the other person to see for themselves that the best answer is for you not to do what they’re asking.

Reason #1 to Say No: It’s Not Worth It

The first type of “no” is “it’s not worth it.”

If someone asks you to do something that you don’t think is a good use of your time—or of anyone’s time—ask a few questions to help them reach that same conclusion:

“How does this fit with our priorities?”“What were the results when we tried this before?”“What do you see us getting out of this?”

The goal is to help them realize that doing that thing isn’t going to help gain traction on anything that matters; that what they’re asking you to do is either not important or not actually going to help achieve their goal.

As you ask these questions, it will become clear to the other person that this is not really a task that needs to be done—that your “no” really means, “it’s not worth it.” You can, of course, follow that up with other things that you are doing that you think are a good investment of your time and effort. That way, you’re showing them that while that task may not be worth it, there are all sorts of other things you’re doing that are.

Reason #2 to Say No: Not Yet

The second type of “no” is “not yet.”

For example, someone comes to you with an amazing idea for an event that you’re doing in Q4—but it’s only the end of Q1 and you’re still trying to finish the deliverables you need to close the quarter. In this case, it really comes down to timing:

“When do you think you’ll be able to use my input?”“What would be the first milestone in this project?”

Asking these kinds of questions will help the other person understand exactly how the timeline will play out.

This would be another opportunity for you to bring up the things you’re working on, what your priorities are, and what you’ve already committed to doing. The goal is to share information and assess the timing of the request. You’re not telling them that you’re never going to help them, just that now isn’t the right time.

Reason #3 to Say No: Not Me

The third type of “no” is “not me.”

What if someone asks you to do something that’s not a good use of your time or that you can’t be successful at? When this happens, you want to ask questions that will help them understand that you’re not the best fit, such as “What expertise do you think is required?” or “What industry is this for?”

This is also a good time to consider whether you’re at the right level for the role and suggest alternatives: “There are three people on my team who would love to be at this meeting, and it would be great development for them. Could I ask one of them to come instead?” Or it might be the opposite situation where you don’t have enough authority to do what they want, so you might say, “I can’t make that decision. If I come to the meeting, you’re going to have to have a follow-up meeting with my boss anyway.”

And again, this would be a great time to bring up the things that you are doing, the things that you’re really useful at or can add value to, as opposed to what they’re asking you to do.

Reason #4 to Say No: Not All of It

The fourth type of “no” is “not all of it.”

This is a partial “no.” In this scenario, someone comes to you with a request where part of what you’re being asked to do makes sense, and you might say “yes” to that, but “no” (of one kind or another) to everything else. This is a “no” that actually pairs a “yes” with any of the first three types of “no.”

Let’s say someone comes to you, dumps 300 pages of background research on your desk, and asks you to write a proposal. Tackling a complete proposal like that would probably derail your work, but there might be a section there that makes sense for you to write based on your experience and skill set. In this case, you might say “yes” to that one section, but your experience is that no one reads the rest of them, so they’re “not worth it.” You might say “yes” to the time-sensitive part, but you think the other stuff can wait, so that’s a “not yet.” Or you might say “yes” to the things that really make sense and are a good fit for your expertise, but “not me” to everything else.

“Not all of it” is a really great way to take something that might have thrown you off your own priorities, because it allows you to say “no” to part of it, while still being able to focus on the part that is actually important, valuable, time-sensitive, and a good fit for your skills.

Reason #5 to Say No: Not Unless

The fifth type of “no” is “not unless.”

Again, this isn’t a definitive “no.” Often people will ask you to do something and you’ll find that it checks all the boxes you’re looking for:

It’s something that’s valuable and worth doing.It’s time-sensitive and needs to be done now.It’s a good fit for your skills and it makes sense for you to do it.

The problem is, the same could be said for a bunch of other things you’ve already committed to. Instead of saying “no,” tell them what’s on your plate right now. Help them see that you can’t just drop your previous commitments to jump on their thing. Unless… if they can help you renegotiate the things you’re committed to, find someone else to do them, or change the deadlines, that “no” might turn into “Absolutely, I think that’s a great use of my time.”

With “not unless,” you can create a situation where you have the resources and time you need to take on this new responsibility and do it well.

