Own YOUR Career, YOUR Time. Say kNOtt more, so you can say yes when it matters most.

How quickly days turn into nights – especially now as we all juggle back to back on what feels like endless teams/zoom/webex/gchats. Have your eyes started to burn like mine? A new experience for me was getting to a Friday night and FaceTiming my parents in Portland, Oregon – my eyes just started watering. I simply could not look at the screen. My body was rejecting anymore screen time.

I started to reflect. This reminds me of my early days of being addicted to work, surfacing all over again. I swore to myself I would protect my balance, at all costs. And yet, how easy it was to let the control slip away, in just two weeks. Our bodies are magical and force us to listen. If we listen, we can take action and regain control.

As I connected with dear friends from my Coca-Cola Scholars community who have become my international family (Jeremy, Joy, Michael), I have realised I am not alone. They inspired me to share my story and tips with the Coca-Cola Scholars Alumni group. And as a personal goal, I’m pleased to share with you, too in this channel.

There were 4 moments that really shaped my perspective of work and life integration. I share them with you to give perspective.

·      My first international assignment in London, when Will and Kate got married in 2011. I was so excited to be fulfilling my aspirations of working abroad. I was desperate to prove my worth and worked ridiculous hours… till 3am, up at 630am to do it all over again. I was living in London, but saw my office and the hotel. My client, a Kiwi (hi Cash), told me: Knott, you gotta stop working, I’m going to lock your laptop in the cupboard! I told him I couldn’t because Skype (do you remember that?) was my way to communicate with my family and friends in the US. That was half true - it was my way to keep working. He showed me it’s leaders to set the tone and the culture– whether your boss, a client. As a girl growing up in a town called Boring, Oregon, removed from ‘corporate America’ I was mimicking those around me and trying to fit in at all costs, following my leads for good or bad.

·      Second, I had returned to the US at the end of my assignment, more familiar with taking ‘proper holidays’ and planned an epic 2-week holiday (that’s long for an American!) to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay with my travel buddy, Emily. When I was preparing my handover with my boss, he wanted to confirm I was taking my phone and laptop. I thought: right, sure, if I get wifi in the Amazon! Again, this reconfirmed leadership sets the culture and supports or challenges your boundaries. (And no, I didn’t take the laptop)

·      Third, I met with a CSO out of Australia via an Accenture International Women’s Day event. She told a story that stuck with me – she was walking between meetings and her colleague asked her if she saw the email about the change in an upcoming meeting. She told them no, I don’t have email on my phone. I’m paid to be the CSO, and to bring the outside world in and to do that, I need to live in it. She went on to talk about her team – how she paid her team to show up and give 8 brilliant hours at work, coming well rested and ready to work. She didn’t want 12-14hours of sloppy, half asleep, stressed team members work. This was around 2015 when we were starting to talk more openly about mental wellbeing. This made me realise – be where your feet are, be in the moment, coming at our best physical and mental state.

·      Finally, in my first month as a new Managing Director and I was aggressively attacked (at least it felt that way!) to support an urgent need. I was in back to back meetings (physical in person meetings, back when we had those). I said I could meet at 7pm – knowing for a German team that was ridiculous and they would find someone else available now. The next thing I knew, I had an invite for 7pm, 8pm CET by an analyst with the senior Managing Director. I replied all: Surely everyone wants to have dinner with their family on a Friday night or go out with friends – what’s the ask and let’s see if we can answer offline. In the end no meeting was needed. Again, the old Nicole would have said ok, what’s one more call. Here it’s about paying it forward being the role model for younger generations too.

From these four stories you can see where my mission to take control of my own boundaries came from. Inspired by Accenture’s ?WhatIf! family, there are micro-experiments we can try to see if it helps with boundaries and getting more time into our days. To be clear, I am by no means perfect – but talking more about it allows for an opportunity to continue to refine, and remind ourselves to pull back the reins when our bodies like watery eyes, as an example, remind us to pull back.

Here are some examples to inspire you:

1.       Add a post-it that says NO or a sticker on your laptop / monitor to remind you to not immediately say YES, but to reflect, is this the right thing for me to say yes to? If you say yes, confirm when it’s needed to be done. I can only imagine the number of times people have said, sure I’ll get that to you tonight, when it probably isn’t needed until next week or even 2 weeks.

2.      Sometimes we have to Turn off, to turn on. Try closing email, messenger and putting your phone on airplane mode. Giving yourself just 30 minutes to focus without interruption can yield magical results.

