A CASE STUDY IN LIFE CHALLENGES: I recently received a LinkedIn message from a buddy in Amsterdam: “I’m facing a mid-life crisis. I’ve done all the ‘What matters to me’ stuff and still…nothing. Can you inspire and challenge me out of it?” Here are the highlights of my response. If you’re facing your own mid-life moment, perhaps this will help.

First, accept that you already know the answer: While most anyone can challenge or inspire you…Things will only happen when YOU inspire or challenge you!

And that won’t happen until addressing this mid-life “crisis” is truly a priority for you.

A small example: Since high school, I’ve had an ongoing battle with my pear-shaped body. And the older I get, the more work the battle takes. Right now this is crucial to me cuz we’re about to leave for the beaches of Thailand. But if I’m completely honest with myself…my mini-”crisis” of weight loss still isn’t a priority for me. If it were, I would find a way to put down the ice cream and get on my damn bike instead! Same thing happens with big things, like “What will inspire and fulfill me for the rest of my life?” If we are honest with ourselves, we will probably have to admit that many of mid-life’s nagging challenges/problems that exist for us, are still there because they’re not really a priority…yet.

The good news is: I can guarantee that as soon as it is truly time for this crisis to be addressed, your drive will kick into high gear, and you will address it!

So, what to do in the meantime? Some suggestions…

1. Treat right now and the short term as Pre-Work Time. Embrace that sometime in the near future, you absolutely WILL be changing the course of your life…But that now is the time you should be PREPPING for that change. This is a MIND-SET shift. It means that all that work that you’ve done so far — asking yourself questions like what you’re passionate about, etc. — and all the work you will do… is not yet supposed to yield anything. Stop looking for answers! Start enjoying being a STUDENT! This will make your “searching” phase a lot more fun! Which leads to the suggested next step…

2. Stop focusing on yourself! Focus on how OTHERS dealt with or are dealing with the same challenge you have. Suggestion: Take ten friends out to dinner (one at a time!) and ask them about their journey towards figuring out what they’re passionate about, etc. Another guarantee: As soon as you are focusing on others’ journeys, and sincerely are interested in learning about how they struggled with this, you will discover amazing things will start happening for YOU…you will start “connecting the dots” between their journey and yours…e.g. “Mary’s situation five years ago is just like mine now…That gives me an idea…” Which leads to…

3. Enjoying being a student leads to: What matters is JOURNALING YOUR JOURNEY. Focus on your journey (…what you’re discovering while you’re searching for the answer…), NOT on your destination (…whatever the solution is). Get passionate about journaling all your interviews with friends, all the things you’ve read in books and online. More important than the main, detailed entries are the “notes in the margins”— the one-line Aha’s you’ll write down while recording the detailed notes. Those marginal Aha notes are how you personalized what others said or did for yourself. Then, after several months of doing that, try to reduce everything you’ve written down to just one half page…three to five things. If magic doesn’t happen the first time, treat it as a practice run and come back several months later. Repeat as often as needed. At some point, magic absolutely will happen!!!!! You will have three to five principles/driving forces/passions/whatever that you can use for the rest of your life!!!

(Not into Old School pen-and-notebook journaling? There are many mind-mapping software tools, and then sharing tools, which are definitely Web 2.0-ish. Also, check out a download from my book, What Is Your Life’s Work, for what to journal…Old School or 2.0!)

So, a Mr. Simplicity recap…

Focus on the journey, not the destination, and you’ll find that you’ll actually arrive at the destination a lot faster and a lot easier than you thought was possible!

AND

The better you get at journaling your journey and…eventually…recapping it in three-to-five-things form…the clearer and more empowering everything will be once you arrive at your destination!

Hope that was a help!

Watch this the night before, then…
Stand at attention.
Smile and nod.
Flip the bird once boss is out of sight.
Then, do whatever makes you happy…
You’re never gonna please that asshole anyway!

Said Another Way:
Those In Power Can Find Other Ways to Make Things Work
Besides Forcing Everyone to Do Things the “Right Way”

The other day I was listening to Radio Lab on NPR. They told an amazing story.

