In the meantime, Steve Hearsum invites you to stop work and consider, is there any purpose to what you do?

Planning & productivity without purpose is pointless

One of the challenges of running a business, particularly if you spend a large amount of time on your own, is making the best use of time. I am a Jedi Master when it comes to the art of drawing out making a cuppa, and have recently discovered the re-runs of Undercover Boss on C4 in the morning (hey, the school run is exhausting…).

And procrastination and avoidance is hardly exclusive to me, or you. Many organisations I have worked with strive for efficiency and high performance, throwing time and money at processes, technology, paperwork and productivity training, and yet still end up flailing, or full of people expert at looking like they are efficient whilst delivering less. Even if you embrace the art of Accelerated Productivity or other free productivity tools (e.g. Remember the Milk), it may not actually help you get where you want to go, individually or organisationally, and even more damaging is the tendency to pursue action at all costs whilst ignoring what in reality matters to you.

What, I hear you cry, has this got to do with my own productivity/action/success/delivery etc?

“When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and business does.”

Daniel Pink, Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

What doesn’t motivate us, and therefore lead to increased productivity and performance, is ‘carrot & stick’, except if you are working in a job requiring routine, repetitive, manual tasks. If you need to work creatively, or use your brain in pretty much any way, being productive and performing to a high level requires three conditions to be met:

• Autonomy – the desire to direct or own lives
• Mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose – the yeaning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves

In other words, finding out what matters to you is crucial if you are going to get where you want to go and develop a plan that you will actually follow. The problem is, conventional approaches to planning and productivity just don’t cut it for two main reasons.

Reflection is discounted or ignored as a business tool, at a huge cost to us at a human level, and organisationally. I regularly get push back or looks of incredulity when I tentatively suggest to clients that maybe the answer to doing more is to do less. And yet all my experience shows me that the most intractable issues are often the ones that require us to slow down and step back in order to see what is really in front of us.

Meaning in the workplace is largely un-disscussable. But here’s the thing: we are meaning making machines, so you do this anyway. The question is not whether your making meaning in relation to work, it is whether what you do is aligned with your wider career goals and what really matters to you.

Which brings me back to Undercover Boss. Aside from the emotional payoff at the end of each episode where a wealthy business owner gets to do ‘nice stuff’ for a few valued employees, what strikes me is that the people that tend to get rewarded for their loyalty, hard work and attitude, are those who have the strongest motivation and awareness of what matters to them personally. For some it is caring for family, old and young, others it is mission driven e.g. community projects, or more personal stories such as the recovering alcoholic whose journey spurs him on to help prevent others falling into the same traps as he did.

So here is my question to you: what matters to you, and how does that fit in with your work? And if you know the answer, how good is your plan to get the most out of that, personally, professionally, organisationally and in business?

Steve Hearsum – People Who Do Associate

To book a place on our next retreat starting on the 21st of March you can either click here to find out more, email us, or call on 01273 252550.

From my experience, you can’t wait around to find what you love. You gotta work your ass off. And then you find what you love by doing piles and piles of work.

Kate Bingaman Burt

Via Swiss Miss

A great motto from Pixar director Andrew Stanton.

More on Pixar’s creative process here.

Spring 2012 sees the return of the planning retreat. This year we have a new format. Now over two days with an overnight at the beautiful Hawthbush Farm there is more time to reflect, consider and plan.

Join us for two days in the heart of the Sussex countryside to:

• Learn to understand what drives you forward and holds you back.
• Raise self-awareness and understand the reality of where you are, and want to be.
• Design a plan that will allow you to work towards the things that really count in your work, and personal life.

What you’ll get from it

• Understand what you want to do and why
• Review your career objectives
• Work on your key issues and barriers
• Identify and develop a sense of purpose
• Learn new approaches to think critically about how and what you do
• Place self awareness at the heart of what you do
• A detailed plan for the next few months
• Leave refreshed, reengaged and motivated
• Confidence and clarity
• Fun! And muddy boots.

