Metamucil for Managers
There is a fine balance we need to maintain between regular, boring, same ole same ole and change. If we allow ourselves to be too patterned to the same thing every day, we gradually erode our resiliency. Whether it is a new path to work, a change in outfit, a different coffee order or shifting house, I encourage everyone to voluntarily and proactively make small changes to your own. Yet at the same time, we know that every time we add a new thing, we also trigger an emotional and physical cascade. If we do it too much, we can exhaust ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, and professionally. Call it burnout or exhaustion, people just get tired. My topic last week is exactly what you’d expect to see when change fatigue is taken to the extreme. So how can we combat global tiredness? How can we recover our own emotional and physical equilibrium when the world has thrown so many changes into our lives simultaneously?
Well, let’s take a step back and talk about the things that might have gotten bolluxed but which we can reclaim. The one that immediately comes to mind is the standing, team meeting. At the company for which I work, the past 9 months have been intense, full on, exhausting. We supply critical services to the healthcare sector so there was no stand down during lockdown… in fact the work doubled, tripled, multiplied by X. The second lockdown was actually worse because – thankfully so! – our medical services continued with their normal, regular care but added testing and covid care on top. Not surprisingly, standard leader hygiene factors were deferred, deflected, and thrown out the window. Regular fortnightlies, standard 1:1s, monthly team sessions, quarterly planning… you name it. While pockets of these activities remain, by far the majority got thrown out.
You could say this is organisation specific, but I think you’d be lying. I very strongly suspect that there are very few organisations where at least some of this ‘regular order’ abandonment did not take place. By far the majority have seen a considerable erosion of basic leadership and management hygiene factors during these times. Virtually every individual has used ‘but the pandemic’ excuses to avoid a meeting, skip a report, stop taking care of a thing.
Yes. I went there. I used the word ‘excuse’.
Initially, these weren’t avoidance behaviours or excuses or bad habits. Initially people and teams and organisations very rightfully deferred and deflected in order to focus on the immediate, compelling need to respond to the moment. We were all in a form of survival mode. When you are running from a lion, you don’t need to pay any particular attention to whether your zip is up. It is, in fact, easy to make the case that you were doing exactly the right thing, focused on exactly the right priorities in those early months.
But people… we are 9 months into a modified way of work and life that in all probability will last for another 18 to 24 months. If you are still not having 1:1s with your team members, still periodically cancelling regular meetings (or haven’t even restarted them), still deferring performance evaluations or end of year reports, clearing the backlog of leave requests, still not holding planning sessions for 2021… if you are still not putting in place some sense of regular order, you are doing an enormous disservice to yourself and your people.
While the world spins wildly and the pandemic rages and everything feels uncertain and in flux, what is within your circle of control are the regular heartbeats of personal and business life. The trash goes out on Tuesday. The team meets for a Monday stand up at 10:00am. We plan for the next year during a half day planning session in late-November before the holidays. Every year we have a holiday event. Board papers are due the 3rd Thursday of every even month. Property tax is due on the 4th Tuesday of every third month. Beat beat beat beat. Re-establish this metronome for yourself and for the people around you. Recover the banality of your weekly team meeting, the predictability of your quarterly executive roadshow. If you can’t use the same format as in the before times, that’s okay. What matters is the sheer, mind-numbing familiarity of something that is regular, routine and – dare I say – normal. When a new wave hits, a new disruption threatens to swamp you, this time don’t let go of the regularity of the mundane. Fiercely protect the 1:1s, the fortnightly Friday beer, the business unit town hall. Prioritise any tiny thing you can that hints at consistency and reduces change.
Our ability to manage change is a finite resource. While we can increase the size of the cup, even the most resilient find themselves this year drained nearly bloodless, exhausted by the sheer noisy, relentless volume of it all. Regularity pours a little bit of energy back into that cup. Drip drip drip, heartbeat by heartbeat. Give us back a few boring meetings.
“A man who works regularly, in a systematic fashion, never feels overworked or tired. He knows his limits and is able to do in fair time all that he undertakes. It is not hard work that kills a man, but irregularity or lack of system.” ~ M.K. Gandhi
