The Top 7 Ways to End Frustrating Wait-Time

Image source by Adryana Nicoleta

Life goes down the drain while you wait. Airports, repair shops, grocery lines, and doctor’s offices ruthlessly steal time.

Time is life.
Wasted time is wasted life.

Waiting:

1. Escalates anger.
2. Strains relationships.
3. Increases stress.
4. Reduces productivity.

Planning and preparation transform frustrating wait-time to satisfying productivity.

Top 7 Ways to End Frustrating Wait-Time

1. Create a list of things to do while waiting. Look around, and ask, “What productive activities could I do right now?” Do one.
2. Write thank you notes. (Prepare for waiting by keeping thank you notes with you.)
3. Journal. Turn off email, texts, and the phone.
4. Blog. Write a blog about waiting.
5. Connect. Grocery story lines are great opportunities to say, “Hi.” (For extroverts.)
6. Meditate or pray. People will think you’re sleeping.
7. Renew a relationship. Call an old friend and say, “I was just thinking about you.”

Bonus: Help someone. Look around and see who needs a hand. Pick up garbage if you’re a clean freak.

This post was inspired by Lets Grow Leaders.

How can leaders capture wait-time?

The Real Reason Teams Don’t Work

Overwork prevents teamwork.

Imagine the feeling of being close to missing a deadline. At 3:00 p.m. a team mate needs your expertise on their marketing project. Are you eager to serve? Or, are they an irritating pain in the a**?

You’re frustrated because you want to help but feel you can’t.

People who can’t get their own work done can’t help others.

When schedules are maxed out teamwork is out.

Overworked leaders don’t have time to help. They are too busy helping themselves. A corporate leader recently said, “My boss is buried. She doesn’t have time or energy to give me.”

Turf wars not teamwork:

“Overworked staff results in turf wars and office politics,” Andy Stanley at Catalyst. Can you see people jockeying for position? Jockeys aren’t team players.

Helping others help others:

1. Get real with workload or teamwork-talk becomes platitudinous drivel.
2. Reward and recognize helpers. Ask, “Who helped you?” at the end of projects.
3. Honor serving. Ask, “Who are you helping?”
4. Ask, “How are you helping others?” What get’s asked about gets done.

Supporting team work:

From Facebook: Leaders support teamwork when they _______.

1. … don’t try to do everything themselves.
2. … are willing to do the nitty-gritty work with team members.
3. … share opportunities, responsibility, and credit.
4. … affirm others’ strengths.
5. … treat team members as stake holders.

More at: Leadership Freak Coffee Shop.

What are the roadblocks to teamwork in your organization?

How can leaders support team work?

How to Quickly End Useless Meetings

More lying happens in meetings than any other place in your organization. Most lies are lies of silence.

In meetings, silence isn’t consent, its cowardice, self-interest, manipulation, or political expediency. Honesty, more than anything else, transforms meetings. Truth-telling ends useless meetings.

When there’s more honesty in the “meeting after the meeting,” excellence is a myth.

Meetings apart from honesty are:

1. Driven by personal agendas.
2. Scripted frustration.
3. Fake affirmations of weak leadership.

Robert Herbold, former C.O.O of Microsoft, told me, “Many meetings are useless religious ceremonies controlled by highly organized, meaningless ritual after meaningless ritual.” I wrote, “Polite Meetings Are a Waste of Time” after our conversation.

Great agendas apart from honest participation
are well oiled exercises in futility.

Jay Elliot, former Sr. V.P. of Apple, shocked me when he said they had lots of meetings at Apple and they were useful. I’ve come to appreciate well run meetings, even if they are rare.

New Beginnings:

Great organizations have great meetings.

1. Honest participation begins with leaders. They won’t be honest if you aren’t. Point out elephants in the room. Share your missteps. Seek real solutions. Challenge the status quo.
2. Honor honesty. The next time a thorny issue is raised, thank the person who raises it. If you punish them, everyone learns the expediency of silence.
3. Success depends on chairpersons who keep everyone focused and who move conversations toward action items.
4. Agree on and define problems before discussing solutions.
5. Invite participation with short agendas. Long agendas silence discussion.
6. Identify imperfect next steps. Forget perfect solutions. Small steps are better than no steps. Excellence is never a destination.
7. Assign responsibility and establish deadlines. “Who does what by when?”