–

When someone comes to you with a task and you know it’s not the best use of your time, or at least not the best use of your time right now, instead of just saying “no,” think about the reasons you would say “no” and use this approach to set boundaries in a way that makes sense—and communicate them effectively. Is it “not worth it,” “not yet,” “not for me,” “not all of it,” or “not unless”?

If you try this approach, let me know how it goes. And if it creates some conflict, here are some tips on how to make sure it’s healthy.

More On This

Conflict Resolution in the Workplace: Interpersonal Conflict

The Steps to Resolve a Conflict at Work

Are You Saying Yes Too Often?

Video: How to Have Healthy Conflict in the Workplace

The post 5 Different Ways to Say No appeared first on Liane Davey.

Does Time Management Work?

If you want to get a rise out of me, try telling me that you “just don’t have enough time.” There are few faster ways to turn me into a pedantic, patronizing finger-wagger.

No one has more time than you.

The question is not whether you can somehow conjure more time but whether it’s possible to manage your finite time more effectively to get more done. And not only to get more done but to have a better working experience.

The question is: Does time management work?

To answer this question for both of us, I donned my reading glasses and dove into Google Scholar. Fortunately, I found an excellent meta-analysis by Aeon, Faber, & Panaccio that curates the findings of 158 different primary studies, including 21 from real-world workplaces. The authors looked at the research from a variety of different angles and concluded that, yes, time management works. Hooray!

Sure, I could stop there, but this isn’t one of those blogs where all the juicy information is in the title. Sure, “Time Management Works!” But what the heck is it? And what does it work on?

Shall we…?

What is Time Management?

define time management as “a form of decision-making used by individuals to structure, protect, and adapt their time to changing conditions.”

According to their literature review, Aeon et al. describe time management in three categories: structuring your time, protecting your time, and adapting your time.

Structuring Your Time

The first category is about how you set up your work in the time you have. It includes establishing routines, schedules, and systems for your day, week, or month. The idea is to organize your work in ways that take advantage of efficient sequences, deliberate frequencies, and appropriate durations to optimize your outputs.

Another interesting and important finding is that structuring your time is most beneficial when it connects your use of time to a clear purpose. It’s not just about getting more done; it’s about getting more of the right work done. YES!

Protecting Your Time

The second category is enforcing boundaries to stick to your intended schedule. This includes protecting yourself from interruptions, distractions, and derailers as you work. It requires that you advocate for yourself and know when and how to say “no.”

Adapting Your Time

The final category is about flexing your time to adjust to changing circumstances. While you can protect yourself from some disruptions to your schedule, others can’t be avoided. Adapting your time is about rejigging your priorities, shifting schedules, and using waiting time.

Time management is structuring, protecting, and adapting how you use your time to get more done and in a more satisfying way.

Now that we know what it is, let’s talk about what good it does.

Benefits of Time Management

It turns out that optmizing your time has beneficial effects on various outcomes. Let’s talk about them in three categories.

Time Management Boosts Performance

The evidence suggests that managing your time makes you perform better. It improves behaviors that lead to better work, such as motivation and proactiveness. I was most interested to see the results of one study that showed a significant correlation between time management and creativity. I guess it makes sense… if you’re bogged down in a swamp of tasks, you don’t have the space or stillness for tiny ideas to emerge.

In addition to predicting productive work habits, time management also predicts managers’ (or teachers’) performance ratings, albeit with a slightly weaker relationship. Aeon & Aguinis propose a troublesome hypothesis for why it might not be more strongly related to your ratings—persistent norms that people who work longer are better. Thus, those who manage their time effectively and leave work on time might be penalized over those who doddle but linger. Frustrating.

Time Management Enhances Wellbeing

While time management has an important benefit on performance, the positive effects on well-being are even more potent. It is positively related to job satisfaction, optimism, and a sense of purpose. The relationship is especially strong for two subcategories of well-being: life satisfaction and mental health.

Now, you might wonder whether time management makes you happy or happy people are more likely to manage their time. We have data about self-efficacy, which is your belief in your ability to perform. While you might assume that people with higher self-efficacy manage their time better, there is evidence that people who engage in time management training subsequently feel more in control, suggesting there could be a causal relationship. If you learn and apply time management techniques, they increase well-being.

Time Management Reduces Distress

Time management increases productivity and well-being. Does it have anything else to offer? Yup. It bolsters the positive side of the equation and mitigates the negative side. It’s associated with decreased distress measured through factors such as stress, hopelessness, and boredom. The strongest relationship is between time management and psychological distress, which, across ten studies, correlated -.36. That’s a significant finding. Better control of your time, less fretting.