How we will work
Structured small group sessions and 1-to-1 work are combined with fine food, luxurious accommodation, country walks and relaxed drinks in inspiring surroundings. We’ll work together to review the past, separate opinion from fact, identify barriers and pin down risks to help you achieve what you want in a way that aligns with your principles and connects with your beliefs. You will leave the retreat with greater clarity on the path towards your goals, and how to get there.

Our approach allows you to focus on yourself in a supportive environment while shaping the retreat to your emerging needs. Groups are small with no more than six participants and are supported by expert facilitators.

Please bring outdoor clothing and appropriate footwear.

The Venue
Hawthbush Farm is a 140 acre organic farm in the heart of East Sussex. Toby and Lisa are working with Natural England under the Higher Level Stewardship scheme to protect our species rich meadows, ancient woodlands and enhance birdlife and butterflies.

Tucked away down a long farm track, and situated next to the family home, the holiday cottages have been converted from an old piggeryand cowshed to offer eco-friendly accommodation in a beautiful countryside setting.

Facilitators
Steve Stark
Director of People Who Do, an organisational and personal development consultancy that seeks to make work better. Steven has 15 years experience working in the creative industries at director level. He has founded, built up, bought or sold nine terrestrial and digital radio stations, led an audio production company, launched and run a music festival and consulted for clients ranging from Virgin Media and Haymarket Publishing to The Department of Health and Local Authorities as well as private residential care homes and silversmiths. He has extensive experience of working with SME’s to improve productivity and working environments. In his spare time he shares the childcare, keeps a smallholding and looks after bees. You can read more on LinkedIn.

Steve Hearsum
Founder of Deboxing: organisational development and change, specialising in making work relationships work. Steve works to ensure change is simultaneously aligned at organisational, team and individual levels. He has over 20 years experience working in publishing, media, telecoms, SMEs, public sector and third sector, the last 10 years as an independent practitioner. Clients include The Guardian, Bauer Media, EMAP, Pitney Bowes, Teachers TV, NHS, BT and the public sector.. Core to Steve’s work is the belief that human beings are social and relational, and that the quality of our relationships affects our experience of ourselves in subtle and profound ways . Steve lives in Brighton with his family and an unhealthy obsession with the art of making coffee. There is more about Steve on LinkedIn.



Costs and Dates
The Planning Retreat costs £995 + VAT for two days. This includes all food, drinks, materials and accommodation but not transportation to the venue. You can download a summary here.

Next course: April 23rd & 24th.

To Book
Call: 01273 252550
Email: do@peoplewhodo.co.uk

Coffee – grinding beans, making espresso, steaming milk – very nice process, good thinking time.  Sometimes Radio 4 is on in the background.

Review calendar, the hard landscape, the stuff that I have to do today or at a time today.

Do some work, project stuff – not emails.

I try to put off looking at emails until I’ve done at least an hour’s work.

I then have little bits of time throughout the day for checking my emails and my action folder in my emails.

With emails I:

Scan the inbox for trash, junk and bacon (social/newsletters/stuff I’d like to read but not essential) – I move them to the relevant folders.

I scan the inbox for any very quick to respond to emails – and send responses (trying hard to use these guidelines - http://emailcharter.org/ )

What’s normally left are emails that are going to require more in depth responses, or some project work – 2 ways of dealing with these – first, move them all to your action folder, get them out of inbox – next, book some time in to deal with them as a batch, or put time in for particular emails.

It’s not like this everyday, but, I try as much as possible to keep to this routine.

Some concept stuff on how Microsoft perceives the future of getting stuff done.

More here.

The pipeline worked out well, we’ve been busy busy busy, we just have to keep making time to feed it (another thing you have to do to a pipeline). It’s funny how this was second nature to me in radio, but I had to learn it again for PWD. Although the approach has needed to be different. Apart from the regular feeding, the next problem was how to represent the pipeline in a meaningful way that allowed us to see what was happening quickly and would motivate us to keep on at the feeding and pushing things along.

