On Doing Things The Right Way - Part 2

#change #behavior #productivity #strategy #hbr

Part 1 of the article

Change

All Management Is Change Management by Robert H. Schaffer

• The job of management always involves defining what changes need to be made and seeing that those changes take place. [...] The organization becomes a perpetual motion machine. Change never occurs as some sort of happening; it is part of everyday life.
• Leaders should view change not as an occasional disruptor but as the very essence of the management job. Setting tough goals, establishing processes to reach them, carrying out those processes and carefully learning from them — these steps should characterize the unending daily life of the organization at every level.
• A critical part of this evolution is holding managers accountable for continuing improvements.

5 Behaviors of Leaders Who Embrace Change by Edith Onderick-Harvey

• Make opportunity-seeking part of the regular conversation. Simply asking questions like “What are our customers talking about? What do you think they will want a year or two from now? What new trends do you think will impact us?”
• Provide space to experiment. When a potential opportunity is identified, allow individuals or groups to experiment with ways to take advantage of it.
• But for real learning to occur, people need to feel psychologically safe to share the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• As work becomes more complex, it takes teams and cross-boundary collaborations to build products, attract customers, and achieve results.
• How Good Is Your Company at Change? by David Michels and Kevin Murphy
• From that research we identified nine common traits and abilities that make companies excel at change: purpose, direction, and connection (necessary for leading change); capacity, choreography, and scaling (necessary for accelerating change); and development, action, and flexibility (necessary for organizing change).
• Every company will have its own balance of factors that affect change power. But we’ve found that most fit a pattern corresponding to one of four common archetypes: In search of focus, stuck and skeptical, aligned but constrained, and struggling to keep up. Each archetype has its own symptoms and remedies.

How to Get Better at Dealing with Change by Nick Tasler

• Change is an unavoidable constant in our work lives. Sometimes it’s within our control, but most often it’s not. Our jobs or roles change — and not always for the better. Our organizations undergo reorgs and revamp their strategies, and we need to adjust.?Fortunately, there are ways to adapt to change, and even to take advantage of it.
• Focus on your values instead of your fears. Reminding ourselves of what’s important to us — family, friends, religious convictions, scientific achievement, great music, creative expression, and so on — can create a surprisingly powerful buffer against whatever troubles may be ailing us.
• Accept the past, but fight for the future.
• [...] we should choose to accept the fact that change happens, and employ our freedom to decide what to do next.
• [...] struggling leaders were consumed by thoughts of “the good old days.”

Change Is Hard. Here’s How to Make It Less Painful. by Erika Andersen

• Major change happens moment to moment — economically, environmentally, sociologically, politically, and organizationally. Given all this, we need to re-wire ourselves to be more comfortable with and open to change; we need to become more change-capable.
• [...] their initial mindset (again, based on many thousands of years of change being seen as a threat) is usually that the change will be difficult, costly, and weird.
• Unfortunately, people often get “stuck” in their initial negative mindset about a change, and refuse (either quietly or overtly) to support it.
• [...] to create skills and habits of mind to approach change in a more neutral, open way, and therefore to be better able to navigate all the changes that will arise in this new era.

Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey by Andrew White, Michael Smets, and Adam Canwell

• One of our most important findings is that, in order for transformation to be successful, leaders must approach it in ways designed to mitigate emotional harm to — and drive emotional commitment from — employees.?
• The first step in any transformation is recognizing that the status quo is unsustainable.
• [...] understanding your own ego’s need to be an expert and recognizing the importance of being open to learning during this time of transformation.
• Embracing the unknown and adopting humility enables you to develop a purposeful vision
• Enabling transformation requires giving employees the information and resources they need to develop and innovate in other directions.

You Need to Practice Being Your Future Self by Peter Bregman

• Being busy is not the same as being productive.
• If you want to be productive, the first question you need to ask yourself is: Who do I want to be? Another question is: Where do I want to go? Chances are that the answers to these questions represent growth in some direction. And while you can’t spend all your time pursuing those objectives, you definitely won’t get there if you don’t spend any of your time pursuing them.
• You need to spend time on the future even when there are more important things to do in the present and even when there is no immediately apparent return to your efforts. In other words — and this is the hard part — if you want to be productive, you need to spend time doing things that feel ridiculously unproductive.
• Sometimes you need to be irresponsible with your current challenges in order to make real progress on your future self.