The Benrath Senior Center in Düsseldorf faced a challenging problem with their Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients: lost in their memories, they sometimes get disoriented, and wander off. This can have serious consequences…they can get hurt or worse. So the most common solution is to aggressively confront the reality of the situation, which usually involves quickly catching and then locking up the patients. Which just feels cruel. But what else are you supposed to do if you want to keep them safe?

The Benrath Center found another way. They built a bus stop. A bus stop to nowhere. There was no bus, only a bench and a sign.

Shortly after, a patient had an episode, and no one tried to stop her and lock her up. They just let her let her walk out and sit at the bus stop. A nurse came out to wait with her. No conflict. No forcing back. Just hangin’. Eventually, the patient forgot why she was there, and the nurse simply said “Let’s go back in.” Now, the nurses even use the bus stop intentionally, taking the patients there to sit until their episode passes.

The strategy is simple: Why not allow that other world — wherever the Alzheimer’s patient is running off to — to be true, for just a beat… and then lead them back to the real situation. This approach is now being implemented throughout the institution. For example, one patient was a baker before he came down with Alzheimer’s. In the Center, he kept wanting to get up at 2am to start baking. Previously, they used to always correct his “bad” behavior and force him back into bed. Now, they just let him get up and bake, and he’s much happier and the Center is getting great baked goods!

The Big So What:
What’s This Got to Do With How Leaders Lead Others?
Everything.

Everyone in every workplace is going change. Often requiring deeply personal changes. And the normal human tendency is to avoid embracing change until it’s absolutely necessarily. (e.g., The Kübler-Ross Model from Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 book, On Death and Dying: The Five Stages of Grief: 1. Denial, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression, 5. Acceptance) People are going to stay in the first four stages for as long as they can, or until someone creates a “bus stop” where they can process things faster and move on to Acceptance.

Mostly because they have no other choice, leaders are forcing massive amounts of change on everyone in their company, yet hardly any leaders are building bus stops. The manta is “The bus is leaving. Get on the bus or get thrown under it. Now. That’s your only choice.”

Maybe a responsible leader’s role needs to be different. Maybe it’s building better transitions into the new way of being. Maybe it’s about building better bus stops, and not just forcing the buses to run morebetterfaster. Maybe.

Richard St. Johns interviewed over 500 TEDsters — certainly a group of highly successful people — to find their secrets to success. He came up with Eight Secrets, one of which is to Persist Through CRAP: “Which of course means, Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.”

To learn the other seven secrets, check out this short, simple 3+ minute video

AKA: Speed-Freak Coaching

You need to be proactive. At the start of any assignment, you need to ask super-critical questions that your manager would have coached you through if he had the time. Think of this approach as the 80/20 Rule for coaching. It won’t get you everything you need, but they’ll get you 80% of what you would have gotten if manager wasn’t so time-pressed.

60-SECOND VERSION
There are many “best” questions to ask, but when you’ve got time for only one question, make it this one…

“What does success look like?”
Or: How will I know I’m making progress and am on target?

Why this question? By far, the number one reason people get coaching “after the fact” — (only after they fail or make mistakes) — is because they began work without a clear definition of success.

If you’ve got time for only one question, make it this one. As you start any assignment: focus on how your manager (and his manager) will evaluate your efforts.

Again: You need to be proactive. No matter what, keep asking this question in follow-up meetings until you have a complete answer. Your success—and avoiding after-the-fact coaching—depends on it!

From an old stone cottage in the woods of Flat Rock, North Carolina, Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson are making the world a better place — one business, one person at a time.

Have you ever had a relationship — business or personal — go sour? Maureen and Zelle have developed a new way to build, sustain and transition relationships with honor and grace.
It is called the State of Grace Document.

Rather than solely relying on legal contracts or corporate planning cycles or boss-subordinate evaluations, a State of Grace Document anticipates the unavoidable transitions and changes that ultimately take place in life, marriage, business, or friendship. It begins with the agreed-upon premise that we ultimately want to be at peace within ourselves and with the other person, even as we address areas that aren’t so pretty to look at.