Bonus: The goal of all meetings is doing what’s best for the entire organization, not simply your division.

See contributions on my Facebook page.

What do effective chairpersons do?

How are useful agendas created?

The Rule of the Needle

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Failing is easy – chase urgencies and neglect priorities.

Success is found by passionately
doing what matters most.

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The thing that matters most for leaders
is building other leaders.

If you don’t develop others, you’ll never reach extraordinary.

Who:

1. Avoid Model T’s. Before driving a Model T you crank it to get it started. If you have to convince, cajole, or constantly crank someone to get them going, that’s all you’ll ever do. You’ll crank them – they’ll sputter – you’ll crank them again the next time. Failing is easy; just spend your time cranking.
2. Passion first. Find the most passionate people available and throw gas on their fire.
3. Potential second. Potential seduces leaders who are dedicated to developing leaders. You see someone with talent, skills, and/or education and you start drooling like a dog at a dish. Potential apart from passion is constant frustration and ultimate disappointment.
4. Respect matters. The more they respect you the more impact you’ll have.
5. Practice trumps theory. Talking is useful but action matters most. Go with people prone to act.
6. The sandbox principle. How well do they play with others?

The rule of the needle:

When it comes to people, there’s never perfect clarity regarding who to coach, mentor, and/or teach.

Ask yourself, “Are they passionate?” If the needle tips to yes, ask, “Do they have potential in this area?” If the answer is yes, ask, “Are they prone to action?” etc.

The needle determines what or who matters most. It doesn’t point to perfection or create certainty. Waiting for certainty and perfection wastes time and stalls progress. The needle indicates likelihood of success.

How do you determine what matters most?

How do you identify people you plan to develop?

The Surprising Power of Stopping to Begin Again

The longer you work at improving something -
the fewer improvements you make.

Gold Medal swimmers work unending hours shaving hundredths of seconds off their time. Not so, when they began swimming.

Improvement – at the beginning – is quick and easy;
excellence – over the long haul – is slow and hard.

Large organizations may have time and resources to grind for that last hundredth of second but medium and small businesses don’t.

Begin frequently:

Spend time beginning – move on – then begin again.

For example, you’re working on streamlining customer service. Make a few obvious improvements, stabilize those improvements and move on. Go to another challenge with the idea you’ll go back to improve customer service in a few weeks or months.

Excellence is a process not a destination.

Pursuit of excellence calendar:

1. Stop wasting time on low impact activities, time is too precious.
2. Grab low hanging fruit. Identify high potential areas for improvement; perhaps current pain points, emerging opportunities, or process improvements.
3. Create an excellence-rotation calendar. January is customer service month and February is internal operations month, for example.
4. Identify goals that move you toward excellence. Answer every call within three rings, for example.
5. Determine and implement behaviors, processes, procedures, and technologies that achieve your goals.
6. Work on it for a designated time. Urgency suggests shorter timelines are better than long.
7. Evaluate, stabilize, and systematize improvements.
8. Move to your next opportunity. Accept progress – reject the need for perfection.
9. Return in a few weeks or months to evaluate and improve again.

Large organizations move forward on many fronts, simultaneously. “Stopping to begin again” enables smaller organizations to pursue excellence on many fronts, just not at the same time.

What modifications or additions can you make to these suggestions?

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8 Ways to Create Great Meetings

Poorly run meetings start in the wrong place and end up rushed before they’re done.

Right place:

Leave inconsequential items for the end. Deal with big items at the beginning. I’m tempted to check off a few quick agenda items before digging into the meat of meetings. It’s seductive but ineffective and inefficient.

Don’t prioritize insignificant agenda items
by placing them first.

Starting with insignificant issues raises their significance. Trivial items frequently take longer than expected. Additionally, you’re wasting your best moments on least important issues.

