Blog

How small acts of care build loyalty

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:14:19 GMT

It’s been a week to remember, and not in a good way.

At the end of January I was celebrating the launch of my new book People Glue with my sprightly mother, 84, who still lives independently. People Glue is about how we can create 'sticky' organisations by giving people more freedom so they want to stay and they do their best work. I dedicated to my mother and my late father, the photo below was taken just after Mum had seen the dedication for the first time.

Ten days ago, she fell off a ladder whilst (perhaps a tad unwisely) hedgecutting alone. She was blue-lighted to a major hospital an hour away with head injuries and a heart attack caused by the fall. When I reached her in the emergency ward, she was covered in blood, very shocked and looking far frailer than usual but typically, she was mainly worrying about interrupting my day. I’ve spent the past 10 days by her bedside, swiftly joined by my 2 brothers. Thanks to the expert and dedicated care of the medical team at the hospital, she has pulled through and to all our relief, is back home recuperating.

With a few minutes to myself today, I’ve been reflecting on this experience, namely:

⭐️ How big things outside of our control can happen unexpectedly, however well-organised our plans and routines are;
⭐️ When you’re faced with the unthinkable, you get a whole load of clarity about everything else that previously seemed so important;
⭐️ 99% of my to-do list wasn’t as critical or urgent as I’d thought and has mostly been parked for the time being;
⭐️ When I mentioned the situation to others, many of them told me they are dealing with similarly challenging scenarios in their home lives - I’d have had no idea otherwise;
⭐️ Big shocks or difficult situations push you into alternate realities, from where you can contemplate new possibilities for the future;
⭐️ How fortunate I am to have an incredibly supportive husband who has quietly picked up all the extra school runs, meal prep and parenting needs; plus close friends in the know who’ve sent supportive messages.

I'm fortunate in that working for myself, I could adapt my workload and hours to fit around responding to this family emergency, but I know only too well this is far harder to do if you're an employee.

So if you are reading this and you lead a business or a team, please:

✅ Listen/watch out for the tiny cues that might indicate a colleague (or client) is dealing with a lot at home;
✅ Ask ‘what do you need right now?’
✅ Ask ‘what’s the best way for us to keep in touch about this?’
✅ If your flexible working or time off policies aren’t very generous, use your manager’s discretion/authority as much as possible to help them manage;
✅ Ask them what would help lighten the load temporarily at work.

People remember these small acts of care and kindness; they are hugely powerful in forging connection and bringing humanity into a world of work that can often feel transactional, pressured and lonely. And if you're wanting to encourage people to stay for the longer term, remember that loyalty can be strengthened through the hard times as much as through the good.

Counting down to launch

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:26:27 GMT

Have you ever worked on a slow-burn project that took 2 years (or more) to come to fruition?

I’m fast approaching one of those ‘fruition’ moments. Yet it feels like yesterday that I was telling you about my seed of an idea....

My second business book People Glue: hold on to your best people by setting them free launches on Monday 26th January (e-book) and Tuesday 27th January (paperback & hardback). I’d love your help to create momentum around the launch and celebrate with me.

Here are 5 way s you can help:

1. Buy the e-book/Kindle edition on Amazon for just 99p/99¢ on Monday 26th January only, preferably between 10-11am UK but any time will do, to help get People Glue on to the ‘hot new releases’ and ‘bestseller’ lists. Want a reminder on the day? Let me know your mobile number and I’ll Whatsapp you first thing.
2. Pre-order the paperback or hardback now here . Good pre-order levels persuades retailers to stock it.
3. Like and share my Linked In and Instagram posts before/during/after launch , to help spread the word. (Click the bell icon on the top right of my Linked In profile to see all my posts).
4. Post a photo online with your copy of the book or if you spot it in a local bookshop, using the hashtag #peopleglue and tagging me. I’d love to see where my book travels to! And I promise to reshare your post.
5. Leave a rating and a review online ( Amazon , Waterstones , Goodreads , any other bookseller/site) , just one sentence about why you bought it or what you thought of it will suffice. I’m aiming to get to 50 reviews in 50 days to help others discover the book too.

As a thank you for your support, please join me at a free Zoom webinar on Wednesday 4 February 12 noon -12.45pm UK time where I will:

• Advise on 8 ways to diagnose your retention risks.
• Dip into each of the 4 freedoms and a positive example of each in action.
• Share 3 top tips for creating more freedom in your work life.
• Answer your questions about writing a business book and/or creating a ‘sticky’ organisation.

Click here to book your place.

I'm looking forward to sharing People Glue with you all! And thank you in advance for your continued support and encouragement, I hugely appreciate it.

From ‘festive creep’ to ‘thinking deep’.

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:05:07 GMT

How far ahead do you typically think ?

‘Festive creep’ is a thing apparently, with the festive decorations, shopfronts and marketing campaigns officially starting earlier than ever before. (I ate my first mince pie on the last day of November – have I fallen prey too?). This seems to me to be another indication of how impatient and hurried we have become, always in a rush for the next arrival, to start the next new initiative at work or hit the next deadline, and in parallel our attention has become chopped up into ever-smaller increments in our rush to acquire, achieve and advance. I’m pondering how we can counterbalance our short-term, hyper-fast focus with a slowing down to help us take more in, look further ahead and expand our thinking.

I’m as guilty of myopic busyness as anyone. My second business book People Glue launches on 26/27 January (quick plug: pre-order your paperback/hardback here or you can snap up the e-book for just 99p on the 26th January, add a reminder to your calendar here ) and we’re shortly heading off on a long-haul family adventure over the festive period. So I’m currently running several ‘to do’ lists concurrently, all intended very ambitiously to ‘get everything done’ by the time school’s out. I can’t see past the forest of work tasks, home admin, festive gift-buying and packing reminders that clog my view. With our departure date looming, I need to step back and look further ahead, or as the French say, ‘reculer pour mieux avancer’. My exasperated husband put it more bluntly, ‘yes we need to unblock the kitchen drain for the housesitters but a new rug for the sitting-room is NOT a priority!’

When I was researching for People Glue , I spoke to 25 or so CEOs, COOs and CPOs , many of whom talked about looking at their business through 2 lenses: one eye on daily operations and short-term results, the other on longer-term ‘moonshots’ that anticipated potential future developments and built organisational capability for tomorrow. Each lens brought insights and a counterbalancing view to the other.

Individuals generally want the same in their lives too; to manage, on the one hand, the day-to-day load (at work and home) as efficiently and productively as possible whilst planning their next pay rise, promotion, job move, house refurbishment, holiday or family addition. They’re also zooming out to think about what matters most to them today and how this might evolve in the future. Even those who take a fairly spontaneous approach to their career opportunities hold firm to a set of longer-term beliefs and values that form a career compass guiding their decisions - listen to my podcast conversation with tech CEO Soulaima Gourani to hear how she does this brilliantly.

I was fascinated to read at the weekend about the creation of a Clock of the Long Now (FT £, or here ), designed to measure the passing of 10,000 years. Located deep in a remote Texan mountain, it will confound our expectations of a clock by ticking once a year, chiming once a century and trumpeting a cuckoo once a millenium. All without winding and parts replacements.

The same day, I listened to author and computer science professor Cal Newport talk about the lost art of long thinking on his podcast. He defines long thinking as ‘the persistent intentional application of your brain when you’re trying to create something new’ and points out how sustained attention is critical for long thinking. But thanks to smartphones, instant gratification and short-form ultra-digestible entertainment, we’ve lost the habit of thinking for ourselves and spend less time reading longer texts, reflecting, and writing as form of thinking.

The renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman shed light on our 2 speeds of thinking in his remarkable book Thinking Fast and Slow . We slip comfortably into fast thinking thanks to our cognitive biases and shortcuts, entrenched assumptions and easily-recalled (but incomplete or unreliable) data. It’s more effortful to engage in slow thinking – like writing with your non-dominant hand - because the latter requires sustained attention, the search for alternative perspectives and an exploration of the unfamiliar.

I have a thirst for books, reading, bookshops and libraries that I’m belatedly learning is a powerful antidote to the short-term busyness and task accomplishment that I’ve become so used (addicted?) to. I’m curious to know what value business leaders place on reading, and learning, generally in their organisations, and asked a friend who’s running a 7,000 employee consulting business whether she thought corporate libraries were worth investing in. Her answer was revealing: her initial reaction was ‘not a priority’ but she swiftly followed that up with ‘but I would love to encourage people to switch off from the immediacy of work and find more time in their day/week to read/learn/reflect, engage in curiosity and expand their thinking horizons. I absolutely want to make this part of the way we work here’. If this strikes a chord, if you’ve established a corporate library or another mechanism e.g. a book club, reading circles etc, to grow people’s reading and thinking habits at work, then please do get in touch , and I’ll share my thoughts on this too.

Here's how I’m trying to adjust the balance of my thinking time and extend my thinking horizons:

1. 10 minutes a day ‘still time’ – sitting quietly, doing nothing, to get used to the discomfort of switching to a slower pace. My brain twitches like mad for most of it but my mental hamster wheel does start to ease into a slower, more contemplative state.
2. Prioritising ‘reading windows’ for 20-30 minutes a day over other things I could do in that time . Phone down, jobs ignored, interruptions discouraged. I turn to my subscriptions - the FT, The Economist, Harvard Business Review and Sloan MIT Review – and have a browse. In the evenings I turn to fiction, often a Korean novel (translated) of late.
3. When drafting or planning, I’m reverting to ink pen and paper . I’m a fast touch-typist and writing out my thoughts by hand is more effortful, forcing me to think more carefully. My phone goes in Focus mode to silence notifications, and out of sight.

What works for you? Or what thinking habit do you want to introduce? I’d love to hear what you’re reading at the moment or what you’re stacking up to read over the festive period and I’ll include a little book list in my New Year’s email.

In the meantime, embrace the festivities your way and if that means ditching your to-do list in favour of some quality thinking, reading and reflecting time (mince pie or Celebration choc in hand), then go for it. Let’s make ‘thinking creep’ a thing instead.

Navigating life's bumps at work and home

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:16:33 GMT

How do you react when the going gets tough?

We’ve been talking a lot about resilience at home. It’s a much-thrown-about concept I know, but I’m genuinely curious about how to really be resilient when the path you’re on feels anything but easy.

Between anxiety-inducing news headlines, a tough job hunt for my stepson, my daughter finding school challenging, and clients navigating big transitions, 2025 has felt bumpy. The world of work is turbulent, with layoffs happening in multiple industries and budget cuts in others. GenAI adoption is shrinking early-career jobs, while over-55s are anxious about the future. Leaders and managers are grappling with the diverse needs of multigenerational, hybrid teams.

I’ve been reflecting on how we ride out these bumps without feeling battered.

Resilience isn’t something we magically have or lack - it grows as we show up consistently to adversity. Here are 3 resilience-building ideas.

First, try reframing things.

Reframing doesn’t fix a tough situation overnight, but it brings the energy to keep going. I love how my recent podcast guest, Soulaima Gourani, a globally recognized tech founder and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, handles setbacks:

‘I don't look at my problems as problems, I look at them as projects. I’m just manipulating myself to think of life as a human experience. Even setbacks are an incredible opportunity to grow. I have a setback probably daily; I get used to it! When I call my girlfriends and we have a good laugh, I often share what went wrong that day. It just takes the spiciness out of it.’

You can hear more about being fearless in life and work in our conversation here .

Second, focus on what we can influence.

Stephen Covey’s framework in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People describes a large ‘circle of concern’ within which sits a smaller ‘circle of influence’ (picture a donut). We waste energy worrying about things we can’t control; we build our resilience by putting our time and energy into those challenges which we do have some influence over.

At work, that may mean:

• Reflecting on what gives your work meaning. I discussed this with Professor Ying Zhou here .
• Talking to your boss about reshaping your role, temporarily or long-term. My chat with Beth Stallwood about shaping better working lives may help.
• Spotting new opportunities as stepping stones to a better work experience.
• Building your skills to create more options for the future.

At home, it’s about:

• Accessing a coach or specialist advice if needed.
• Focusing on eating, sleeping, and exercising consistently.

• Finding pockets of time - however small - for things that recharge you.

For me, that’s having a great book at hand to help me switch off, learning Korean for a few minutes a day, a coffee or a call with a friend, and the occasional spa treatment.

Third, focus on the team.

Resilience resides within teams . We can’t change everything alone, so talk about challenges and lean on your team (however you define ‘team’ at work and at home) for support.

Workplace team resilience doesn’t demand a big ambitious programme, expensive external support or a flashy new employee benefit. Some powerful, low-cost habits make all the difference:

• Having timely, quality conversations.
• Setting up check-ins, building social bonds.
• Making it easy for people to make reasonable requests.
• Giving people chances to develop resilience through experience.

Skilled managers are key - emotionally intelligent, with coaching and facilitation expertise. Find more ideas in my LinkedIn post or take a look at my outline for a new manager development programme here and please do get in touch if you want to chat about this, I’d welcome your input.

And at home? Try:

• Adjusting how you share the daily load.
• Carving out lighthearted family time with no talk of challenges.
• Sharing both your wins and stumbles of the week.
• Asking, ‘how are you doing today on a scale of 1–10?’ (where 1 is ‘finding today very hard’ and 10 is ‘feeling at my brightest’).

What helps you and your team at work or home?

If things have been feeling bumpy for you too, I hope you can find your way onto a smoother path soon and please get in touch if I can listen or help.

Would you trade a Gucci watch for a great boss?

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:06:27 GMT

Lavish gifts and loyalty.

My first was a very shouty, Theory X-er who believed fear and control got the best out of people. They gave me a Gucci watch when I left though. The others, very fortunately, have been mostly enlightened, empathetic and encouraging. No bling but they boosted me out of my comfort zone, believed in me and had my back when work or life got tough.

I’m talking about managers, not my love life in case you were wondering.

Let’s be honest, it’s tough being a manager today – and a more challenging role than a decade or more ago.

If we’re a team member, we expect our managers to:
• understand what matters to us personally,
• proactively support our development and career path,
• be flexible and fair at the same time,
• keep us well informed and consult us on stuff that impacts us,
• deal effectively with slackers and political game-players,
• be approachable no matter how busy they are,
• show they care,
• be human,
• .. and still cope calmly with everything coming their way.

If we’re a leader, we expect our managers to:
• hit their team’s stretching targets,
• do a great job of motivating and managing people,
• deliver consistently even when under-resourced or overloaded,
• support strategic decisions they didn’t make and maybe don’t agree with,
• persuade their team to embrace the latest organisational changes,
• deliver hard messages,
• manage across generational divides
• and more…

No wonder a high proportion of managers feel ‘squeezed not supported', tugged between the demands and expectations of their bosses and the needs of their team. They've likely not had access to the right training to equip them fully for their role. They’re often stressed, feeling burnt out, lonely and wondering how long they’ll stick it out for. And this has a ripple effect.

Reflecting back on the people managers I've had over my 30 year career, the best ones weren’t those who tried hard to be nice and be liked, knew HR policies off by heart, were technically expert on everything, managed every tiny detail, polished up our work so it ‘looked better’, or delivered unpopular news by distancing themselves from the decision and ‘siding’ with us. And I didn’t tend to stay so long in those jobs.

My best managers invested a lot in becoming self-aware and emotionally intelligent. They learnt how to ‘read’ group dynamics, surface the unspoken, enquire thoughtfully, listen carefullly and show up consistently. They didn’t promise more than they could deliver, they were honest about a situation, kept their word, and told me what I needed to hear even when that was painful for me to receive and for them to deliver. They coached me with open questions that drew out my resourcefulness and built my confidence. They cared most about doing the right thing with integrity and compassion and less about being popular. And I stayed a long time, largely because of them.

What have your managers been like? What has made the difference to your decisions to stay or go? Who would you follow into another organisation and why? I’d love to hear your stories , and about any surprising farewell gifts you may have received .

Me? It's the great managers I miss today, not the Gucci watch - which was admittedly gorgeous but not gorgeous enough to compensate for the shoutiness.

***

PS I'm designing a manager development programme to fill these critical skill gaps, here's an initial outline , please do let me know what you think should be prioritised from this list. And if you're interested in shaping the design, or piloting a specific module or the full programme with a group of managers in your organisation, please get in touch .

How to have an energised team all year round.

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:56:30 GMT

Need another break already?

If you’ve had a break from work over the summer, I hope you got to switch off fully and are returning feeling rested and refreshed, with perhaps a few new adventures or treasured memories in your pocket. My most memorable evening was seeing the biggest girl group globally, K-pop superstars BlackPink, play at Wembley Stadium with my 14 year old daughter - a brilliant new life experience ticked. What was the highlight of your summer?

With most of us heading back to school and work this week, you may be determined to hang on for as long as possible to that all-too fleeting feeling of being re-energised. By late September that summer break can feel like eons ago when we’ve been running at full tilt again for a few weeks, juggling all the urgent work that has to be done by yesterday and already feeling depleted. It’s a well-researched fact that work intensity has been steadily increasing over the past 2 decades .

So here are ten practical ways - that don’t require big budgets or renegotiating company policies - to help you and your team to keep your energy levels up month in, month out, so you’re not crawling on the floor with exhaustion between now and your next annual leave:

Lighten the load. Stop doing work that isn’t adding value and worse still, sucks up too much time. Use my free Time ROI tool to identify in a low-risk way what you can safely delegate, do less often or ditch completely. You can do this exercise in 15 minutes on your own, or in 30 minutes with your team.
Give time back. When your team has been putting in extra effort to hit a deadline or complete a big piece of work, let them work shorter hours over the following day(s). Maybe it’s an afternoon off, maybe it’s coming in late for a day or two; even a small gesture will be highly appreciated. If you’re a team member, ask your manager if you can do this.
Hold a team ‘standback’ session. When you’re all working flat out, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees; you don’t have the headspace or perspective to reassess how you’re working together. In a 2 hour workshop you can identify what’s working well/less well and elicit ideas for improving collaboration and efficiency; it can be a really valuable opportunity to regroup, surface frustrations and proactively build on the positives. Here’s a sample agenda and consider using an external facilitator to get maximum benefit from your session ( get in touch if you want to explore this).
Buddy up. The higher the ‘substitutability’ of team members, the more flexible your resourcing can be, meaning you can easily re-distribute work if some individuals in your team are feeling overloaded. With buddying up, a second colleague informally shadows the lead colleague on a particular strand of work so they can quickly step in and support when needed.
Organise social time. Not just after-hours but during the working day too. Spending time together not on tasks strengthens social bonds, a shared sense of community and the feeling of belonging, which in turn increases levels of motivation and engagement. Team coffees fika-style, a daily/weekly team game or competition, celebrating birthdays and other life milestones and finishing meetings 10 minutes early for some purely social chat are all effective, low-cost ways to do this.
Pay attention to work handovers. When the handover of work to/from other teams doesn’t happen smoothly, this can result in an energy-sapping duplication of effort, inter-team friction, delays or all of these. Suggest a collaborative review with the other team manager or your counterpart and map out the ideal steps, timings and ‘what if’ scenarios. You’ll appreciate better any constraints you’re each facing and build transparency and mutual trust.
Engage a time management coach. I know, I would say this being a time management expert and a coach, but as a manager or leader, your relationship with time has a fundamental impact on your team, the way they work and your collective performance. Managing your time more effectively has a positive outward ripple effect and senior leaders have told me that their time coaching was the most valuable investment they’d made in 2 years.
Look afresh at who you’re rewarding and for what. Is it the people working long hours who are rewarded with stretch/higher profile opportunities, pay increases and promotions for putting in ‘discretionary effort’ and ‘going above and beyond’? If so, for healthier work norms focus instead on rewarding those who achieve their performance goals within normal working hours and without overworking.
Just say yes. When it comes to flexibility, the small things matter alot. Say yes as much as possible to ad-hoc requests that help people manage their work and home lives in a sustainable way. Provided they’re still delivering what’s expected of them, it’s a win-win. If you can’t say yes, what could you propose/explore together as an alternative?
Lead the change. Whether you’re a manager or leader or not, we all have our own sphere of influence. By visibly role-modelling positive time habits – your own energy levels, carving out thinking time, managing your work boundaries, investing in social bonds etc – you’re showing others that you don’t have to blindly follow unhealthy work norms and that there is a better way.

Which of these ten practices appeals the most to you? Let me know what you’re going to experiment with over the autumn and how that goes. I hope these recommendations help you manage your workload better so that you keep your energy levels up, enjoy work more and find more time for the things outside of work that bring you and your team joy.

Quiet spaces, magical places

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:37:50 GMT

How often do you get the luxury of extended, undisturbed time?

Is there a quiet space or magical place you retreat to?

I’m writing this in a silent house, up early before the rest of the family. All I can hear is the scratching of my ink pen on the paper and the cooing and chirruping of garden birds outside my window. No voices, machines, traffic, notifications or interruptions. I can hear myself think, there’s no-one calling for my attention and the jobs can wait. But at any minute, this brief lull will crumble. It's hard to get extended, undisturbed time.

Many of us are spending less time in our home offices now more organisations have encouraged – or mandated – more in-office working. The majority of people still work a structured hybrid patterns, but likely 1-2 days per week at most at home. Not that home-working is typically quieter – diaries are still largely stuff with calls, messaging channels ping continously and the home distractions of pets demanding attention, chatty home-working partners, texts from teenagers at school or – my pet peeve – couriers knocking on the door, dropping the parcel outside and driving straight off while I’m halfway down the stairs thinking I’m needed. Our focus time is bounded by each interruption or intrusion into our attention.

Some people I know say they need background noise to help them concentrate. At least 2 CEO’s I’ve spoken to prefer doing calls and emails in cafés and their office’s buzzy atrium where the constant hum of voices and hissing and thumping of coffee macines provide a cloack of anonymity around even sensitive conversations. Whatever your preference environment-wise, it turns out that noisy ones are actually damaging to our health; anything above the maximum recommended noise level of 53 decibels is described as a ‘ silent killer ’. A quiet library falls under this, your average office above it.

Quiet time isn’t just about the decibel level, it’s also about freedom from distraction and interruptions. As I was telling over 200 sixth-form students at an Enterprise and Innovation conference a week ago, our brains prefer to focus on one task at a time and maintain an extended attention set – to get into ‘flow’, in other words. In terms of cognitive functioning, that’s when we are at peak performance. Every time our attention is tugged away from the task at hand, research has shown that it takes us over 2 seconds to reorient back to the task at hand. Known as the toggling tax, this happens on average up to 1,200 times per day, costing us 4 hours a week or 5 full weeks per year of lost attention, wasted time and reduced productivity. Ouch.

So there’s a strong case for designing work environments that allow people to concentrate in quiet spaces and office design today is increasingly factoring this in. Co-working hubs and corporate offices now offer quiet zones where calls and conversations are not permitted; individual work spaces that look like padded, high-wall cubicles block out the rustling or key board tapping of workers either side; and individual sound-proofed call booths that keep noise leakage to a minimum.

I’ve learnt the hard way to be more selfish with my quiet time when I’m writing, silencing notifications on my phone, putting noise cancelling headphones on and shutting the door to our companionable, aka needy, cat (and my companionable but not needy husband).

I’ve been reminded this week of the power of quiet time and a restorative environment: I was fortunate to spend 2 nights at the UK’s only privately-owned national nature reserve in a luxury eco-cabin (hot shower and log burner included) overlooking 3,300 acres of marshland, big skies and an incredible array of wildlife. Having discovered it last year, I’d booked myself in again as a reward for getting to the ¾ milestone in writing People Glue and an incentive to crack on with the last 12,500 words as the manuscript deadline looms.