Behavior

Empathy Rules by Sherry Turkle

• Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s problem in the hopes of understanding, of bridging a gap. It helps us feel in community, not abandoned to anomic isolation. It helps us feel seen and known for who we are.
• Real empathy starts from a different premise, radical humility: “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m here to listen.”
• Radical humility is the first of four empathy practices that can help us move away from anomie and shape the new “new normal.” More imperative than guidelines, they are fundamental to emotional and social well-being.
• Empathy implies that you will do the work necessary to comprehend [...].
• Empathy isn’t altruistic. It enlarges those who offer it and binds them to others.

How to Cultivate Gratitude, Compassion, and Pride on Your Team by David DeSteno

• Innovation typically requires team effort. Expertise has to be combined to solve problems, necessitating cooperation. And cooperation requires a willingness to share credit and support one another as opposed to always striving to take credit for oneself.
• These three emotions [(gratitude, compassion, and pride)] not only increase patience and perseverance, but also build social bonds. For most of human evolutionary history, the ability to succeed rested almost entirely on the ability to form relationships. People needed to be honest, fair, and diligent – qualities that required a willingness to inhibit selfish desires to profit at the expense of others. And it was moral emotions like gratitude, compassion, and an authentic pride that motivated these actions.
• Gratitude, compassion, and pride make us more willing to cooperate with and invest in others. But because they accomplish this feat by increasing the value the mind places on future gains, they also nudge us to invest in our own futures. In so doing, they make both teams, and the individuals who comprise them, more successful and resilient.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Kindness at Work by Ovul Sezer, Kelly Nault, and Nadav Klein

• A commitment to be kind can bring many important benefits. First, and perhaps most obviously, practicing kindness will be immensely helpful to our colleagues. Being recognized at work helps reduce employee burnout and absenteeism, and improves employee well-being [...].
• [...] practicing kindness helps life feel more meaningful.
• Organizations benefit from actively fostering kindness. In workplaces where acts of kindness become the norm, the spillover effects can multiply fast.
• It [kindness] is an essential leadership skill that can cascade through people, changing the culture of the workplace along the way.

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

• Yet arrogance and overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent — the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams, and to inspire followers to set aside their selfish agendas in order to work for the common interest of the group.
• [...] what it takes to get the job is not just different from, but also the reverse of, what it takes to do the job well. As a result, too many incompetent people are promoted to management jobs, and promoted over more competent people.

How to Avoid Hiring a Toxic Employee by Christine Porath

• Nothing is more costly to an organization’s culture than a toxic employee. Research shows that rudeness is like the common cold — it’s contagious, spreads quickly, and anyone can be a carrier.
• Skill and talent can’t make up for the costly impact that toxic employees have on your organization; it’s better to catch that behavior before the person joins your team. Do your homework. Rely on structured, behavioral interviews. Conduct thorough reference checks. Investigate hunches thoroughly. And put your best foot forward. After all, it pays to be civil.

Leaders, Stop Rewarding Toxic Rock Stars by Deepa Purushothaman and Lisen Stromberg

• Most of us have known a high performer who is a bully at work or a leader who delivers results but creates a toxic environment. These “toxic rock stars” can ruin the workplace experience for most employees [...].
• [...] toxic rock stars can and do deliver today. However, the long-term impact of these culture bullies on attrition, employee engagement, productivity, and employer branding can’t be ignored.
• But too often, employers tolerate toxic rock stars’ poor behavior despite repeated reports to management and human resources. [...] reports with no action send the message to all employees that bad behavior can be trumped by other factors. Companies have to take decisive action and terminate people who create toxic environments.
• The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate [...] Leaders must ask themselves what they’re tolerating.
• Inclusion and belonging have become core values for numerous companies in the past few years. [...] if these values aren’t reflected in employees’ lived experiences, the good intentions become performative and create distrust.