We tried various CRM systems, in particular ZOHO but that proved so over featured and complex it became a barrier. We looked at Highrise, which didn’t seem to fit well back then, and several others. Then @mattweston showed us a lightweight paper based system that we loved. It involved a sheet of wallpaper and a bunch of post its. We stuck the long sheet on the wall and separated it into sections along the short axis. we labelled the sections as followed:

New Leads – ideas for people we could approach

0% – people we had requested a meeting or call with

25% – people we had met with and who expressed interest or offered to help

50% – people who actually agreed to look at a proposal, or asked us to help

75% – people who had received a proposal from us

100 – people who had said yes

In delivery – for our live clients

Each lead would be assigned a post it note and the note would be physically placed at the various stages along the wallpaper as the conversation progressed. More detail got added, proposal value etc, as you went along. At the end we stacked up all the completed jobs as a glory thing. If we got a no the note went in the bin. If things weren’t progressing they went in the bin. At a glance you could see how you were doing. So long as we had a lot of notes in the 0 – 25% range, some in the middle and a few in the 75% + range we were doing ok.

It was really good for quite a while, it felt great to see the notes progressing along the pipe. However it was not very portable it took up a huge area of wall so we’d take photo’s to refer to when we meeting away from the wall. I later compressed it and put in the side of my filing cabinet by my desk, which was neater. Later still I stuck it all in a manila file, and in one fell swoop I had made it portable. Neat.

I really enjoyed the low tech, physical nature of this system. It was pleasing to rearrange the notes at the end of the day, add figures when ideas were pitched and to see them stack up as the work was done. But we outgrew it. The others wanted to who I was speaking to so they could steer clear.

For a while I used Datum.com to track my key stats. We were tracking an agreed set of mnimum standards in particular meetings held, value pitched and value closed. I liked that too, it would show a rolling 30 days of activity so if the numbers started to drop I would feel a real urgency to get some proposal out and get sign off just to keep the numbers up. It was really effective at keeping me motivated.

In the end though that went by the wayside too. It was cloud based and had an iphone ap, but the ap was appalling: you couldn’t get any clarity from it. Plus the free version was public, so we could see each others activity but so could anyone else. Going private was more secure but then we couldn’t see each others activity either…

Since then I have seen a lovely tool called Kanban.com which is basically postit notes on a screen, you can setup sections and move the notes, plus you can share projects or sales activity, assign tasks etc, proper project management and pretty too. I am not currently using it, found it too late.

Instead we’ve settled back on 37 Signals’ Highrise. It’s much better now: simple, sharable, you can email it stuff, really quite good.

Not the same as a piece of paper though.

Simon’s solution: a leaf out of the Google history book. Fridays you can do what you like. 

His take on this:

“Just taking the short-term view, by allowing our team to release their captive ideas into the wild, we should get some cool new features and develop some experimental stuff that may or may not work, but will be fun finding out. The broader view, however, promises so much more.

As I’ve alluded to already, the brain is a muscle that needs exercising and the opportunity to practice innovation and ideas will breed more of the same.  Not just specific ideas, but also innovative ways of thinking, can be brought from this to every project we undertake.”

The team’s take?

“Awesome. I want it to be Friday again.”

They just started it, can’t wait to see how it pans out.

Hawthbush is where I keep my bees and grow vegetables. Toby and Lisa are finally coming out of the treadmill of building and refurbishing and welcomed us to what is now a beautiful place. Most of the accommodation and the function room are finished and feel amazing, so much so that Curtis and Emily have booked to stay for a holiday. The twelve of us sat around an old oak kitchen table in the Granary, ate great food, talked a lot, fended off the occasional curious chicken and a very affectionate cat. By the end of the day I was slightly overwhelmed by the breadth and number of ideas we’d covered. I guess we didn’t actually invent anything physical, but I did leave feeling wiser and curious to try out some of the ideas.