In the magical peace and quiet, I wrote close to 3,000 words there – my average weekly output in just over a day – in long, undisturbed stretches punctuated only by my daily run, short walks to clear my head and the arrival of delicious dinners brought to my door. The biggest distraction was the wildlife outside the cabin’s huge glass windows: a mesmerisingly beautiful, shadowy-eyed short-eared owl did its utmost to persuade me to look up from my writing with its swooping, gliding and head-swivelling display. Hares bounded around playfully as buzzards, marsh- and hen-harriers patrolled hungrily overhead. A tiny wren skipped across my patio, tapping its beak on the glass doors, tail cocked up jauntily.

No school runs, no pets to feed, no work calls, no washing macines to load, not unattended chores in sight nagging me reproachfully - I am very grateful to my wonderful husband for holding the fort at home so I could steal away. Perhaps you would prefer the cosmopolitan buzz of a city or a sunlounger beside a gleaming hotel pool - I wouldn’t say no to either at a different time. But soaking up this solitude, my time felt unbounded and that felt the biggest luxury of all. It has reminded me of the importance of consciously planned quiet time, ideally somewhere magical, for our wellbeing, our creativity and the quality of our thinking. I’m just wondering how soon I can book a return visit….

Defining moments

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 22:40:44 GMT

Recently, I witnessed a wonderful example of intergenerational learning.

A couple of days after news broke about the Chinese generative AI tool DeepSeek, my mum (in her early 80s) and my daughter (early teens) were chatting with me as I cooked Sunday lunch.

Grandma: "So what do you think of this new AI chatbot from China?"
Granddaughter: "Erm, what are you talking about?"
Grandma: "It’s called DeepSeek. It’s like ChatGPT but cheaper to make because it uses fewer expensive chips. I’ve tried it—it’s not bad."

My daughter’s expression was priceless as she realized her grandmother was quicker to explore new tech than she was. Minutes later, they were huddled over my mum’s phone, exploring DeepSeek together. It was a joy to watch.

One of the things I most admire about my mum is her curiosity and eagerness to learn about technology. She has built websites, acts as tech support for her retired friends, and often solves issues before I can help.

In my new book People Glue: hold on to your best people by setting them free , I'm exploring the 4 freedoms that make people want to stay. One of these is the freedom to grow—the ability to develop skills, gain experience, and pursue a meaningful career path. In my short survey on workplace freedom (feel free to participate!), respondents have been sharing what "freedom to grow" means to them:

Choosing their own career path.
Escaping financial or role-based constraints.
Having opportunities and support for advancement.
Avoiding rigid job descriptions and glass ceilings.

Many have also shared defining moments such as:

A mentor recognizing their potential and opening doors.
Gaining autonomy through growth opportunities.
Switching roles for better flexibility during life transitions.

On the flip side, some described moments of frustration when growth stalled:

Feeling like a square peg in a round hole.
Waiting for opportunities that never came.
Working in environments where their potential wasn’t recognized.

How can you expand your freedom to grow?
If you feel stuck, want to reignite your professional growth or make the most of what your employer can offer, consider these steps:

Craft your role to gain exposure to diverse colleagues and tasks.
Discuss your long-term ambitions with your manager or mentor.
Explore available development programmes you might have overlooked.
Seek out sponsors, coaches, or mentors — formally or informally.
Consider lateral moves that could open new doors.
Leverage external interests or side projects to build skills.

As Virginia Woolf said in A Room of One's Own : “There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” My mum embodies this spirit — I sincerely hope I’m as curious about new technology when I’m in my 80’s.

From pipedreams to reality

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 20:19:06 GMT

Being more intentional in 2025 .

Where do you stand on New Year’s resolutions? Do they provide an invaluable roadmap for the year? Have they evaporated by February? Or do you avoid setting them on principle, like my husband? I used to be a fan, but in recent times I’ve approached New Year resolutions a little differently.

I still love taking advantage of the end of year lull to consider what I’m going to be committing time and effort to over the coming months, but I’ve shifted towards trying to make more intentional choices throughout the year, not just in January. Here are 4 reflective prompts that work for me, I hope you find them useful if you’re also keen to keep your intentions alive and kicking from month to month.

1.     What matters most to you this year?
Taking the birdseye level here, is it finding a new challenge? Is it preserving stability in one aspect of your life, perhaps because you’re dealing with change in another? Is it persevering with an existing initiative or direction you’ve been investing in for a while so that you can realise more of the rewards? Is it freedom – releasing yourself from the status quo or stepping outside of your comfort zone in order to start a new chapter, master a new skill or explore a new facet of your identity?

2.    What will it take to achieve this?
This is about the nitty gritty of execution, the steps you will take and when, that turn your priority (this conscious choice you are making) into a reality. I’m a recent convert to the 12 Week Year approach, which encourages you to set quarterly goals and weekly action plans to help you avoid procrastination and make steady progress. Planning across a whole year can feel pretty daunting plus it’s highly likely your context will change more than once. I trialled the 12 Week Year approach last autumn, including a ‘weekly accountability meeting’ (a 15 minute call every Monday) with another professional where we share our tasks for the week, what’s going well and if we’re not on track, what we might do in response. These WAMs have been working so well, we’re continuing with them in 2025.

3.    How are you going to stick at your priority?
New Year’s resolutions notoriously fall by the wayside before long and this is often because the hardest aspect of achieving something important to you is making new habits stick. There’s some great advice on this in 2 books: Atomic Habits by James Clear and How To Change by Katy Milkman. It’s also something I coach people on – whole teams or on a 1:1 basis – so if you’d like a commitment-free exploratory conversation to discuss some coaching options further, book a time to chat here .
Think about who you might share your goals with, whether a close friend or colleague, your team, or by going big about it on Linked In or with other social media followers. This gives others permission to ask you ‘how is it going’ which can be a powerful nudge to help you recommit if you’re wobbling.

4.     How are you going to bring more intentionality into the weeks and months ahead?
My top 3 pieces of advice on making more considered choices, week in and week out, that are aligned with your priority would be to:

1 – Find a few minutes every week to look back at your priority/goal and remind yourself of why this matters so much to you. If you’ve got an image or a quote that conveys this, take a look at it. I’ve printed off my new book’s cover to remind me how much I care about sharing my ideas and knowledge in this way and how mindblowingly proud I’ll feel when I finally finish the manuscript.

2 – Decide how you’re going to carve out the time and effort to invest in your priority so that it can take shape. Otherwise it’ll fall off your radar and into the vast scrapheap of unrealised pipedreams. If freeing up time during an already packed week feels like mission impossible, try using my Time ROI tool here to help you figure out what you could realistically stop doing, outsource, automate or continue doing.

3 - Accept that during the year you’ll likely get knocked off course, have setbacks and encounter curve balls. This is real life we’re dealing with – gloriously messy and frustratingly unpredictable - so your plan needs to be flexible not set in stone. Don’t beat yourself up if you fall behind or need to tweak it; as my wise WAM partner advised me: depersonalise it, treat it as interesting data, decide what you want to do in response. Ditch the guilt.

If you want to drop me a line to tell me what your priority is this year, I’ll email you every quarter to ask you how it’s going. Good luck, I hope you make great progress and encounter fun and fulfilment along the way, whether you end up exactly where your roadmap intended you to be or somewhere slightly different that may just be even better.

Holding on and letting go

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 11:00:50 GMT

Holding on and letting go.

It’s that time of year when we start thinking about next year. But in our enthusiasm to move forward and begin afresh, we could be forgetting to pay attention to what we’re leaving behind. And this matters because at any point or period of transition, to move forward successfully and embrace the new – as individuals, as communities, as teams, as organisations - we need to reflect and celebrate what we are also letting go of.

William Bridges explains this brilliantly in his book ‘Managing transitions’, where he sets out the 3 psychological stages of any transition. The first stage is letting go: acknowledging what is coming to an end and what we are losing that may have been valuable to us. The second stage is the neutral zone where we’re in limbo between the old and new; a time of uncertainty, anxiety but also creativity. The final stage is new beginnings when the way forward becomes clear and importantly, its implications for us personally. The mistake many leaders and organsations make is to excitedly trumpet the new without properly acknowledging the endings. Equally they often underestimate what people need by way of support during the neutral zone.

If you’ve got a few decades of life under your belt like me, you can probably look back and chart the endings you’ve experienced. Maybe these related to breaking up with a partner, leaving a treasured home, losing a loved one or relinquishing your independence in some way. Some endings we choose, others are forced upon us. At work it’s the same – changing jobs, changing bosses, going through a merger or restructuring, saying goodbye to colleagues we’ve enjoyed spending time with. What are the endings that stand out for you, and why?

My husband and I have been helping our 13 year old navigate the tricky transition into senior school after 10 exceptionally happy years in a small school that had effectively been her second home. While she has established a good circle of friends at her new school and is doing well academically, we’d underestimated her sense of loss at leaving her old school life behind her. It's the first time she’s really had to deal with the ending of a significant chapter in her life, and the first time for us that we’re having to support her as parents through such a change.

Coming back to the world of work, I work with organisations that are growing fast and have ambitious goals; you might think ‘well, they’re not dealing with endings’. Wrong. The businesses are never in steady state with new structures and processes, teams expanding, the strategy evolving, and for some, regulatory requirements driving change too. No surprise then that a top priority I hear from business leaders is to help their employees adopt new ways of working, new ways of managing team members and new expectations of what ‘good’ performance looks like. Growing successfully as a business means first letting go of old ways of operating - work processes, ways of making decisions, behaviours and even language – and only then can people fully embrace the new.

So how do you help people let go?

At an organisational level:
•    Find ways to bring everyone together to mark the ending of a significant chapter e.g. no longer being fewer than 100 people, the founder stepping down or the business no longer being privately owned or leaving your first workspace because you’ve outgrown it in size.
•    Celebrate and remember together all the stories, the highs and the lows that people experienced during that time.
•    Make it visual and interactive, and consider a physical memento. Give the closing chapter a proper send off together.

At the team level:
•    You can dedicate one or more regular team meetings to talking through what’s going to be different in future and what you’ll collectively be leaving behind.
•    You can use the space around you, for example inviting everyone to stand along one wall and then one by one, to share one thing they are ‘letting go’ of before crossing to the other side of the room. It’s a simple, powerful way to hear what the changes mean to each colleague.
•    Or you can lead a longer ‘standback’ session to reflect on what’s made you successful as a team today and what you will stop/start/continue to help you adapt and deliver successfully in the future.

At the individual level:
•    You can have 1:1s with team members to help them acknowledge what this change will mean for them personally and to work through any resistance they’re signalling – usually rooted in the fear of some loss of control, competence, connection or identity.
•    Consider arranging some 1:1 coaching to individuals taking on a big leap e.g. a challenging new role, stretching new responsibilities, a change in career direction. Don’t just leave them to ‘sink or swim’.

I’d love to hear your experiences of transitions, work-related or otherwise. If you’re going through a transition now or leading others through one, then I hope you find the Bridges model and my recommendations above helpful. Let me know how you get on.   If you’ve got any tips on helping young teenagers with transitions, I’m all ears! And if life is in a blissfully steady state for you right now, then take a minute or two to look back on what you’ll be letting go of as 2024 draws towards a close.

Fuelling growth

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 20:33:09 GMT

Fuelling growth.

At the risk of sounding like a Labour party bigwig, this month’s blog is all about growth. Specifically, how you can fuel your business’ growth by building resilient, empowered teams.

I’m going to be provocative and say that I think teams have gone out of fashion of late. Leaders and leadership practices are endlessly profiled and debated in business media, podcasts and books. Equally, with recent well-publicised trends like the great resignation, quiet quitting, job nomadacy and side hustles, individuals and their career get a lot of airspace and attention too.

But in my humble opinion, teams are what make or break business performance. People want meaningful, enjoyable connection with their fellow workers and to work with people whose skills and expertise they respect. Hanging out with the team is more influential than any other factor in persuading people back willingly into offices. ‘Great colleagues’ is a consistent reason why people say they stay, from all the employee research I’ve done over the years. Conversely, ‘crap managers’ is still a major reason why people decide to leave. Research last year by the Chartered Management Insitute and YouGov found that half of those who say their bosses are ineffective plan to quit within the next year and a survey by Unmind of over 3,000 UK workers, 67% had left or considered leaving their job because of a bad manager.

If you’re lucky, you’ve experienced being part of a tightly bonded, high-performing team led by a capable, emotionally intelligent manager. You’ve known what it’s like to overcome challenges successfully together, to cope with everything that gets thrown at you and to still have fun along the way.

But not everyone gets to have that experience. Some of the common frustrations I hear teams complain about are:

•    Being overstretched and under-resourced.
•    Being in firefighting mode all the time.
•    Never getting time to think about improvements for tomorrow because they’re too busy delivering for today.
•    Being confused and distracted by multiple communication channels and notifications.
•    Finding it hard to focus on the important work.
•    Reeling from one change initiative to another and never getting to 'steady state'.
•    Being asked to deliver more and then more again, with nothing ever being taken off the team’s plate.

Managers aren’t blind to these frustrations or deliberately ignoring them; most of the time managers have great technical skills but lack the necessary skills in facilitation, workshop design and team effectiveness to coach the team into becoming a high-performing unit. The CMI found that 82% of UK managers are ‘accidental managers’, lacking any formal management training.

Leaders I speak to are only too aware of their teams’ frustrations, which are typically raised more than once via employee surveys and leaver intervews. Many leaders want their teams to be more proactive in resolving issues and finding solutions, instead of sitting back and waiting for leaders to dive in and fix everything for them.

So how do you build more resilient, empowered teams? These things help:

1.    Holding people accountable for performing and transforming - for delivering business as usual and for continuously improving – and recognising this in team and individual goals.
2.    Giving people permission and time to problem solve and make changes within their control. If they need a time code to recognise this investment of time and effort, set one up. If they need an inspiring or practical space to do this work, give them a small budget to go off-site.
3.    Offering practical support such as an agenda for a ‘standback’ session, a facilitator to keep them on track and avoid getting bogged down, and some provocative questions and examples to spark their thinking.
4.    Formalising post-deadline or post-project reviews so people take the time to reflect and learn and identify improvements for next time.
5.    Encouraging teams to experiment, track the results and keep what works. This could be meeting-free windows to help people focus better, different ways of engaging with other teams involved in delivering the work, or new buddying and back-up arrangements to increase the resource flexibility across the team.
6.    Making 1:1 coaching support available to the manager, so they have time and space to reflect on what they’re hearing, how they’re responding and how they in turn can coach their team.
7.    Fixing the bigger sources of friction that are outside any single team’s control, by bringing the relevant people together and tasking them to find short-, medium- and long-term solutions.

If your business is serious about growth then you have to be really intentional about doing the things described above. With this relatively small investment (compared to a fancy new IT system or swanky office upgrade) your retention rates, employee engagement scores, and productivity measures will go up. People will manage demanding workloads better, feel more connected to the organisation and adapt quicker to the inevitable changes lurking round the next corner.

All of which will fuel your growth. And yes, Labour will love you.

The right to switch off?

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:06:16 GMT

How to encourage this in a way that works for your business.

There is a real and urgent need to address the creeping norm of employees working all hours, being contactable and available all the time. But Labour’s recent abandoning of a legal ‘right to disconnect’ in favour of a voluntary code of practice is probably the right move, in my humble opinion. Here are 5 reasons why, 5 ways to make switching off a win/win for you and your organisation, and 5 positive actions to put into practice now.

Why legislation is too blunt a tool:

Heavy-handed legislation will probably antagonise businesses, not secure their support. There's more to do first to spotlight organisations that are managing the boundaries well between working & non-working time well and proving the business benefits.
It’s too early to say confidently how well similar legislation has worked abroad. Australia only adopted this last month; the longer-standing fine-based approach in France and Portugal isn't proven as an effective deterrent.
Human-centred organisations are probably already paying attention to this, being creative about work boundaries and using their approach to enhance their employer brand. They'll be the ones who proactively adopt the code of practice and make it genuinely part of ‘the way we work here’ - and they'll win at attracting and retaining talented people longer-term as a result.
‘But clients will go elsewhere’. This is the defence I often hear in rejection of proposals like the right to disconnect. No, client won't IF you engage them in the change and show them that it means they get to access your sharpest minds working at their best,.
When organisations see their early-adopter competitors living the code and still winning & keeping desirable clients - and nabbing theirs - they’ll swiftly follow suit.

Let’s be clear: some people will continue to say yes to high pay/exciting work in return for ‘you’ll work whenever when we need you ‘. But it’ll be a transactional relationship lasting for as long as it benefits the individual (or employer) and no longer. Easy come, easy go. If that’s your philosophy as an employer: own it and be transparent. Don’t sign the code and pay it lip service.

If yours IS an organisation that wants to do better at encouraging employees to switch off, try:

1.    Using Labour’s shift to open up conversations at work about pressures to communicate or be available after hours.
2.    Adding ‘we support the right to disconnect’ in your recruitment material and having examples to share with candidates during interviews.
3.    Supporting selected managers and their teams to trial different experiments around switching off.
4.    Asking people ‘how can we help you do to your best work within your normal working hours?’. ‘What gets in the way of this?’.
5.    Setting up an industry-wide collaboration to trial different ways of achieving the same outcome.

Asynchronous and flexible working are here to stay and bring many benefits to individuals and their employers. But they can make it a challenge to co-ordinate and communicate within teams and across time zones. Here's what you can do personally to uphold the right to switch off and respect other people's non-working time:

Add an email footer like: 'I'm sending this now because it suits me but I'm not expecting a response outside of normal working hours'.
Work offline if you're working late evenings or weekends, so you're not visible on Teams/whatever channels you use, and schedule your emails to send the next day to avoid the ripple effect of people responding immediately.
If people on your team have repeatedly worked late or sacrificed home lives to help reach a deadline, then give them some time back straight afterwards. It's simple and effective.
If you're a manager, find out people's preferences around being contacted - or not - during out of hours or when on leave. Everyone's different, so make it your job to know.
See annual leave as an opportunity for a colleague to step up and have some stretch experience by covering for you, with support beforehand. Then switch off properly and don't muddy the water by dipping in and out unasked. Listen to my podcast conversation with Ben Higgins, Global CHRO of Wholesale Banking at Societe Generale, about how he does this.

These examples are about applying #timeintelligence. If you want to know more about my #timeintelligence sessions for leaders, teams and individuals, get in touch . And if you're making good progress in your organisation on switching off - or at least trialling a few changes - then I'd love to hear more. During normal working hours, of course.

Climbing hills

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 21:13:51 GMT

The school holiday juggle and book 2 news!

I’m writing this on the train back from Cornwall to London, watching the lush green hills and valleys of Devon and Somerset unfold and undulate at speed as we flash by. I snatch glimpses of young fallow deer amid the ferns, small sailing boats lined up like soldiers in tiny creeks and lone dog walkers tramping steadily across sodden fields. After a week’s rest, my brain is starting to fizz with fresh ideas and plans for the weeks ahead, including some parenting and literary hills of my own I’ll be climbing.

My daughter and I have been perched on a real hill for the past week, soaking up views to die for. We’ve been living mostly-off-grid in a glamping pod on a hill outside Penzance; if you’re thinking that sounds like hard-core back-to-nature stuff, I’ll come clean. The pod included underfloor heating, a hot shower, fully-equipped kitchen and a private hot tub, so we weren’t exactly roughing it. I did however keep up my daily 3 mile running streak (of course), despite the fact that the run from the pod in every direction looked like this:

Hell for the first 15 minutes, followed by blissful ease for the second 15 minutes as I coasted gently downhill. After 7 days, I’m aching for some flat monotony.

Back to those metaphorical hills I mentioned: the first hill I’ll be climbing is the conundrum of how to juggle work during the school holidays with a nearly-teen who is too old for holiday camps and too ‘meh’ about traditional sports to agree to any organised multi-day activities. If Kent offered a 6-week K-pop dance bootcamp, she’d have signed herself up yesterday. But since K-pop hasn’t really landed in Kent yet, the school holidays will instead offer the chance to declutter her room (again), make simple meals independently and wear an even bigger patch of lawn out choreographing her dance routines outside while I crack on with work. I’m fully ascribing to the ‘boredom breeds creativity’ philosophy (for her, not me). If you’ve got caring responsibilities, how are you managing these alongside work this summer?

For my second hill, I’m already out of the starting blocks and on the lower slopes. It’s a longer-term endeavour that I started planning in earnest just as late spring morphed into the summer-that-has-not-yet-materialised (unless 2 sunny days out of 7 in Cornwall count as summer). My big project? Writing business book #2. My first one was about time at work; this second one will be about freedom at work and it will also be published by Practical Inspiration Publishing. The working title and subtitle are …. drum roll please … People Glue: hold onto your best people by letting go , and here’s the short overview I’m sharing with CEOs and COOs I’m interviewing:

There are multiple business benefits of holding onto talented employees that you’ve likely invested in. But how do you create ‘sticky’ organisations that persuade your most valued employees to stay?

You give them freedom.

In People Glue, Helen unpicks what ‘freedom’ looks like today for both individuals and employers, and reveals how organisations can successfully offer more of it to retain and motivate their best people.

What thoughts and reactions does this spark in you? What would you want to know about freedom at work as an individual thinking about your own role and career? As a manager responding to the ambitions and needs of your team members? As a leader figuring out how to get the best out of your workforce in the coming year and beyond? Every comment and conversation I have with people about the book helps me shape its structure and content, so please do pop me an email with your thoughts, however brief. I promise to reply.

If my daily run in Cornwall looked like a classic up-then-down peak, then writing a book is, in my experience, a different kind of hill to climb. More like twin peaks really. There’s the long slog of planning, researching, writing and editing the manuscript, culminating in the celebratory first peak when the proofs head off to the printer. But it’s not job done or the ease of the downhill glide. An even higher and longer ascent looms – up the ‘getting People Glue out there’ hill. Full-on launch planning, then a 3 month or so sprint to make the most of post-launch interest, followed by a steady marathon of interviews, articles and speaking engagements to spread the word through as many relevant channels as possible. All the time hopefully working with my own clients to help them retained valued talent by offering more, and more meaningful, freedom in a win-win arrangement for the business and the bright sparks that work there.

Here I confess a guilty secret: I’m far more energised by running up the ‘writing’ hill than the ‘marketing’ hill. If I could lob the book over the latter with a cheery ‘there you go’, I would (don’t tell my lovely publisher that). But I get that the marketing is as much a part of helping people to access the book’s ideas and advice as the writing of it, so I am fully prepared to go the distance and put my best ASICs-clad-foot forward. I may hit heavy-going along the way; I will definitely huff and puff at certain points and I will absolutely need a support team encouraging me and People Glue on.

If you’re up for supporting People Glue ’s launch when the time comes - by helping to spread the word on socials, buying a copy or two, coming to the launch, inviting me to talk to your leadership or HR teams, connecting me with a media opportunity – whatever works for you - then please click here and I’ll come back to you later to talk specifics. And thank you, in advance.

If you’ve been climbing a hill lately at work or at home and have reached a peak, then congratulations. If you’re still mid-slog, then let me know if I can support you in any way. Either way, I hope summer finally pitches up when you pause to catch your breath and enjoy the view, and that you feel proud of your hard-earned progress.

My daughter, who has been reading this over my shoulder, helpfully suggests I should be listening to Kate Bush’s ‘Running up that hill’ to keep me pepped up and focused book-wise over the coming months. Since I’ve endured endless school runs of late listening to Straykids, BTS, BlackPink, ITZY and Aesp and am inches away from peak K-pop saturation, I’m inclined to agree with her.

The value of reflecting

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 09:14:31 GMT

Beacons, twirly skirts and feedback.

Last week turned out to be full of reflection for me, about historic global events, about long-forgotten personal memories and about recent work conversations too. It’s far from easy to make time for reflection in our headlong sprint to get through the day or week and accomplish our ‘to do’ lists. But what does it cost us to be always rushing ahead? What are we missing by not pausing to look back?

