An important lesson I learned this week

Hey friends,

My team and I recently had a whole 2-day planning session. We bounced ideas around, and everyone had their say on the long-term business strategy.

Taking time off from ‘business as usual’ reminded me of this great point (roughly paraphrased from Steven Covey’s?The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People):

When it comes to Things, effectiveness and efficiency are usually broadly similar. But when it comes to People, effectiveness often?looks?like inefficiency.

As you probably know, I focus a lot on efficiency. I like to get things done ASAP, using the bare minimum of resources.

And that approach works great when I’m dealing with inanimate?Thingslike studying, coding, cleaning the house.

But human relationships don’t work like that.

For example, I used to think that the faster we could get through a team meeting, the better. If a 1-hour meeting took 20 minutes I’d say ‘great, that was super efficient. Let’s get back to work.’

But what I realised during our planning session is that people need time and space to speak their mind. With two whole days set aside, everyone loosened up and a whole bunch of minor (and occasionally major) issues came to light that we’d have missed under normal circumstances.

Potentially mission-critical stuff.

And if you want to run a happy, profitable,?effective?business (rather than one that just?looks?efficient) you have to make time for that to happen.

In short: human beings aren’t machines. If you want to be effective in your collaborations and relationships, you can’t focus exclusively on ‘getting things done ASAP’. You need to account for the human factor, even if it?feels?inefficient.

Have a great week!

Ali xx