Fixing Feedback. Murch Georgia
poverty is not having enough time to do all the things you want or need to do. Like a shortage of income, lack of time is a disadvantage for individuals and organisations.
Societally, we have never been busier. There is more to do, higher expectations that we will deliver it perfectly, and greater distraction from devices and social media than we've ever encountered in the past. There is increased competition in all aspects of products and services, ongoing family commitments, financial pressures in a challenged economy, and many people are facing technology overload. No wonder we feel time-poor.
The past ten years have given us a plethora of functional, fun and powerful electronic tools at our disposal. Many of them started out claiming to make our personal and working lives easier. There are electronic scheduling systems, handheld devices, and we have the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Yet we still struggle to stay organised and focused. It's most likely due to the fact that we have more information to wade through than ever before. It all adds up to more excuses to not address problems when they happen, because we are ‘busy’ wading through our technology.
Productivity expert, thought leader and author of Smart Work Dermot Crowley says, ‘We need more than just new technology to stay organised in the modern workplace. We need new mindsets, new systems and new skills’.
Crowley tells us that a large part of the problem is that we are using twenty-first century technologies, but still using twentieth-century methodologies. He says the main reasons we are so time-poor in this modern era are:
• We have too many meetings, especially at the senior manager level. It is not unusual for the modern
• manager to spend 80 per cent of their core hours in meetings. This leaves little time to read and respond to emails, solve issues, develop strategies and do the thinking to deliver the right outcomes. Weekends and late nights are often taken up getting to the other needs. We are not creating enough time to stop, think and plan.
• We are drowning in emails. Six years ago the average senior executive would have 60 emails per day to deal with. Now we are looking at an average of more than 300 per day. This email noise has created an unprecedented communications focus. These emails are a combination of cc's (copying people in), information only, marketing products and services, blogs, personal memos and event requests, just to name a few. No wonder important emails are sometimes hard to find.
• Our use of technology is disabling our productivity. While technology has made doing business and connecting with others easier it has also created a sense of urgency that is crippling the way we work. We can communicate with anyone at any time. This is generally seen as hugely advantageous, but it has also created a sense that everything is urgent and important. It is not the case: we just lack the tools and training to see what is urgent and what is important.
• We procrastinate. We need to relearn the art of planning what to do and committing to action. We put things off in the hope that they will go away or sort themselves out. It's no surprise they don't and then become much bigger than initially planned, and much more time-intensive – especially things like giving feedback and tackling tough conversations.
We need to learn to confront issues as soon as we see them. How many conversations with people – friends, colleagues and family – become more serious than they need to be because you don't ‘nip them in the bud’ in the early days? That is, when you first notice the issue or problem, or when something feels not quite right.
The things we let go vary widely: being spoken to rudely, observing someone arrive late, missing a deadline, or your manager cancelling your weekly catch-up again. It can be anything that seems small, at the time. You might decide it's not worth worrying about so you let it go because you ‘don't sweat the small stuff’, or because it has only happened once or twice and you are too nervous to approach the person. Perhaps you deny it will become something bigger, or perhaps you would just prefer to avoid conflict. There are plenty of reasons why we don't have the tough conversations but the point is, there is a downside to sticking your head in the proverbial sand.
Ignoring these issues can be the difference between dealing with a spot fire and fighting a raging bushfire. The longer we leave it the greater the costs to the business and ourselves.
When we see a spot fire we grab some water and put it out, right? We know that fire is dangerous and it could turn ugly pretty quickly. It's the same when we don't nip problems in the bud.
In 2014 McKinsey put out a white paper called ‘Bad to Great: The path to scaling up excellence’, which states that the most important factor in leadership excellence is the ability to ‘nip it in the bud’. Leaders who are focused on improving behaviour improve organisational performance. Eliminating the negative is the first step in the process. Destructive behaviour – be it selfishness, nastiness, fear, laziness or dishonesty – packs a far bigger punch than constructive behaviour. Furthermore, it damages the bottom line.
Matrix structures add complexity
As organisations grow so do their complexities. In most organisations this leads to matrix structures, with people working on multiple projects across business lines, often with more than two managers.
About thirty years ago this structure became popular and organisations such as IBM, HP, Citibank, Nestle and Xerox led the way. Today it's not just for big businesses; many small to medium businesses are embracing it, too.
The purpose of these centralised and decentralised structures is to optimise productivity and rise to the modern challenges of managing virtual teams working on multiple projects across cross-functional and global platforms. These structures are also about responding to customers swiftly and efficiently.
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