Last Thursday marked the 80 year anniversary of the D-Day landings on Normandy beaches. I happened to listen to a veteran speaking on the radio as I drove back from the school drop-off, and was so moved emotionally by his reflections that I had to park up to wipe my eyes and give his words my full attention. It was poignant to know that the 25 or so remaining veterans – most in their nineties - are unlikely to be present at the 90th anniversary. This was one of our remaining chances to hear their testimonies first-hand before their memories passed definitively into history. I’m so glad I got to hear his words, they shifted for ever my understanding and appreciation of those world-order-changing events. I wished my 12 year old daughter could have listened too. I took her with me to the lighting of the beacon in our village that evening to remember the courage and sacrifice of so many that bought us our freedom today.

Last week also saw me dusting off a file that my father had quietly filled throughout the first 3 decades of my life (he died suddenly aged 59, when I was 28). Inside are certificate, letters and other assorted papers all preserving tiny forgotten details for me to remember, laugh and cry over. From my Grade 1 ballet exam aged 6 which I scraped through, marked down because of ‘excessive skirt twirling’, to a badly scrawled declaration of love from the 7 year old boy down the road, to letters in verse penned by my father to me while I was away for long spells at boarding school. And pretty much every school report I’d ever received. I was taken aback to see how often ‘ Helen could contribute more actively in class’, ‘Helen is too quiet ’ and ‘ Helen doesn’t speak up enough ’ reverberated in teachers’ pithy feedback. I found myself wondering what the definition of a high-performing student was in those days; I clearly fell short by their standards yet to everyone’s surprise (and most of all, my own) I emerged with straight As at A-level. I took two big reflections from this absorbing and often emotional meander through my life file: firstly, that potential can easily fly under the radar when you look through a narrow lens and secondly (with a full heart here), that my father’s pride in and love for me shone through every treasured scrap of paper.

On the work front, last week I was looking through some of the post-workshop feedback from teams who have recently participated in my Time-Intelligent Team sessions. These are 2 hour, in-person (or hybrid) workshops that help teams to identify changes within their control that can help them work smarter not harder and have a more engaging, motivating experience of work. In other words, to get more done and to get more out of work. I was fascinated to see the following comments come up frequently: ‘it enabled us to step back and evaluate how we can really get the best out of ourselves as a team’, ‘it was so useful to hear [the team’s] perspectives on obstacles and efficiencies’, ‘we all thoroughly enjoyed the session ’. ‘ These words underline for me how much people value the chance to reflect, post-deadline or on a regular basis, on how they’re working together, what they’re doing well and where the frustrations lie. People crave these opportunities to slow down and reap the learning, they don’t want to rush straight onto the next project or deadline. They also appreciate the opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate their achievements; reflecting in this way together can build powerful team bonds and a strong, motivating sense of ‘we’re in this together’.

If your team is reeling from one deadline after another, or you want to help them be well-positioned for a stretching period ahead, or you’re wondering why there’s a high level of task or interpersonal friction undermining performance or retention, then take a look at the workshop details and pick a time here for us to chat. If you’d love some help but got no budget right now, click here to download my free guide to creating a Team Time Contract.

Racing ahead without making time for reflection means we miss out on the powerful insights that can help us shape a better tomorrow. And the act of reflecting itself can be transformative, enriching our experience and our relationships with others. So let's pause, reflect, celebrate, learn and then move forwards.

Letting go

Fri, 17 May 2024 05:45:27 GMT

When sticking stops.

A barn owl perched observantly on a post in front of me, a heron gliding by like a feathered Concorde with its wings tucked in. Just two of the birds I’ve spotted today whilst working at UK’s only family-owned and managed National Nature Reserve, at Elmley in Kent. I’m not working in the sense of checking on wildlife and mending fences, I’m working in the sense of enjoying an indulgent writing retreat in glorious isolation, tucked away in a definitely-not-roughing-it wooden cabin complete with outdoor tub overlooking meadows and marshes (more pics here ). This retreat is both a long-anticipated birthday gift from my family and the official starting point for writing my second business book. It’s been brewing in my head for months and is now begging loudly to be given some proper love and attention. So here I am, off-grid in every sense with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do for 24 hours than plan and write. Write what? I hear you ask…

My book-to-be is about the things that make people want to stay in an organisation. I’ll be sharing the working title and subtitle on Linked In soon and will be asking for reactions and comments on these. The ‘big idea’ at the heart of the book? To keep your best people, you have to give them their freedom. But what does that mean in practice? How do you do that well? And how do you manage the risks associated with letting go? If you’ve got a point of view on these questions or you are instantly intrigued/bored by the sound of my book-to-be, please let me know even in just one sentence. Every bit of input at this early stage is helpful, especially the negative feedback!

I’m aiming to speak to at least 20 CEOs as part of my research for the book; might you/your CEO be interested in speaking with me? If you haven’t figured out how to keep your best people, if you’re trying to entice sought-after talent to join you, if you’re feeling caught in a tug of war with employees around work freedoms or are sweating over a solution that keeps everyone happy (when everyone wants different things), then I’d really love to talk. You/your CEO can pick my brains for free during the conversation and I’ll share what I’m hearing (anonymised) from my other conversations. Drop me a line to say ‘yes’ or ‘possibly’ and I’ll follow up with you directly.

What makes people want to stay is one side of the coin; the other is, obviously, what makes them leave. The latter isn’t necessarily the converse of the former. If you’re reading this feeling fairly relaxed about turnover, bear in mind that 90% of your employees are 'open to new job opportunities'. From my research into retention and attrition, here are a few insights into some of the factors that propel people towards the door:

A lack of work joy. It sounds suspiciously Marie Kondo but it’s true. When your work hours are filled with more toil than joy, you’re more likely to quit. BCG research surveying 11,000 workers found that people who say they enjoy their work are 49% less likely to consider taking a new job than employees who don’t enjoy their work. For advice on how to create more joy in your own work life, read Beth Stallwood’s Workjoy: a toolkit for a better working life or tune into my podcast conversation with her here .

Return to office (RTO) mandates. These cause signficant declines in employee job satisfaction and – take note – your high performers are the most likely to leave. Ouch. Additionally, fully office-based jobs see the highest level of employee turnover at 43.7%, compared to hybrid or flexible roles or fully remote roles). We want our location freedom and we’ll move to get it. Earlier this year I discussed RTO mandates and work flexibility with leading work-futurist Brian Elliott, listen here .
Layoffs. Research last year found that announcements of layoffs are significantly more likely to be followed a wave of people heading for the door than either dismissals (for poor performance or misconduct, say) or voluntary turnover.

Workload and schedule inflexibility, particularly for women. As you may know, alongside my own business I work 2 days a week as Head of Programmes for Encompass Equality, the gender equality experts. Last week the Encompass team released new research into why women leave, looking specifically at how gender influences retention. Whilst women are only marginally more likely to leave than men, the issues of overwork and lack of time flexibility are particularly significant factors for women compared to men. Find the full report here and drop CEO Joy a line if you want to chat further about ways to retain women where you work.

Sometimes organisations are ok with people choosing to leave, even the really talented ones. Long-term-thinking employers will know that some leavers may go on to become valued clients, others may boomerang back to you with newly acquired skills and contacts that you’re keen to deploy. What matters in the short-term is taking the time to understand better why people choose to stay and why they decide to leave, knowing what you can do to influence these decisions and acting early. Don’t be a metaphorical emu and stick your head in the sand*. Speaking of flightless birds, I’m off to watch their airborne counterparts swooping across the marshes here, with a mug of cocoa by the campfire and the sun setting behind me. The grid can have me back tomorrow.

* Contrary to popular belief, emus don’t actually do this.

Not working

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:34:42 GMT

What does time off mean to you?

I’m writing this at 36,000 feet, looking down onto fluffy white clouds stretching out to the horizon. In the gap between them are glimpses of pale lines snaking across dusty brown fields. We’re flying home after 3 weeks in Australia visiting my grown-up stepchildren who live in Sydney and Melbourne; only another 22 hours to go up here in our floating bubble. I love the solitude of a long-haul flight, this rare stretch of undisturbed time when all the usual routines and responsibilities are suspended. I’m not one for watching back-to-back films; my ideal state of bliss is a pen and notebook to scribble in, a book to read and, fingers crossed, a window to gaze out of while some kind cabin crew member brings me sustenance. Oh the luxury of time off.

Time off from what?

Well, work obviously, and what I perceive to be my roles in everyday life down on the ground. Author, adviser, colleague and collaborator, Mum to a nearly-teen, Chief Domestic Organiser and Head of Pet Care.

The questions I’ve been pondering whilst Down Under are: What is ‘working’ to me? What is ‘not working’? And what falls into the grey space between the two? These prompts were inspired by a book that caught my eye at the fabulous Woollahra library in Sydney’s eastern suburbs (yes I visit libraries on holiday, I’m slightly obsessed with them). Woollahra Library is a wonderful example of an enticing space that caters imaginatively for all ages and interests; there’s greenery everywhere, tons of natural light, thoughtfully designed workspaces and reading nooks and even, built into the wide curving staircase, a tunnel slide that pops you out into the children’s section. I was gutted you had to be under 5 to use it.

The book I spotted was How to not always be working , by Marlee Grace. I found it a tad alternative at times but its invitation to answer these 3 questions about work, not-work and the grey area in between was compelling, partly because I’m curious to research more about the growing ‘anti-work’ movement and partly because whilst I love the work I do, I feel lately I’ve forgotten how to ‘not work’ well.

I’m not alone, I know: the amount of time knowledge workers spend working has increased in recent years, eating into our evenings, weekends and holiday time thanks to smartphones, instant messaging, ‘free’ videocalls and the merging of home and work spaces. Even when we’re unplugged from our devices, our home lives are more likely to resemble a second shift than leisure – we parent more intensively than previous generations, our ageing population means we’re more likely to be looking after an older family member, and when we find ourselves with some downtime, we can often feel like rabbits caught in the headlights, transfixed with indecision about how best to spend it. It's easier to reach for our phones or the next chore waiting for our attention than to figure out how to properly get off our hamster wheels of busyness.

So, ensconced in a cosy corner, I drew a Venn diagram of 2 overlapping circles, one labelled ‘working’, the other ‘not working’ with the ‘grey area’ in between. Under ‘working’, I listed all the activities I spent my time on that for me constituted work tasks. In the professional sphere, this included things like: calls and meetings; running workshops; producing my podcast; updating my website; creating fliers about my services; invoicing and maintaining financial records. I then added work tasks from the domestic sphere such as: running errands; planning and cooking family meals; doing home and life admin; organising birthdays, festivals and holidays; and sorting out personal technology.

Under the ‘grey area’, I listed the things that I spent time on that might look ike work but that also feel particularly creative, enjoyable or restorative in some way. To quote Marie Kondo, they spark joy. For me, these are learning activities like reading business books and research; listening to work podcasts; networking; supporting my daughter in her social life and development; investing in community building; fulfilling a couple of voluntary roles; and some (limited) social media activity.

The third question I found the hardest to answer: what is ‘not working’ to me? The ‘to me’ bit is important – it’s all highly subjective and my answers could look totally different to someone else’s. My ‘not working’ list had some things that were about not doing certain things – not multi-tasking, not being online, not being in a routine, not being surrounded by visual reminders of outstanding work, not being available to others – and some positively-worded things like savouring a pot of green tea in peace; sea swimming; having micro-adventures; hosting friends and family; making life plans; and my daily runs.

The more I thought about this final question, the more I appreciated the pleasure and fulfilment I gain from the things I listed. It was a welcome reminder of the breadth of ways in which I can lean into ‘not working’ and satisfy my creative, social, intellectual and wellbeing appetites.

Sometimes this act of reflecting and making lists is a fulfilling activity on its own. This time I wanted it to nudge a change in routine and behaviour, to spark a slightly different partnering between work and non-work following my Australia trip, to just tip the balance a little more in favour of ‘not working’ and to make richer use of my leisure time.

So I’ve looked at my typical week and thought about how to demarcate my ‘non-working’ windows of time more clearly. I’m literally marking the boundaries out again like those snaking, dusty lines that I spied far beneath me. I’m also keeping my lists close to hand so when I’m next caught rabbit-like in an agony of indecision about how to use some precious downtime, I’ll look back at my ‘not working’ list to remind me of all the glorious, enticing possibilites I can pick from.

What do ‘working’ and ‘not working’ look like for you? What falls into your grey area? If you’re not sure how to answer these, then next time you’re in a little time-space bubble of your own, have a think and a scribble. I’d love to hear what emerges for you. In the meantime, I’ll be revelling in the next 21 hours that stretch out ahead of me and watching the world slide by.

Mind the 5 gaps

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 21:43:34 GMT

I waved a Minion off to school yesterday for World Book Day.

At least my 12 year old daughter now sorts out her own WBD outfit thank goodness, and there’s now another 364 days before WBD rolls around again. But we’re not done for this week because it's International Women’s Day today!

In recognition of this global celebration of women’s contribution to work and society, every day this week I’ve been sharing a statistic on Linked In that describes how women are impacted by our 'time culture' at work. If ‘time culture’ is a new expression to you a) you obviously haven’t read my award-winning business book The Future of Time yet and b) it means our attitudes, behaviours and expectations around the way we spend our time at work. What gets valued and rewarded, what doesn’t. What we spend much of our time on, what we don’t spend so much time on (but ought to). Because surprise, surprise, women are disadvantaged by our ‘time culture’ in several ways. Here are my top five.

Feel free to share these stats with friends and family members, and colleagues at your #IWD events and celebrations. I hope they open up conversations about work culture, ways of working and career barriers/enablers so that more women can get in to their chosen industry, get on and achieve their career ambitions. I also rather optimistically hope that when my daughter leaves her Minion-dressing-up-days behind her and enters the world of work – either as a professional choreographer for K-pop bands or the head of policy at motor racing’s governing body the FIA, she can’t quite decide which - she doesn’t fall into these gender gaps because we’ve managed to close them.

Just one thing

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:58:03 GMT

Making change stick.

Recently, I’ve been tuning in regularly to the 'Just One Thing' podcast by Dr. Michael Mosley. In each 15-minute episode, Michael delves into a single, manageable change that can enhance our health and extend our lifespan. Thanks to him, I’m keeping up my green tea ritual (that was a quick win), incorporating daily planks into my exercise routine (right after my morning run - oof) and reheating leftover carbs. I’m a bit of a podcast butterfly and I’m wondering why this podcast has stuck firmly now as a favourite. Besides Dr. Mosley's warm and reassuring tone, I think it boils down to 3 things.

Firstly, focusing on just one thing feels refreshingly attainable. Let's face it, we're bombarded with complex self-improvement strategies daily. Who wants a whole industry of new ‘to do’s to implement, remember and track?

Secondly, the changes are entirely within my control. I don't need anyone's permission to start planking in my bedroom, even if it does provide my husband with daily amusement. I can make these changes tomorrow, better still, today.

Thirdly, the advice is specific and the outcomes are clear. I know precisely what to do and whether it’s working. Whether it's keeping my blood pressure in check or reducing blood sugar spikes, the benefits are measurable.

Now, shifting gears to my work life, I find parallels between Dr. Moseley's approach and my Time-Intelligent Teams workshops. These workshops aim to enhance teams' productivity and enjoyment at work – to help people to invest their time more effectively. We focus on one collective and one individual change that are within the team's control. Through reflection, brainstorming, and laughter, teams identify actionable steps to work smarter, not harder. The feedback from these workshops has been resoundingly positive with managers reporting improved communication, higher levels of commitment to the change and more cohesive teamwork.

Of course the power of ‘just one thing’ is that once you’ve mastered that one change and it has proven it’s value, it simply becomes part of how you do things. Which leaves you free to cast around for the next ‘just one thing’ that could also have a transformative effect. And another after that.

That’s why, to my amazement, wall squats have joined my daily exercise routine and I’m evangelising about the benefits of cooked tomatoes. I just need to find Michael’s episode on why sticky toffee pudding will reverse the ageing process…..

Are we there already?

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:37:04 GMT

How are those 2024 goals looking?

If you’re the type of person who loves setting New Year resolutions and making aspirational plans for the coming 12 months, but then feels downcast a few weeks or months later when all those intentions look over-ambitious or have fallen by the wayside, then this blog post will cheer you up, I guarantee. Because I’ve discovered a better way to start the year: by recognising that we’re already living our future today.

Let me unpack that.

People today say they are time poor and the stats shed light on why: work intensity has increased steadily over the past 20 years, leisure time has fallen - plus we don’t tend to use it wisely - and we spend more of our time parenting our children than previous generations, or caring for elderly dependents.

When we’re time poor, we tend to feel under pressure to get things done, stay on top of things and keep all those plates spinning as efficiently as possible. We’re always thinking about what’s coming up next and the future that we’re working towards. (My vision of the future? Older me is effortlessly churning out bestseller books from an idyllic coastal eco-cottage, in between bouts of sea-swimming and long clifftop yomps. What’s yours?). The problem is, that future is always slightly out of grasp. So we keep on striving to get there.

Hand-in-hand with tomorrow-chasing is beating ourselves up about the big things what we haven’t achieved yet or on a smaller scale, tasks we haven’t ticked off our daily or weekly to-do lists. I had a great 2023 – busy, healthy, enjoyable – but reading back over my mid-year plan was a frustrating litany of ‘not done’, ‘not done’, ‘not done’, from my updating my website to launching my new Time-Intelligence online diagnostic for teams and organisations. Hal Hershfield, Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today came on my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant in September. He advises ‘ not to always live life for tomorrow’ and to ‘ have some self compassion and self forgiveness. It's really easy to beat ourselves up because we're falling short of the things that we said we wanted to do. And that's not really fair to our present selves’.

What we don’t typically pay so much attention to – or even notice at all – are all the things we’re already doing today that are to be celebrated or that quite simply, we find enjoyable or rewarding. As Hal says ‘ I think we do a disservice to our future selves by telling ourselves that we're working for them, but in reality we're missing the present and then what sort of life does that add up to?’

I notice the same unhelpful tendency in organisations, where we’re equally future-obsessed. As soon as one project is over, the next one begins. We sprint from one deadline to the next without pausing for breath or taking time to reflect, appreciate, learn or reconsider. It’s a common refrain I hear people say in my Time-Intelligent Teams workshops . It’s a chronic case of organisational impatience, and it’s not a recipe for long-term, sustainable high performance.

So what’s the antidote?
It’s to ask ourselves ‘are we there already?’

This question is reminiscent of the dreaded ‘are we there yet?’ that every child asks, usually 10 minutes after leaving home (yep, you did it too) and that makes every driver want to scream. But ‘are we there already?’ is different.

It invites us to reflect on what we’re doing today and the outcomes we’re bringing about. It helps us to see afresh the seams of richness layered through our work or home lives that we’ve been neglecting to notice and whose absence we’d sorely regret. By asking ‘are we there already?’ or ‘am I there already?’, we can look differently at what we spend our time on today and appreciate those things we do that are working well for us right here, right now. In other words, the ways in which we’re already living our future today.

In my #timeintelligence workshops, I help teams identify all the positive aspects of the way they work that is enabling them to deliver on their goals, often under intense time pressure and resource constraints. In parallel with celebrating these strengths and successes, we look for changes within their control that can help them overcome the challenges or frustration and make best use of their time at work.

So instead of setting some traditional resolutions, why not try setting some ‘living my future today’ resolutions? By listing a few things that you already do and would like to continue doing/do more often because they bring you joy, respite, connection, growth, inspiration, fulfilment, contentment or some other benefit.

Here are some of my ‘living my future today’ resolutions:

1.    Doing a short writing sprint every day to make sense of some half-formed musings, explore the seed of an idea or untangle a mental confusion. The world makes a bit more sense after each sprint.
2.    Playing the piano every day that I’m at home, because I find it a magical antidote to a racing mind and it brings back treasured memories of jamming on the piano with my father.
3.    Keeping up my daily running streak (today was day #1,151) because I love it and I want to stay mobile and independent until I’m headed for the next world.
4.    Sticking with my ‘Review, Celebrate, Plan’ habit where at the end of each week, I review how the week has gone, celebrate things I feel proud of and plan for the week ahead. Cup of tea and large slice of cake in hand.
5.    Saying yes to coffees and phone calls with friends even when work and life feel too busy and I’m tempted to say ‘not this week’. I never regret making the time.

Why not ask the same question to colleagues in your team? Your close friends or family? It might spark a new kind of conversation. And you might well discover that your future has already arrived.

Big questions for a new year

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 07:44:43 GMT

Pause the hamster wheel and set a more thoughtful course for 2024.

One of the things I love about ending a year and looking forward to a new one is pausing to reflect on how the year has gone and thinking about what a good new year would look like for me and my business. It’s the ‘festive edition’ version of what I do at the end of every week, only with a longer view and a generously proportioned mince pie beside me. Asking some big questions now before the work hamster wheel starts spinning again helps us set a more thoughtful course for the year ahead.

When we talk about time management, we often focus on the day-to-day, week-to-week view. How efficiently can we get through our to-do list today? What days will we be working from home vs in the office? Who do we need to speak to or meet up with this week? Yet as I describe in The Future of Time , applying #timeintelligence means taking the long view too (check out my November blog for a 5 minute ‘all you need to know’ overview of what ‘time intelligence’ is and how we can use it). From the research I read and the conversations I have, it’s clear to me that asking the bigger questions benefits us as individuals, as teams and as whole organisations. Here are four ‘time intelligent’ questions that take the longer-term view that you can ask yourself, individuals you manage or mentor, or the team(s) you lead.

What do you want to have a shot at?

I was interviewing someone yesterday about their experiences of working at a former employer, and they told me ‘I wasn't there just for the salary, I came to learn and I had career dreams to achieve'. This echoed another comment from an investment professional while I was researching for my book, who told me the reason they chose to stay at their organisation was ‘You say where you want your career to go, what your ambitions are, what you want to achieve over the next five years and they’ll try and help you into those roles.’ Having this kind of conversation can be incredibly motivating for people as it lets them know that you’re interested in the answer and you’ll do what you can to help them realise their aspirations. Having the conversation with yourself gets you thinking differently about what you’re doing and can kick start your future ambitions now instead of kicking them down the road (again).

What doesn’t appear in your diary that you’d like to see in there?

This about the things we find hard to carve out time for but that really matter to us in some way. Outside of work it may be about exercise, a lapsed hobby you’re longing to pick up again or a ‘one day, I’m going to ….’ cherished ambition. Work-wise, it’s typically it’s the important proactive stuff that will help us advance in some way like longer-term planning, strategic thinking or creative work, but when it’s not deadline-driven it invariably ends up being squeezed out by more urgent, reactive activity. In a survey I did back in November 2020, I asked people exactly this. They said things like ‘analysis of work trends and customer data to plan work in a more targeted fashion’; ‘process and system development, testing & feedback, to identify and avoid problems before they reach customers’ and ‘deep thinking which benefits the company strategically’. Imagine how much an organisation and its customers would benefit if people found it easier to make time for these valuable activities.

What would you do differently next time?

Often during my Time Intelligence workshops , teams will say ‘we don’t get time to review how we’re working or debate better ways to do things’. People really want to have these conversations, to use the pause between sprints or deadlines to figure out how they can work more efficiently, resolve issues that cause delays and bottlenecks and to feel like they’re gaining the learning that will build their skills and expertise and help them advance in their career. In ‘Building Learning Organisations’, the management guru Peter Senge identifies how businesses that are successful over the longer term invest a huge proportion of their time in continuous learning. Not just formal training and development but this cultural habit of constantly reviewing our ways of working, the outcomes we’re seeing and what we’re learning from both.

Who do you talk to at work?