One final point: In the meta-analysis, I’ve been citing collected data over multiple decades. One of the most interesting findings was that the benefits of time management are getting stronger over time. It’s no surprise to me. With the torrent of emails, the ridiculous bloating of hours in meetings, and increasingly unstructured knowledge work, managing your time effectively is becoming increasingly important.

Given the importance of time management to both productivity and well-being, I’m starting a series on techniques you can implement to wrangle your time in a way that serves you best. I hope you’ll follow along.

Research References

Aeon B, Aguinis H. It’s about time: New perspectives and insights on time management. Acad Manag Perspect. 2017;31(4):309–30.

Aeon, B., Faber, A., & Panaccio, A. (2021). Does time management work? A meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, 16(1), e0245066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone....

Häfner A, Stock A. Time management training and perceived control of time at work. J Psychol. 2010;144(5):429–47. pmid:20806849

Additional Resources

Practical Advice About How to Prioritize Your Workload

10 Helpful Things To Do When You’re Overwhelmed

Enough about Workload, the Problem is Thoughtload

 

The post Does Time Management Work? appeared first on Liane Davey.

How Do I Know I Have a Healthy Team?

Do you ever wonder whether your team is as healthy as possible? Ever question whether you’re fit as a fiddle or if a thorough checkup might reveal you’re headed for trouble? It’s like asking if your team’s blood pressure is climbing or your cholesterol is too high.

But unlike those medical diagnostics, we don’t have readily accessible tools to assess the health of your team. There isn’t a sphygmomanometer we can use to measure your team, like blood pressure; no X-ray machine to let us see right through to your bones and connective tissue. So, what should you look for if you’re trying to conduct your team’s annual physical?

Signs You Have a Healthy Team

I would include a few diagnostic characteristics in my Dr. Liane team checkup.

Output

A healthy team delivers on its commitments. If your team is meeting deadlines with work that requires only minor iterations and improvements, that’s a good sign that things are working as needed. You can learn plenty about your output by examining how well you deliver on your project plans.

Let’s use an example. Imagine you’re part of a marketing team and committed to creating a new web campaign to drive traffic before a product launch. You do the research, build the storyboard, execute the creative, and roll out the program on time and in a way that thrills everyone in sales and product management. That’s a good indication that your team can generate the required outputs.

Health Check Diagnostics for Output

🔲 Delivering required products or services

🔲 Meeting deadlines

🔲 Requiring few revisions

Outcomes

While pushing work out the door is an essential sign of vitality, it’s possible that you’re getting stuff done without moving the needle on the things that matter. That is to say, outputs are not the same as outcomes. The next question is whether your work is leading to the desired changes. For our marketing team example, if your web campaign is launched on time but doesn’t create the bump in traffic or leads you were hoping for, that’s a sign that you need to rethink your approach. Team effectiveness isn’t just about getting stuff done; it’s about getting results.

Health Check Diagnostics for Outcomes

🔲 Seeing progress on leading indicators

🔲 Changing the trajectory of key performance indicators

🔲 Having the desired effects

Efficiency

I’ve seen many teams who are good at getting the right things done in a way that moves the needle on the measures that matter. Unfortunately, some of these teams make meaningful progress at approximately the pace of sap running in the spring. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Effective teams are also efficient teams. They learn how to deliver faster, with less energy, and with fewer resources. Our marketing team might be inefficiently building every campaign from scratch, or it could be accumulating a database of creative assets or developing repeatable processes that allow them to get each successive campaign out the door with less investment.

Health Check Diagnostics for Efficiency

🔲 Decreasing time required to execute

🔲 Reducing effort to get required results

🔲 Codifying or automating repeatable approaches

Trust

Efficiency and effectiveness are the only measures of a healthy team; it’s important to consider how your interpersonal dynamics affect the experience of working together. The best teams have solid foundations of trust that promote candid communication, transparent feedback, and timely information sharing.

Trust exists at multiple levels, from a basic connection among individuals to confidence in one another’s competence, comfort in relying on your teammate’s dependability, and a belief in everyone’s integrity. In the marketing team, trust might mean the difference between a team that shares innovative, unconventional ideas freely and one that takes the path of incremental tweaks and safe bets.