Find your State of Grace!
Check out this worthwhile tool.

Here at Hacking Work, we have dedicated ourselves to helping you question and then change things above you, below you, and all around you. That definitely includes questioning your boss in ways that will yield the best results.

But does questioning your boss AT ALL… EVER… feel like this script from “Kill Bill”? For some, we have heard that this is exactly what it feels like.

Just before midnight December 16, 2002, Amazon sent its business customers an announcement: “A Harvard module on Time Management is available…come and get it.” By the next morning, it was Amazon’s Number Two seller! Important problem, eh?

The HBR module listed the three phases of effective time management: 1) Analysis, 2) Planning, 3) Follow-up and Evaluation. And then provided a handbook for following this rigorous and disciplined approach. In other words, they wanted you to do the stuff you’d be doing if you had the time to manage your time in the first place!

There is a much easier way to gain control over how each day’s 1440 minutes are used. More direct, too. The best time management practice is Just Saying No.

Can You Name Your Five Biggest Time-Wasters?
I can. Since 1992, I’ve been studying work from the worker’s perspective. Countless interviews and surveys later, I can say with confidence that the biggest blackholes in your workday are:
1. Meetings
2. Dealing with communication from others (Used to be mainly via email…Now there are countless channels, media and ways to reach you 24×7)
3. Communicating to others (Ditto on countless ways)
4. Corporate-centered rules, tools and procedures that are designed around the company’s needs, but not yours
5. Your boss micromanaging or undervaluing you

Your circumstances may change the order, but these are probably your biggest time bandits. And they are a lot more than petty annoyances. Consistently, I have found that Blackholes One, Two, and Three cost people like you at least two wasted hours per day! Non-replaceable hours, gone.

Let’s Simplify Time Management: Hey, you! If you don’t walk out of meetings that waste your time…If you don’t hit Delete on at least 75% of the communication coming at you…If you keep going to All-Hands Town Meetings because you’re ‘supposed to’…If you keep checking emails from home and jumping through communication hoops for others because it’s the politically correct thing to do…Then don’t whine about having so little time! Got it?

With three of the top five time-wasters, you are in control of those lost hours. Not your boss. Not your company. Not technology. You.

No matter how crazed you feel, you don’t need new time management tools or more analysis, planning, and evaluating than you’re already doing. You just need to give yourself permission to say ‘No’ more often, and take back control of who you let use your time, and how it is used. That’s it: the big time management secret of this economy.

Basically, there are three kinds of people who are gaining control over how their time is spent:

PushBack Zealots
Either they were pushed to the point of almost breaking (forcing a career or lifestyle change), or a major health or family situation forced a wake-up call. They are now habitual in pushing back, and continually asking, “Why does this deserve my time and attention?”

Insulated Bosses
You know the kind. They have gatekeepers to say no for them, filter their incoming communication, and shape their outgoing communication. Obviously, this approach has major downsides!

The Famous and Powerful
They have other kinds of problems to be sure, but often others must organize their schedules around these people.

If I could influence just one of your decisions this year, it would be this: Become a PushBack Zealot. Become a claim-back-at-least-two-hours-per-day zealot.

That’s time management simplified.

Bad-Ass Hack: Evaluate your manager, and make him/her responsible for YOUR productivity.

What Makes It Bad-Ass: Tracking your managers’ productivity — and documenting how they do/do not support your efforts — takes the traditional power structure and turns it on its head. The more your coworkers pitch in on doing this, anonymously or otherwise, the more weight your analysis will have. Your manager will be on the hook to HIS boss AND to you, which is how it should be in the first place. The result? You get to be more successful and the company as a whole benefits.

How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Managers who walk over their employees are under a mistaken impression that they are supposed to be serviced, when in fact they’re supposed to be helping those employees be more productive. Fixing this misunderstanding helps the company succeed.