I mean this in the sense of ‘who do you confide in?’ and ‘who do you hang out with?’. We may be back in the office more regularly but this doesn’t mean we’re all bonding like mad and building close, rewarding friendships. On my free webinar ‘Make office time popular again’ last week (join my January free webinar on ‘Fewer, better meetings’ here ), attendees were worrying most about the small number of people who are coming in but not interacting with others in any meaningful way. As Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research shows, having a close friend at work is a big driver of employee engagement, making people feel more motivated to stay and do their best work. Software company Atlassian’s ‘Team Anywhere’ research found that team connection grew by 27% after they invested time in bringing people together for social and ‘culture-building’ events. And on my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant, Professor Robin Dunbar explains why the best thing a CEO can do is design more opportunities for people to meet in person for ‘synchronised social activities’ like eating a meal, singing or playing a game. It sounds almost laughably simple and slightly old-fashioned, but it’s still powerful stuff.

Thinking about these 4 questions myself, on my ‘have a shot at’ list is getting invited onto TV or radio to give an expert point of view, applying for and getting accepted for a TEDx talk and collaborating on some research. What doesn’t appear in my diary, despite my best intentions every week? Time to update my website, finish my new online ‘time intelligence’ diagnostic and start planning book 2. Please ask me how these are going when we’re next in touch! I’m definitely going to be asking myself ‘what would I do differently next year’ as I ponder what I’ve learnt about this year’s efforts and I’m making a list of wise and wonderful people I want to catch up with again because it’s been too long since we last spoke.

What would your answers be? Pop me an email at hello@helenbeedham.com , I’d love to hear and I promise to respond. While I’m reaching unashamedly for another mince pie….

All you need to know about Time Intelligence in 5 minutes

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 08:30:23 GMT

Want to overcome resourcing constraints, meeting overload, employee burnout? In the time it'll take you to enjoy a cuppa, these 10 Q&As tell you how.

What’s the problem? Why do we need time intelligence?

We work long hours yet our productivity levels are not what they could be. The incidence of stress and mental ill-health has been rising steadily, costing employers and health services billions every year. And as organisations are failing to meet the needs of different groups of employees, they are making glacial progress towards their diversity goals. The answer isn’t to exhort people to work faster or harder or smarter: it’s the system we need to fix. We need to create more sustainable, inclusive, productive organisations and ways of working that will allow all kinds of talent to flourish.

What is time intelligence?

Time intelligence is our collective ability to notice how we’re spending our time at work and to make thoughtful decisions about how we invest our many hours of work so that we get a better return on that time investment, for ourselves, our clients, the businesses we work for and indeed the people who are important to us outside of work.

Time intelligence offers a framework and language to help people explore and understand their work culture, ways of working and organisational or team set-up so they can figure out how to improve these to boost both their own performance and enjoyment of work and the business’ performance.

How is time intelligence different to traditional time management?

Traditional time management focuses almost exclusively on efficiency – doing things faster, wasting less time, getting more done within the time available. It’s also very task-focused and aimed solely at the individual – think of it as helping us to spin ever faster on our hamster wheels! Time intelligence is still about doing things efficiently but it’s also about our experience of work and the human, social dimension as much as the task, so that we can slow down our hamster wheels, change course or even step off occasionally. Because our working time is highly interdependent and we don’t work in isolated bubbles, time intelligence is primarily aimed at whole teams and organisations, not just individuals.

What are the warning signs that tell me we need to focus on our time intelligence?

Clients reach out to me for a range of reasons. It may be that workforce data on overwork, sickness absence, burnout or attrition is flagging up issues that can’t be ignored any longer. Sometimes they’re wanting to help teams do more with less when resources are stretched, or to cope better with cyclical peaks in business volumes or business-critical deadlines. Some organisations suspect that a large chunk of the time they invest in calls and meetings is fuelling busyness and not generating value. Or maybe they’re going through a period of change and it’s the right time to engage people afresh in a conversation about mutual expectations and more effective organisational habits.

How do you create more time intelligent organisations?

Straight up: there’s no quick fix or magic bullet; encouraging behavioural and culture change takes time and effort. But the process isn’t complex and you can get going straight away.

Ideally you start at the top, by getting time intelligence on your leadership agenda and defining as a leadership team what time intelligent ways of working look like for your business and the outcomes you’re seeking. Then you engage other teams in a similar conversation through interactive sessions to help them identify changes within their control that will help them work smarter not harder whilst building on all the positive things they like about working there. Broader issues or opportunities outside of their direct control are fed back to the leadership team.

After this initial stage, you will likely have identified a number of organisation-wide changes to implement so the next stage is to set up these pilots with selected teams, support them and evaluate the benefits afterwards. At a team level, you can help each team to develop a Team Time Contract which is an informal agreement about how they’ll manage their time across the team. Throughout this process you may want to offer 1:1 support to certain individuals in key roles or who may be in need of additional help for a while to deal with time pressure or manage their workloads.

Who is time intelligence for?

Time intelligence is a mindset and a set of skills that’s for leadership teams, project/functional teams and whole organisations to apply. But you can grow your time intelligence as an individual too and on my group coaching programmes and in my 1:1 coaching sessions I help people do exactly that.

Can you give me some examples of time intelligence in action?

In The Future of Time I set out the 6 traits of time-intelligent teams and organisations, these are:

1.   They have a laser sharp focus on both shorter- and longer-term outcomes
2.   They minimise distractions and help people focus on the important work
3.   They create healthy habits and environments that enable people to do their best work.
4.   They recruit, manage, develop and reward people in a way that encourages best use of time
5.   They value humanity, social cohesion and wellbeing and work to reduce cognitive overload, burnout and loneliness.
6.   They prize experimentation, learning and open-mindedness.

The book also offer 24 ‘time solutions’ which are examples of things time-intelligent organisations do day-to-day. For a preview of the book’s index and first few pages, click here . When I work with clients, the actions vary significantly depending on their context, ambition and challenges. We might do some cross-team process mapping to clarify work handovers and deadlines; we might look afresh at the meeting culture and/or introduce organisation-wide meeting-free windows or days; or we might look to formalise ‘deep thinking’ time or informal learning time.

How can we measure our time intelligence?

If you’re working in time-intelligent ways, you’ll see the benefit in terms of the business outcomes you’re aiming for e.g. more clients, longer-term relationships, more successful product launches. You can also measure organisational or workforce outcomes such as fewer hours worked (if overwork is an issue), lower employee turnover, reduced sickness absence, improved diversity at different levels, more time spent on formal/informal learning and development or strategic, ‘deep’ thinking. You can introduce specific questions into pulse or engagement surveys that assess whether people feel able to deliver successfully as a team in a sustainable, enjoyable way, can fulfil their work without undue time pressure and enjoy a meaningful work life balance.

What can I do tomorrow to engage people in a conversation about this?

If you manage others, as a starting point three great questions to ask people are:
1.   What helps or hinders you from making the most of your time at work?
2.   What doesn't appear in your work calendar that you would like to see in there?
3.   How can I help you free up your time to focus on the important work?

If you’re finding it hard to persuade people back into the office in a regular rhythm, you could ask them what makes office time rewarding and useful, and use these insights to tailor your firm-wide working policies.

If I haven’t got a budget to spend on external support, what free resources can I access?

You can download two checklists, one for individuals and one for managers and leaders, and a guide to agreeing a Team Time Contract here . You can also join my free half hour webinars that I aim to run roughly once a month; each one deals with a different aspect of putting time intelligence into practice. You can also listen to my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant , available on all major podcasting platform,s where I chat to HR, DEI and business leaders, business school professors, entrepreneurs and scale-up experts, business book authors and industry champions. Finally it’s not free but for just £7.99 you can buy the e-book version of The Future of Time, or order copies for all your team at a bulk order discount.

If you’re facing some of the challenges I’ve described above and think you could do with a bit more ‘time intelligence’ to help your teams thrive and your business to perform better, then book a free half hour call with me and let's chat.

What makes you brilliant?

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 14:38:38 GMT

What would you say if someone asked you this?

I know, it's a question that might provoke a mild (or moderate) sense of discomfort given that underplaying our strengths is more socially acceptable, in the UK at least, than voicing them confidently and risking being seen as overly self-promotional or worse, 'full of yourself'. Maybe I'm wrong and the question provokes no discomfort at all and you can put your answer out there in a flash. In which case, good for you! But I'm betting it's a question that you might not have asked people for a while. I'm about to persuade you that you should.

A prospective client recently asked me for some references so I reached out to 3 people I’ve been working with over the past year to ask if they would oblige. I was hoping they’d say yes but also a little reluctant to make this ask (after all, what's in it for them?). So I tried to make it easy for them to say no if they were too busy or had more important things to do. I was humbled and chuffed when they all said yes in a matter of hours and sounded genuinely delighted to have been asked. Lesson number one - people who know you and trust you will invariably want to help if they can.

These 3 clients all shared really thoughtful feedback with the recipient, copying me in. They said some wonderful things about me like ‘professional in every sense of the word’, ‘an exceptional speaker’ , ‘offers engaging and relevant insights’, ‘provides very practical solutions’ and ‘handles questions with intelligence, skill, and tremendous grace’. I was deeply touched by these comments, they put a spring in my step and a smile on my face for the rest of the week.

Now I’m not sharing this to blow my own trumpet; if you know me, you’ll know I’m my own biggest critic. I’m mentioning this because what I found truly illuminating was to read what they saw as my unique strengths, or my super powers if you prefer. Things like ‘ she challenges the status quo in a way that opens up the conversation brilliantly ’ and ‘ she helps people turn the knowledge she shares into action so they can step into their full potential ’.

I’ve written plenty of bios over my career, I've crafted website copy and put together fliers about my services and my expertise, but I’ve never used those words to describe what I do or how I help clients. But I realise that this feedback gets right to the heart of why clients like working with me. These words cut through the noise of well-crafted but less meaningful phrases; they are much more powerful than any statements I might have come up with. So I’m going to borrow them with pride and share them far and wide.

If it’s been a while since you asked someone about the things they see YOU do well, why not do this? This week?

Ask them what’s special about the way you work or the way you help others. I hope it helps you see afresh the ways in which you are uniquely brilliant at what you do. And why not pay it forward too, by offering your feedback to someone else about what makes them brilliant?

How to free up your time wisely

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 16:51:55 GMT

How can I successfully free up more time in my week?

This is a question I get asked a lot in my workshops and coaching programmes. Unless you are leading a life of leisure, retired or my new rescue cat Maisie (pics on my Insta feed), you’re not likely to say you have spare time on their hands. It’s the opposite problem: we’re all madly spinning plates. I repeatedly hear people say they never enough time to fit in everything they want or need to do. So when you really want or need to free up some time – because the pressure or workload has reached unsustainable proportions, or because something significant has changed at work or at home, or because an enticing new opportunity has arisen – how do we do this without metaphorically sweeping up a load of smashed china?

Recently, I’ve had to take a good hard look at my work and my home life and figure how I was going to free up two whole days every week. If you’ve been following my news on Linked In or my podcast , you’ll know I’ve added to my portfolio career and taken on a new part-time role as Head of Programmes for Encompass Equality , the gender equality experts. This will run alongside my existing consulting business which I’m continuing to grow. Finding two extra days out of an already full schedule was a daunting task; I might advise people and organisations on time management but I still bump up against my own time challenges every day! But I’ve figured out (mostly) how to do it and so far, it’s working pretty well. Here’s how I’ve done it:

Let me introduce you to my Time ROI matrix . It’s a classic 2x2 matrix – we consultants do love a 2x2 matrix - that enables you take stock of what you’re spending your time on and what benefit you are getting out of that time investment. The X axis shows how much time you’re investing in a particular activity, from ‘low’ to ‘high’. The Y axis plots how much value or benefit you’re seeing from that time investment, from ‘low’ to ‘high’. How do you define ‘benefit’, you might be wondering? Answer: any way you like. It can be in terms of financial outcomes (e.g. income, new business wins), career outcomes (e.g. securing a promotion, gaining a new qualification) personal outcomes (e.g. improved wellbeing, more rewarding relationships), a mix of these or simply whether these activities are getting you closer to a particular goal.

Here's how to use it:

Set aside a minimum of 15-20 minutes of undisturbed time. I know that, in itself, might be a challenge but if you can’t find 15 minutes to review your time habits, believe me, nothing is going to change for the better.
On one sheet of paper, take 5 minutes to note down at a reasonably high level all the different things you spend your time on. To give you an idea of how specific to be, when I did this exercise thinking about my business, I listed items like: delivering client work; podcasting; posting on social media; planning new offerings and researching. I got to around 20 items in 5 minutes. If you’re hitting 50 and not done, you’ve gone too detailed so zoom out a notch. Number each item.
Take the matrix and plot each item on your list against the X and Y axes. Each item will end up in one of boxes 1-4. Don’t take too long over each allocation, just weigh it up versus other items in the list and go with your instinct. You might end up shuffling a few items around before you finish the exercise, that’s ok.
Once you’ve plotted them all, step back to look at the results. What do these tell you? Broadly speaking:

a) Box #1 is the sweet spot . You’re getting a comparatively big return on things that aren’t eating up too much time. Don’t change anything here, at least until you have cause to review this picture again.

b) Box #2 is probably still valuable stuff to be spending your time on, but these activities may be either very complex or they’re taking you too long to accomplish. If it’s the former, what can you prioritise and what can you put on the back burner for now? If it’s the latter, is there a smarter, more efficient way you can approach these activities?

c) Box #3 is not likely to promise much by way of time gains, but it’s still worth reviewing to identify where you can increase your returns or to spend even less time. Repurposing (doing something once but reaping multiple benefits), delegating and simply doing them less frequently are all possibilities here.

d) Box #4 is the proverbial time sink . This is where you really stand to gain in terms of freeing up your time in a low risk way. Take a good hard look at these activities and ask yourself if it’s really worth continuing to invest your time in them. If you’re reluctant to bin them completely (or it’s a responsibility you can’t ditch) look how you can either spend less time on them by automating them or get more value out of them, ie by moving items upwards to box #2 or left to box #3.
For each activity that you want to move from one box to another, draw a little arrow indicating its direction of travel. This will be a useful reminder when you next review this picture (and saves writing explanatory notes).

Should you use a time tracker in order to do this exercise properly? If you want to, you can but you don’t have to. If you do, I would suggest tracking your time for at least 1 week, ideally 2 and there are some free downloadable timetracking templates online or take a look at an app like Toggl . If you don’t go down this route, be mindful that we tend to underestimate our time investments so err on the side of generosity when considering how much time you spend on any given activity.

The point of using this tool is to make considered, lower risk choices about spending your time differently, but it also brings added benefits like opening up new possibilities. I've finally bid Twitter, sorry X, farewell so I can focus more creatively on Linked In and Instagram. Halving the time I spend producing my podcast each week has forced me to think differently about what the outputs are and how I share them with others. I’m really happy with my new-style, visually interesting episode pages that have replaced the previous time-consuming transcripts that people probably never read in the first place! (Now is not the time to tell me you read them religiously).

If you give this tool a go, do let me know how you get on. I’d love to hear what you found easy or difficult, and how some of the changes work out for you? I hope it helps you to take your eye off those spinning plates every now and again and enjoy a different view.

Decluttering our lives

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 11:32:43 GMT

What do you yearn for?

I spent last week living in a farmer’s field in a glamping pod measuring roughly 3m by 4m, with my daughter on our annual, much treasured trip to south west Cornwall. We’ve tried various accommodation options over the years but seem to have settled contentedly on this pod, which is just one of three on a hillside overlooking the bay. After a day visiting St Ives where we used to stay, I asked my daughter if she was missing the hustle and bustle of being in a town with everything on our doorstep, or the much more spacious former sail loft that we rented before. ‘No’ was her emphatic reply. ‘I love the simplicity of being here’.

And she was right – aside from the draw of the mesmerising Cornish coast and countryside, what we love most about our stay there is our temporarily pared-down style of living. We leave all the usual ‘essentials’ behind, take very little with us and make few plans in advance. The pod is cleverly designed with a sleeping area, sofa area, small tv, kitchenette and shower room and it is fully insulated with underfloor heating for the winter months, but there is no wifi, iron, washing machine nor – eek! – a hairdryer and precious little spare space. Goodbye daily blowdry and make-up routine, hello ‘natural’ looks aka sea-salt-tangled hair, crumpled tshirts and the shorts we wore yesterday (and probably the day before that). There’s only one tiny mirror anyway so we can’t really see how dishevelled we look. We love it.

We go for the huge view, the sense of space around us, the peace and quiet (no deafening 4am dawn chorus unlike at our house) and because we slow right down. Lazy breakfasts on the decking, looking out to sea. Watching the farmer hypnotically sowing row after endless row of tiny cauliflower plants that’ll be supplying the national supermarkets in a few months’ time. Noticing how St Michael’s Mount disappears completely from view as the rain clouds roll in. Following the swallows as they dip and soar over the wildflowers at dusk. We potter about locally, visiting favourite beaches with simple packed lunches and picking up fish and chips on the sea front for tea, or play card games on rainy afternoons.

As we unwind and enjoy ‘pod’ life, we fantasize about living this simply back home. It wouldn’t work easily – there’s next to no storage space and no washing machine for starters. And we can’t be on holiday forever. But our thoughts and chatter turn to ‘clearing stuff out’ and living life a bit less hectically when we get back. We yearn for a slower, simpler life with less stuff. My daughter has vowed to edit down the games cupboard and I’m tackling the utility room and garage.

It's not just about streamlining our possessions though. Decluttering life means, to me, spending less time driving around from A to B (hard to achieve when you live rurally), being less driven by our ‘to do’ lists and having more time to chat and play together, invent games and create memories that will linger long after the summer is over. As Daniel Kahneman says in ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, it’s the peaks and endings that matter. In our later years we’re unlikely to remember any of the repetitive routine of work, chores and daily busyness that fill our hours today, but we will remember the emotional highs and lows and the unexpectedly rich moments together, like the impromptu card game of ‘Cheat’ four of us played earlier this week where we all laughed so hard the tears were pouring down our cheeks. What does 'decluttering life' mean to you?

Over the next few weeks, between the work/parenting juggle, I’m aiming to spend an hour a day just chilling, where I’m available for games, idle chatter, inventing things and going on spontaneous mini-adventures. Or not available because I’m dozing, daydreaming, tinkering (badly) on the piano or watching our pet hen Nettie emerge from the flower beds to chase butterflies. I know September, with its back-to-work-and-school routines, will roll around before we know it but hopefully by then I’ll have a decluttered house and mind to act as a restorative buffer against the autumn rush. And some lasting, more meaningful memories of a simpler, more satisfying summer.

Behind the sparkle

Fri, 26 May 2023 08:20:56 GMT

How often do you doubt what you’re doing, or get discouraged?

Tina Turner, the legendary singer who died this week, overcame well-documented hardships throughout her life to enjoy huge global success. I heard on the Today programme yesterday (starts at 2h 38m) that when asked by Oprah Winfrey in 2013 to describe her legacy, Tina replied ‘My legacy is that I stayed on course from the beginning to the end because I believed in something inside of me that told me that you can get better, or you can make something better, and that I wanted better’.

We're not all Tina Turners, but her words are powerful. Towards the end of last year, I met up with an old friend I’d not seen in person for some time and who has worked for big businesses all of her career, progressing to a very senior role and managing a busy home life with children as well. To my amazement she told me she was deeply impressed by my entrepreneurship, profile and achievements since setting up my own business and that in comparison, she felt she had just trodden the corporate path in a far less exciting way. Whilst very touched by this, I was quite thrown by her comment.

Because the truth is, I’ve frequently wondered whether I’m doing the right thing and even whether anyone has noticed what I’m up to (there, I’ve aired my inner critic’s favourite jibe publicly). In this blog I’m finally coming out of my ‘self-doubt closet’ and confessing all. I’ve probably worked harder than I’ve ever worked before since setting up solo, spending 9 months writing my book, another 7 months finalising it and preparing to launch it, a further 15 months (and counting) post-launch promoting it, speaking, writing and podcasting about it. It has been a huge investment of my time and energy, and yes, I’ve pondered on a weekly basis what I’m getting back on that investment.

It's all too easy to compare ourselves to others in similar lines of work and to unhelpfully measure ourselves up against their external indicators of success and find ourselves coming up short. Believe me, authors building their businesses are just as prone to this as any other professional! There’s a whole raft of measures that can stoke our insecurity, including:

•    How many print runs your book has had
•    How high profile your speaking opportunities are
•    Whether you’ve landed any bookshop signings and events
•    Whether you’ve licensed any foreign language editions of your book
•    What media coverage and appearances you’ve garnered
•    How many positive online ratings and reviews your book has

I could go on. But what I’m learning is that book success (for which read: any kind of professional or career success) comes in many forms and flavours, and each of us follows our own path. As authors we helpfully swap ideas and learn from what each other is doing, which I hugely appreciate, but unless we’re Margaret Heffernan or Malcom Gladwell, we’re unlikely to be ticking all the boxes off the ‘Global Business Book Success’ checklist.

Sure there are the shiny moments that we celebrate publicly but for every one of those there are hundreds of hours of invisible graft behind the scenes. That’s one reason why, when I hit 2 years of daily running in November last year on an unusually bright day, I chose not to post a sunshiney celebratory photo of me out running with my husband, but instead I posted this photo of me out running alone the next day in the rain. Because that was the reality beind the big milestones.

Don’t get me wrong. I do feel very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and it felt great to put my gladrags on last week and celebrate with other published authors as finalists at the Business Book Awards 2023 .   And it was utterly amazing to hear my name and my book’s title read out as winner in the People, Culture & Management category! Thank you to all who have commented on and celebrated this achievement with me on Linked In and in real life. (If you missed the news last week, my Insta reel has the highlights). My May newsletter is an unusually joyous edition. But as I float gently back down from cloud nine, it’s back to normality and writing this blog, updating my website, following up with clients enquiring about my talks, workshops and coaching programmes, booking in podcast guests and preparing my VAT return.

Because it’s putting the effort in every day, come rain or shine, that moves us forward; that grows our business or our book’s reach bit by tiny painstaking bit, each and every day. Success for me is just as much about the ‘keeping on going’ as it is about the occasional celebratory or highly visible moments that come along. If you’ve been plodding away at something in your work life, feeling like it’s slow going, or if you’ve been admiring other people’s successes, then this message is for you:

If you love what you do, if it you believe in it, and if you can afford to keep doing it, then don’t give up. As the saying goes, if it was easy then we’d all be doing it all of the time. The harder the effort and the longer the wait, the more rewarding that moment of success feels, as a wise teacher once gently explained to my 9 year old daughter who was sobbing after failing yet again to win her first ever medal at a school sports day.

I like the way James Cleare, author of Atomic Habits, puts it: ‘complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 21 to 31 degrees. Your work is not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees’.

So when you’re full of doubt and feeling like you’re pushing water uphill, remember that to someone else your hard graft looks like enviably shiny success. And good things will come. So don’t give up.

The questions people ask

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 19:31:59 GMT

‘So when is book 2 coming out?’

If I had a pound for every time someone has asked me that, I wouldn’t need to write another book (but I always appreciate the questioner’s interest). I’m still catching my breath from getting my first business book The Future of Time ‘out there’ and to mark its recent first birthday, I thought I’d share some reflections on the experience.

Like training for a marathon or any other long-term challenge, you have to really want to write a book. It’s a daunting task to churn out 500 – 1,000 words each day, week after week, month after month. I needed visible proof of my progress, aside from the words on the page, so I set up a daily tracker charting my snail’s pace advance towards my target 55,000 words. For ages it felt like I was plodding along not getting very far, then suddenly I found myself on the home straight with the finish line in sight. Weirdly, at that point I speeded up and wrote like a demon - much like the one and only London Marathon I ran in 2018, where mile 26 was my fastest of all (I still haven’t figured that out). Looking back, the actual writing of the book is what I’m most nostalgic for and what I’m itching to return to.