Better to rush through less consequential items – at the end – than substantive issues.

The top item on your agenda should be:

1. Biggest problem.
2. Best opportunity.
3. Grandest goal.
4. Greatest issue.

Meetings are dangerous because talking feels like action but it isn’t. Effective meetings result in decisions and action. If actions or decisions aren’t required, send an email, make a call, or post a report on the company’s intranet.

What if:

What if biggest problems can’t be fully solved? Take the biggest step toward best available solutions. Hit it again next time.

What if best opportunities can’t be fully leveraged? Take the best available action.

What if grandest goals can’t be immediately reached? Take the grandest steps possible.

The best action at meetings is assigning actions.

8 ways to run great meetings:

1. Short agendas are better than long.
2. Allow ample time to discuss substantive issues.
3. Rush through trivial items at the end.
4. Press for decisions.
5. Create immediate, short-term action items.
6. Set short-term incremental deadlines. If it’s due in six months it won’t be started for five unless you set clear, impending milestones.
7. Identify champions – people who own action items.
8. Follow-up with participants in between meetings. Ask, “How’s your projecting coming?”

What tips or strategies create great meetings?

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On Turtles and Rabbits – Finding Pace

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Few leaders find effective pace naturally.

You’re running in circles because of two types of mistakes; both have to do with pace. You’re either too slow or too fast.

Pokey Turtle:

Scan your personal history.

• Has foot dragging plagued you?
• Has delay exacerbated your frustrations?
• Do you find yourself missing opportunities and wishing you had acted sooner?

Then you know what to do. Doing it is another matter.

Rash Rabbit:

• Has impulsiveness undermined success?
• Do you start too many projects and finish too few?
• Have you run over others and ruined relationships?
• Are you persistently pushing people?

Then you know what to do. Doing it is another matter.

Both:

Perhaps you’re a turtle in one context and a rabbit in another. I suspect you are. Combining too fast in one realm and too slow in another doesn’t create appropriate pace. It’s a formula for frustration.

You know:

You know when you’re a turtle or a rabbit. You know if you persistently miss opportunities because you go too slow or ruin your chances because you go too fast.

The solution:

Bring yourself to the table. You are uniquely qualified to succeed in this moment. Past triumphs, tragedies, achievements, and failures prepare you for success.

Let your experiences form you. Bring them with you on your journey. In particular, listen to reoccurring frustrations.

Include others on your journey. Find your opposites. If you’re a rash rabbit, find some turtles. I need wise turtles in my life. They trouble me but I need them. I also need racing rabbits to kick me in the pants when my turtle-self pulls back.

Bottom line:

You may think your pace is just fine. I seriously doubt it. Successful pace is found with others.

Listen:

Listening to frustrations ends them. Ignoring frustrations prolongs them.

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How can leaders find their effective pace?

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Pareto: 80% of Your Time is Spent on Trivialities

The 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) indicates 80% of your activities are trivial and 20% deliver results. Who wants to go to their CEO and say I’m wasting 80% of my time?

It’s shocking to suggest that 80% of an employee’s time is available for richer activities. It’s even more uncomfortable to apply that rule to ourselves.

You may be thinking, if 80% of my activities are trivial, why am I stressed out and time pressured? One reason, you haven’t identified triviality. What are you doing that doesn’t take you where you want to go – that doesn’t deliver results?

I was reminded yesterday that organizations support their mission with trivial activities. For example, when someone signs off on documents they don’t read, they’re engaged in trivial activities.

You may suggest that the sign-off is to keep them in the loop. Is the delay worth it? Would a weekly or monthly report satisfy the need?

Is your team spinning their wheels? Maximizing their time and energy requires clear direction, guiding values, planning, goals and objectives, prioritizing, scheduling, controlling, delegating, and more.

Drucker explained, “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”

80% of our time is spent on trivialities because effectiveness and efficiency require persistent intention and focus.

