 When Do You Find Time to Think Deeply?
A few years ago, I wrote a post entitled, "Yeah, Why Don't Manager's Think Deeply" prompted by an article on our creeping, device and social-media driven attention deficit disorder in our interruption driven workplaces. The topic is more relevant than ever. Sadly, many leaders and most teams struggle to find the quality time necessary to think freely and deeply about the big issues facing them in their firms and their careers. Here are a few thoughts to help you fight back the gravitational pull and inertial energy of our sound-bite, frenetic workplaces and lives. Create Device-Free Meetings. One team I encountered has watched the quality of their interchanges improve as they enacted and enforced their new rule on no texting, tweeting or even glancing at a device. The penalty...the perpetrator must sing a television theme song. Another group designates "Device Free" meetings on their invites and requires participants to check their devices at the door...literally. Everyone is required to place his/her smartphone in a box on the credenza in the meeting room before taking their seats. Leaders, Model the Right Behavior, Please. An executive at a former client constantly monitors and responds to her e-mails during team meetings. She often requires participants to restate the points she missed while she was e-mailing. And for icing on this poor communication cake, she leaves the audio indicator live on her iPad, treating the entire group to a beep every time a message arrives. What message is she sending on the need to pay attention? You set the tone for this topic...get it right and model proper behavior! Strengthen Team Values and Personal Accountability for Creative Sessions At the design firm IDEO, brainstorming is a religion and people understand that they are accountable for full engagement, team member support and most of all for generating great and unique ideas. Running great creative sessions and ensuring follow-through from them is challenging. Invest in outside resources to teach your team different tools beyond simple brainstorming and most of all, focus on knocking out the social, communication and process problems that detract from active involvement and great output. Eliminate 50% of the Status Meetings from Everyone's Schedule Most status meetings struggle for relevance. Some well-intentioned individual feels compelled to keep people up to speed and schedules regular updates. Multiply this times the number of projects going on in your workplace, and I guarantee that you can find some people who do almost nothing other than attend status meetings. Use technology tools to reduce the demand on group sessions. Cut the frequency in half, and institute "exception-based" meetings...only meet on status when there's a genuine issue. And importantly, fill the empty space with quiet time, creative time and other activities that inspire ideas and stimulate creativity. The Bottom-Line for Now: Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel Prize winner famously suggested that if you want better ideas, generate a lot of ideas. As a leader, you owe it to yourself and your team to fight back against the interruption-driven workplace in pursuit of time to think deeply about our customers, our strategies and our challenges. | 