But writing the book is only one half of the task - getting it ‘out there’ requires an equal or even greater investment of effort. Book ‘visibility’ is a hungry monster that demands constant feeding and the more resources you can afford to throw at the task, the bigger the impact you can have. I was disheartened to discover it’s surprisingly hard to get your business book stocked in a physical bookshop, partly because comparatively little space is allocated to business books versus other genres, and partly because the buyers understandably rely on safe bets by established authors, celebrity CEOs and long-running classics.

Few writers I’ve spoken with expect to make a steady income from one book or even a few books. Many view their books instead as calling cards that convey their expertise and credibility with distinction and weight. ‘Don’t give up the day job’ has more than a ring of truth to it and compounding this, authors are often expected to speak for free in return for the ‘marketing opportunity’ offered. But once you factor in the years honing your expertise and then a year or more of of researching and refining ideas into book form - forgoing income-earning opportunities at the same time - I’ve concluded that the marketing opportunity rarely comes close to matching the full value of the talk’s content.

‘How is the book is doing?’ is another recurring question.

By this, I think people tend to mean ‘have you sold lots of copies?’ because that is the classic, if narrow, measure of book success. From my limited experience, I’ve observed some books explode into the public consciousness and onto the radar of the media like attention-grabbing rockets. Others launch more sedately then, like those fireworks that gracefully spiral upwards before delighting you with a late ‘whoosh’, they pick up pace. And some fizzle along steadily and quietly, doing their thing and garnering quiet nods of appreciation without dominating the headlines.

Selling truckloads gratifyingly keeps you at the top of the bestseller rankings and keeps your publisher – who has worked incredibly hard to support your book - rightly happy. And undoubtedly, opening the quarterly sales statement and seeing a satisfying number in the ‘sales this period’ and ‘cumulative sales’ box brings a warm fuzzy glow to any author. But when I reflect on how my book is doing, honestly for me it’s not just about the numbers (although don’t tell my publisher that).

I still hold the book in my hands with pride and not a little incredulity at knowing that somehow, I brought this to life. Much to the amusement of my family, I still give a little pat or word of affection to my now scruffy and dog-eared copy as I pass by.

And I’m unashamedly revelling in some of its ego-stroking external indicators of success, from its little orange ‘Amazon bestseller’ tag to its airing at the renowned Cheltenham Book Festival and most recently, its UK Business Book Awards 2023 ‘finalist’ badge (keep your fingers crossed for me at the awards night on 16th May).

But I get a far deeper sense of satisfaction from hearing readers tell me how the book has crystallised into words something they were wrestling with, given them a way of framing and communicating this and provided practical help in solving their work or organisational challenge.

I’m proud of how it brings people together in conversation to acknowledge problematic aspects of the way we work today and to figure out better approaches. At the end of a leadership session I’ve led, hearing the business leaders say ‘we need to be talking about this every time we meet’ makes me feel that the blood, sweat and tears poured into the book were worth every drop. If I can help remove some of the barriers that get in the way of people doing their best work, thriving and succeeding in their organisations, I’m satisfied beyond measure.

It's been a full-on two years book-wise, so it feels a good time to pause, reflect and catch my breath over the Easter break. I’m going to down tools, hide tons of eggs around the garden and eat hot cross buns for breakfast, lunch and tea. Then suitably revived, I’ll cast my gaze forward again to fresh book adventures that this second year might bring. And just possibly, there may be a little seed labelled ‘book 2’ beginning to germinate.

Why sloths have it sussed

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 11:31:28 GMT

Did you know sloths’ faces are naturally shaped to give the impression they are always smiling?

Whilst they look like the ultimate time-wasters hanging out lazily in trees chewing like teenagers with a bad gum habit, sloths’ habits are in fact perfectly designed to maximise their energy and minimise time spent on unnecessary activity. They avoid doing anything that doesn’t contribute to their two main goals: survival and reproduction.

I came across these facts while putting together my talk Healthy Brains: positive habits for thriving at work in which I argue for being more like sloths (who at least make it down to the bottom of their tree once a week) and less like hamsters (spinning on their wheels and getting nowhere).

I’d shared these sloth facts with my family, so I was delighted and highly amused recently to receive this fabulous mug as a birthday present from my two grown-up stepchildren:

I’ve written about my experiences as a recovering ‘time-addict ’ before, so regular readers will know that, along with the majority of working professionals (especially those with any form of caring or parenting responsibilities), our time can feel like an unseemly race to get the important work done, keep on top of the less important but far ‘noisier’ urgent stuff and not drop too many spinning plates when it comes to life admin or family needs.

So I read with interest this Behavioral Scientist article about a new book called ‘Subtract’ by Yael Schonbrun and Leidy Klotz , which e xplains that we default to adding not subtracting, a habit that intensifies the more we have on our minds. It literally takes us more effort to stop and think about what we might stop doing in exchange for adding something new onto our to-do list.

This echoes many comments I’ve heard from working professionals about their workloads always expanding and new organisational initiatives regularly being launched but few, if any, ever being stopped early and woefully few conversations about how much time it actually takes to do the work required. These are examples of what I call our cultural ‘time blindness’ manifesting in the way we manage work, workloads and working time.

Subtract’s authors recommend maintaining a ‘stop doing’ list alonside our ‘to do’ list, and if we’re not sure what to subtract, then to go back to deeper questions about what kind of life we want to be leading – and I would add, what kind of person we want to be.

I argue that we don’t just benefit from doing this in our lives but across teams and organisations too. By developing ‘time intelligence’, groups can realise a far better return on the cumulative time everyone invests in work. The almost 3,000 participants in the UK’s recently completed 6 month pilot of the 4 day working week are celebrating significant benefits such as 39% reporting less stress, 71% reporting lower levels of burnout and 37% reporting improvements in physical health. Importantly, the 61 participating organisations reaped benefits too with average refvenue rising 35% on previous years and staff attrition down 57%. Much of the increased productivity came from streamlining operations and processes, eliminating wasted time and automating more standardised, routine tasks as former 4 Day Week Global CEO Joe O’Connor explains in this 2 minute video clip and on an upcoming episode of my podcast The Business Of Being Brilliant .

So as we head into March and longer daylight hours, I’m popping ‘subtract’ nudges into my calendar and notebook, setting up a ‘stop doing’ list and putting some extra effort into making sure those lighter evenings don’t simply turn into more hours chasing my tail or glued to my laptop.

If my family start to notice that I’m hanging out more, loafing around with my mug in hand, then I’ll be beaming like a time-rich sloth too.

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If you're stuck on a spinning hamster wheel and want to spend your time differently, get in touch and let's chat on a free 30 minute call.

Advice from a recovering time-addict

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:15:51 GMT

Lessons I've learned the hard way about managing time.

As the author of a business book about time management, people often expect me to have nailed time management perfectly, to never turn up late and to get everything done whilst still having time to spare. Let me hold onto that appealing depiction for just a minute or two … because it is definitely not my reality.

I described myself recently on a webinar as ‘a recovering time addict’ because most of my adult life I feel like I’ve been desperately chasing time, needing more of it, obsessing over it. Looking back, I’ve been as guilty as anyone at trying to fit too much into my waking hours, being overambitious about how long things take to do and complaining about never having enough time. When our daughter was tiny, I’d start cleaning the house at 9pm at night because I never managed to fit it in earlier (yes I know, I should have just accepted the mess).

I should have seen the warning signs earlier on (we’ll come back to those pesky ‘should’s shortly). In the 1990’s, when I was starting my career, Belbin team roles were all the rage. You answered a questionnaire and were told whether you were a ‘plant’ (fun-sounding creative type), ‘shaper’ (bossy-sounding leader) or another one of the 9 roles. Me? I was the very unexciting-sounding ‘completer finisher’. Combined with being a J in Myers-Briggs, that means I find it really hard to stop work and play unless I’ve got to the bottom of my to-do list. Which, as we all know, never, ever happens.

So what led me stumbling down the path towards enlightenment? Over the past 25+ years, a great deal of research and learning around human behaviour, group dynamics, work cultures and people’s experiences of work, and more recently the concept of time, our perceptions of time, the neuroscience of how we think about time and the science of how habits form, stick and fail.

Through my 1:1 and group coaching, team workshops and consulting work, I now help individuals, teams and organisations to develop ‘ time intelligence’ or TQ , by which I mean: our ability to notice how we’re spending our time and to consciously invest our time in more rewarding ways, so that we reap a better ROI for ourselves, our teams, our businesses and our families. You can read more about that in my January newsletter here .

My own relationship with time is a source of constant fascination to me and very much ‘work in progress’. in this blog, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve learnt along the way and that work for me; they might not work for you, but feel free to borrow and adapt them to suit you.

I look at time management in 3 ‘buckets’: goals, mindset and systems, and I work on all of these in parallel.

Goals : these are the big questions I ask myself from time to time, about ‘what kind of person do I want to be?’ and ‘what does a life well-lived mean to me?’

So much of the way we spend our time is wrapped up in our identity, our values and what matters most to us in life. That’s one reason why it can feel so hard to change our daily habits – it’s not simply about flossing our teeth every night or networking better, it’s about something much, much more significant to us.

Mindset : I try and take an honest look at some of the self-talk going on inside my head. In The Chimp Paradox Steve Peters calls it ‘chimp chatter’, whilst in Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway Susan Jeffers calls it ‘the Chatterbox’. I think of it as my inner radio, which I can choose when to tune into and when to switch off.

Good questions to help you explore your self-talk are ‘what outdated beliefs am I holding onto?’ and ‘what limiting ways of thinking are keeping me stuck in unhelpful habits?’ And ditch those 'should's! Jim Detert, author of Choosing Courage and a recent guest on my podcast, describes this mindset work as cognitive behavioural thinking here (audio starts at 40m 55s).

Systems : these are the tools, reminders and nudges that we put in place to help us make better choices day in, day out around how we spend our time. 3 great books I recommend on creating effective systems and habits are The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habit s by James Clear, and How to Change by Katy Milkman.

Here are 5 ingredients of my own system:

1.    I think about and plan my time A LOT.
At the end of every week I review how I’ve spent my time and what I gained (in the fullest sense) from it and I write down what I want to spend my time in the coming week. At the end of each day, I list the few things I most want to get done the next day, at work and at home. Once a quarter I have a ‘standback’ session where I look more critically at how things are going, what I’m happy with, what’s bugging me. And during holiday time, when I’ve detached from work, I get a relaxed perspective on the same questions.

2.    I make my time as visible as possible.
So much of what we spend our time on goes unrecorded and unacknowledged. Of course it’s not possible to capture everything but I try and get a clear view of the things that matter most to me. I have a hand-written, 6-weeks-on-a-double-page view of what’s coming up at work and at home; I have shared calendars with family members; I don’t just put tasks in, I put social time, family time, reading time and ‘me’ time in.

3.    I don’t rely on my imperfect memory.
I offload as much as I can to ‘external memory’ sources, whether that’s my calendar or a list (or telling my daughter who has an incredible memory!). Importantly my list isn’t a ‘to do’ list, it’s a memory list and from that, I decide what things I want to move to my daily and weekly ‘to do’ lists. I set frequent reminders; I use countdown alarms to help me finish up tasks on time; and I write short notes after important conversations.

4.    I ask myself ‘what do I most want to spend my time on right now?’
This simple question helps me avoid motoring relentlessly from one task to the next while the hours fly by. If necessary, I walk away to another room or viewpoint to break my focus and then answer the question. And whatever my week has been like, Sunday afternoons are sacred – no chores, no work, no cooking, just idle time and leisure time.

5. I pack away – or squirrel myself away from – distractions.

Putting my phone in a bag or a drawer does help me stop reaching for it mindlessly; moving my home office upstairs and away from the kitchen helped minimise family interruptions and mute the siren call of the larder cupboard. Whilst working I switch off all programmes and apps except the ones I need to use for the task at hand, and I’ve found a couple of quiet, welcoming places in Kent and London where I go and do a day or half day of some ‘deep work’ from time to time.

No, my system isn’t perfect, yes it falls over sometimes (as do I). But each day I start again, and I think it’s the patience that I’m cultivating that is the most rewarding outcome in itself. It’s a welcome antidote to our hunger for instant gratification, and in my view a vastly undervalued superpower in our speed-obsessed world of work. I don’t want to hurtle through life then look back and wonder why I spent so much of my time in a headlong rush, I want to enjoy life more as I go and stop to enjoy the views … whilst accepting happily the things I’ve left undone.

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If you're stuck on a spinning hamster wheel and want to spend your time differently, get in touch and let's chat on a free 30 minute call.

Biting the bullet

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 16:37:46 GMT

Why we procrastinate and how to overcome this.

Why do we find it hard to get round to doing certain tasks or deadlines? Procrastination doesn’t just afflict some unlucky people people and leave others blissfully unscathed – even the most efficient, organised people delay doing certain things until the consequences become impossible to ignore. Here are six reflections, drawn from neuroscience, behavioural science and motivation theory, about our tendency to avoid getting on with the job and some tips to help us knuckle down more successfully.

1.    Know your brain.

To speed up its processing power and apply learning from one task to another, our brains rely on shortcuts, known as heuristics, and biases. The optimism bias, for example, leads us to be over-optimistic when we are forecasting and planning, with the result that we typically underestimate and underscope activities. One simple way to counter this bias is to double your time estimate when planning your work (and enjoy the free time if you finish early).

We also tend to think of time as elastic rather than finite, and behavioural science research shows we value our time today more than our time tomorrow. So we’re more reluctant to commit to doing something today and more relaxed about saying yes to committing our time tomorrow. Consequently we often put tasks off until ‘later’ … and often end up with an unrealistic load when tomorrow does swing around.

Ignoring tasks actually costs us mental energy and depletes the finite amount of willpower we wake up with each morning. Every time you spot the task on your to-do list or around your house, your brain thinks about it, weighs up the pros and cons of doing it now vs later, and makes a decision. Multiply that by several times during a day and you’re consuming valuable brain effort and time. It’s more cognitively efficient to tackle the less palatable or harder tasks first, known as ‘eating the frog’, which has the added benefit of helping you feel less weighed down and more productive for the rest of the day.

2.    Uncover the emotion.

When someone is struggling with procrastination, I ask them what emotion they are feeling about the task or decision they are putting off. Resentment? Boredom? Frustration? Lack of confidence? It can be hard to pin this down because we may not be paying much (or any) attention to the underlying emotion, but keep exploring this until the answer emerges.

Identifying the emotion can give us some clues about what’s really going on and shed some light on why we’re procastinating. With this clearer view, from here we can decide whether we want to do anything about it and if so, what the possible courses of action might be.

3.    Spot your motivation.

In the theory of self-determination researched and developed by Deci and Ryan (see their figure 1) different types of motivation lie along a continuum which stretches from amotivation , where we are just going through the motions, to extrinsic motivation , where we are responding to an external demand or reward, and on to intrinsic motivation , where our motivation comes from within us.

Some good questions to ask ourselves, or others we may be coaching or managing, are: ‘do you have to do this or are you choosing to do it?’ ‘what does completing this task/decision mean to you? And to others?’ or ‘how important is this task/decision to you personally and why?’.

4.    Get constructively critical.

When we’re reluctant to get on with a task or decision, sometimes this is to do with rational factors at play, rather than emotional ones. For example, the purpose or process relating to this task isn’t clear or the timing is poorly planned.   Standing back and looking critically at the objective, deadline, resourcing and any interconnected tasks or decisions can help you to identify ambiguities or inefficiencies that no-one else is paying attention to.

By asking ‘what outcome are we trying to achieve?’, ‘am I the right person to do this work?’, and ‘what’s really driving the timescales?, you can uncover any hidden assumptions and agree on ways to simplify, delegate or – joy! - even eliminate the task.

5.    Assess the environment.

Sometimes it’s the landscape around us that presents us with barriers to getting on with the job - these barriers can be physical, virtual or people-related. Physical barriers may be visual or aural distractions that prevent us from concentrating on the task or lacking the right tools for the job; likewise virtual barriers may be connectivity issues, digital distractions or clunky interfaces and user experiences. People-related barriers might include lack of access at the necessary time to the people you need to collaborate with or involve in decisions.

With barriers it can help to map out or write down everything you need to accomplish this task successfully, looking at it from all angles, then tackle each barrier in turn (or look for an alternative approach if you can’t). This works just as well if you’re trying to get a small child (or a teenager) out of the house on time in the morning, as parenting expert Anita Cleare once advised me – map the route through the house to the door, get your child to line up everything they need to take with them and move all potential distractions out of the way or out of sight.

6.    Tweak your habit(s).

Once you’ve identified where you tend to procastinate and why, you can start to work on your own behaviours. We rely heavily on habits, consciously and unconsciously, to manage our day and our work: habits are typically comprised of a cue or trigger, then the activity or routine, followed by the reward. By looking closely at the cue, we can identify ways to change the activity or routine so that we’re more likely to get it done in good time. For example, if you always end up sorting and submitting your expense receipts at the last possible moment, then rather than using the submission deadline as the cue, make your new cue the moment when you incur the expense, so you build a new habit and mental association around doing the two things (purchasing and filing) in quick succession.

Notice too the reward that each habit results in: what’s the pay-off to you when you complete the task/take the decision? How does it make you feel? Here’s a reward-based example: I’ve been reading a book a week during 2022 and have realised that when I take 15-20 minutes to read during the day, I feel more refreshed physically and mentally and remember the content more (my ‘reward’) compared to when I leave all the reading until bedtime (when I invariably fall asleep after one page and forget what I've read).

If you’ve got a regular reflective practice going already, then use one of those reflective sessions to consider these questions more comprehensively. If you don’t and you’re looking for some speedy answers, you don’t need to work through all six reflections above every time you’re procrastinating; you’ll probably have a immediate sense of which one(s) might be most useful to you to focus on. Or share the list with a colleague, direct report or your team and find out what insights flash for them – a quick chat about this can often shed light on our procrastination problem too.   Good luck, let me know what works for you and if you want more personalised support then join my group coaching programme or ask me about my 1:1 coaching packages. A last word of advice: if procrastination is really holding you back right now, don’t make a mental note to come back to this at some unspecified time. Tackle it today.

The power of tiny actions

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 12:38:30 GMT

'The clock is ticking...

'We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing….We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator’ . On Monday, António Guterres’ words reverberated around the world. The Secretary General of the United Nations’ opening remarks to the COP 27 attendees are still ringing in my ears; the frustration and the heartfelt plea is visceral. Limiting earth’s temperature rise to 1.5°C seems as impossible a task as winning the many other battles going on around the world, from ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to dismantling the oppression of women and ethnic minorities, to resolving raging inequality and poverty even in ‘rich’ countries. It’s easy and understandable to feel discouraged and say ‘this is too hard’ or ‘I can’t change that’. All change feels hard, particularly big, complex, ambitious goals. But as individuals, we have more power than we might think.

In The Future of Time , I write about how in our world of work we are stuck in an old way of operating that isn’t benefitting us as individuals or the businesses we work for. Yes there are a few encouraging signs of progress post-pandemic, including flexible working becoming mainstream and the widespread adoption of new collaboration and communication tools. Yet overwork is still a big problem, our working hours are fragmented by constant interruptions and task-switching, we’re pulled in competing directions by multiple corporate initiatives and processes, and the boundaries of our working time continue to erode. In our non-stop, high-speed work culture, there is precious little time to linger in a conversation, to let our minds idle or even have some social time with colleagues with no other purpose than to have fun together. No wonder then that many people are feeling more depleted, lonelier and less fulfilled in their career than ever.

Tackling all of this feels hard. Change IS hard, whether we’re trying to make a change happen in our own life, in our team or organisation, or across the whole of society. This week for example, we heard about the ‘ alarming lack of women in executive roles ’ despite the UK reaching 40% of women on boards in FTSE 100 companies. Making positive change happen takes constant effort and resilience and this can take its toll - there is much talk currently of diversity fatigue, gender fatigue and change fatigue in businesses that catapult from one transformation to another. My podcast guest Victoria Livingstone, EMEA Chief People Officer at Densu International, shares some great advice on this from her extensive experience in leading transformational change programmes (episode airs on Monday 14th Nov).

Big actions help of course. We won’t slow down climate change without ambitious steps being agreed and implemented by every nation. Whatever the issue, high profile campaigns, publicly stated targets and influential endorsements from powerful figures all help to get the message across and create momentum. But don’t be fooled into thinking these big actions are all it takes. In my consulting career, we used to say ‘change begins and ends with me’: making change happen means we all have to do something different, however small and seemingly insignificant the action. Just look at the immensely courageous women in Iran who are making their voices heard by passing on scribbled messages to others, removing their headscarves, singing from the rooftops and joining in protests. Each person’s brave action is inspiring others and leading to a swelling chorus for freedom that is being closely watched around the world.

Going back to our world of work, there are many tiny ways in which we can influence the accepted ‘norms’ and help bring about more productive, inclusive and healthier working practices. We don’t have to publicly champion a cause, lead an initiative or network or become a social media influencer with thousands of followers. We can exert our influence through tiny actions that over time have a reinforcing, rippling effort. At a brilliant talk last week about THAT famous ‘misogyny speech’ 10 years ago (read the speech here or watch it here ), the former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, now Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, talked with Mary Beard, renowned classicist and author of ‘Women and Power’, about how we can make faster progress in eliminating sexism, misogyny and other -isms in society and in our workplaces. Their advice? To take tiny actions, or ‘micro-fightbacks’ every day. The CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, Ann Francke, says something similar in her book ‘Create a gender-balanced workplace’ which I read in week #43 of my 2022 Reading Challenge #ReclaimTimeToRead : ‘ if you tolerate the little incivilities then you contribute to a culture where it’s still ok to get away with the bigger things ’. The power of tiny actions applies to whatever change you are looking to make happen, not just in addressing gender inequality.

So let’s start the micro-fightbacks! Here are some ways we can do this in our day-to-day working lives to make our places of work more human-centred, more supportive and more rewarding places to spend our time. Call out a biased comment when you hear it. Invite an overlooked colleague to contribute their opinion. Say no to (or reschedule) that lunchtime call that eats up your work break – and explain why. Ask your client or boss to reconsider a deadline that requires you to work at the weekend instead of enjoying your much-needed downtime. Propose a different way of delivering something if the existing way means duplicated effort, unnecessary work and re-work. Pick up the phone or invite someone for a coffee or a walk if you’re sensing they’re having a bad day or going through a difficult time – even if it means setting aside your own work for a little longer. Who knows what the ripple effects from the conversation might be over time, for you both and for others.

So what tiny action will YOU take today? And tomorrow? And the day after….? I’d love to hear.

Bringing out the rockstar in all of us

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 15:31:11 GMT

How often do we bring 'the other me' to work?

Last week I left my home office in our quiet Kent village and stepped into a different world, spending 2 days at the celebrated Cheltenham Literature Festival. I spoke on a panel about the future of work at a breakfast event alongside Johanna Thomas Corr, incoming Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, and Lizzie Penny, joint CEO of Hoxby and co-author of Workstyle. Between events I got to hang out in the Writers’ Tent - picture squishy leather sofas, free food and drink and lively book chatter - with far more famous and celebrated writers than me. I loved it all: speaking, seeing my book in the Waterstones book tent, signing copies, listening to other talks and chatting to attendees. A friend commented amusingly to me afterwards about my ‘rockstar’ life, and indeed it did feel a little like being a rockstar for 48 hours, minus the entourage and air guitar. It was exciting and invigorating to let this other 'me' out.

The following day normal life resumed, complete with the school run and hanging out the washing. As I pegged up the seemingly endless line of socks, I pondered: how much time do we invest in the other ‘me’s? How often do we get to explore different sides to our personalities, practice different skills, try out new experiences, wear a different image to our usual one, and meet different people in new settings? How much are we limited by our ‘usual’ routine, environment and yes, our ingrained expectations of ourself?

