Five Simple Strategies for Working Well
My parents taught me about working hard to achieve success. They started out modestly and built a nice life through years of hard work.
My father rose through the ranks in his industry, from unskilled labor, to union electrician, then foreman, electrical superintendent, and eventually project manager. He worked on huge power plant and transportation projects. So this was a pretty amazing feat. I remain proud of him to this day, and of my mother, who raised four kids in a spotless house and whose pound-cake was legendary. They figured out the recipe for achieving success without selling your soul and they executed it very well.
As a young naval officer, I first heard the phrase “Work smarter, not harder.” It was in Total Quality Leadership training, the navy’s adaptation of Deming’s Total Quality Management (TQM). We learned about personality types, improving communications, and statistical process control, all of which were meant to help us to focus the resources and human capital in our organizations in ways that would better support mission accomplishment.
I always put a lot of faith in both philosophies, but up until now I thought of them separately. Then this morning in my journal, I wrote this sentence.
This week we are working well.
Working well… What does that mean?
We are working hard and we are working efficiently, creatively, and effectively— definitely working smarter than is the norm.
Certainly the stage is set for success here. My colleagues and I are on a writing retreat of our own design, working collaboratively on a book with a short turn around time. We are available online for our other obligations, but have secluded ourselves in a mountain retreat. We aren’t meeting anybody for lunch or coffee. We aren’t attending luncheons or networking events. We aren’t distracted by the neighbor’s dog or office small talk. I won’t disclose too much detail about our process, but it is working swimmingly.
So let’s talk about what it means to work well, the way my colleagues and I are, and how one might go about doing it.
First of all, what IS working well?
Working well, as I define it, is working smarter AND harder, creatively, and with a real sense of joy.
This is the life-work integration I so often talk about.
How do I know when I am doing it?
If you wake up in the morning, ready to go, with a smile on your face and end the day satisfied with your progress, you are working well.
Here five simple keys to working well, based on my own experience.
1) Stage-setting: Creative projects like writing, strategizing, and developing web content are difficult to do amid the hustle and bustle of office life and personal obligations. Bruno Latour (1999, 2005) talks about setting the stage for emergent phenomena and honors the way that people and things come together to make things happen. ![endif]--[endif]--
By coming to the mountains in the fall, just as the aspens are at their peak, stocking the refrigerator here with healthy food, etc. my colleagues and I established the conditions for optimal performance. The blend of our friendship, mutual respect, laptops, books and e-readers, the mountains, aspen leaves, and good coffee set the stage for several days of focused writing, theorizing, and collaboration.
How can you set the stage for working well? It can be as simple as cleaning off your desk and turning off your wi-fi for a few hours, or perhaps taking the book you are reading outside under a clear sky.
That doesn’t mean you didn’t have to deal with any distractions or negativity from others. I am no Pollyanna and I get that we can’t always hide in the mountains to work. Even when we can, outside influences are not entirely unavoidable.
The trick is to manage them and deal with them in a way that does NOT throw you into an emotional tailspin that gets you off track for your bigger purpose. Remember that other people’s misbehavior is just that— their problem. Even when you are forced to engage with negative people and situations, that’s not who YOU are. Even if you do get pulled into the soul-sucking negativity vortex, be sure to look up, remember who you are, and climb out before you cross the event horizon! We can still work well on days where circumstances are less than ideal.
2) Having a goal in mind: For this retreat we had a specific goal in mind— taking a body of theory we have each contributed to and getting our understanding of it into book form. The intent is to get clarity on how we express the ideas for common use in the world of business. Admittedly, this is a pretty lofty goal. It requires the kind of focus we have found this week.
As Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat suggested, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there, Alice!”
I won’t belabor the point. Goal-setting is addressed in any of a number of forums and is the stuff of strategy classes and personal development workshops that are abundant, often helpful, and easy to come by. (If you need help here, begin by Googling the term “SMART goals”!)
3) Fluid structure: Executing a goal like writing a book, especially with colleagues, requires you to get organized. Yet “too many rules” and “too much structure” can completely kill creativity. We had to come up with a process that would get the job done without feeling cumbersome. The feeling that we “have to” do something or “should” do something is the death knell of creativity. Our structure for this project is the perfect balance of structure and openness.
Granted, we don’t always get to be the ones making the rules for every project we work on, but within your own span of control— and we all control SOME aspect of our days— see where you can inject a little space for creativity and the joy of working productively. Where you can, try to find ways of working that charge your batteries instead of draining them.
4) Picking the right collaborators: This can be a tough one, but it is really very important. There are people who feel the need to “one-up” their colleagues— pointing out flaws in subtle (or not so subtle) ways. Others routinely underestimate us and have trouble supporting our success. Some people even engage in overtly personal interactions with purely transactional aims in mind— tolerating your friendship for the sake of selling you something.
These are NOT the right people to collaborate with! They may be delightful people in other respects, great partners for other people to work with, etc. but if you are feeling the slightest hint of any of the experiences I just described, the worry will drain your energy in ways you can’t afford. It is time to discretely move on to a better place for yourself rather than spinning your wheels.
When you spot these patterns, without whining or harsh judgment, quietly draw your cards a little closer to your vest. If you can, thank the dealer and the other players as you politely excuse yourself to find another table. Explanations are not required and can be a negativity trap if provided.
I have become much choosier of late and for this project, we have exactly the right team. We have known each other for several years, seen each other deal with successes and struggles, and genuinely care about each other’s happiness. Trust is a given here. We are all skilled researchers and writers. We all have strong backgrounds in the work we are doing, and possess the desire to see it through. THIS is the writing project dream team.
Can you find people to work with who lift you up, who are invested in their own success and are capable of supporting yours? Who helps you to become your best self and achieve professional success on YOUR terms? These should also be people who can be happy for on those occasions when their lights shine a little brighter than yours, and who feel the same when it is your turn.
In the picture above, I am actively engaged with someone who is invested not only in his own success, but mine too! THAT is what I am talking about!
5) Focus, focus, focus: Figure out what works for you in terms of staying on track. One size does not fit all here and you may need to follow a recipe of your own invention.
It can be more productive to work for a few hours and take a short break than to push through without any breathers at all. Even when we are working toward a deadline, it is important to stop and regroup every once in a while. How long is your attention span? Can you take a few minutes to meditate or take a jog? What does that do for your focus and productivity afterwards? There is no point to sitting at the computer and writing nonsense you will have to delete later. How many of us have had to read the same page of a book three times because we are simply fried and can’t process the information?
You know it is time for a break when… 1) Your mind is elsewhere and attention is fleeting. OR 2) You are reading the words but there just aren’t any pictures in your head to go with them and you couldn’t paraphrase what you just read if your life depended on it. OR 3) You are feeling angry or resentful about the task at hand. If any of these things happens, take a break.
Reset yourself.
Come back to the table with your head in the right space and the determination to get the job done. Trust me. It helps!
If you work in an environment where your actions are closely monitored, like a "cubicle farm," be sure to discuss your strategies with your supervisor so that your resets aren’t misconstrued. You might have to adjust your preferred strategy to conform to the rules of your workplace.
So what about you?
Are you working well today?
If not, how can you begin to move in that direction tomorrow?
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References:
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora's hope:essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Original edition, 2005. Reprint, 2007 paperback.
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