Byron's Babbles

This morning I am reflecting on another topic brought up in Rachel Pedersen’s great book, Unfiltered: Proven Strategies To Start And Grow Your Business By Not Following The Rules: Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law states that as “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In other words, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If you give yourself a week to complete a task, it will take a week, but if you give yourself a day, you will be able to complete it in a day. Rachel emphasized the importance of setting realistic, but aggressive deadlines up front. She also discussed limiting the amount of time spent on tasks to increase productivity and efficiency. I have been paying attention to this lately. In fact this week I had a client schedule a 15 minute meeting with me. Guess what? It took 13 minutes. So, another client asked for an hour. I suggested a 30 minute gap between other meetings. You guessed it; the meeting took 26 minutes. So, one of my big takeaways is to get away from the default time periods for meetings – 30 minutes or one hour. I’m even trying some 10 minute calls. Calendly really helps me with that kind of scheduling.

One thing I have learned is that setting a clear deadline, breaking the task down into smaller chunks, and limiting the time spent, I can accomplish more in less time and feel more satisfied with the progress. Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA, advocated for splitting our days into 10 minute increments. Then, trying to waste as few of those 10 minutes as possible. I tried it – I was amazed at how few I wasted. And…I didn’t get bored with any one thing. Now, will that work for everything? Nope, but one more tool in the toolbox. I love having tools in the toolbox. Instead of letting projects take on a life of their own, we need to design the scope up front, because otherwise those projects will take on a life if their own and take as long as we let them.

I love the television show FBI International. It’s even better when it’s a new episode and I am able to be home to watch it. Carter Redwood plays Special Agent Andre Raines who in the episode I was watching was comforting the son of a kidnapping victim. Raines told the son, who was jumping to the conclusion that his father was dead that, “Assumptions are dangerous. They are made without evidence.” A good reminder that we are just assuming if we don’t have any evidence. Making assumptions is dangerous. We need to look for the evidence. But when we make assumptions it makes it hard to change our minds, even with evidence.

Unfortunately, assumptions underlie many of our biases as humans. Our minds naturally jump to conclusions and make meaning. The great leaders, as Special Agent Raines reminded us, look to the evidence to tell the story. Assumptions lead to ineffective behavior, unnecessary worry, or reactionary responses. These behaviors can lead to cycles of assumption to reaction to assumption. A good way to fight our urge to jump to assumptions is to take an attitude of inquiry. Instead of guessing, ask. Instead of assuming, look for and find the evidence. Oh, by the way, the boys father was found and was alive.

Rachel Pedersen discussed “problem mindset” versus “challenge mindset” in her great book, Unfiltered: Proven Strategies To Start And Grow Your Business By Not Following The Rules. We all know how important our mindset is in everything we do. For me, the challenge mindset is about seeing opportunities. Sort of like when instead of just seeing a gum wrapper, MacGyver sees an opportunity to get out of a life threatening situation. He is seeing the situation as a challenge instead of a problem. In fact, in Owning Up To Our Mistakes, I blogged about an early mentor of mine that taught me to see problems as opportunities. As he would say, “We’ve got an opportunity.” I never heard him say problem, obstacle, or challenge. And, framed as opportunities they always became just that – opportunities for growth and success.

By having a mindset that sees challenges instead of problems we see these opportunities as jumping-off points for growth and for enlargement of our existing abilities. I loved where Rachel went with this by discussing challenges as chances to grow and learn new things. One of the things I love about owning my own business right now is how every new thing I take on has given me to opportunity to learn in new areas I had never dreamed of. It’s exhilarating, really. Just like MacGyver, we need to see challenges not as problems or forces of opposition, but as opportunities. Those opportunities enable us to learn, grow, improve, or adjust in a way that leaves them better off than before the problem existed.

Think about this question posed by Rachel Pedersen in her great book, Unfiltered: Proven Strategies To Start And Grow Your Business By Not Following The Rules: “What if I decided to be me all the time?” Now, really reflect on that question. For example, I usually live by the rule of not wearing a tie on days of the week that end in the letter “y”. That’s every day, by the way. But, there are times that I wear a tie. Why? Because everyone else will have one on. So, Rachel has us questioning why we do that to ourselves. Again, what if we decided to be ourselves all the time? How many times do we do something because of some social norm? There is a lot of imitating that goes on in this world. And, that imitating involves envying others, too. What if we really started being ourselves ALL the time? What if we, as leaders, made space for others to be themselves and show their creative selves all the time?

For the most part I think I’m pretty good at being me, but there are those moments where I find myself conforming. I already mentioned the tie thing. This is where Rachel also taught us that, “professionalism is killing creativity.” So true! I have, no surprise, been told to tone it down before. Just how does one do that? Pretty hard for a guy like me that gets “giddy” over the smallest of things. Rachel even talks in her TED Talk about being given the advice to “dull her sparkle.” I like sparkle!!! She asks the question: “Who decides what is right?” The point here is, what if we were always ourselves? We are all packaged a little differently and we need to make sure we appreciate all those differences. Let’s all try to make a little more space for others to be themselves all the time.

I finish reading an incredible novel yesterday. Red Dress In Black and White by Elliot Ackerman was a great book that caused a great deal of thought and reflection. Before I go on, let me just say, “Read this book.” I have several notes from yesterday as I finished up the book, but one of the lines that caused great reflection was, “She held up a mirror to my own self interests.” We all have self interests. In the policy side of my world I call this ‘turf,’ but we all have self interests. Rightly so, and there is nothing wrong with that. Reading Red Dress In Black and White, made me realize how important it is to hold up a mirror to those self interests often and reflect.

In doing a little research on mirrors, I found they were invented in 1835 as we know them today. Prior to that people used reflections in water or other polished items to get a distorted view of themselves. Click here for a pretty good history of mirrors. Think about it; mirrors changed the way we walk through the world. We can’t help ourselves, but to look in a mirror or in a window reflection to see how we look. There are huge psychological impacts of so clearly being a subject of ourself. Mirrors give us a perspective on how we look to the rest of the world. Now that we have mirrors and we all have looked into one, we can use the great metaphor given to us by Elliott Ackerman of holding up a mirror to our own self interests.

Mirrors allow us to see what we really look like. When it comes to our self interests we need to review how those self interests are affecting the trade-offs we make related to our personal and professional life. Sometimes there is even an intertwining of our personal and professional lives. Now, I love the fact that we have become a society where the private actor can pursue the personal and commercial interests we choose. But, don’t forget, this can lead to greed, vanity, envy, and pride. Which in turn can lead to selfishness. We need that mirror held up in front of us occasionally so we can reflect (pun intended) on how our actions are affecting others. In other words, to stay with the metaphor, have we become ugly.

We will never change the fact that we are self-interested creatures. This is what allows us to have passions and drive. We do, however, owe it to those in our community circles to reflect on how our own self interests are impacting those in our web of influence.