Health Check Diagnostics for Trust

🔲 Believing in each other’s competence

🔲 Counting on each other’s dependability

🔲 Having each other’s backs when you’re vulnerable

Signs and Symptoms Your Team Isn’t Healthy

Just as with your own health, monitoring the well-being of your team means paying attention to indicators of health and fitness while simultaneously watching for symptoms of underlying problems. As you’re boosting our outputs, outcomes, efficiency, and trust, be on the lookout for any of the following signs that something troublesome might be emerging:

People stop listening to one another and become rooted in their own positionsFactions develop where subgroups talk among themselves but not with each otherSubgroups convene meetings-after-the-meetingTeam members shirk their commitments and make excusesPeople withhold bad news until it’s too late to do anything about itEveryone avoids conflicts and leaves the important concerns unspokenIndividuals descend into persons, counterproductive conflict

Teams don’t often go from healthy to dysfunctional overnight; it can be a slow process. Similarly, if your team is already experiencing malaise, you’re not going to become the picture of health right away. Stay focused on the mindsets, processes, and behaviors that help you build trust, find efficiencies, deliver results, and have an impact, and you’ll find that your team gets progressively healthier.

What would you add to our list of team health checks?

I loved having my blood pressure taken as a kid, so the nurse practitioner in my clinic said that if I could ask for it with the proper name, she would take it any time!

Additional Resources

Team Effectiveness Starts With You Being an Effective Team Member

The Ultimate Guide to Toxic Teams

Getting Your Team Unstuck

 

The post How Do I Know I Have a Healthy Team? appeared first on Liane Davey.

Communication Challenges on Hybrid Teams

It seems wrong to spend a whole month delving into team effectiveness and not give particular thought to building a healthy, happy, and productive team when team members are regularly apart. So, let’s talk remote and hybrid teams!

Definition of Remote and Hybrid Teams

I define a remote team as one where the team members are physically separate from one another in their ordinary course of business (e.g., a team where each of you lives in a different city or country). A hybrid team is a team where some members are co-located while others are not. To add complications, some hybrid teams are always in the same mode (e.g., five people in the office in Tulsa and three people spread out throughout the country). In contrast, others are intermittently hybrid (e.g., eight people who work together in Louisville but come into the office only three days a week and often on different days).

So, let’s tl/dr that…

Remote team: always all apart

Full-time hybrid team: always some together and some apart

Intermittent hybrid team: sometimes together, sometimes apart

Challenges on Remote and Hybrid Teams

Teamwork is hard whether you’re far-flung across the planet or sitting in one another’s laps (okay, that’s inappropriate, but you know what I mean). But there are some significant advantages when you’re within sight of one another.

Indirect Communication

When you’re sitting near a colleague, you have a significant communication advantage because you don’t have to depend on the messages they intend to send (i.e., what they say in a meeting or type in an email); you get volumes of valuable information they don’t have to send deliberately. Here are a few examples:

You see them walk into the office whistling, and you know they’re in a good mood, and it might be a good time to ask for their helpYou notice them sighing, pulling their hair, and dropping their head in their hands, and you know they are struggling and might value some help.You notice out of the corner of your eye that they’re in a meeting with the boss, and it’s getting heated, so you give them some space and save your constructive feedback until tomorrow.You realize they were at the office before you arrived, didn’t get up for lunch, and are working through the afternoon without a break. You stop thinking that they haven’t responded to your email because they a) don’t like you, b) are a slacker, c) don’t know what they’re doing, or d) all of the above.

Now, imagine some of you are together and benefit from indirect communication while others are working remotely. The remote team members are in the dark about what’s going on for their teammates and can’t modify their interactions accordingly. They don’t ask for help because they’re worried it’s not a good time; they don’t know that you should offer support, pile on feedback when the teammate is already feeling vulnerable, and they jump to conclusions about what colleagues they can’t see are thinking, feeling, or doing without any context.