The Psychology Behind Unethical Behavior by Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

• The psychological counterweight to omnipotence is owning your flaws. It’s a mature capability to look in the mirror and recognize that you are not above it all. Especially if you’re in a leadership position, assume you have weaknesses and think about them regularly.
• Cultural numbness. No matter how principled you are, you must recognize that, over time, the bearings of your moral compass will shift toward the culture of your organization or team.
• [...] looking out for signs of moral capture:?those brief moments when you don’t recognize yourself and any other indications that you are subjecting your own personal agency to the deviant norms of the collective.
• Justified neglect. The human mind is skilled at justifying minor incursions when there is a tangible reward at stake — and when the risk of getting caught is low.

Working with People Who Aren’t Self-Aware by Tasha Eurich

• Even though self-awareness — knowing who we are and how we’re seen — is important for job performance, career success, and leadership effectiveness, it’s in remarkably short supply in today’s workplace.
• At the office, we don’t have to look far to find unaware colleagues — people who, despite past successes, solid qualifications, or irrefutable intelligence, display a complete lack of insight into how they are coming across.
• Interpersonal conflict can arise from different priorities, incompatible communication styles, or a lack of trust.
• Typically, if someone is unaware, there’s a consensus about their behavior (i.e., it won’t just be you). More specifically, we’ve found several consistent behaviors of un-self-aware individuals:?They won’t listen to, or accept, critical feedback. They cannot empathize with, or take the perspective of, others. They have difficulty “reading a room” and tailoring their message to their audience. They possess an inflated opinion of their contributions and performance. They are hurtful to others without realizing it. They take credit for successes and blame others for failures.
• Mindfully reframe their behavior: The popular workplace practice of mindfulness can be an effective tool for dealing with the unaware. Specifically, noticing what we’re feeling in a given moment allows us to reframe the situation and be more resilient.?
• We can adopt the mindset of compassion without judgment.
• [...] we’ve studied people who made dramatic, transformational improvements in their self-awareness. Though it takes courage, commitment, and humility, it is indeed possible—and whether or not the people around us choose to improve?their?self-awareness, we have complete control over the choice to improve?ours?(find a quick, high-level assessment of your self-awareness?here). At the end of the day, perhaps that’s where our energy is best spent.

How to Persuade People to Change Their Behavior by Jonah Berger

• You can increase people’s sense of freedom and control by pointing out a disconnect between their thoughts and actions, or between what they might recommend for others versus do themselves.
• Another way to allow for agency is to ask questions rather than make statements.?Public health messaging tries to be direct: “Junk food makes you fat.” “Drunk driving is murder.” “Keep sheltering in place.” But being so forceful can make people feel threatened. The same content can be phrased in terms of a question: “Do you think junk food is good for you?” If someone’s answer is no, they’re now in a tough spot. By encouraging them to articulate their opinion, they’ve had to put a stake in the ground — to admit that those things aren’t good for them. And once they’ve done that, it becomes harder to justify the bad behaviors.
• Questions shift the listener’s role. Rather than counter-arguing or thinking about all the reasons they disagree, they’re sorting through their answer to your query and their feelings or opinions on the matter.

How to Figure Out How Much Influence You Have at Work by Maxim Sytch

• Do your contacts provide you with more value than you return? Such relationships are difficult to sustain in the long run. Asymmetries in dependence indicate others hold the power in a relationship.
• First of all, a prime way to rectify unfavorable power audit scores is to earn relationships by delivering value to your contacts. Ask yourself: what value can you deliver to them? One way is to develop and continuously improve upon a skill set that leads others to value your contributions. Then proactively use your skills to help others, well beyond the demands of your formal role. You don’t want to be the expert whom nobody knows.
• By creating value for diverse stakeholders and making yourself irreplaceable, you open possibilities for yourself within the organization and beyond. And, by doing so, you add value to your company.

Cultivating Everyday Courage by James R. Detert

• I’ve found many examples of people at all levels who created positive change without ruining their careers. Their success rested primarily on a set of attitudes and behaviors that can be learned, rather than on innate characteristics. I call people who exhibit these behaviors competently courageous because they create the right conditions for action by establishing a strong internal reputation and by improving their fallback options in case things go poorly; they carefully choose their battles, discerning whether a given opportunity to act makes sense in light of their values, the timing, and their broader objectives; they maximize the odds of in-the-moment success by managing the messaging and emotions;
• Courage, after all, is about taking worthy actions?despite the potential risk.
• Competently courageous people are masters of good timing.
• Above all, keep your values and purpose front and center. You’ll have a stronger sense of self-respect through any setbacks you face, and you’ll be less likely to regret your actions, no matter how things turn out. And by using the principles discussed in this article, you’ll increase the chances of successfully creating change, making the risks you take all the more worthwhile.