A word of caution:

Accepting the challenge of effectiveness and efficiency drives some toward ineffectiveness. You may believe honing processes, procedures, and getting more things done is the answer. There’s a place for that. But, effectiveness and efficiency begins with people.

Great teams love delivering meaningful results; enable them.

How can leaders create effective, efficient environments where team members spend more time delivering meaningful results and less time on trivialities?

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Go to the main page of Leadership Freak by clicking the banner at the top of this page, look in the right-hand navigation bar, enter your email and click subscribe.  Your email address is always kept private.  Note:  if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam filter for a confirmation email.

Be Quick but Don’t Hurry – John Wooden

One of my favorite quotes is, “Be quick but don’t hurry,” John Wooden. If you aren’t quick in today’s world, you’re done. If you hurry, things are poorly done or not done at all.

Creating Urgency:

Nothing gets done without urgency. With that in mind, shorter timelines are better than longer. They create urgency – Be quick.

Urgency and Quality:

Shorter timelines enhance efficiency.

Shorter timelines, on the other hand, threaten quality – Don’t hurry. Allow more time the first time but shorten timelines thereafter.

Urgency and Stress:

Shorter timelines increase stress. It’s easy to go too fast and stress out people. Moderate levels of stress enhance performance. But, go too far and performance drops. That’s where Wooden’s wisdom shines. Never hurry when it comes to people. Instead, “Go slow to go fast.”

Going Slow:

Go slow with people be quick with performance.

Take time to calm frustrated employees or volunteers who are stressed by short timelines. Listen to their concerns and frustration. They’re frustrated because they want to succeed and the timeline you established seems to block, not enhance success.

Move forward by asking if they think they can meet deadlines. If they say yes, express confidence in them and say, let me know if I can be helpful.

If they don’t think they can meet the deadline, ask what will it take? You may not be able to provide their request. In this case, express confidence and ask them to do their best.

Shorter timelines demand you manage emotions and provide support.

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How do you create urgency?

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Go to the main page of Leadership Freak by clicking the banner at the top of this page, look in the right-hand navigation bar, enter your email and click subscribe.  Your email address is always kept private.  Note:  if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam filter for a confirmation email.

Working Toward Working Less

The reason you don’t get more done is you’re doing too much.

We tie our worth to being busy. The busier we are the more important we feel. There is some truth to the idea that being busy indicates we are valuable to others.

Perpetual busyness, however, is more a sickness than an indication of value. Perhaps busyness indicates we are smothering our pain in constant motion.

10 Reasons you are overworked:

You aren’t over-worked because of your abilities. You are over-worked because you lack ability. For example:

1. You can’t make someone unhappy. (people pleaser)
2. You refuse to hold others accountable.
3. You avoid hard conversations.
4. You can’t take things out of your bucket. All you do is add, add, add.
5. You don’t delegate.
6. You won’t trust others.
7. You can’t organize and plan.
8. You can’t say no. (That includes saying no to the boss)
9. You aren’t able to prioritize.
10. You can’t see the value in investing and enabling others. You live on quick fixes.

Believe:

Believe you matter and what you do matters. You won’t matter until you decide to.

Focus, Focus, Focus:

Focus on things that matter most. The shorter the life span the less it matters. Cars last a few years; people have souls and spirits – they last forever. Focus on people. Would life change if you shifted from things to people?

Focus on the biggest bang for your buck. Are you wasting your energy doing things that don’t create the world you desire? Stop wasting yourself.

An unfocused life is a frenetic, wasted life.

Working toward working less:

Take one thing from the list of 10 reasons you are overworked and gradually live it. Then take another.

What suggestions do you have for people who are perpetually too busy to do what matters?

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More help for those working toward working less: “Stop the Madness Before its too Late.” Starting new things without stopping old things is the reason life is out of control.

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Don’t miss a single issue of Leadership Freak, subscribe today. It’s free.  It’s private.  It’s always practical and brief.

Go to the main page of Leadership Freak by clicking the banner at the top of this page, look in the right-hand navigation bar, enter your email and click subscribe.  Your email address is always kept private.  Note:  if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam filter for a confirmation email.