Written Communication

When you’re ten feet away from your teammate, you can do most of your communication verbally. You don’t have to infer their emotional tenor from the words they choose; you’re getting reams of information from everything coming with their words, including hearing their pitch, tone, and volume and seeing their facial expression, body language, and gestures. Here are some examples of the difference:

They say, “Drafting this presentation is killing me,” but as they say it, they’re chuckling and miming humorous, over-the-top actions, so you don’t respond with an overly dramatic expression of concern.They say, “I don’t think your draft is ready for prime time yet. It needs work,” but they are smiling at you and friendly, and they gesture toward a desk to sit down so they can help you with it so you don’t feel like you disappointed them.They say, “Everything is moving forward on the project plan,” but their volume is abnormally quiet, and they’re looking at the floor as they say it. You don’t have to trust the words, you know, to ask for more insight about what’s going on.”They say, “We need to accelerate the ship date on this new release by two weeks.” As they say it, they see the pained look on your face and ask what it would take to make that happen.

Now, imagine some of you are getting the low down in person while others are getting messages over email, Slack, or text. They’d be unsure how to take the sender’s points. They might respond with something overly negative, which could start a downward communication spiral. Written communications are more susceptible to negativity bias, so that’s not a far-fetched suggestion. Alternatively, they might be casual or cavalier about something the person needs them to take seriously. That’s a problem, too.

Timely Communication

When you’re sitting near each other, it’s easy to grab five minutes (or 1 minute) that will help you clarify, inform, or question in a way that enables you to make more efficient progress; you can have high-frequency, low-impact communication. Here are some scenarios where that makes a difference.

The definition of a word in an email is unclear, so you prairie dog over the cubicle and ask, “Hey, what did you mean by “agile” in this bit?” You don’t have to send an email and wait an hour for a response before you can carry on working.You’re learning how to use Salesforce, and you’ve forgotten how to attach a proposal to the client file. You wander over to watch another admin enter data instead of scheduling an appointment with the help desk.You overhear two colleagues talking about this morning’s meeting where the timelines for the new performance management system got pushed. You can immediately follow up on what that means for your team rather than waiting until it’s announced at the team meeting on Thursday.A client calls you to share some concerns and changes they need on your latest iteration of the blueprints. You wave your colleague over and put on the speakerphone so you can hear it simultaneously rather than having to summarize everything later.

Now, imagine some of you are getting a steady stream of intel all day while others need to wait for a team meeting, send an email and hope for a response, or schedule a formal meeting that might take two days or expand to fill 30 minutes instead of being a quick connection. Adding that formality might slow their progress and make accomplishing even the most minor task feel like running through thigh-high molasses.

None of these communication challenges of hybrid teams is insurmountable, but they’re worth considering. How will you help remote teammates overcome the deficit of communication that lacks the richness of facial expressions and body language? What will you do to bolster the accuracy and compensate for the negativity bias of too much communication in writing? How will you address the inefficiencies of asynchronous communication, where you must wait to convey the information you need to be effective?

How will you take into account the challenges that hybrid teams create?

Additional Resources

Check out my Ultimate Guide to Hybrid Teams here.

Watch this quick set of tips on Running a Great Hybrid Meeting

Building Trust in Remote and Hybrid Teams

How to Improve Hybrid Meetings

 

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The Worst Team Dynamics

There are some A+ teams out there, and then there are some miserable failures. By that, I don’t mean groups with one or more dysfunctional individuals (although there are plenty of those). I’m more interested in the types of team failings that require everyone to be complicit. Can you think of a team where the individuals are smart, hardworking, and well-intended, yet the whole is less than the sum of the parts? That’s the kind of unhealthy team dynamic we’re talking about here.

What Goes Wrong on Teams?

Consider each scenario where the problem is less about a daft, dodgy, or derelict individual and more about a disastrous dynamic. Recognize any of these behaviors? Are you ready to put an end to them?

Working at Cross Purposes

You know you’re in this kind of team if the engine is revving, the tires are spinning, but you’re getting nowhere fast. You’re so invested in forward momentum that you’re too quick to spring into action before there’s a plan.  The result is that you miss necessary pieces, duplicate efforts, or invest in activities with little value.

If your team tends to shortchange planning in service of rapid action, try one of these:

Be the one who asks the questions to align everyone around the goals. “What are we trying to achieve?” “What would good look like?” “What are the non-negotiables here?”While in a meeting, track the activities each team member has committed to, then project the list on the screen and ask, “What’s missing?” “Where are there interdependencies?” or “Who needs to team up?”Request a pre-mortem to spend 30 minutes considering what might cause the project to derail and put steps in place to mitigate those risks.

Don’t just go along while your team races off in all directions. Instead, be the one who pulls out the map. For more on improving alignment on your team, click here.