Potential Downsides to Avoid: Managers with Napoleon complexes really don’t like being held accountable for their laziness, and will probably be really pissed off. Be careful; don’t get yourself fired.

Getting Started:
1. Create a wiki list associated with your department or team goals and/or activities. List some useful metrics, like dollars saved by your manager’s department, and track them carefully, Key will be that the data must be able to be validated by your manager’s boss.
2. Circulate the page among your coworkers, so, as a team, you’re all documenting complaints and anything that will help the team improve. Keep working on the list as a team until you feel you have enough data to show specific areas that need improvement.
3. Now it’s time ingratiate yourself with your manager. Share the wiki list with him or her and explain how concerned you are that his/her team is getting their due credit or support. (Reverse psychology: You’re really tracking his/her report card and about to turn it in to the Big Boss…But by first inviting him/her to participate, you’re giving your boss a chance to improve on those metrics first.) It’s only fair to give them a chance to address the complaints, right?
4. If your manager does participate, you all have a powerful tool with which to present to the Powers That Be to get more credit or support or change for your team. If your manager chooses not to participate… Oh, well…Then it’s either time to take it directly to his/her boss, or, failing all that: you now have ample evidence that it’s probably time for a new job.

• • • • • • • • • •
12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!

My site and my CV promote me as “today’s foremost expert” on this and that, and the Shameless Testimonials on my site have all sorts of clients claiming I do the speaker’s and consultant’s version of walking on water.

Hardly. At least not in Dallas recently.

I gave a talk in which not only were the evaluation reviews not great, but that apparently, in some of my word choices, it sounded to the client (who was actively taking notes) and to all in the room, like I was dissing the client who paid me to come speak to their group. Talk about the ultimate sin!

Wow. Ow. Big time.

Now, I could chalk it up to a bad day. We all have them. Me too. But there was something in all the feedback that forced me to look inward. I still am. On long bike rides, in the shower, as I’m falling asleep…. Where was I coming from that made me come off that way? What made me choose that tone? What was I trying to say that clearly came off the opposite of what I intended? Is there something bigger here that I need to reevaluate? Will I ever be able to regain the trust of those who invited me? I’ve given back the fee for that day, and taken a few other steps, but what more could I, should I be doing? Big and important questions, all.

Introspection, truly valuable and deep introspection, is hard! It’s so easy to blow off feedback and other people’s observations. But it’s really hard to look deeply into oneself and question what needs to be questioned.

This note is just a journal-type scribble at a personal inflection point. If it’s like the many others I’ve had in my career, hopefully I’ll move through it, taking the lessons I needed to learn with me, and helping me be the best Me I can be.

But sitting right here right now, with only the less-than-thrilling feedback ringing in my soul, and the lessons learned still not there yet… This is tough!

Nine years ago, I had the privilege of listening to an amazing man tell his story and ask very insightful questions.

While his stories were then 60 years old, if you listened carefully, you could hear all of today’s themes: trust, integrity, transparency, social obligations, human resources, too few resources to accomplish way too much, and more.

He talked about information issues, privacy and hacking when discussing how British mathematicians broke the Nazi wartime code using a captured Enigma machine.

He talked about social obligations, trust and transparency by asking the question: “Churchill and Roosevelt then knew what was happening. Why didn’t they do more?” He wasn’t angry. I don’t think this gentle man ever got angry. His question was more of a lifetime search through confusion and conflicting truths.

He would be told that if these leaders had done more, they would have tipped their hand to Hitler that they had broken the code. So they sat on their hands, and watched.

“Why didn’t they just bomb the tracks?” he asked. “We now know that they knew, at the time, exactly where those tracks led and what happened every day because of them.”

The tracks he spoke of led to places like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

This gentle man with very deep questions and few answers was Elie Wiesel; Auschwitz Holocaust survivor, writer, teacher, Nobel Peace Laureate, and humanitarian.

I mention this not to compare our discussions to his. There is no comparison.