3.      Track EVERYTHING you do for 2 days – I mean everything, 20-minutes emails, 5-min coaching chat, 20-minutes phone calls, 5-minute bathroom break, 1-hour kickoff meeting… Assess what you see, is it the right balance of time aligned to you priorities? I do this probably quarterly or whenever I start to feel overwhelmed.

4.      Prioritise what is your job…really –our jobs can morph in controlled and uncontrolled ways. We have bits and bobs from all over the place because someone went on mat leave or there was a resignation and we picked it up. We grow in our career and need to remind ourselves what are the big rocks that we must do, what are things we do because love it, and what are the things that help us grow. The others we need to eliminate.

5.      Don’t be the first to respond or the first to volunteer – this allows for time to process and think is this the right thing for me to say yes to. This allows for you to be much more intentional and strategic about what you do, do.

6.      +1, -1 Just like shopping, you add an item of clothing, you need to take one out. You say yes to something, you need to delegate something else. You can’t fill your plate too much, else you’ll get sick!

7.      Delegate…Fully – not like will you do this and I will monitor everything you do and/or redo everything you do. Give up fully things that are right to give on. I remember delegating something I truly loved but recognising it was no longer what I should have been doing from a priority perspective. I gave it to someone who built it up to be even greater and that helped them get the platform and visibility for their promotion. And, I got more time back to do other things to help my own career.

8.      Daily Habits, Boundaries – test what works for you and it’ll change, depending on where you are in your career, in your life and even what project your working on. If you work in compensation, you of course will be incredibly busy during the peak of the annual comp cycle. Maybe you’re a morning person – so stop giving up your best hours of the day to email or to meetings. Block that time to think and do. Say you’re going to take a tennis class on Wednesdays at 6:30-8pm. Tell your team, your boss, your client– they will support you, in fact they will probably follow your lead.

9.      Email etiquette – we have really lost it here. We have email, messenger like teams/gchat, WhatsApp, Text, teams channels, slack… inundated with messages everywhere!

               i. Delete. If you haven’t responded to an email older than 2 weeks, you’re not going to. Admit it. Delete (or archive if you feel more comfortable). If it was important, they would have chased you by now. Or even called you. you know, on the PHONE.

               ii.  Stop emailing people OOO (out of office) for over a week – they shouldn’t be reading it, and whatever you are emailing them is probably going to be old news by the time they return anyway

               iii. Stop responding when you’re OOO. If you’re too tempted, turn off email on your phone. Don’t worry, you can turn it back on when back from holiday.

              iv.  Stop Reply All. When you do, think – who needs to see this? Who can I move to BCC so that they can see I action it, but not continue to see the email exchange. If you’re seeing a lot of back and forth, stop emailing – have a quick call and save the email

              v.  Turn on Business Rules. Color-code emails with you on TO: vs CC:; Use Important, Low Priority responsibly; file notification emails,

              vi.  Unsubscribe to emails you just aren’t reading.

              vii. Delay send so that if you have a surge to work at 1am or 4am, your team doesn’t wake up to 100 emails from you disrupting the start to their day.

              viii. Send less, get less. Magic! If you send fewer emails, you’ll get fewer responses. Try picking up the phone for a 5 min conversation instead of emails.

              ix.  Decline meetings that you won’t add value to and/or someone else from your team can cover.

We teach people HOW we want to be treated. We are in control. We say yes, we say no. Leaders owe it to their teams to create a safe space to do this. There are thoughtful ways to have a discussion with senior leaders when necessary – one way to do this is to graciously accept an offer for a new role and work with your manager to determine what existing priority should come off of your plate.

As we drive our career and take on more senior roles, we have to learn these skills. We must remember we will not let people down by saying no more often. People will actually respect us for it. We say no so that we have the capacity to say yes when it matters.

I stop working on Friday at 5pm, with very rare exception as by then I have done a heck of a lot and it’s time to give back to me, my friends, loved ones. People know it. I am quite vocal about it and people respect it by not putting in meetings after 5pm Fri-yays. Sure me declining meetings helps. ?? I also try not to work on the weekends and late every day. I do this so that when I need to dial up for a big milestone, a bid or a critical client commitment, I have the energy to do so. I know enough about myself, and frankly the human body, that no one can work 18hours a day every day and deliver top quality work. There will always be work. It’s not about being work-shy, but about being deliberate about what we do, when we do and how we do.

Thanks to the Coca-Cola Scholars fam who helped give me a platform to share my stories. I hope these tips help others to protect their time and find a balance that works, despite what may feel like endless virtual ways of working. We are in this together!