What Great Listeners Actually Do by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman

• Good listening is much more than being silent while the other person talks. To the contrary, people perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight.
• Good listening included interactions that build a person’s self-esteem. The best listeners made the conversation a positive experience for the other party, which doesn’t happen when the listener is passive [...]. Good listeners made the other person feel supported and conveyed confidence in them.
• The listener creates a safe environment in which difficult, complex, or emotional issues can be discussed.

6 Habits That Hurt Your Career — and How to Overcome Them by Kerry Goyette

• At its core, conflict avoidance uses escape or intimidation to mask insecurities and avoid having our fears, uncertainties, or mistakes exposed.
• This derailer might include unpredictable emotional responses, such as anger and frustration, or going after the new, shiny idea without vetting it.
• the number-one cause of poor problem-solving and a lack of innovation. Blame shifters exaggerate the negative, feel like victims, and pass the buck to colleagues, different departments or managers.
• If you have a tendency to micromanage, consider spaced-out check-ins in which you get updates, share goals and metrics, and offer advice, while still empowering your team. You need?more communication, buy-in and alignment to loosen control, but the results are shared team success.
• [...] people who always aim for perfect often miss deadlines and opportunities.
• [...] claiming control over the resources in a relationship, due to lack of empathy, a laser-focus on your own goals at the expense of others, an unwillingness to compromise, or seeing others as a means to an end. Power hungry leaders tend to make snap decisions and alienate the people around them.

Stop Complaining About Your Colleagues Behind Their Backs by Deborah Grayson Riegel

• Ask yourself or others why you need someone else’s confirmation about a behavior that you’re noticing in a third person. If it’s to justify your feelings, to confirm that you’re right, or to gain support for your point of view, don’t bring someone else into the conversation. If it’s to understand how you might be contributing to the dynamic or problem, to brainstorm helpful solutions, or to go on record to make a formal complaint for further investigation, then go for it.
• Let people know that you have a policy of “if you have a problem with me, please tell me first.”
• Create a feedback-rich environment around you. The more you normalize feedback — both positive and negative, and both giving and receiving — the less likely people will be to look for alternative means to express their frustrations and concerns.
• Gossip, even by any other name, is still a destructive communication strategy that negatively impacts individuals, teams and the whole organization. By stopping it in its tracks, choosing healthier and more helpful methods of communicating what’s not working, and engaging in collaborative problem-solving, relationships and organizations can flourish.

The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead by Peter Bregman

• When we complain about someone else, the uncomfortable feelings begin to dissipate because complaining releases the pent up energy.
• Complaining changes the balance of negative/positive energy and, for a brief moment at least, we feel better. It’s actually a pretty reliable process. Addictive even.
• Which is the problem (beyond even the wasted time): Like just about all addictions, we’re feeding the spin of a destructive, never-ending cycle. The release of pressure — the good feeling — is ephemeral. In fact, the more we complain, the more likely the frustration, over time, will increase.
• Complaining creates a number of dysfunctional side effects (again, beyond the time wasted): It creates factions, prevents or delays — because it replaces — productive engagement, reinforces and strengthens dissatisfaction, riles up others, breaks trust, and, potentially, makes the complainer appear negative. We become the cancer we’re complaining about; the negative influence that seeps into the culture.
• Worse, our complaining amplifies the destructiveness and annoyance of the initial frustration about which we’re complaining.
• Complaining is a violent move to inaction. It replaces the need to act.

How to Interrupt Someone’s Workday — Without Annoying Them by Elana Feldman

• [...] before interrupting someone, consider whether what you want them to do is likely to be a priority for them.
• [...] ask yourself what you know about the person’s current workload.
• [...] interruptions are experienced more positively if they occur at what feels like the “right” time.
• [...] think creatively about how you can lighten the load and use the person’s time most efficiently.
• [...] let someone know that you expect to have to interrupt them in the near future.