But, to me, his questions cut through the clutter of the moment. What we’re really talking about is leadership. And tough choices. And doing the right thing when faced with multiple paradoxes, enigmas, and conflicting needs.

Regardless of the technology or challenge or economic needs of the moment, we’re really talking about mapping a journey where there are more questions than answers, and all the answers require character and a will to do things just because they’re the right things to do.

Again, on almost all levels, no comparison. Please don’t take the mental leap I’ve made the wrong way.

Yet, when it comes to looking inside ourselves, and standing up for the rights and welfare of others because it’s the right thing to do: that’s a journey we must all face every day of our lives. Whether we’re tackling something the whole world must never forget, or whether we’re just trying to make it through another day.

Making a difference matters.

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. Soon there will be many remembrances and memorials. Here’s one that relates to how leaders lead, and what we all must remember about what really matters at work.

Mid-October 2001, I was flying from Los Angeles to New York. Only a month after the events of September 11. As I boarded the plane, I looked up and down the aisle. Most everyone’s faces told a single story: the tension and fear of flying was still very real.

My seatmate was a very senior executive at a Fortune 100 company. Throughout much of that year, her CEO had been lauded in the press for his ability to execute strategies during tough times. She held a slightly different view. In her words, she was pissed-as-hell at him.

Lots of major changes had occurred at her company. New leaders assumed new positions. So there was a big social and team-building event at corporate headquarters. She really didn’t want to fly to this event at this time. She offered all kinds of alternative solutions; teleconferencing in, arranging for one-on-ones with key players, and more. She was not given a choice: show up in person. One more offsite she had to attend.

At one point, while telling this story to a complete stranger, her eyes grew watery. “What if something happens on this plane?” she sobbed. “I’ve got two daughters — four and six years old. What message am I sending to them? That work is about sucking up and doing what you’re ‘supposed to do,’ regardless of your personal priorities?”

What struck me about our conversation was not the outpouring of emotion. She just blurted what many of us were probably feeling.

What got to me was her feeling of complete loss of control. Here’s this woman at the top of the heap, probably making gazillions of dollars — (she was slumming next to me only because a corporate jet was unavailable). And yet she felt like she couldn’t say “no.” Whoa. If she can’t take control of her life, how would us peons do it?

In the months that followed, we remained email and phone buddies. I did little more than provide a safe zone for venting. But the adversity of that one moment began to reveal her true character as a leader.

She dedicated herself to saying no more often, and having the courage to do less. She relayed how that changed her relationships with those she led. They felt more confident in revealing their true selves, and in changing how they managed others. She also shared how her relationships with her daughters and husband grew more enjoyable, with less baggage hauled back to her family from work.

Since her CEO hadn’t grown at the same pace — he was not thrilled with her newfound freedom to say no more often — she decided to leave.

Getting to know her taught me a leadership principle that will endure for years to come…

The true depth of a leader’s character is fully revealed when that leader must make a choice between doing less and doing more.

A recent USA Today lead article cover story said it all… Workers Antsy as Morale Plunges: But employers think everything is just fine. The details included: Employee loyalty is as low as it’s been in years… and… “Businesses are understandably focused on expenses, but they’re taking their eye off the ball on human capital issues, notably what drives employee satisfaction and loyalty.”

What will happen as the economy bounces back?

Will we get a surge of employees doing the equivalent of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” and not just quit in record numbers…but when they seek new jobs, will they act in newly empowered ways and form bond with employers that are permanently based on their needs, not just their employer’s needs?

Or will they seek new jobs, and approach their worker/employer relationship in the same way…a way that ensures the current cycle will repeat itself the next time the economy tanks?

What will happen?

