CWO Diary, September 2023

Welcome to the September issue of the Chief Wellbeing Officer digest on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to this edition or the weekly direct-to-inbox newsletter .

The September issue in the world of fashion is the most important of the year. A bumper edition which defines the direction for the coming season. And I think for the wider world of work too. September is the month that we get back up to speed, setting our routines for the increasing rush towards the end of the calendar year. In many ways, it is the new year .

To that end, the core content in this month's digest revolves around getting stuff done. We look at the first and final 15 minutes of your day , winning with meetings , reflections on thinking time , my column with The European Business Review and a busy few weeks on the road with Chief Wellbeing Officer programs. It also gives me great pleasure to highlight the work of Ashley B. Stewart .

New Writing

After the vacation period, re-starting in September can be a daunting prospect. Rather than being overwhelmed by the big picture I think a good first step is to look closely at the key, small pockets of space in your day. Particularly how you start and finish. To that end I have two questions for you. First:

How do you spend the first 15 minutes of your day?

This is a typical area of focus in the self-improvement space and I think a big danger is to be obsessed by achievement. Wellbeing doesn't need to be performative. Maybe just one thing is enough for your new morning routine, or maybe it's just thinking on the things you shouldn't do. Whatever works for you. Not someone else.

Of course, the follow-up question is:

How do you spend the final 15 minutes of your day?

It could be journaling, reading, meditating, general reflection or giving thanks. Personally, I've battled with this space over the years. I'm a morning person so can easily fall into bad habits (and bad temper!) late at night. I focus on reading, and am currently loving Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. Pure escapism!

Meetings are another key aspect of our September return to full-speed. I've found the above flow-chart from Harvard Business Review helpful and often ask my program participants how many meetings they can 'kill' in their normal week. I looked at a range of measures to win with meetings here and am inspired by different approaches, such as this one from Jeff Bezos:

As a means of outlawing PowerPoint presentations, which he believed led to shallow thinking, Bezos started meetings with each attendee sitting and silently reading a six-page narratively-structured memo for about 30 minutes. Importantly, the memo wasn’t shared in advance, since it was believed that no-one would read it, or at best skim read. Bezos believed this approach led to deep discussion and the best use of everyone’s time and described the approach as probably the smartest thing Amazon ever did.

A final area of recent writing and useful, I believe, for September, is how you carve out thinking time . An initial reflection is how you spend your time at work. We might easily identify the e-mails, meetings and phonecalls, but what about dedicated thinking time? Therefore, the key question is:

When and where do you do your best thinking?

Whatever the answer is, try and build more of this in. The following table, taken from The Daily Reset , might help in your reflections.

Community Spotlight

This month it gives me great pleasure to highlight the work of Ashley B. Stewart . Now, I'm sure Ashley would be the first to say his work doesn't sit in the wellbeing space, but what he does -- providing world-class transformational leadership experiences and executive coaching -- is absolutely critical for building the foundations on which wellbeing might thrive.

I co-facilitated a workshop with Ashley in the US last year and let me share this: he is the best workshop facilitator I have seen (and I have seen a lot). Follow or connect with Ashley here , or schedule a call via his website here .

Back Catalogue

My recent New Year reflections took me back to the start of a memorable recent collaboration. In September of 2016 I started a monthly column on Executive Health with The European Business Review . It gave me the accountability to write on a regular basis, with a lot of the ideas that emerged there subsequently becoming part of the Chief Wellbeing Officer book . I've always enjoyed my interactions with Team TEBR and they also very kindly produced a cool video of my Seven Hacks of Highly Effective Habits model . You can download a PDF version of the first year of articles here .

CWO Programs

I've loved being on the road recently and reflected on Instagram on my most intense period of global travel to date . In the middle of this period was my first talk at the Apple Spaceship which I included in my LinkedIn feed this week .

Huge thanks to Workday and Alfardan Group for two intense memorable weeks this month. I was in the Sonoran Desert one week and the Arabian Desert the next.

It's the Swiss mountains next and this week I finished the design for a 2-day program for On. 50 people, offsite. Hoping for deep transformation.

Thanks for reading everyone. I'd love to hear what you'd like to see in the October edition. Keep well.

Steven