Time is Money - but not as we know it

Well I learned something today, apparently, Mr Spock?never said "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."

He did say, “No life as we know it."

Another oft used figure of speech is ‘Time is Money’ (used by Benjamin Franklin in 1748 but pre-dated to an article in The Free Thinker in 1719) obviously has a good degree of truth in it but its’ notion and interpretation that every minute of not fulfilling a task has a financial impact feels increasingly at odds with how people in work feel and behave.

In my opinion, we are facing a work and life crisis for many people across the globe. Recent studies have quantified dramatic issues with burn out (89 % of UK workers say they have experienced it and a truly staggering 25% all the time), high levels of stress and anxiety (86% say they have too much work to physically move!) and lack of engagement (according to Gallup 10% of UK workers are truly engaged, 5-6% in Italy and to me a surprisingly as high 31% in the US). For hundreds of millions of people, ‘WORK IS NOT WORKING’.

Much has been written about the changing nature of work and the workplace and of generational shifts in the way younger people feel about their work, organizations and careers. But the issues are systemic, continuous and under the relentless ‘march of corporate life and progress’ towards a paralytic state of ‘always on’ (in some cases 24/07). When my insight career started, I heard an anecdote, that the tyrannical nasty, Robert Maxwell fired someone in an owned agency because they had not been in the office when he sent an evening questionnaire change as the person responsible had left the office. In 2023, that person might have saved their job (hopefully they would have left anyhow) but would have had their mail on their smartphone, likely seeing at 11pm. Whilst, that feels like huge progress of communication and swift decision making, it comes with real costs of burn out, stress and low engagement are partially caused by the ‘digital overload’. As we look forward, perhaps AI offers the opportunity to make us all think more and ‘do less’ tasks but the organisational and people health challenge is immediate.

So, it feels to me, that as well as making our organisations healthier, we also need to think NOW about the way we use and value time, to ultimately be productive in a sustainable way. The issues we see are also being compounded by the nature of instant gratification communications (e mail, Slack, Teams etc) and the new hybrid working model.

So, what are some of the key problems that many individuals and organisations face, in an era of where absolute immediacy and urgency dominate.

1. LACK OF REFLECTION

From personal experience, I see less, and less time devoted to reflection: -

How did the project go?

How did the meeting go??

How did your day go?

How are you feeling? ?

What could we have done better?

What did we do well that we can share?

The headlong race to ‘knock over’ tasks win the immediate battle and on to the next. However, with its’ cumulative exhaustive effect, it’s little wonder many people feel overwhelmed and struggling to perform to their level and prioritise.

2. LACK OF ACTIVE LISTENING ?

For many people, particular leaders, genuine active listening is the hardest skill because leaders are often highly impatient and believe they should or have the solution. Plus, our innate desire (or perception) to be the important voice in the room, the egotistical desire to be right and the tension to get on and get stuff done prevents us from genuinely taking in diverse perspectives and often railroading solutions. Active listening to me remains the weakest held and hardest to perfect leadership skill, even amongst high performers.?Too often, people are not truly listening, they are preparing their response in their head.

3. SUB-OPTIMAL DECISION MAKING ?

If you combine Points 1 and 2, the outcome is often in teams a feel good that lots of decisions have been made or lots of tasks achieved but the recurring feeling is they may not be the best, they may not even be 80% right (perfectionism has plenty of flaws). A really interesting question I pose is how does your team actually make decisions? It seems an obvious question, but I have led, been in and observed teams that don’t make good collaborative decisions, often false consensus occurs, and the reality is the ‘true’ conversation then unfolds at the coffee machine or on messaging between those who have felt ignored or undervalued.?

4. LACK OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT ?

Perhaps, the most worrying sense I get, from a variety of conversations across industry sectors is that the current workplace is short-changing people on learning and development. In some cases, it’s a delusional tick box exercise to meet the targets or admission we simply don’t have time (a falsehood). The concept of learning on the job is powerful and makes perfect sense but particularly in a hybrid world learning areas like how to lead remote teams, how to effectively communicate internally and externally, how to motivate and inspire become even more crucial. I hear, time and time again, enthusiastic developing staff saying they feel they are getting no learning and development or sporadic job specific ‘technical’ learning to do the tasks. When quizzed about why people want to leave, increasingly and unsurprisingly, the lack of career development and learning head the list.

The good news is it’s all fixable, but its’ key requirement is time investment and slowing down in certain areas.

Given time is finite, the suggestion is we all need to unclutter tasks (for us personally but crucially for all our people), determine true priority so that we focus on areas that really drive both productivity and engagement. If we don’t face this urgently, the hamster wheel of low engagement, high turnover, lower productivity and all the associated costs remain.

The Gallup Workplace survey recently estimated that low engagement is costing the global economy a mind blowing $8.8 trillion per year or 9% of global GDP.

Of course, the range of solutions to low engagement go way beyond what I’ve covered here but these elements are real low hanging fruit if leaders and organisations commit time.

It's all part of building a healthy organisation and high performing individuals and teams. If you want to discuss further on how these issues can be hugely improved or share your experience, I would love to hear from you.?