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO COMPLETELY CHANGE HOW WE ALL WORK

1. Seek two mentors: One twice your age, one half your age.
Technology is changing unbelievably rapidly. Each generation has wildly different tech experiences even within the generation. But tech isn’t the reason. It’s what that’s doing to create wildly different attitudes about personal productivity. With each new tech NextGen, each segment within the population is becoming more bold and cocky about asking for what they need to be their best. (Positive things!) Learn from them. Also, with age comes some wisdom. Do seek out the aging sages in and around you. They will temper that cockiness with ground truths that do not change over a lifetime

2. Question your leaders, often: “Explain to me again how you’re adding value in how my time and energy are being used?”

3. Question yourself, often. “Am I changing enough to demonstrate that I respect and trust people? How much value do I place on other people’s time.” Time and attention are today’s most precious assets that can never be replaced. Most people in today’s knowledge and service economy get their job done by using a portion of someone else’s life. How well do you do at that? Are you mindful, concerned and respectful about how you use their life to get your work done?

4. Get your fingernails dirty, often: Experience your company’s systems, tools, and processes from the user’s perspective. A guaranteed eye-opener! Our rules, tools and infrastructure are becoming more bossy than our bosses. Today’s infrastructures drive everything. Look at what you are handing off to people to use from their perspective. Change the rules, tools and procedures based on what you learned. And if you’re not empowered to change them, hack them… benevolently, of course.

5. Share Open Source, social media and crowdsourcing measures, tools and philosophies with one main goal: Changing the conversation. Before actual change, usually comes mindset change. And the key driver of mindset change is changing what we all talk about. If everyone starts having conversations like “why isn’t it as easy to get my work done here as it is at home, when I get to use my own smart device, when I use the cloud more freely?,” etc. Change the conversation to “How easy is it for me to do great work?” That one conversation will change everything!

(Here’s one conversation starter: The SimplerWork Index. Download it. Share it. Change the conversation at your company.)

SEE ANY PATTERNS HERE?…

1968
“How do you motivate employees?…Forget praise. Forget punishment. Forget cash. You need to make their jobs more interesting…more enriching…. Job enrichment will not be a one-time proposition, but a continuous management function.”
Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review article

1970
“Management by whose objectives?…Most performance systems don’t take employees’ aspirations into account. Is it any wonder that they fail?”
Harry Levinson, Harvard Business Review article

1974
“They talked, and I listened….They talked about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread. For recognition as well as cash. For astonishment, rather than torpor. In short, for a sort of Monday through Friday life rather than a Monday through Friday void. Perhaps immortality was part of that quest. To be remembered is their wish. I was consistently astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people. No matter how beguiling the times, no matter how dissembling the official language, those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth, or more often, the lack of it, in the work they do. As Nora Watson said, most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit.”
Studs Terkel, Talking about his 1974 book, Working

1999
“Every existing society…takes two things for granted: that organizations outlive workers, and that most people stay put. But…the opposite is true. Knowledge workers outlive organizations, and they are mobile. The need to manage oneself is therefore creating a revolution in human affairs.”
Peter Drucker, Harvard Business Review article

BACK TO BASICS: Wisdom for Today

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana

“Study the past if you would divine the future.”
Confucius

Ten Simple Truths About Simplicity, Doing Less, and Still Accomplishing More

Why these ten truths are so damned important: Much of what you’ve been told and sold about simplicity is a lie — or at best, misinformed. Making things simple isn’t about KISS or dumbing things down or even staying focused on just one or two things.

Making things simple is about power. The simpler something is to understand, the easier it is to push back when things just don’t make sense. The simpler something is to apply, the less someone needs to be managed or needs a manager. The simpler something is to measure at line-level, the more line people can track their own success.

Making things simpler is about making it easier for each individual to make informed, independent, empowered decisions.

Making things simpler is about making implementation easier, not just making it easier to manage and control things. (Which is how most senior execs currently define simplicity.)

Making things simpler is about empathy — always looking at everything from the other person’s
perspective.

* * * * * *
Truth 6: It is no longer acceptable to say that there’s work and there’s life and it’s up to employees to balance the two.
Everything an employer does and asks of you uses a portion of your life.

Truth 7: To build better workplaces, we must first see how the design of work impacts the quality of our lives.
Employers ask you to invest your assets — time, attention, ideas, knowledge, passion, energy, and social networks — to make their companies go. We all must examine how well, or poorly, companies use your assets

Truth 8: R-E-S-P-E-C-T now includes how well, or poorly, your company, your manager, and your teammates use the finite time you have available every day.
(And how well, or poorly, you use theirs!)