It also made me question how much of ‘the other me’ we share with others at work. I recall an interview at the start of my consulting career when I was in my 20’s in which I talked about having a ‘professional’ self and a ‘personal’ self and how I presented only certain aspects of my persona to colleagues and clients at work. I was never sure if that was an advantgeous or disadvantageous thing to confess to! But for some years I certainly hid some aspects of my personality and interests in order to fit into the perceived mould, although I've gradually overcome that as I've become older and care less about fitting in.

As a writer and adviser on creating diverse, healthy, productive work cultures where everyone can flourish, I’m professionally interested in this question too. What stops us from bringing our full identity to work? From trying out different skills or interests during our careers? Remote working during lockdowns gave employers unprecedented insights into our private worlds outside of the office and by extension our fuller personalities, our hobbies and our home lives. One positive consequence is that employers are now recognising more openly that we are multi-faceted humans with commitments and interests outside of our day job, and many are embracing more inclusive working practices and norms that help us to be more open with colleagues and clients about our circumstances, ambitions and constraints.

But how much time do we spend on finding out about these other sides to our colleagues? In our high speed, long hours work culture we typically value task accomplishment more than interpersonal curiosity – and we have to stop pounding the work treadmill in order to enquire, listen, empathise and appreciate. But these behaviours are exactly the ones that help create strong, connected communities characterised by high levels of mutual trust, openness and support. Not only is this social connection the aspect of office life that we’ve been missing the most, according to this recent Microsoft study, but also it boosts wellbeing, belonging, creativity and those elusive higher levels of productivity (defined here as better quality outputs in less time).

Some ways organisations can signal that bringing ‘the other me’ to work is encouraged and celebrated are:

1.    Allowing people to invest time in ‘passion projects’ for a few hours per week/month
2.    Recognising people’s contribution to running/supporting employee networks and other community-oriented initiatives in their job design and performance objectives
3.    Participating in group challenges or shared fundraising activities
4.    Setting up crowdsourcing tools via which people can pool their brainpower and experience drawn from external activities to help problem-solve or generate ideas
5.    Encouraging storytelling about different lived experiences and career ‘ups and downs’.
6.    Bringing in speakers from very different industries or disciplines

As individuals, we can invite more disclosure from our colleagues and learn more about them are by asking:

•    What does your ideal day off look like?
•    What unfulfilled ambitions do you have?
•    Tell me about something or someone you’re really proud of?

And some questions we can reflect on ourselves are:

•    What have I not devoted time to lately? (that I am missing)
•    What side of me have I kept hidden away?
•    What mode do colleagues/family usually see me in at work/at home?

This way, we’re more likely to discover and enjoy the hidden rockstars around us at work, and in our circles outside of work. And we might get to enjoy that rockstar feeling ourselves for more than a day or two.

Feeling 'meh' about work?

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 21:12:40 GMT

The term ‘quiet quitter’ has been making waves in the press lately.

It was coined not to describe employees who leave without any fuss, but people who stay, do their jobs … and no more. They don’t go the extra mile, they don’t feel a deep sense of purpose and they aren’t highly committed to their employer. Does this transactional ‘meh’ attitude to work matter, to us or to the organisations we work for? This FT article (£) and Bartleby’s column in The Economist (£) ask this question and both conclude that employers should stop obsessing about winning employees’ hearts and minds and most desirable of all, their discretionary work effort.

One person who was the polar opposite of a quiet quitter was our late Queen, whose funeral takes place in a few days’ time as I write this. For a great number of people in the UK and around the world, her steady presence throughout our lives will be deeply missed. Whatever your own views on the monarchy or your own reaction to her death, it is hard to think of another individual who dedicated so many decades to fulfilling their role with such ceaseless energy and commitment. These characteristics defined her in many ways: her reign, her public life, her private life and her legacy, and they have left me reflecting in recent days on what to draw from her example and this point in our history.

I’m not advocating that we all ought to be similarly committed to our work lives or keep calm and stoically carry on when the going gets tough. After all, we have far greater freedom to change our roles than our monarch does; we’re pretty unlikely to hit the global headlines or enter the history books if we do. But whether we are super-motivated in our work, a quiet quitter or actively heading towards the door, we can pause and take a little time to look again at our colleagues and our workplace and notice afresh the people or things that we perhaps have been taking for granted and would miss if they were no longer there. Things that bring us little (or big) moments of satisfaction, pleasure, pride, purpose or connection. For me, it's when some people respond so positively when I ask ‘would you have 5 minutes to talk something over with me?’; or when they send words of support and encouragement unprompted, often in the margins of another exchange; or when I’ve helped someone figure out a way through an organisational or personal challenge. Even if you’re really disgruntled at work, I bet you can find something.

In this speeded-up, fast-changing, uncertain world we spend most of our time with our heads down doing our duty – as employees, as breadwinners, as family members – and we’re often running fast just to keep up. it’s all too easy to overlook these things that we unconsciously treasure. But when we do pause to appreciate them they enrich us, our outlook and our relationships with others. Which can only be a good thing for everyone, including our employers.

Leaning in to missing out

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 10:12:04 GMT

What does a good holiday mean to you?

A flurry of social activities with visits to friends and family? Outings, expeditions, and new destinations explored? Or do you tackle those jobs around the house that have been staring reproachfully at you all year? Amidst all of that, how much of your annual leave will be spent in a leisurely way? Enjoying real leisure time is harder than we think, for many reasons, and something we are collectively failing to do well. Here's why, and how we can polish up our rusty leisure habits this summer.

Firstly, we’re not great at even taking our annual leave. A 2018 Glassdoor study found that ‘40% of employees do not take their full annual leave entitlement because they are too busy’. Even when we do take it, we rarely switch off completely and often ‘keep an eye’ on work matters with our devices never far from reach. In today’s world of 24/7 connectedness and blurry work/life boundaries, it takes a lot of discipline and willpower to detach from work and be fully focused on our home lives. Ben Higgins, Managing Director and UK Head of Human Resources at Societe Generale and Chair of the City HR Association, recently spoke on my podcast (starts at 20m 20s) about how he manages to do this despite being in a very senior role with a big workload and team to manage.

Secondly, slowing down can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. Even when we switch off our devices and physically stop working our brain often carries on churning at top speed, trapped in its ceaseless drum of activity like a never-ending spin cycle. We’re so used to constantly consuming incoming information, checking media updates and juggling competing demands on our attention that we can feel twitchy and restless when we try and stop. I often feel in a hurry to get past this uncomfortable stage of disconnecting into a more zen-like mental relaxation, and am reminded of the exhortation to ‘Hurry up and slow down’ that the energetic, impatient Hare implores of the glacially-paced Tortoise in the wonderful children’s book of the same name.

Finally, in today’s purpose-driven world, we often feel compelled to use our downtime profitably. Instead of simply ‘being’ we fill our leisure time with ‘doing’ and even ‘achieving’, whether that’s ticking ambitions off our bucket list, starting projects we’ve been meaning to get round to doing, or simply filling our time up with pre-planned activity until there’s no space left. As in many families, my husband and I both work so we face the practical need to arrange a certain amount of activities and childcare during the school holidays. But aside from that, every year I tell myself I won’t fill up the calendar completely but leave it open for long, invitingly empty days, clinging onto the vision of us all lazing in the garden or pottering on the beach. But as fliers for theatre offers, kids activities and local open days tumble temptingly into my inbox like the Hogwarts invitations spewing out of the Dursleys’ fireplace in Harry Potter, I can’t resist the urge to say yes to some of them. Is it FOMO or discomfort with boredom? Probably a bit of both, if I’m honest. But suddenly I realise I’ve passed the tipping point and I start to panic there’ll be no clear days before we’re gearing up again for autumn.

So how do we get better at stopping? At embracing leisure properly, without deadlines or self-imposed objectives? Some words of wisdom on this from books I’ve been reading in my 2022 reading challenge, #ReclaimTimeToRead , keep coming back to me:

In Overwhelmed: work, love and play when no-one has the time , Brigid Schulte says ‘ constantly choosing leisure is the first step to reclaiming it ’. We have to actively choose leisure over all the other possible choices we could make, or it simply doesn’t happen. That means consciously choosing not to do other things, like check our phones, reach for our to-do list or squeeze in a quick errand.
Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: why we do what we do and how to change , explains how habits are at the root of how we behave and by observing and adjusting the cues or triggers, we can change our routines more successfully. When the first few moments of idle time arrive, do we instinctively reach for our phones out of habit or look for something to do? If so, putting our devices and to-do lists out of sight in a bag or drawer and putting something more enticing within reach (sunhat and book?) can help break that cycle.
And in one of my favourite books ever, Four Thousand Weeks , Oliver Burkeman reminds us that when it comes to choosing how we spend our time, ‘ there are hard choices to be made: which balls to let drop, which people to disappoint; which cherished ambitions to abandon; which roles to fail at ’. Slowing down means saying no to things we’d like to say yes to and to my earlier FOMO point, leaning in to missing out.

I’m going to be practising some of these things over the next few weeks, so if I don’t reply to your email, if I politely decline your invitation or if my house and garden are a total mess, it’s not that I don’t care. I’m simply stopping the clock, flexing my rusty leisure 'muscles' and hopefully discovering the upsides of missing out. Are you in too? Let’s swap notes on the other side.

PS. If this blog has touched a deeper, nagging concern that life is rushing by and you're not living it the way you'd like to, then join me in October to transform the way you think about, and spend, your time.

Freedom to choose

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 08:27:36 GMT

What was your reaction?

I was appalled at the US Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn Roe v Wade, thereby ending federal protection of the legal right to abortion for American women. Why should I care so much? I’m not a US citizen or resident, my childbearing years are behind me and I’m fortunate that here in the UK we have well-established legal freedoms ensuring women’s right to choose whether to continue with or terminate a pregnancy. Well, I care for two reasons, one societal, the other personal - more on those shortly. Whether they are facing an unplanned pregnancy or the opposite scenario of trying and failing to get pregnant, whatever their circumstance and whatever their wishes, when it comes to reproductive health women need 4 things to help them decide on the right course of action.

Let's consider first the societal impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling. It hasn’t ‘just’ ripped up the legal right to abortion, it has dramatically unwound years of painfully slow, hard-won progress towards gender equality and equal rights. Women will be forced down paths not of their choosing, denied access to the healthcare they need and criminalised for thinking deeply about whether they are able to bring a baby safely into the world, love it, care for it and provide for it – possibly with minimal support - for the next 18 years and beyond. And that’s not even taking into account any distressing or traumatic circumstances under which they may have conceived or what the baby’s or mother’s life prospects will be if either are facing serious health issues. Abortions will not cease, they will simply go underground and become unsafe, further jeopardising the mother’s health. Many teenage girls and young women may, as a result of this ruling, stop their education early due to state-enforced motherhood and as a result watch their life choices, job prospects and earnings potential dwindle and never recover. As a a mother and stepmother of two girls, I fear for the futures of all young Americans coming into womanhood. Travelling out of state to access medical advice and interventions will require sufficient funds and time off work and therefore won’t be available to all; this ruling will disproportionately impact those on low incomes and in precarious employment or unemployment and will deepen social and racial inequalities still further.

Secondly, the personal reasons behind my reaction. As a woman and as a mother who tries hard to instil independence, a sense of agency and resilience in my own young daughter and to teach her to make her own choices in life, it makes me viscerally angry to see this most basic of right – to make our own healthcare decisions, to decide what does and doesn’t happen to our own bodies – taken away from other girls and women. It sends a chilling signal, reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, that a woman’s role and place in society is first and foremost as a bearer of children; that her own wishes, hopes, ambitions, value and identity come a poor second, if acknowledged at all.

Whilst I count my blessings never to have been in the position of needing to consider a termination, I have needed access to expert advice and medical help for the polar opposite situation: trying to get pregnant. After 3 years of trying for a baby in my mid/late 30’s (not postponed as a ‘lifestyle choice’ in order to focus on my career, simply because I had only just met someone with whom I wanted to bring a baby into this world), we were refused access to NHS fertility treament because my husband has two children from his first marriage. Many investigations, countless injections, one private, failed round of IVF and several thousand pounds later, we were given the diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’ and told we’d never have our own child. But we had still had options and the freedom to make our own decisions and yes, being able to pay for this advice and treatment privately (with all the financial sacrifices that entailed) helped keep some options on the table. We were advised to consider surrogacy or adoption; we were also free to decide, against the experts’ advice, to try one more round of IVF that was ‘bound to fail’ but which, against the odds, miraculously worked. I am eternally grateful for those choices and freedoms, for the support every step of the way from our doctors, families, friends and the few colleagues at work who knew what we were going through.

Going through that experience left me wanting to help others facing difficult journeys to parenthood. So now I speak publicly (FT, £) about my past infertility and try to help break down the taboo at work about this topic. I’m on the Steering Committee of the Workplace Fertility Community that runs free monthly webinars and hosts a Linked In group offering advice, resources and examples for employers. And I work with organisations to help them develop fertility policies and put in place practical, valued support for any employees needing help with their reproductive health.

Trying to conceive and bear a child is clearly a very different situation to trying to decide what to do about an unplanned, unsafe or unwanted pregnancy; I’m not arguing they are one and the same. But whichever situation women – and their partners – find themselves in, they need the same things:

1.    Timely access to unbiased, accurate medical information and advice to help them understand what their options are and what the right choice is for them: whether to proceed or not and what the risks and consequences will be, physically, emotionally, financially.
2.    Non-judgmental support from people around them as they make those decisions and who help them, in time, come to terms with the outcomes and to move forward in life.
3.    Practical, financial and emotional assistance such as being able to attend appointments and take time off work without fear of reprisal, being demoted, seeing their pay or prospects stagnate or losing their job; access to loans, vouchers and other means of funding to cover travel and medical expenses; knowing their employer cares about them as more than just a number.
4.    To be listened to and to be heard. To be asked ‘what is important to you in all of this?’, ‘what do you need right now to get through this?' and ‘how can I/we help you?’. Not to be ignored, told they are wrong or told how they should feel or what they should do.

Sometimes people find themselves facing the hardest decisions imaginable, in life-changing situations they didn’t plan or choose to be in, or they can see the life path ahead that they want to make happen but they can’t do it on their own. As a society, as employers, as colleagues and as friends, we all have a role to play in helping them to make the choices that are right for them . Not to sit in judgment, label their wishes as ‘wrong’, decide for them, punish them for their decisions or take their freedom away.

It is heartening to see a number of large US employers quickly announce their policies to support employees needing access to out-of-state medical advice and expertise for terminations or unspecified ‘medical interventions’, including providing financial assistance. If you're at a UK-based organisation and thinking this issue doesn't feel relevant to you right now – think again. Your employees today still need to understand and manage their own reproductive health just as they need to manage other, more spoken-about aspects of their wellbeing. And some of them may be wrestling right now with a difficult reproductive health decision, unbeknown to you or other colleagues.

So stand up, speak up and let them know you are there for them and ready to listen.

When do we say ‘yes’?

Thu, 12 May 2022 19:46:18 GMT

When do we say yes?

On my podcast recently, my guest* Leonard Ng, one of the City’s most influential lawyers , attributed his career success in part to his habit of saying yes to every opportunity that comes up: “I participate in everything and I always find something that's good from that thing. Even if it didn't look apparent at the time, it might be five years later, someone I met at an event whom I said ‘yes’ to now becomes a client or asks me for help.” This got me thinking. I can fully see how keeping an open mind and accepting whatever invitations or requests arise can lead to all sorts of unexpected experiences, connections and discoveries. But most of us lead pretty busy, full lives; inevitably there are limits to what we can do and no-one has more than 24 hours in a day. Unsustainable workloads are a key factor behind the Great Resignation, as I commented on recently in this Forbes article . So when, and why, do we say yes?

Sometimes we say yes, despite reservations or the costs (financial or otherwise) to ourselves, because saying yes fits with the things we believe in and care deeply about; they resonate with our values. Last month, my husband, daughter and I flew to Australia for 3 weeks to see my grown up stepchildren who are living and working out there. We agonised for ages over whether or not to commit to this big, expensive, logistically-complicated journey at a time when we were both busy with work and Covid was still disrupting travel. In the end, we came to the simple realisation that being together as a family, and showing my stepchildren in this way how much we love them, mattered more to us than anything else. So off we flew and our time together, the fun we had and the memories we brought back were priceless (even if the credit card bill made us blink). In the context of work and careers, Adam Grant’s excellent book Give and Take explores why ‘givers’ - people who say yes to helping others out of value-driven motives with no expectation or desire for personal reward - are more successful over the longer-term than ‘matchers’ who seek mutual benefit or ‘takers’ who see life and business as a zero sum game where they are only chasing their own gain, invariably at others’ expense. ‘Matchers’ want to share out the pie equally, ‘takers’ compete for the biggest slice and ‘givers’ bake more pie by helping others succeed.

More prosaically, demands on our time at work come in thick and fast. When should we say yes to these? Obviously sometimes we have no choice if we value our job, but it’s rarely that black and white. If a request for an urgent turnaround or deadline comes at a high price for us, then we can often negotiate the scope or explore the possibility of an extension. Recent research by Ashley Whillans, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and author of Time Smart: how to reclaim your time and live a happier life , shows that when it comes to asking for extensions, we typically fear we’ll be judged negatively or our request turned down. But many employees ‘overestimate the extent to which their bosses care how fast they complete their work’, and quality of output generally trumps speed. Deadlines are extendable more often than we think.

Saying yes doesn’t have to mean an outright commitment without any counterproposal. If you’ve received a request, an invitation or another kind of work/business opportunity requiring an investment of your time and expertise for free, this can be a hard one to decide particularly if you work independently or run your own business. We might say yes if there are valuable non-financial benefits we might ask for in exchange, such as the opportunity to raise our profile, grow our network, test out new skills, agree a quid-pro-quo or a land a coveted introduction to another individual or organisation.

Then there’s the serendipity factor, when saying yes can trigger unexpected conversations and chance connections that open up rewarding opportunities you’d never previously considered. I recently spoke for free as a panellist at a professional networking event, and it ultimately led to a professionally valuable introduction and a potentially exciting collaboration.

Or maybe we say yes simply because that kind of opportunity brings us joy, fulfilment, connection, friendship or variety. In short, because it makes us - and others - feel good. And who would say no to that?

Sometimes saying yes feels like stepping off a cliff into the unknown without a safety harness: we can feel wracked with doubt and fearful of failure or humiliation. But sometimes it’s a case of ‘now or never’, and as a good friend told me when I was contemplating a major career decision ‘if you don’t try, you’ll always wonder what might have been and you’ll never know the answer. Even if you try and fail, you’ll be wiser from it, and another door may open in its place’. She was absolutely right.

I’m not advocating that we relinquish all control over our diary our workload and our life. We all need boundaries, downtime and time when we’re not available to anyone else. But pausing to reflect now and again on our motivations and our mindsets for saying 'yes' can help us to avoid being steamrollered by life and instead, to craft a life well-lived.

*The episode with Leonard Ng (Episode 3, Series 2) airs Monday 16th May

How employers and employees are re-working work together

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:04:09 GMT

The Great Resignation & The Future Of Work: How Employers and Employees Are Reworking Work Together

My interview in Authority Magazine by journalist Karen Mangia .

… Businesses need to create a different experience of work, which will drive better outcomes for their bottom line and for their employees. They need to look afresh at every aspect of their organisation and aim to ‘fix the system’, instead of trying to fix the individual. This means changing the way they structure their organizations, take decisions, collaborate, manage work, lead teams and attend to interpersonal relationships.

When it comes to designing the future of work, one size fits none. Discovering success isn’t about a hybrid model or offering remote work options. Individuals and organizations are looking for more freedom. The freedom to choose the work model that makes the most sense. The freedom to choose their own values. And the freedom to pursue what matters most. We reached out to successful leaders and thought leaders across all industries to glean their insights and predictions about how to create a future that works.

As a part of our interview series called “How Employers and Employees are Reworking Work Together,” we had the pleasure to interview Helen Beedham.

Helen Beedham is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Future of Time: how ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing, in which she sets out how organisations urgently need to embrace a new way of managing time at work. A former management consultant then chair of a professional network, Helen holds an MA from Cambridge University and as writer, speaker and adviser, she draws on over 25 years of expertise in shaping organisational cultures and nurturing professionals’ careers. In her podcast ‘The Business of Being Brilliant’ she explores the human side of work, talking with business and HR leaders and academics about what helps us, and the businesses we work in, to flourish.

Thank you for making time to visit with us about the topic of our time. Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better. Can you please tell us about one or two life experiences that most shaped who you are today.

Probably the most defining life experience was losing my father very suddenly to heart disease when he was just 59, as I was in my late 20’s. He’d shown no outward signs of illness and we were — and still are — are very close family, so it was a devastating shock to us all. That was 22 years ago now. One of the things that experience taught me was how we often assume we will have all the time in the world to do the things we dream of, but in actuality, we may not. So I’ve learnt to appreciate life’s fragility and to make the most of the here and now.

As an example of that, I ran the London Marathon in 2018 with my younger brother. I’d run 5–10k distances regularly for many years but never saw myself as a marathon runner. But cheering my brother on in the 2017 London Marathon inspired me to get training too — put it down to a healthy dose of sibling rivalry! The 2018 Marathon turned out to be the hottest on record; I ran it without stopping and the experience was incredible: I’ll never forget the roar of 40,000 people cheering us on — or the welcome sight of the finish line. The experience reminded me that I can do ‘big things’ when I put my mind to it and gave me courage to follow other ambitions such as to set up my own business and to write a book. (And no, I have no plans to run another marathon).

Let’s zoom out. What do you predict will be the same about work, the workforce and the workplace 10–15 years from now? What do you predict will be different?

What will not change, in my view, is our need for a sense of purpose in our work lives, for personal growth and for meaningful interpersonal relationships. Wherever we work from, and however we do our work, we will still want to feel part of a community that genuinely values what we each bring — our skills, our knowledge, our life experiences and our ways of thinking. Increasingly we will gravitate towards employers and businesses that can offer us this, along with sustainable workloads that allow us to thrive, progress in our careers and enjoy our lives outside of work.

In terms of what will be different, I’d like to say that we will have abandoned the cult of busyness that characterises our world of work — the frenzied urgency, short-term deadlines and horizons and the greater value that is placed on our being present, visible and available rather than on what we actually achieve. I predict that businesses will be judged much more sharply on the kind of work culture they promote and on whether they nurture healthy, inclusive workplace behaviours and working patterns. Today 20–30% of a business’ market capitalisation (if they are a publicly listed company) is determined by their reputation; in the future, I believe that a corporate reputation will be made or broken by the way the business treats its employees and shapes its workplace culture.

What advice would you offer to employers who want to future-proof their organizations?

One of the biggest challenges facing employers today is how they attract, develop and retain the people and skills they need for their business to succeed in the future. This is at a time when we are adopting and integrating new technology into our workplace at an astonishing pace with automation, cloud computing, digital platforms, data analytics and of course virtual and hybrid working.

The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, time spent on existing work activities globally by humans and machines will be equal; 85 million jobs will be ‘displaced’ and 97 million new roles will emerge. Some of the more worrying consequences of this digitization of work include the fragmentation of our working time, unproductive multi-tasking, long working hours on screens without sufficient breaks and a reported rise in loneliness and joylessness in our daily work lives.