Here are some of the themes that are still resonating with me:

Pressure
Whether or not it is required for good creative work. Should a manager seek to keep a team in a state of pressure, through deadlines, limited access to information and other techniques? Does this tension lead to better work? It seems rather sinister to think that it should be deliberately managed. Can it be done successfully? Is there a difference between externally imposed pressure and that we generate ourselves?

If we are committed to a project our engagement will drive us to good work, a pressure to do well. Many of us recognise the buzz that comes from time constraints, difficult problems, sometimes we even encourage it. There is a balance to be struck. Perhaps managers can facilitate positive pressure. I suspect they would do that best by stepping back and trusting their people to do good work and generate / feed off positive pressure. The manager’s role might be protect their teams from unhealthy pressure, to recognise when the balance is out and to help get it back rather than to seek to apply and control it as though it were water through a dam.

Tidiness
We need tidying phases, to process expenses, deal with admin, manage diaries. It is not unusual for this sort of activity to be delegated and there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe though doing it yourself forces you to slow down and reflect. A day a month put aside for tidying could be a light touch way to ameliorate stress.

We encourage people to review their work weekly, to take time out to plan what they are doing over the week ahead, that’s a kind of tidying. We know well the benefits it brings: clarity, control, focus.

I like the idea that projects might benefit from a deliberate tidying stage, a consolidation of the information, a final record collated before being archived, a road map for others to follow, a dissemination of lessons learned. A quietus.

Networks
Matt Locke described how starting The Story exposed him to a whole new network. Now he works for himself doing more of what interests him and that network is generating twice the number of opportunities his older, longer established work based network is.

I like the idea of finding ways to build a network (if that is what it is) around your areas of interest. Perhaps it is not strictly a network, more a community. If it is interest focused, has something to coalesce around, it should be fertile and if you can be a focal point for that, it seems reasonable that it should be more fertile than say LinkedIn. Perhaps it something to do with the physical contact an event such as The Story offers, opportunities to connect in the real world to share stories and ideas face to face. There is common ground, a reason to champion an idea.

So where are the really valuable networks. I don’t mean the ones that lead to work necessarily, but the ones that engage you in other areas of your life. How do we find them, build them, nurture and manage them to find fulfilment? I don’t think that it’s complicated, but perhaps we undervalue them and fail to put ourselves forward and so form a barrier to what really engages us.

Remuneration
Paul Levy suggested that those people who do the least interesting, most repetitive jobs should be paid more, much more, than those doing creative work that interests them. Perhaps a new economy would see creative thinkers housed and fed with access to wonderful working environments, but without pay. Most people who love their work would do it if their salary was halved. It gives them fulfilment. Meanwhile others do uninteresting jobs and must sacrifice their time and skills to be able to pursue interests in the time left to them outside of work. That sacrifice should be rewarded. I wonder how that might play out in a global marketplace where outsourcing might remove a whole class of activity from a country such as Britain.

New models for businesses
A number of people were transitioning from large employers to working for themselves. We explored the dynamics of that. The idea of doing a not job: a job that is not what you used to do. In that reaction might we be abandoning some things that are good? Working alone or in a small team is exhilarating but limiting. What models are there for building a networked business that expands with demand and shrinks with desire that allows you to do big stuff and keep small. Should growth be a consideration, why is it necessary, should it be a goal, what other objectives could be set that might make for a better experience for ourselves? We unpacked a lot, and some of us will be experimenting over the months ahead.

I got quite interested in the idea of a tool or check list for people to work through who were considering a not-job, of breaking ties and trying something new. I might come back to that.

There was a lot more besides. Curtis and I will run another soon, maybe one a quarter. We’ll tweak the format, invite new people, maybe invite clients to part of it, maybe do it over two days, maybe make it bigger. Perhaps this will become a network/community thing that takes on a life of its own complementing and extending what we and others who share our interests can do. We’ll see.

(If you’d like to come to the next one, get in touch.)