Truth 9: We live in the Attention Economy; Every project is about bartering for someone’s time and attention.
Employees may tolerate management’s logic, but act on their own conclusions of what deserves their time and attention.

Truth 10: Plan and manage and change all you want.
Just know that execution travels at the speed of sense-making.
Create less clutter and more clarity, or make help everyone make sense of it faster than the competition, and you win

Ten Simple Truths About Simplicity, Doing Less, and Still Accomplishing More

Why these ten truths are so damned important: Much of what you’ve been told and sold about simplicity is a lie — or at best, misinformed. Making things simple isn’t about KISS or dumbing things down or even staying focused on just one or two things.

Making things simple is about power. The simpler something is to understand, the easier it is to push back when things just don’t make sense. The simpler something is to apply, the less someone needs to be managed or needs a manager. The simpler something is to measure at line-level, the more line people can track their own success.

Making things simpler is about making it easier for each individual to make informed, independent, empowered decisions.

Making things simpler is about making implementation easier, not just making it easier to manage and control things. (Which is how most senior execs currently define simplicity.)

Making things simpler is about empathy — always looking at everything from the other person’s
perspective.

* * * * * *
Truth 1: Simplicity is about power.
(The power to do less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does.)
Which means, like all sources of power throughout human history, it brings out the best and worst in people

Truth 2: Simplicity in the workplace is the disciplined practice of empathy and common sense.
It is based on human nature and common sense, not corporate logic. It is the practice of working backwards from the needs of those doing the work.

Truth 3: There are three basic reasons for doing LESS at work…
• “Work is important, but it is not life. I want to focus on all that life outside of work has to offer.”
• “I want to make a difference. The work I do must matter. So I focus only on what I believe matters.”
• “I want to be the best I can be. So I focus on what excites me and helps me grow.”
Which means:
• Doing less and laziness are not the same thing
• Each individual must decide why s/he wants to do less, and live every day according to that decision

Truth 4: In most of today’s workplaces:
Work = Figuring out what to do with finite time and attention, and infinite information and choices.

Truth 5: You have a lot more control over your workload than you think you do.
It comes down to where and how you choose to focus your time and attention. No one but you controls those things.

Next Installment: Truths 6—10

THE NEW WORK CONTRACT
OUR VIEW, FROM THE WORKFORCE TO LEADERS

DEAR LEADER:
A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution.

Your emphasis on productivity and cost-cutting forced us to change how we think about the war for our talent. For that, we thank you! Your ability to stay focused on the bottom line has inspired us.

We had gotten lazy about controlling our own destiny. We figured if we focused on customers and profits, continuously changed and grew, drank the corporate Kool-aid, and did great work — we’d be the masters of our own fate. Boy, are we glad that the 2008-2010 financial crisis woke us from that fairy tale. Wasn’t a fun way to get it, but get it we did.

So we watched what you do. We studied how you constantly push for greater returns on investment to ensure your own future. Based on what we learned, we have rewritten our work contract. You are not effectively managing the assets we provide, and we’re calling you on it.

Decent pay, appropriate benefits, great culture and leadership — all are givens in this contract. Important… but baseline issues. After that, it gets interesting, and personal.

This new covenant between us cuts to the heart of who owns, controls, and sets the rules for productivity. Specifically, how much value you create for us when you organize our work.

It’s pretty simple, really.

More and more, a big piece of the working capital you leverage to get stuff done is ours. You want us to spend our assets — our time, our attention, our ideas, knowledge, passion, energy, and social networks — on work that you think is important. That means, more and more, we’ve got to think and act like investors.

We are students of the marketplace, have learned quickly, and need to audit your efforts: Are you making productive use of our assets? Would an hour invested in a competitor’s firm provide a better return? Are you creating better communities than we can find outside in the networked world?