Pretending You Don’t Know

Some teams are so reticent to have a challenging conversation that they carry on with superficial conversations, ignoring the more important underlying issues that threaten their success. You’re so concerned with appearances, so afraid of an uncomfortable conversation that you leave all the essential discussions for small groups who huddle in the meetings after the meeting. The result is that you carry issues, resentments, and risks without resolution.

If your team takes the passive-aggressive approach, pretending everything is fine, try one of these:

Encourage your teammates to be candid and model candor by saying, “For three months, we’ve been continuing as if this program is working. What information do we need to make a call on when it’s time to abandon it?”Redirect anyone who comes to you privately after the meeting by encouraging them to put the issue on the next agenda. Offer to raise it for them or role-play how they might broach the subject.Go straight to the heart of it by asking, “I feel like there’s a lot we’re not saying here. What are we pretending isn’t true?”

Don’t put up with passive-aggressive (or just plain passive) behavior if it means that you’re glossing over important concerns. Instead, be the one who gets the issues on the table. For more on dealing with passive-aggressive behavior, click here.

Racing to Harmony

Another common type of dysfunction is the team that abhors any kind of discord and responds to it with frantic attempts to smooth things over and restore harmony. You’re so wedded to the notion that a good team is a harmonious team that you forego diversity, dissent, and divergence and quickly coalesce around the good enough answer. The result is poor decisions, failed implementation, and damaged reputations.

If your team is loath to rock the boat, try one of these:

Invite someone to improve your thinking. “I’m coming at this with a biased head office perspective. I would really appreciate it if someone would help me anticipate the concerns of the field staff.”Throw out an alternate scenario that might challenge your existing plan. “I love that plan. I’m just wondering how we would have to modify it if interest rates go down again?”Provide positive feedback to someone who broaches a contentious topic or provides a challenging point of view. “When you disagreed with my assessment of the opportunity in Nevada, it got me thinking. I feel much better prepared to address any concerns now. Is there anything else you think I should consider?”

Don’t let your teams’ preference for harmony make you vulnerable to groupthink. Instead, be the one who adds some productive tension. For more on addressing conflict aversion, click here.

Ignoring the World Around You

Some teams operate as if they are in a glass bubble, protected from the world. Or, if not a glass bubble, maybe some kind of tableau where they can work away while nothing in the world around them changes. You’re so internally focused that you persist with plans despite evidence that they’re no longer valid. The result is failed execution, wasted resources, and eroding competitive advantage.

If your team fails to lift their eyes to the horizon, try one of these:

Share an article, video, or news clip highlighting a macro trend or an emerging issue contrary to the assumptions you’ve been basing your plans on.Ask questions of your customers, vendors, partners, and advisors and inject their perspectives into your team discussions.Highlight an assumption that forms the basis of one of your decisions and ask the team to provide alternate scenarios that would invalidate that assumption.

Don’t let your team get so internally focused that you spend your time solving problems that are no longer relevant. Instead, be the person who connects the team to the outside world. For more on understanding the external environment, click here.

Sometimes, groups of wonderful, talented, motivated people get together and achieve far less than they should. Some team dynamics just don’t pan out. And often, it’s because no one is willing to challenge what is a common human foible.

If your team is susceptible to one of these scenarios. Practice using these questions to call attention to the problem and point toward a more effective path.

Additional Resources

An Exercise to Expose Team Dysfunction in One Meeting

Top 10 Signs that Your Dysfunctional Team is Getting Better

Improve Your Team Dynamics

 

The post The Worst Team Dynamics appeared first on Liane Davey.

Improving Team Alignment

If you want a high-performing team, everyone must be aligned. But often, I find that teams make a cursory effort to get on the same page and then run off in opposite directions. Our client once described his team’s level of alignment as “PowerPoint Alignment.” He said they all agreed wholeheartedly with what it said on the five slides written in 28-point font. The issue was that they were miles apart when they had to execute their individual functions in the 8pt reality.

Now, I’m not advocating for spending every minute lashed together with your teammates, so there’s no light of day between you. That sounds awful. And unproductive. We’re aiming for team alignment that’s deeper than PowerPoint but not so deep that you spend all your time planning and none of your time executing.

Too Little Alignment

So, what’s the right level of alignment? Let’s discuss different ways your alignment might be insufficient and what you can do about it.