Productivity

What Makes an Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker

• They asked, “What needs to be done?” They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?” They developed action plans. They took responsibility for decisions. They took responsibility for communicating. They were focused on opportunities rather than problems. They ran productive meetings. They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”
• I’m going to throw in one final, bonus practice. This one’s so important that I’ll elevate it to the level of a rule: Listen first, speak last.?Effective executives differ widely in their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, values, and beliefs. All they have in common is that they get the right things done. Some are born effective. But the demand is much too great to be satisfied by extraordinary talent. Effectiveness is a discipline. And, like every discipline, effectiveness can be learned and must be earned.

5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently by Ron Friedman

• When it comes to building extraordinary workplaces and high-performing teams, researchers have long appreciated that three psychological needs are essential: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• [...] high-performing teams avoid the common pitfalls of poorly run meetings by incorporating practices shown to foster more productive gatherings. Specifically, they are significantly more likely to require prework from participants (39% more likely), introduce an agenda (26% more likely), and begin with a check-in that keeps team members apprised of one another’s progress (55% more likely).
• [...] members of high-performing teams reported receiving more frequent appreciation at work — both from their colleagues (72% more) as well their managers (79% more). [...] appreciation doesn’t flow from the top down. It’s a cultural norm that’s observable in peer-to-peer interactions.
• Why would expressing negative emotions at work yield more positive performance? It’s because the alternative to expressing negative emotions is suppressing them, and suppression is cognitively expensive.
• Previous studies have shown that authenticity contributes to workplace well-being and individual performance.

4 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time by Amantha Imber

• Align your most important work with your chronotype.
• A productive day doesn’t just happen. It requires planning. When we write down what we intend to do — and when and where we intend to do it — we are far more likely to achieve our goals.
• Develop different rituals for different types of work.
• Productivity isn’t about how many hours you work, or how many to-do’s you’re able to cross off your list. It’s about doing what you need in order to work in an efficient and time effective manner. And that starts with being intentional about your day.

5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity by Alice Boyes

• You overestimate how much focused time you have in a typical day.
• When you successfully make a low-key change, your willingness to make other changes will probably naturally expand.
• You underestimate the costs of small time/energy leaks.
• When you create systems (e.g., reducing unnecessary decisions, streamlining and simplifying tasks, batching, automating, outsourcing, or using checklists) that address small time/energy leaks, you’ll experience mental clarity benefits from doing so that far outstrip the time savings.

Collaboration Without Burnout by Rob Cross, Scott Taylor, and Deb Zehner

• Much overload is driven by your desire to maintain a reputation as helpful.
• [...] best practices in three broad categories: beliefs (understanding why we take on too much); role, schedule, and network (eliminating unnecessary collaboration to make time for work that is aligned with professional aspirations and personal values); and behavior (ensuring that necessary or desired collaborative work is as productive as possible).
• Our research suggests that poorly run meetings are the biggest time sink in organizations. Even if you don’t control the ones you attend, you can make them more productive by, for example, asking the leader to circulate an agenda or a pre-read before the gathering and a short e-mail on agreements, commitments, and next steps afterward. You can also limit your involvement by explaining that you have a hard stop (real or constructed) so that you’re not stuck when others run overtime, and asking to attend only those portions for which you are needed or agreeing to half the time a colleague or employee requests.
• For one-on-one interactions, always consider whether you are consuming your counterpart’s time efficiently. Ask yourself, “Am I clear on what I want to accomplish from a meeting or a conversation?” And invite others to be equally disciplined by asking early on, “So that I use your time well, would you quickly let me know what you hope we can accomplish together?”

How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To by Heidi Grant

• When you have a prevention focus, instead of thinking about how you can end up better off, you see the task as a way to hang on to what you’ve already got – to avoid loss.
• So if you are sitting there, putting something off because you don’t feel like it, remember that you don’t actually need to feel like it.?There is nothing stopping you.
• [...] people routinely overestimate their capacity for self-control, and rely on it too often to keep them out of hot water.
• I realize that the three strategies I’m offering you – thinking about the consequences of failure, ignoring your feelings, and engaging in detailed planning – don’t sound as fun as advice like “Follow your passion!” or “Stay positive!”?But they have the decided advantage of actually being effective – which, as it happens, is exactly what you’ll be if you use them.