It’s well recognised that employers who want to future-proof their organizations will need to devote more time to training, developing and reskilling employees to help displaced workers find new roles and succeed in these. Those that do this successfully will not just solve their talent sourcing conundrums but also reap financial rewards — this study by the consulting firm BCG in March 2020 found that the top 5% of companies investing in people development increase their revenue twice as fast as the bottom 5%, and their profits 1.4 times as fast. But alongside learning and development programmes, employers need to focus on fostering humanity at work and enabling longer-term careers in this era of automation, big data and algorithms. If they really want to future-proof their organizations, employers need to invest in ‘humanizing’ their workplaces as much as they invest in digitizing them. They can do this by offering flexibility over the short and long term and prioritizing time during the working week for people to think, create, connect and socialise with colleagues in a more rewarding way.

What do you predict will be the biggest gaps between what employers are willing to offer and what employees expect as we move forward? And what strategies would you offer about how to reconcile those gaps?

Most knowledge-based businesses have impressive statements and policies around welcoming diversity but the majority are still clinging onto a ‘one size fits all’ way of working that simply doesn’t work for everyone and I see scant signs of change. For proof, just look at our homogenous leadership teams, our UK national gender pay gap that is stuck at around 14% and the continued under-representation and slower career progression of people of colour in the workforce. Increasingly, employees are expecting action and evidence from employers about how they are tackling this, rather than polished words. People want to feel genuinely welcomed, valued and included; if this doesn’t happen, they end up marginalized and over time they disengage, fail to reach their full potential and/or move on to a more enlightened employer.

Businesses which are serious about offering rewarding careers need to realize that until they re-evaluate the way they value and invest time at work, broad swathes of their workforces will continue to feel disadvantaged and demotivated. Instead of favouring presenteeism, speed and task accomplishment, businesses need to:

Define in straightforward terms what ‘productive’ looks like
Manage performance more transparently, addressing how work is delivered as well as what is delivered.
Take time to invite contributions from different perspectives to help avoid group think and organizational blindspots.
Dig into their organizational data for evidence of ‘time bias’ — how different groups of people are advantaged or disadvantaged by the way time spent at work is valued and rewarded.

We simultaneously joined a global experiment together last year called “Working From Home.” How will this experience influence the future of work?

Mass enforced remote-working proved to business leaders everywhere that their employees could be trusted to work from home, as employee productivity remained at least as high as, and often higher than, when people worked from offices. However, we already had a long hours culture and during the pandemic, working hours extended and blurred still further into non-working time. In future, working hours and practices will increasingly come under greater scrutiny in the media and in the law courts, as employers like Uber and Goldman Sachs have already experienced. The mountains of unpaid time that we effectively spend at our employer’s disposal will be questioned and leaders will be forced to address the damaging workloads and time pressure that many employees struggle with.

In future, we will need to become more ‘time-aware’ as individuals, managers, teams and organizations: we will have to learn how to collectively focus on the priorities, minimize distractions, manage boundaries and adopt healthier, more productive working habits day-to-day and over the longer term. We need to get better at collective time management. One way to do this is to foster ‘time-savvy teams’ through facilited team discussions and negotiations; another way is to role model ‘time-intelligent’ leadership whereby leaders visibly set positive examples around switching off, avoiding false urgency, valuing downtime and social time and coaching others in doing the same.

We’ve all read the headlines about how the pandemic reshaped the workforce. What societal changes do you foresee as necessary to support a future of work that works for everyone?

Two of the biggest changes that we need to see in societal terms are 1) accepting that men can be equal partners with women in terms of care giving and domestic responsibilities and 2) offering more affordable child care. Only once these are addressed will we begin to see better progress towards real gender equality and balance in the workplace. A third change is already gathering pace: greater calls and campaigns to address social injustices, which is being mirrored in our workplaces. Employees, investors and customers are increasingly calling businesses out on unacceptable practices and exclusive attitudes and behaviours.

What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of work?

Our potential to think creatively and collaboratively. We will always be confronted by issues and challenges to resolve in our world of work, but we have also demonstrated in the past couple of years just how adaptable and innovative we can be, in the face of daunting circumstances. I feel confident that with the right tools, healthy workplaces and foresighted leadership we can harness the abilities of employees to experiment and come up with solutions that will enrich our working lives. I also believe that the best ideas come from all sorts of different people — older workers nearing the end of their careers, younger employees starting out, and people from different backgrounds and cultures. So the more we welcome diversity of thought into our organizations, the more likely it is we’ll design a future of work that will work better for everyone.

Our collective mental health and wellbeing are now considered collateral as we consider the future of work. What innovative strategies do you see employers offering to help improve and optimize their employee’s mental health and wellbeing?

Many employers have been investing in wellbeing strategies and targeted solutions such as mindfulness sessions, social activities and talks by wellbeing experts. The more innovative employers are steering clear of piecemeal offerings and adopting a more strategic approach to wellbeing; in particular, they are looking at ‘flex wellbeing’ where employees can adapt their working arrangements and personalise their employee benefits to best suit their own wellbeing needs.

Employees are increasingly valuing time-centric benefits, such as meeting-free days and weeks, an annual corporate day off for wellbeing purposes (often billed as a thank you to employees for their hard work and an encouragement to rest), and additional wellbeing days off added to existing annual leave entitlements. Some employers are introducing a minimum number of days’ leave that employees are required to take and then offering unlimited paid leave once this threshold is met, as this People Management article describes. Working parent and carer employees at family-friendly employers have gained additional paid leave entitlements too, a practice introduced during the pandemic that looks set to stay. And longer stretches of paid and unpaid leave are being offered to employees for a far wider range of reasons than before.

The most innovative employers are not shying away from the underlying question of job design, an issue which is often disregarded or overlooked, yet unsustainable workloads tend to lie at the heart of work-related stress and overwork. These employers are considering the full range of time-flexibility options including part-time, job-sharing, hybrid or term-time roles, annualized or compressed hours and importantly, they are reviewing and updating job responsibilities to make sure the workload is ‘human-sized’ and regularly pruned to address scope creep.

It seems like there’s a new headline every day. ‘The Great Resignation’. ‘The Great Reconfiguration’. And now the ‘Great Reevaluation’. What are the most important messages leaders need to hear from these headlines? How do company cultures need to evolve?

The loudest message for leaders from these headlines is that the balance of power is shifting between employer and employee. So many employees are feeling burnt out, disengaged and unwilling to continue making such significant sacrifices in terms of their wellbeing and home lives. They are also judging their employer’s actions and practices more carefully and asking themselves: do I agree with the way business is conducted here? They are speaking up more, negotiating harder for an employment deal that works better for them, and voting with their feet. Leaders who insist on reverting to pre-pandemic work policies and practices will see their talented people ebb away to more enlightened competitors who are offering greater autonomy, flexibility and choice in terms of working arrangements, development and career paths.

Businesses need to create a different experience of work, which will drive better outcomes for their bottom line and for their employees. They need to look afresh at every aspect of their organisation and aim to ‘fix the system’, instead of trying to fix the individual. This means changing the way they structure their organizations, take decisions, collaborate, manage work, lead teams and attend to interpersonal relationships. By adopting the following 6 organisational traits, leaders can foster a healthier, more productive and inclusive work cultures:

Outcome obsessed: they have a laser-sharp focus on outcomes and leaders role model ‘time intelligence’
Deliberately designed: is on a permanent quest to minimize distractions and help people focus on the important work
Actively aware: they foster healthy habits and environments that enable people to do their best work
Career committed: they invest in long-term careers with tailored ‘time deals’
Community cultivators: they value humanity, social cohesion and wellbeing
Expertly evolving: they prize experimentation, learning and open-mindedness.

To bring these traits to life, there are a whole raft of practical solutions that organisations can implement, from establishing principles for working patters, harnessing technology thoughtfully to free up time and boost performance and rewarding contributions in a timely, fair and personalized way.

Let’s get more specific. What are your “Top 5 Trends To Track In the Future of Work?”

You can watch my ‘Top 5 Trends’ video on YouTube here .

Trend #1. Creating distraction-free environments, by:

Setting up quiet spaces online and in offices to allow people to concentrate or to switch off;
Focusing on a few clear priorities, keep asking ‘why are we doing this?’
Checking assumptions when work is commissioned, and explicitly confirming the deadlines and the required output.

Trend #2. Offering longer term careers, by:

Providing greater job security by minimizing redundancies, reskilling and redeploying people wherever possible.
Acknowledging that people’s ambitions vary by life stage, background and personal circumstances
Helping employees to be ‘the CEO of their career’, with the manager acting as coach and HR providing the tools, data and technology platform.

Trend #3. Rethinking business working hours, by:

Moving away from specifying formal business hours or fixed office hours
Introducing principles guiding working time, giving teams the freedom to decide when and how they work.
Different solutions include offering core working hours with flexibility either side of these; recognising time worked at weekends as at Arup; and experimenting with a four-day working week like Atom Bank and 30 other UK organisations.

Trend #4. Abandoning time as a measure of performance, by:

Shifting away from using billable hours/time as your primary performance metric, as some innovative law firms are looking to do.
Focus instead on outcomes and what has been delivered
Rewarding non-financial contributions as well — ‘how’ people have delivered as well as ‘what’ they have delivered.

Trend #5. Nudging users into better digital choices, by:

Adding pre-designed meeting options to reduce time spent online on video calls
Giving people 10–15 minutes ‘switching’ time between calls and meetings to aid better cognitive functioning and physical and mental health
Analysing your employees’ online habits to spot early signs of overwork, excessive presenteeism and insufficient breaks.

I keep quotes on my desk and on scraps of paper to stay inspired. What’s your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? And how has this quote shaped your perspective?

A favourite quote is: ‘ Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined ’ by Henry David Thoreau the American poet and philosopher. My colleague, mentor and friend Margaret gave me a card with this quote on when she left our consulting firm and it has often reminded me to believe in my goals and and my ability to achieve them.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He, she, or they might just see this if we tag them.

I would love the opportunity to meet and talk with the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman, whose book Thinking Fast and Slow has transformed our understanding of how our brains work. I drew on some of his ground-breaking research in my own business book.

Our readers often like to continue the conversation with our featured interviewees. How can they best connect with you and stay current on what you’re discovering?

Please do get in touch with me via my website, on Linked In and on Twitter. I also share my latest thinking and work on my YouTube channel and Instagram account.

Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and good health.

Time is our most valuable asset

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 20:12:40 GMT

Introduction to The Future of Time .

Business owners and executives tend to talk about their people being their most valuable asset, which is right and good. But I suggest there is another way of framing this: time is the most valuable asset. I should add here that, broadly speaking, I’m referring mainly to businesses that provide intangible products and services rather than those industries that require raw materials, plant and machinery to manufacture or distribute tangible goods. However, some of the principles will still apply across different types of business, regardless of what industry you’re in.

Our time is finite: no one gets more than 24 hours in a day. So what we all do with our time becomes the most important question. What value do we place on our time? How do we use our time at work? What choices and tradeoffs do we make? What impact do these have?

These are big questions. But they aren’t questions to which we pay much attention; in fact, we mostly ignore them. I don’t recall talking with colleagues or managers over the years about what we collectively spent our hours on and whether we were making the right choices. I’ve rarely heard business leaders talk about their own use of time – what they invested their time in and what they chose not to invest time in – or seen them take steps to free up our time so we can focus on the work that really matters.

Instead, we carry on much as we’ve always done. Our collective attitudes and habits with regard to time at work remain largely fixed, year after year. We are stuck in an old way of operating that isn’t beneficial to our health, our productivity or our businesses.

Our time culture at work is broken

Most people have heard about an organization’s culture; some find it an intangible concept to get their heads around. A good definition of culture on which I rely is Edgar Schein’s definition: shared, basic assumptions held by members of a group or organization, developed from shared learning experiences. CEOs, organizational experts and management gurus all recognize that to perform highly, enjoy competitive advantage and sustain growth over the longer-term, businesses need to have a strong, healthy culture.

So what is our time culture? If organizational culture in general consists of shared assumptions, then time culture specifically is our collective attitudes, values and behaviours at work in relation to time. It covers how we think about time, how we value it and how we live those beliefs through our day-to-day actions, words and decisions. Time culture impacts and informs the usually unspoken assumptions, norms and behaviours about working hours, being available to participate in meetings and conversations, being responsive to requests, meeting deadlines over which you may not have any influence. In the Western corporate world, our time culture typically is characterized by short-termism, speed and volume: fitting a huge amount of effort and activity into a working day or week, multitasking, responding immediately to questions or requests, and paying close attention to daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly results. Our time culture is also characterized by bureaucracy - the plethora of processes, structures, organizational layers and governance protocols that we create and that shape the way we work.

This time culture is deeply ingrained. It’s so embedded in the way our organizations are designed, in our business ‘norms’ and in our historical approach to working that we rarely stop to think about it or question it. It is only when it causes us or our businesses extreme pain that we are jolted into a realization that we need to ‘fix’ things.

This time culture is hurting us as individuals. There are winners and losers; the winners are those employees whose home lives or backgrounds enable them to ‘fit in’ and who can ‘give what it takes’ to get ahead by accepting without question this unspoken deal regarding time. Other employees, who for a whole variety of reasons would benefit from a different deal, see their jobs become unsustainable and their careers progress more slowly or stagnate. This really bothers me. I believe in equality in the workplace: getting into a professional organization and flourishing there should be a possibility for all who want that kind of career. But it isn’t. It’s heavily loaded in favour of some employees and against others. Being able to ‘get in and get on’ in our current time culture is highly dependent on our gender, our personal situation and our demographic. It’s also dependent on us making sacrifices in terms of our own wellbeing.

And it’s not only hurting us: our time culture is hurting businesses too. Research shows that the most diverse and inclusive organizations consistently perform best in their market, delivering quality services to clients and attracting, retaining and developing the most talented employees in a highly competitive labour market. However, our time culture is negatively impacting companies through reduced productivity, wellbeing and diversity. As a nation, the working hours in the United Kingdom are the longest in Europe – or even the world – yet our productivity lags behind. The incidence of stress and mental ill-health has been rising steadily, costing our health services over £22 billion per year and employers over £42 billion per year. As workplaces are failing to meet the needs of different groups of employees, businesses are making glacial progress towards their diversity goals.

When we talk about time and work, we focus almost exclusively on the individual, thinking in terms of what working hours are agreed or expected and how many days’ leave we can take, and how many hours we have billed to clients or spent chasing new business. There are countless sources of advice and many thoughtful experts encouraging us as individuals to work smarter and harder, and to be more productive with our time. The overwhelming ethos here is ‘it’s all about the individual’ – but I would argue that it’s the system we need to fix. We need to stop treating the symptoms and start treating the cause. This means looking critically at how we work, at what we collectively spend our time doing, and asking ourselves: ‘Is there a better way – one that works better for each employee and works better for the business?’

By changing our time culture, we can create more sustainable ways of working that will allow all kinds of talent to flourish. Careers will last longer, and richer diversity of thought and experience will lead to better creativity and decision-making. More employees will be able to thrive and succeed, and employers will reap the benefits in terms of attracting and retaining talent and improving business performance.

*****

You can order my Amazon bestselling business book The Future of Time here .

Footnotes

1.E.H. Schein, Organizational culture and leadership, 4th ed., Jossey-Bass, 2010
2. ‘British workers putting in longest hours in the EU, TUC analysis finds’, TUC, 17 April 2019, www.tuc.org.uk/news/british-workers- putting-longest-hours-eu-tuc-analysis-finds.
3. ‘Paying the price: The cost of mental health care in England to 2026’, The King’s Fund, 2008, www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/default/ files/Paying-the-Price-the-cost-of-mental-health-care-England- 2026-McCrone-Dhanasiri-Patel-Knapp-Lawton-Smith-Kings-Fund- May-2008_0.pdf.
4. ‘Poor mental health costs UK employers up to £45 billion a year’, Deloitte, 22 January 2020, www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press- releases/articles/poor-mental-health-costs-uk-employers-up-to-pound- 45-billion-a-year.html

The beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning?

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 08:04:23 GMT

This time last year I outlined 6 ways our work habits would change in 2021 , based on my conversations with business and HR leaders. So what did we actually witness last year? And will it be 'back to normal' or 'all change again' in 2022?

Businesses continued redesigning their operating models and transforming front and back office operations, and business travel remains at much lower level than pre-2020. The shift towards more tech-enabled client conversations and service delivery is here to stay. Individuals may have gained more control over how they fit their home lives around their work but the working day has lengthened without any proven rise in productivity and concern is growing about joyless work interactions, the rise of loneliness and disengagement. Hearing the mistrustful phrase ‘shirking from home‘ may be a distant memory and many organisations are continuing to trial different working arrangements before committing to a fixed ‘future model’. However there’s a chasm emerging between ‘old school’ leaders insisting on a blanket, full-time return to the office and more enlightened leaders who accept that people are unwilling to give up the autonomy they have gained over their work lives. The result? With the Great Resignation and the Great Job Hop, employees are voting with their feet if they see a better deal (aka greater flexibility) on offer elsewhere.

How might these developments play out further over the coming months? What are the new characteristics of the employer/employee relationship? Here are 7 trends that will reshape our world of work in 2022:

1. Time-centric benefits. The gym membership and travel loans seem outdated now and in their place, people are valuing time-related benefits. These include: additional/more varied leave entitlements; meeting-free weeks; and more creative time-flexible schedules such as term-time hours or being able to ‘bank’ non-working days and take these in longer stretches during quieter business periods. There will be more demand for sabbaticals, and at senior levels too such as this recent HSBC example.

2. The return of the awayday. As many people are likely to continue working remotely at least half of the time, the value of bringing people physically together centres more on nurturing social bonds, strengthening interpersonal trust and encouraging creative collaboration in a more rewarding way than talking through our computer screens. Outdoor-, nature- and wellbeing-focused activities and venues will be prized. Geese herding may have had its day though, according to the FT’s Working It podcast.

3. More collective recognition and rewards. As business strive to maintain or strengthen team bonds and a united sense of community, they are increasingly moving to team-based bonuses and away from rewards mechanisms that pit individuals against each other in a win/lose, competitive culture.

4. Investment in the ‘manager as coach’. Historically firms have only invested in building coaching expertise among senior executives and ‘high potential’ future leaders; line managers have tended to be overlooked. With hybrid- and remote-working, employee wellbeing and retention higher up the agenda, the role of the manager is no longer that of a supervisor looking over team members’ shoulders. Instead, successful managers now need to be coach, facilitator, counsellor and inclusive leader rolled into one.

5. Flexi-time leaders. The last bastion to fall: whilst many workforces have embraced more flexible working arrangements lower down the hierarchy, the senior leadership team is often still full-time and most likely to be found back in the office. Until that changes, people will look up the career ladder and see only one model for life at the top. And that will hamper efforts to create a more diverse senior cadre.

6. Offices that work. Workplaces that are designed to meet people’s actual needs, not a uniform set of cubicles or hot desks alongside a bank of meeting rooms. Quiet rooms, creative/collaboration spaces, hybrid-meeting rooms like this one at Google, areas for downtime and physical/mental recharging will be needed, as will outdoor working spaces where these can be created. People will be encouraged to plug in to any desk, pick up the (sanitised) noise cancelling headphones, switch on their ‘do not disturb’ light and turn off their video cameras and online messaging channels.

7. Team time management. Teams will benefit from allocating half days or full days to certain activities such as routine meetings, performance management, planning, learning and development, productive working time and social activities. Similarly greater co-ordination will be required across leadership groups around which days they will be in the office so that people coming in on less popular days of the week (Mondays and Fridays) will still have access to senior colleagues, the chance to network professionally and to be mentored in person. And in return, those leaders can talk directly and regularly with a wide range of employees so they are picking up new ideas and concerns and responding swiftly.

Professor Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, has told the BBC that ‘ it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK … I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic. ’ After two difficult years we’re all hoping we’re on the final stretch, but for me there's one big caveat: that our COVID-driven innovations at work leads to more permanent, positive change for businesses and employees alike.

The unexpected joy of meetings

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 15:31:37 GMT

I know. The word ‘meeting’ probably makes you inwardly groan, not jump for joy. Another commitment to fill up our work diary and eat into our precious time? No thanks. But in the past week, I’ve come to see meetings in a new, more uplifting light.

Disclaimer: this blog post isn’t going to persuade you how to fall back in love with routine, familiar meetings that feel oh-so-familiar. Or to stop you gritting your teeth at a badly run meeting with an unclear purpose. Or to reach for your Zoom app to schedule another video call. I fully acknowledge that the ebb and flow - or rather, ceaselessly incoming tide - of day-to-day work meetings can take their toll and leave us mentally depleted or physically itching to get on our with our to-do lists.

But that’s partly my point. It’s so easy to get used to our regular meeting routines and habits that we can forget a different kind of meeting also exists, one that has the power to refresh and revitalise us intellectually and emotionally. In our cult of busyness, we tend to focus so hard on the next goals or task that we end up accidentally de-prioritising time for non-urgent but deeply rewarding conversations with people on the fringes of our networks. Or those close to us in terms of shared experiences or histories but now further away geographically, or working in a different company or industry. Ex-colleagues, university friends, extended family members or other contacts who now live and work abroad.

In the past week, a number of unusual things have coincided for me. I’ve met up in person on a 1:1 basis with a few people with whom I have been in less frequent contact with over the last few months, even years. I’ve been visiting venues for the London launch of my business book next February, sparking new conversations with individuals I’ve not met before. I’ve attended a celebration at London Business School of a major piece of research into Board diversity and effectiveness in which I played a small role. And most wonderfully of all , I opened our door on Sunday to find my two grown-up stepchildren standing there. Given they now live in Australia and had kept their trip a surprise, you can imagine my shock and sheer delight to see them in the flesh after more than two long years of Covid-enforced separation.

No doubt you're thinking 'of course, long overdue family reunions are bound to be joyful'. Indeed, or at least, I certainly hope so. But so too, in their own way, were all my other meetings. Here are 5 reasons why:

They took me out of my daily/weekly routine and gave me a different experience. That alone was revitalising.
I heard different stories and learned more about different industries from an insider. Seeing the world through someone else's eyes, even for a short time, has enriched my own perspective.
We found out about what mattered to each other, what our respective hopes and goals were, and we were able to ask and offer help, professionally, to one another. I felt encouraged and delighted by this support.
The conversations sparked new ideas; I came back with my head buzzing with possibilities for my own work life and business plan.
Above all, I’ve made new connections, strengthened professional ties, deepened old friendships and spent time with people I care enormously about. That fits with my life and business goals of building positive, mutually rewarding relationships.

So these past few days have reminded me of the importance of:

1.    Setting aside time regularly to catch up with people with whom we're in less regular contact.
2.    Meeting people (safely) in person. The quality of our conversations is so enhanced by seeing each other live, not across a computer screen.
3.    Asking open questions and listening hard. We can learn so much more in our short interactions by being in ‘receiving’ not ‘sending’ mode.
4.    Asking ‘what matters to you right now? How can I help you succeed?’ and asking for help as well on something we’re trying to make happen.

So I invite you to take a few minutes to look through your address book or list of contacts. Who have you not spent time with lately? Which friendships and professional relationships do you want to keep investing in? When will you make that happen?

If this has resonated for you, I’d love to hear your thoughts and any unexpected joy you have discovered in a recent meeting. And if our paths have crossed in the past and it’s been a while since we’ve spoken, watch out for an invitation coming from me soon!

Forensic thinking

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 11:07:19 GMT

I read an article in The Economist (£) a few days ago about how the jury system offers clues to running better meetings. It listed 5 characteristics of jury service that we can draw on: purpose, size, agenda, membership and psychological safety. It chimed strongly with my own first experience of serving as a juror recently at one of the Nightingale (temporary) Crown Courts. I served on two trials, one involving a charge of causing serious injury through dangerous driving, the other a charge of intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Here’s my take on what we can learn from jury deliberations and 5 ways we can apply ‘forensic thinking’ at work.