We were becoming slaves to your infrastructure: That which was supposed to help us now dictates too much of what we can’t get done. The tools we have outside of work are leapfrogging past what we have at work — your love of lingering bureaucracy, legacy technologies and deeply embedded procedures are killing us.

Throw out much of what you thought you knew about creating a “great place to work.” A new work contract is hitting your shores. We call this new covenant Work 2.0. Our relationship with you must return more value on our working capital.

And here’s the thing: Don’t treat us like investors and we’ll hack our work. We’ll join the underground armies of top performers who are bypassing your sacred structures and breaking all sorts of rules just to get their work done. Like them, we’ll take matters into his own hands to increase our own productivity and achieve better results that way.

Three Laws of Workplace Behavior
Each of these three laws come from the findings of The Jensen Group’s ongoing study, The Search for a Simpler Way. They are undeniable patterns of behavior that occur in most workplaces, and drive how most stuff gets done — regardless of how policies, procedures, and dictates say it should get done.

LAW 3:
Once begun, work follows the path of least resistance.
Most of us manage our daily workload through triage: We avoid or postpone all but the most pressing decisions and tasks. And when everybody is in triage mode, the path of least resistance is to just keep things moving, passing work on to others as quickly as possible, even if that work comes up short in focus or importance. Because the biggest wall of resistance comes from stopping the flow and telling our bosses what they want us to do isn’t focused, important, or valid.

The Big So What: Why should you care?

WHY EVERYONE SHOULD CARE
WHY SENIOR EXECS SHOULD CARE
(Same basic reason for both groups…)
You absolutely must push back on much of the work you are being handed! (See Law 2.)

But the key is to do so in a way that does NOT sound like you want to slow down the project. (Like suggesting rethinking some idea or pointing out something that you know should have been addressed earlier.) That will get you nothing but trouble! Instead, the way to embrace this law, and use it to your advantage, is to constantly clarify immediate, short-term next steps.

Push back by saying something like: “Sure boss, I’ll get all those 4,321 things done. Absolutely! (Ahem.) But which one or two do we need to be focused on this week? Oh…those? Great! Now here’s what I’d do next on those two… does that make sense to you?”

Essentially, you’re pushing back on the stupidity of way too much to do, or too much that’s unfocused, but you’re doing so in a way that your boss (or coworker) won’t be challenged or upset, and in a way that provides you much greater focus.

Remember two key things: 1. You absolutely must push back! Most work that lands on your desk has followed the path of least resistance. 2. Do so in a way that seeks to clarify. Never appear to slow things down!

Three Laws of Workplace Behavior
Each of these three laws come from the findings of The Jensen Group’s ongoing study, The Search for a Simpler Way. They are undeniable patterns of behavior that occur in most workplaces, and drive how most stuff gets done — regardless of how policies, procedures, and dictates say it should get done.

LAW 2:
The Number One behavior in business today is moving to-do’s onto someone else’s plate.
In most cases, this isn’t mean-spirited or malingering. It’s merely an effective way of coping with too many to-do’s, too little time, and too few resources

The Big So What: Why should you care?

WHY EVERYONE SHOULD CARE
The old adage: before most people accept change, they go through stages of denial, grieving, bargaining, questioning, and then understanding. Who’s got time for all that? Nobody! Instead of resisting or bargaining when faced with change as well as too many to-do’s, most people just try to pass them on. (Often, to you!) This means it’s fairly easy to get you to do someone else’s to-do’s — unless you learn how to push back.

The big So What is: Learn to push back. (In ways that don’t create defensiveness.) Or else become a permanent victim of downhill to-do’s. Because everyone around you is mastering the art of parsing and pushing their to-do’s onto your plate. It’s that brutally simple.

WHY SENIOR EXECS SHOULD CARE
(If this is what you want…) There is almost no limit to how much moremoremore you can squeeze out of people, as long as you suppress pushback from below. Their universal behavior of pushing work onto someone else’s plate is like gravity…it’s a constant force that will always keep things moving for you — with little or no effort from you.