Stop Sabotaging Your Workforce by Steve Glaveski

• [...] three to four hours of continuous, undisturbed deep work each day is all it takes to see a transformational change in our productivity and our lives [...].
• Process is supposed to serve us, to help us deliver and minimize risk. But, taken too far, it sabotages competitiveness, growth, productivity, and employee morale.
• [...] difference between Type 1 and Type 2 decisions: Type 1 decisions are high stakes, costly, and irreversible. Type 2 decisions are low cost and reversible. Most decisions are Type 2 decisions, and should be made quickly, but when we treat almost all decisions as Type 1 decisions, our cadence grinds to a halt. Such cultural pitfalls are encoded into many governance procedures, such as delegations of authority and approvals, which mitigate Type 2 mistakes at the expense of long-term growth.
• Scale back key processes to the minimum level required to support both innovation and risk management.
• Decrease both the number of steps required to get things done and the frequency of events such as reporting and meetings.
• If people don’t feel that they are learning anything of value at work, they’re likely to become disgruntled and search for greener pastures elsewhere.
• Give people the opportunity to learn skills that matter to them and their role today, rather than rolling out mandatory general courses. Give people the opportunity to learn about topics of their own choosing, not directly related to their existing role, but that can position them to take advantage of new opportunities tomorrow.
• [...] we are six-times more likely to be engaged at work when we play to our strengths, and three times more likely to report an excellent quality of life.
• Automate and outsource any rudimentary, process-oriented, and low-risk functions to liberate time so people can apply their best selves.
• High-performance cultures not only bring out the best in our people, but attract the best people to the fold, giving organizations a significant competitive advantage. It’s time to stop sabotaging our organizations and people and start serving them.

How to Make Great Decisions, Quickly by Martin G. Moore

• [...] consensus-seeking is almost always excruciatingly slow, and the higher up a leader climbs, the less often they are afforded the luxury of time.
• [...] learning to make good decisions without hesitation or procrastination is a capability that can set you apart from your peers. While others vacillate on tricky choices, your team could be hitting deadlines and producing the type of results that deliver true value.
• 1) Great decisions are shaped by consideration of many different viewpoints. 2) Great decisions are made as close as possible to the action. 3) Great decisions address the root cause, not just the symptoms. 4) Great decisions are made by a clearly accountable person. 5) Great decisions consider the holistic impacts of a problem. 6) Great decisions balance short-term and long-term value. 7) Great decisions are communicated well to stakeholders. 8) Great decisions are timely.

You Need to Practice Being Your Future Self by Peter Bregman

• If you want to be productive, the first question you need to ask yourself is: Who do I want to be?
• You need to spend time on the future even when there are more important things to do in the present and even when there is no immediately apparent return to your efforts. [...] if you want to be productive, you need to spend time doing things that feel ridiculously unproductive.
• Sometimes you need to be irresponsible with your current challenges in order to make real progress on your future self. You have to let the present just sit there, untended. It’s not going away and will never end. That’s the nature of the present.
• It’s the other stuff I worry about. The wildly important stuff that never gets done because there’s not time or it’s not urgent or it’s too hard or risky or terrifying.

To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To by Maura Thomas

• Attention management is the practice of controlling distractions, being present in the moment, finding flow, and maximizing focus, so that you can unleash your genius. It’s about being intentional instead of reactive.
• Better attention management leads to improved productivity, but it’s about much more than checking things off a to-do list. The ultimate result is the ability to create a life of choice, around things that are important to you. It’s more than just exercising focus. It’s about taking back control over your time and your priorities.
• [...] if your attention continues getting diverted, and email, meetings, and “firefighting” consume your days, pretty soon weeks or months will have gone by and your life becomes full of the “experiences” you never really intended to have.?
• Practicing attention management will not eliminate distractions from your day. But as you start to recognize when you become distracted, and build your “attention muscle” through habits like those above, you’ll start to reclaim your life and devote more of yourself to what’s really important to you. Don’t allow distraction to derail your aspirations and intentions. Instead, control your attention to control your life.