Aligned on Vision but Not on Objectives

Do you all share the same picture in your minds of what good looks like? Maybe you’re a marketing team in a SaaS company (software as a service), and you buy into the company’s brilliant vision that you will make the lives of small business people so wildly easier. Cool. That’s an amazing vision. But what are your objectives? Are you going to focus on growth first, without much regard for profitability? Will you make a market share play in one industry or try to grow across various sectors? Are you sticking to your native UK for now or going after the EU market from the beginning?

It’s not enough to share a vision; you must also know your objectives.

Aligned on Objectives but Not on Goals

Ok, maybe you are clear on your objectives, but do you agree on your goals? You know you want to focus on growth and expanding your user base in year 1, but by how much? Is increasing your user base enough, or do you need to see a certain percentage switch from your free account to a paid one? What about customer satisfaction? If you’re willing to remain unprofitable while you grow a loyal base, what’s your goal for loyalty?

Once you have a shared set of objectives, take the time to define your goals. How will you measure your success on your objectives, and how far do you want to get next year?

Aligned on Goals but Not on Strategies

Sometimes, I see teams aligned on their goals but completely adrift on the strategies they’ll use to get there. And I get really crusty when a leader tries to pass off their goal AS their strategy.

Me: ok, we can help you define your strategy

Leader: that’s ok, Liane. We already have a strategy.

Me: Oh, amazing! What is it?

Leader: We will be $10 million by the end of the year.

Me: 🤦🏻‍♀️

A strategy is a set of guiding principles that generates a pattern of decision-making. Do you have one? If not, you aren’t aligned enough. How are you going to achieve that $10 million? Where will you play? How will you win? Developing a strategy is a process that requires you to create insights about your unique opportunities to build an advantage. If your goal is for your marketing team to deliver 100,000 new users by the end of the year, how are you getting there? How will you generate demand? What groups will you target? How will your messaging appeal to them more than your competitors’?

Sharing a goal without sharing a strategy is likely to have you running off in all directions.

Aligned on Strategies but Not on Tactics

Being aligned on strategy is a pretty good threshold. And in some teams, it might be enough. If your team is cross-functional and each of you has autonomy to execute in your domain, you’re probably in good shape. But aligning on strategies won’t be enough if there’s a high degree of interdependence among you. You need to get to the nitty gritty and align on tactics.

In our marketing team example, you may have agreed on a strategy to go after small professional businesses with 5-50 employees. Still, if your events team starts attending conferences for medical practices and your demand generation team is paying for ads targeting law firms, your tactics aren’t going to line up.

Where your roles are interdependent, aligning on strategy won’t be sufficient. In that case, you must also make sure your tactics are in sync.

Aligned on Tactics but Not on Tone

One final consideration. We’ve considered various ways you need to be on the same page about what you will do, but there’s also value in aligning on how you will do it. What’s the tone you’re going to take? What pace will you go at? What’s the culture you want to foster, and how do you want people to treat each other?

I’ve seen teams in lockstep on what they’re doing that are still experiencing considerable friction because they’re communicating the story differently or putting different amounts of pressure on their teams.

The final step in reaching team alignment is to be sure you’re aligned on the story, tone, and pace you’re looking for.

Too Much Alignment

It is worth noting that there’s such a thing as too much alignment. Too much alignment creates rigidity and reduces your team’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Course correct if you notice any of the following:

You’re not paying attention to changes in the external environment and, instead, driving forward, oblivious to what’s evolving around youYou shut down dissent from people who challenge the prevailing wisdom on your teamYou’ve locked the plan without considering alternative scenarios if your assumptions don’t pan outYou stick with a plan for long periods without having a formal opportunity to evaluate and course-correctYou’re making decisions about novel situations at the same pace you make more mundane decisionsYou notice that your ideas are all beginning to look alike, and they’re all starting to seem a little vanillaYou seldom have any conflict. Things are usually harmonious and happy.

Teams that aren’t aligned tend to exert more energy than necessary and squander scarce resources doing things that don’t get any traction. I promise you that it’s worth the time and energy to get your team aligned so that your efforts make the greatest impact.

Additional Resources

Is Your Team Misaligned?

Your Strategy Should Serve Two Purposes

10 Tips to Prevent Misalignment from Destroying Trust

Amy Kan in Fast Company: How to Develop Goals that Align Your Team and Improve Performance

 

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