How Timeboxing Works and Why It Will Make You More Productive by Marc Zao-Sanders

• In a study we conducted of 100 productivity hacks, timeboxing was ranked as the most useful.
• Fourth, you will feel more in control. This is especially important because control (aka volition, autonomy, etc.) may be the biggest driver of happiness at work. Constant interruptions make us less happy and less productive. Timeboxing is the proper antidote to this. You decide what to do and when to do it, block out all distractions for that timeboxed period, and get it done. Repeat. Consistent control and demonstrable accomplishment is hugely satisfying, even addictive. This is not just about productivity (largely external), this is about intent (internal, visceral) and how we feel.

Productivity Is About Your Systems, Not Your People by Daniel Markovitz

• [...] most problems and possibilities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual.
• The pursuit of individual productivity is healthy and worthwhile. However, unless you work independently outside of an organization, the benefits of most “tricks” will be limited. To make a real impact on performance, you have to work at the system level.

Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting? by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Strategy

Why Do So Many Strategies Fail? by David J. Collis

• Strategic adaptation must become an ongoing, iterative process of hypothesis, experimentation, learning, and action.
• Today a complete strategy has to encompass carefully coordinated choices about the business model with the highest potential to create value, the competitive position that captures as much of that value as possible, and the implementation processes that adapt constantly to the changing environment while building the capabilities needed to realize value over the long term.
• Identify opportunities. This involves continually taking stock of what’s happening in the outside world—developments in technology, demographics, culture, geopolitics, disease, and so on that are the current “hot topics.” These changes and trends open up possibilities for firms to exploit.
• To translate an opportunity into strategy [...] a business model that maximizes the potential value of their offering [must be developed].
• Strategy has always been about aligning the organization behind a clear direction.

• What Is Disruptive Innovation? by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald
• The problem with conflating a disruptive innovation with any breakthrough that changes an industry’s competitive patterns is that different types of innovation require different strategic approaches.
• The fact that disruption can take time helps to explain why incumbents frequently overlook disrupters.
• Disrupters often build business models that are very different from those of incumbents.
• The disruptive effect drives every competitor—incumbent and entrant—upmarket.
• Empirical tests show that using disruptive theory makes us measurably and significantly more accurate in our predictions of which fledgling businesses will succeed.

What Is Strategy, Again? by Andrea Ovans

• At a fundamental level, all strategies [...] boil down to two very broad options: Do what everyone else is doing (but spend less money doing it), or do something no one else can do.
• [...] in the face of rapidly changing technologies, globalization, and the inexorably accelerating pace of change, there remain endlessly clever new ways to make money, beat the competition, and nudge Adam Smith’s invisible hand toward truly productive and profitable enterprises.

4 Steps to Creating a Strategy in an Uncertain World by Joerg Esser

• Rather than trying to win the teams over, to get them on board with the idea, you ask them why it’s not possible. People find it easier to answer that question, and they also come up with some angles that you may not have thought of. Better still, taking an idea that everyone thinks is ridiculous and going for it is a fun, almost playful process — and play is the secret of creativity.
• Continuously challenging existing solutions has far-reaching consequences for your strategy.

Two Questions to Ask Before Setting Your Strategy by Martin Reeves and Annelies O’Dea

• [...] it is important that strategy makers postpone the urge to immediately start analyzing and deciding and instead begin by asking two basic questions: Is there a problem to solve and what sort of problem is it?
• Many companies get started on strategy-making too late because of a lack of awareness or sense of urgency that there is a challenge to be addressed.
• Of course, there is a tradeoff between investing time in problem framing vs. problem solving. On the one hand, by investing more time in framing, we can be surer that we are solving the right problem and the problem is posed in a tractable manner. Attempting to solve an unsolvable problem or deftly solving the wrong problem will only result in frustration and wasted effort.
• Strategy is not just about thinking strategically about business. It also involves thinking strategically about thinking strategically. And reflecting on the nature of the problem before addressing it, will result in more economical, relevant, and robust solutions.

Design Your Organization to Match Your Strategy by Ron Carucci and Jarrod Shappell

• An organization is nothing more than a living embodiment of a strategy. That means its “organizational hardware” (i.e., structures, processes, technologies, and governance) and its “organizational software” (i.e., values, norms, culture, leadership, and employee skills and aspirations) must be designed exclusively in the service of a specific strategy.
• Every strategy will demand unique competitive capabilities that clearly enable your success. This work that forms these capabilities is work you must be better at than competitors.
• Leaders must not only design new governance, they must also strip away previous processes and governance that are no longer contributing to the strategy’s success.
• [...] leaders assume that a few nips and tucks to the org chart are the equivalent of good design. But those are the Frankenstein “designs” that make people in different parts of the organization feel like they work in different companies. They quickly grow stagnant and are more fit for the PowerPoint slides on which they’re loosely drawn than for a dynamic business.

Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies by Freek Vermeulen

• One major reason for the lack of action is that “new strategies” are often not strategies at all. A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do. Many strategies fail to get implemented, despite the ample efforts of hard-working people, because they do not represent a set of clear choices.
• Many so-called strategies are in fact goals.
• [...] another reason many implementation efforts fail is that they usually require changing people’s habits. And habits in organizations are notoriously sticky and persistent. Habits certainly don’t change by telling people in a town hall meeting that they should act differently. People are often not even aware that they are doing things in a particular way and that there might be different ways to run the same process.
• Identifying and countering the bad habits that keep your strategy from getting executed is not an easy process [...] It may involve reshuffling people into different units, to disrupt and alter habitual ways of working and to expose people to alternative ways of doing things.
• We often resist change unless it is crystal clear that the alternative is substantially better. For a successful strategy implementation process, however, it is useful to put the default the other way around: Change it unless it is crystal clear that the old way is substantially better. Execution involves change. Embrace it.

Don’t Confuse Strategy with Lofty Goals by Constantinos C. Markides

• Strategy is not aspirations, objectives or wishful thinking. It is a set of hard-to-reverse choices and explaining what these choices are and why they were made is what strategy communication should be.
• The real problem that most organizations face is not whether they need to make three or four or five choices but how to get their senior managers to make any choices at all! The biggest strategic mistake that organizations make is not that they miss one or two choices in their decision-making; it is that they do not make choices at all
• For any organization to succeed, it must first make the difficult choices that strategy requires and then communicate these choices to employees in an effective way. [...] A little bit more effort in improving our communication of strategy can lead to major benefits in how employees execute our strategy.

How to Demonstrate Your Strategic Thinking Skills by Nina A. Bowman

• Developing great strategic thinking skills requires you to gain exposure to strategic roles, synthesize broad information, participate in a culture of curiosity, and gather experiences that allow you to identify patterns and connect the dots in novel ways. That’s why high-potential and leadership development programs often include job rotations, cross-functional projects, and face time with senior leadership — these all accelerate the development of strategic thinking.
• Demonstrating strategic thinking, on the other hand, requires that you are simultaneously a marketer, a salesperson, and a change agent. Proactive and widespread communication of your strategic efforts combined with the courage to challenge others and initiate and drive your strategic ideas are what make your boss and peers take notice.
• One of the first changes he made was to instruct his assistant to block out 30 minutes on his calendar before important meetings. He knew that barely having time to collect his thoughts before going into meetings made him unprepared, less vocal, and less capable of synthesizing and sharing his knowledge. Just a half hour, once or twice a week, would allow him to shape his point of view on important issues.
• [...] as a strategic thinker, you must also demonstrate that you can use your knowledge to put new ideas into action.

4 Ways to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills by Nina A. Bowman

• In order to be strategic, you need a solid understanding of the industry context, trends, and business drivers.
• [...] looking at information from different points of view [...] see different possibilities, different approaches, and different potential outcomes.
• Strategic thinkers also know how to speak the language. They prioritize and sequence their thoughts. They structure their verbal and written communication in a way that helps their audience focus on their core message. They challenge the status quo and get people talking about underlying assumptions. Those that are really skilled walk people through the process of identifying issues, shaping common understanding, and framing strategic choices.
• [...] evaluate her tasks based on urgency and importance as outlined in Stephen Covey’s 2 x 2 matrix [...].

The Art of Strategy Is About Knowing When to Say No by Brian Halligan

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