1.    Full body listening
Jury service was fascinating. At times, it was also draining, partly because of the effort we put into listening to all the evidence and the arguments. We had to listen with our full attention, entirely focused, with no mind wandering. In addition, we were instructed to observe attentively too, noticing body language and movements. This was so important that we had to notify the judge if anything obstructed our line of sight to the witnesses and the defendant. In one trial, this resulted in what felt like a game of musical chairs thanks to the obstructions posed by pillars, counsels’ lecterns and social distancing requirements. When you’re next in a meeting, why not try ‘full body listening’ for as long as possible before you speak? I guarantee it will enrich your thinking.

2.    Open minds
Unlike teams at work, members of a jury are selected at random and work together only for the duration of their service (usually around 2 weeks), unlikely to ever meet again. We were a mix of office workers, business people, trades people, animal handlers/trainers, retirees and full-time carers, from different backgrounds and with different levels of educational attainment. I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of the quality of our deliberations, but I was blown away by the unanimous commitment to thinking deeply, questioning assumptions, exploring all points of view and repeatedly revisiting points we’d previously discussed. ‘Keeping a collectively open mind is a learned skill that takes conscious, repeated effort’, I write in my business book The Future of Time . It’s essential to understanding each another’s views better and resolving our differences.

3.    Taking time
One of the luxuries of jury service that we rarely enjoy at work is the lack of time pressure. Juries can take as long as they need to deliberate and return a verdict. In both trials, we were instructed to reach a unanimous decision. It took us two hours in the first case, and over four hours in the second case. A friend was on a jury a few years ago where they took over 2 days to return their verdict. When you know you hold the fate of another individual in your hands - for the next few months or years at least - you feel a weight of responsibility to reach a just and fully-reasoned conclusion that is ‘beyond doubt’. In our work lives, we are usually rushing to make decisions, meet deadlines, and move onto the next task. It’s all too easy to adopt group think and forget our blindspots. Less time pressure would help us avoid these behavioural traps and make better quality decisions.

4.    Looking into the unknowns
One thing I hadn’t anticipated as a juror is that you have to work with incomplete data. Only certain facts are presented as evidence while others are omitted - the latter are the ‘unknowns’. In The Future of Time, I quote former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld’s famous speech about ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ (the YouTube clip is here ). So as a juror, how do you fill in the gaps, particularly when you’re split over the verdict or wrestling with doubts? The judge explained we could draw inferences from evidence, but we could not speculate (reach conclusions that are unsubstantiated by any evidence). In work discussions, we have more freedom: we can explore the ‘unknowns’ by looking for the data that doesn’t fit the pattern; being attentive to the smallest or most unlikely-sounding ideas from unexpected sources; and asking ourselves ‘what don’t we know yet?’.

5.     Accepting dissent.
As a jury, knowing we weren’t going to be colleagues beyond the fortnight removed all pressure to form alliances or prove ourselves to one another. This helped us to accept that between the 12 of us, we might hold different views for good reasons. People with opposing opinions listened respectfully to each other’s reasoning, because it helped them to explore questions from fresh angles. To reach a decision that is truly supported by all, we have to seek out the views of those who have not yet spoken; allow people to change their minds; and welcome the awkward questions because they’ll lead us to a better outcome.

I’m quite sad that jury service has ended. It stretched me intellectually, it brought me into contact with people I’d never met before, it opened up new conversations and a window into other people’s lives, reminding me of our diversity of experiences and situations. It has also left me with a renewed sense of faith in the jury system. Let’s apply some of its strengths to the way our organisations work too.

Practising downtime

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 13:33:37 GMT

As we head towards the summer holidays, many of us are no doubt looking forward to a well-earned rest after the past year of lockdowns, remote working, home schooling, Covid infections and caring for others. But how will we spend that downtime? How well do we actually ‘do’ rest?

Not very well, as it happens. First, we have less leisure time than ever before coupled with a long hours work culture: the UK has the longest working hours in Europe. When commuting stopped during the pandemic, many who were still employed found their working hours simply increased. With boundaries between work and home lives blurring, we're often doing a low level of work all of the time instead of fully switching off. Professor Cal Newport describes this ‘shallow’ work, such as checking emails, messaging people and catching up on low complexity or routine tasks, as ‘non-cognitively demanding’ in his book Deep Work .

Second, add caring responsibilities into the mix and you might be feeling like you simply swap one paid shift for another unpaid one. If you are a primary carer looking after others - family members, dependents - then it’s likely you fill your early mornings, evenings and weekends with a different kind of work or busyness. Parents are investing more time in their children than in previous decades and scheduling more activities into their lives too.

Third, in our culture of busyness we tend to prioritise task accomplishment over interpersonal curiosity, creative exploration and daydreaming. By constantly switching between tasks and topics, we become cognitively depleted and our mental batteries are drained. This can lead to poorer quality social bonds and weaker sources of emotional support. It’s no surprise to learn that that loneliness is on the increase at work and in our society, or that burnout is on the rise. In 2019 the World Health Organisation officially classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon.

A big factor in this burnout-inducing state we’re in is that we’re not great at switching off or using our downtime wisely. As someone I interviewed for my business book The Future of Time remarked thoughtfully to me ‘ when we do get downtime, we squander it’ . Leisure time has stopped being leisurely. Ask yourself: when did you last linger and stretch out a moment of enjoyment? When did you last sit and daydream? Or simply stop and watch the world around you? David Attenborough advocates this most basic of downtime activities in a recent podcast for the WWF, saying “ One of the simplest things that you should do if you get the chance, when you get the chance, is just naturally to stop. ”

' At its most fundamental, work is an energy transaction ’ observed anthropologist and author James Suzman in an FT article Healthy working and living is about managing our energy. We’re humans not machines, so we need to minimise energy depletion, restore energy levels and keep our minds and bodies healthy. Avoiding burnout means paying attention to how we spend our time each day, consciously building in slower-paced activities and using our downtime thoughtfully.

Here are some small habits we can encourage at work that help signal that downtime is valued:

Invite social chat for ten minutes at the start of each meeting or at the start of the week.
Propose a meeting-free hour over lunchtime for everyone.
Create quiet virtual and physical environments to help people do deep work undisturbed
Encourage short breaks during the day for people to mentally switch off and recharge their mental batteries.
Cultivate and reward kindness, listening and empathy.
Talk about your own downtime during the working day and how you use it.

It’s not just individuals that will benefit, but the bottom line too. When we give our minds time to rest and wander, it fuels our creativity and our relationships. Businesses benefit through greater innovation, higher-quality collaboration and client service and a more productive use of working time.

In the meantime, if like me you are making a mental note of all the overdue jobs and activities you’re hoping to catch up on during your summer holidays between days out and seeing friends, then let’s think again. Let’s try practising better downtime and really stopping for a rest. It can feel surprisingly difficult if we’ve been running hard to juggle the many demands on our time. But I can’t think of a more rewarding - or more enjoyable - skill to invest in.

All aboard for adventure

Mon, 03 May 2021 18:47:04 GMT

Have you booked a foreign holiday yet?

Some people have already booked their holiday abroad for early summer, anticipating positive news from the Government on 17th May, while others are steering clear of making any plans involving the need for a passport. We’re still in the latter camp for now. Don’t get me wrong, we’re desperate to be somewhere different and explore another country’s culture and scenery. John fantasises daily about a train trip to Rome via Paris and Turin, immersed in history and excellent restaurants. He’s worked out the route and the train times. I suspect he’s secretly packed his bag too, ready to go at the drop of a hat. I picture myself in the Nordics, wild swimming along the beautiful coastline and eating pickled vegetables, freshly caught fish and cardamon buns. Fortunately we’d both be content to settle for each other’s holiday vision. Isabella won’t mind where she goes as long as it sounds fun and includes ice-cream and an excessively large breakfast buffet. And provided there are no alligators, sharks or crocodiles when we’re wild swimming, apparently.

Like many others in the UK, we’re cherishing the slight loosening of Covid restrictions after our long winter confinement. Being able to safely see family, meet up with friends and enjoy a spot of hospitality outdoors (wrapped up to the nines in the frostiest April for sixty years) feels a blessed relief. Infection rates may have plummeted where we live but I’m painfully aware that for others, especially in India and Brazil, it’s still a terrifying time with illness, loss and stress weighing heavily on them. It’s hitting home that we won’t be Covid free until every country has vaccinated its citizens and gained control over the virus.

Against this backdrop, whilst feeling grateful for a less anxious situation here in the UK, it dawned on me recently that the thing I’m missing most at the moment is adventure. I’m craving adventure. Not in the sense of zipwiring off a hundred-foot-high cliff (done that, loved it) or caving (hyperventilating at the thought). I’m not so much chasing adrenaline, more that fish-out-of-water feeling. Goodbye familiar surroundings and the same old weekly activities. Hello quirky surprises, a language I don’t speak and getting lost.

As soon as we know what’s possible in May, we’ll be ditching the weekly food shop and heading off somewhere, with or without a plan. Frankly I’d be happy in a yurt in a field, being an outdoor-lover. John’s idea of adventure has certain minimum standards though, involving excellent coffee and no roughing it. If we could wave our magic wands, we’d head straight to Australia to see my two grownup stepchildren, whom we sorely miss. Whilst it would breach Isabella’s other edict - no snakes - she’d be packing instantly if it meant seeing her big brother and sister again. The thought of our family being complete again brings a lump to my throat. But that heart-swelling prospect is still some time off, the date unknown. We try not to think about that uncertainty too much.

Australia aside, we’re not so keen on planes. We want to meander across the continent by train, watching the landscape and cities unfold in front of us and feeling the adventure unroll as the train speeds by. Stop at random places, discover something unexpected, bravely eat something we’ve not encountered on a plate before. Squabble over the map and laugh over shared surprises. Get soaked in the rain in unfamiliar streets and watch the sun set over an interesting horizon. Discover places we’re sad to leave and others we’ll vow never to return to. Laugh (afterwards) at the mishaps and misdirections. Reunite with lifelong friends who live abroad and make fleeting new friendships as we roam. Collect stamps in our new British passports (and no doubt queue at the borders).

Bring it all on, I’m ready for it. Even the mountain of holiday laundry when we get home.

In, out, shake it all about

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 10:20:45 GMT

In, out, shake it all about: the changing norms about when we work

Last week PwC was the latest employer to announce their future working arrangements. They’re allowing employees to work from home 2 days a week and to flex their start and finish times. What really caught my eye though was their plan for employees to take Friday afternoons off in the summer.

Much of the current debate about the future of work centres on the location of work: how much work will be done at the office, at home, at satellite hubs or working from anywhere. The other important angle to consider is working hours and when work gets done. Here, I see two interesting trends emerging.

First, work whenever you want .

Some firms are ditching fixed business hours. Back in October the insurance group Beazley announced they were dispensing with core working hours. More recently Nationwide confirmed they are looking at ways to " help [employees] better manage their working day around their home lives ". Until recently, time flexibility was mainly driven by formal requests by individuals. Now we’re seeing a shift towards mainstreaming informal flexibility - making it the norm not the exception. This is likely to reduce the need for formal requests for flexible working patterns. Employers still need to do a better job of advertising this flexibility from the outset though; according to Timewise only 22% of jobs were advertised as time flexible by spring 2020, barely up from 17% at the end of 2019.

Second, reshape the organisation’s working hours .

This is where everyone follows the same patterns, like PwC’s decision around summer hours. Goldman Sachs recently underlined no Saturday working, although this indicates a culture of overwork rather than flexibility. More encouragingly, Spain is trialling a 4 day working week, the first European country to do so. A lighter version of this is to introduce more corporate days off - Citi and Unilever have both taken this step. Other ways of encouraging employees to switch off from work/use their time as they wish include introducing firebreak weekends and meeting-free lunch hours. I wonder how soon we might see shorter working days or weeks being trialled more widely during school holidays, over major festivals or popular holiday months?

These two trends are not an either/or choice.

Organisations can adopt both approaches at the same time. We need to tailor working patterns to the individual but we also need some new collective norms around working time. We’re contemplating - and adapting to - a whole new set of social norms including face mask wearing, no handshakes, and potentially, health status certification for hospital, entertainment and travel. But our norms at work urgently need to catch up with society and modern life generally, not just Covid.

So how do you determine your own approach?

Find out what’s getting in the way of helping employees to be productive and manage their energy levels, what they need to do their best work and what the business needs in terms of workforce agility to meet peaks and troughs in demand. Trial new arrangements for a set period or in certain areas and see what works. Learn by experimenting. The key to success? Everyone does it, even if the ‘it’ varies by team, unit or geography. Otherwise there’ll always be individuals and out-groups who are disadvantaged or marginalised and others who'll benefit disproportionately.

Make it simply ‘the way things are done around here’. That’s what it’s all about.

Peaks and endings

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 12:17:11 GMT

How does memory-making work? What will we remember about this year of pandemic?

A year ago yesterday, the World Health Organisation declared the coronvirus a global health pandemic. I find myself wondering what we will remember about this tumultuous year when it’s (hopefully) in the distant past. We’ve all had such different experiences of lockdown living depending on our our home lives, our jobs, our health, our families and many other factors.

In researching neuroscience for the book I'm writing, I've learned that our brains are not well designed for processing time. They hold onto certain memories and stories rather than accessing our full range of experiences. Our sense of happiness is determined by our average happiness over time, not the sum of all happy moments. In the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, ‘ peaks and ends matter, duration does not ’.

The peaks might be joyful, celebratory or hilarious moments but they might also be intense peaks for less cheerful reasons - sadness, loss, despair, anxiety or insecurity. Not being able to see grandparents, worrying about jobs, feeling isolated, seeing how much our children miss their friends and their school community, losing loved ones to Covid.

The fact that we don’t remember duration as well resonates with me. I can’t believe we’ve been living with the pandemic for a year now. In some ways, it has flown by. And one thing I have heard repeatedly is that people’s sense of time passing during the lockdowns has become much more blurred. I’ve certainly found it hard to remember which day of the week it was at times; when your daily routine has little variation, each day seems to dissolve into the next.

I find endings fascinating. Some endings announcement themselves in advance, like our pathway out of lockdown. Some endings happen without us noticing until a long time later. I never consciously decided to stop going clubbing but I’m struggling to remember when I last did. Some endings are of our own choosing, like changing jobs or moving house. Others befall us, like redundancy, bereavement or ill health.

The expert on managing transitions, William Bridges, says it’s important that we acknowledge and celebrate endings properly before we move onto the new. This is because to cope well with change, however excited we are about it, we need to acknowledge that there’s always some kind of personal loss tied up in the ending part. This applies in our work lives as much as in our home lives. At work, a change might mean an end to familiar, confident ways of doing things, a loss of autonomy or status, or a valued relationship.

So, peaks I’ll remember from this past lockdown? They’re mostly about the fun we’ve had as a family, particularly our Saturday night ‘travels’. Each Saturday we’ve picked a country, ransacked the house for representative outfits and accessories and cooked a meal typical of our destination. We’ve skied in France, strummed guitars in Mexico, line danced in mid-west USA, sunned ourselves in the Seychelles, blinged up as Russian oligarchs, made sushi in Japan and many more. We’ve all loved it and the photos will definitely be making it in to the Pandemic album (and definitely not onto social media).

Yes there have been less happy peaks too. We’ve very fortunately stayed Covid-free and been able to continue working but we’ve had moments of great worry about others we care about. And we’ve missed seeing our wider family and our friends enormously.

But as spring nears - as I write I can see the pinky-white blossom starting to burst open on our ancient flowering cherry tree - we’re also nearing the gradual lifting of our social restrictions (subject to meeting the required conditions). So maybe now is the time to start thinking about marking the ending of lockdown and winter. If endings matter so much in building happy memories, how do we make this ending as positive as possible? How can we celebrate this turning point? What, if anything, might we feel nostalgic about when we look back over this time in the years ahead? For some of us it may be nothing, just overwhelming relief. For others, sadly, it may be the presence of a loved one.

There are some things I’ll miss, to my surprise. But I’m most definitely looking forward to starting the next chapter and enjoying the freedom that summer will hopefully bring us. And adding to that mental album of memories.

The dangers of not listening

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 16:08:46 GMT

"Don’t gimme excuses, gimme results!"

When it's hard to feel cheerful

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:52:08 GMT

(blog updated at 7pm on 26 Jan)

Right now it feels hard to be cheerful.

I’ve just heard this evening's news that we've passed the truly awful milestone of 100,000 Covid deaths in the UK. I'm heavy-hearted, thinking about all those lives lost and all the people bereaved by this pandemic. I wrote this blog earlier in the day, to share what we're doing to stay positive in the hope it might help others to hear this. If you're are a friend from home or work or a family member reading this and you're feeling down, please do get in touch . I'll be happy to talk or just listen.

*******

This pandemic is often referred to as a ‘marathon’, a term which reminds me of ‘the loneliness of the long-distance runner’.

I was reflecting this morning that it’s pretty lonely running at 7.30am along country lanes in -2°C, the black ice snapping under my feet and the cold air making my lungs crackle. The only other sign of life is the rabble-rousing colony of ducks that launches into a cacaphony of quacking as I pass by. But for me, this feels lonely in a good way. I’m full of awe as I watch the glowing orange ball of sun creep up over the horizon, turning the frosty fields and sheep pink. I feel restored by the solitude and silence, two things in short supply in our household during lockdown. My head clears and starts to hum with ideas. Today is day 62 of my daily running streak which started in mid November. Despite a grumbling shin muscle, it has become a much-needed part of my early morning routine. Always happier outdoors, I’ve found cabin fever has been kicking in very early each day during this winter lockdown, making me scratchy and impatient. I feel distinctly more hopeful and less tetchy after I’ve run. No wonder my family are in a hurry to shoo me out of the door as they sit down to the more civilised option of breakfast beside the woodburner.

To my surprise, my early morning running habit has rippled out in unexpected ways.

My husband John, who has always been a semi-regular runner, is now running on alternate days and seems to be relishing this new frequency. Isabella (9) is outside straight after breakfast with her skipping rope for ‘family skipping time’ as I return from my run. Yep, that's right. Family skipping sessions. I had been racking my brains for a quick, fun way to be active outdoors when our waterlogged clay soil rules out ball games and we only have 10-15 minutes before lessons start. I discovered some ancient skipping ropes (bought back in my 20’s when I had the energy to do kick-boxing) and since then we’ve all been honing our skipping skills every morning, in all weather. I’ve been remembering some fancy skipping moves I thought long-forgotten. Isabella is learning to persevere and stay cheerful whilst getting tangled up in rope. John (tall and gangly) is turning into the suprise skipping pro, ratcheting up the highest continuous skipping score so far. Mostly I’ve come to love our skipping sessions for the spontaneity and fun they generate: pink-cheeked and puffing, we invariably end up in stitches laughing at each other. It feels good.

Another infectious habit I’ve discovered is de-cluttering. I’m an ardent minimalist and would happily live in a house with bare floorboards, no curtains and just an occasional chair or two. It’d be bliss. Periodically I have a fit of chucking stuff out, Marie Kondo silently egging me on. It’s hard to properly de-clutter a family household singlehandedly. But to my surprise, after clearing out our tardis of a utility cupboard, I found John voluntarily tackling another cupboard and Isabella tidying her over-stuffed desk so enthusiastically that not only will the lid now actually shut but - added bonus - she discovered some precious long-lost ‘gems’ inside.

It’s not just physical habits that are contagious, emotions are too.

I’ve been writing about this in a draft chapter of my book , where I’m describing our cultural norms about time at work. Did you know that most employees spend 10 or more hours per month complaining — or listening to others complain — about their bosses or upper management? (The research is here ). Astonishingly, almost a third spend 20 hours or more doing so. Negative emotions and habits such as complaining spread easily across teams and leave a toxic imprint. A recent paper by The Oxford Review confirmed this phenomenon of ‘emotional contagion’ which they define as how “ we tend to catch and take on the prevailing emotions of any team or group we are a member of for any period of time ”. This means our mood and emotions tend to converge with the mood of others around us over time, whether at home or work. It’s even proven to be the case when we’re working virtually. These findings ring true for me. I remember as a management consultant I frequently found Monday mornings in the office hard and often felt low until another colleague’s cheerfulness perked me up. And just this morning a Zoom call with a former colleague who was radiating positivity and warmth left me feeling buoyed up and enthused.

I realise that when I’m feeling particularly fed up of lockdown or anxious about 'what if...', I’m most likely spreading gloom around the house. So I’m going to try a scientific experiment this week, rather like my old tube train experiment back in my London-living days. To while away the tediously familiar commute, I’d quietly (or noisily) yawn and count how many other people in the carriage I could set off yawning as well. How very pre-pandemic that seems now, almost sacrilegious. My experiment this week is to see if I can spread cheerfulness at home when one of us is feeling down in the dumps. How? By digging deep and finding some positivity, even if I have to ‘fake it till I make it’. I’ll keep you posted. If it drives my family nuts, I guess I’ll be back out on the roads running for longer to give them some peace.

6 ways our work habits will change in 2021

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:57:03 GMT

“People will be standing up more for what they want. And the more power you have, the more important it will be to do the right thing for others as well.”

What will we be saying in December about how our world of work has changed over the course of this year? In interviews I’ve been conducting as research for my book The Future of Time: how ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing , I’ve asked two questions of business and HR leaders across a variety of industries:

By the end of 2021, what will have changed in terms of the way we’re working?
How will we be valuing and managing time differently?

Their answers were thoughtful and fascinating. Here are the headlines if you are time-pressed, keep reading for the predictions.

Businesses have learnt to evolve more quickly.
Clients have shown greater willingness to adapt too.
Many industries are genuinely balancing work between home and office.
Lockdowns have embedded a better sense of trust and more constructive attitudes.
Old mindsets have proven hard to break …
… But employees are pushing harder for what they want.

1. Businesses have learnt to evolve more quickly

More organisations have caught up with the opinion leaders that were already embracing virtual working two years ago. Businesses that were already using online collaboration tools were far better prepared for the the the impact of Covid 19 . Those that weren’t really struggled during 2020 to evolve quickly enough.
Companies have got better at making decisions more quickly and at using working time more efficiently. The pace of business is accelerating in terms of new trends and new technology. Companies can't afford to can't afford to take their time over decisions and implementing plans anymore.
Inefficiency has been tackled as businesses have learnt how to ‘create once, deliver multiple times’ instead of duplicating efforts and reinventing wheels unnecessarily.

2. Clients have shown greater willingness to adapt too

More of the work we do to build relationships with clients is being done virtually in a meaningful way. This is driving greater acceptance that we don’t need to be working from an office all the time.
The ‘hard-driving work culture’ of senior executives travelling all year to meet clients in person has gone. Clients are no longer demanding this. Hence a huge amount of unproductive time spent trying to work from trains, planes and cars is no longer being wasted.
Clients are more willing to interact meaningfully in other ways too. For example, being willing to respond to meeting requests from a new business contact and trusting that such opportunities could offer value to them.

3. Many industries are genuinely balancing work between home and office.

The most likely pattern is 2-3 days a week in each place, varying depending on the function. This is recognised as “a massive and very healthy shift”. And it has happened because people now recognise that employees are as productive - if not more - at home versus in the office thanks to less bureaucracy and improved communication technology.
More CEOs and Chairmen have recognised this new balance is here to stay and they have actively been encouraging this in their organisations.
The concept of the working day is far more fluid and individualised. Employees can flex their working hours across the whole day to suit their working preferences and personal lives and are no longer shackled to traditional office hours. This is increasing their productive time.
People are more at ease with video conference communications and have found healthier ways to manage the demands of online meetings.

4. Lockdowns have embedded a better sense of trust and more constructive attitudes.

People are more conscious and wary of competitive, dysfunctional behaviours. They are having more open dialogue about the need to manage our working time differently. They have used this Covid-driven disjunction to reset expectations and behaviours at work.
We’ve turned more full-time roles into part-time roles more successfully, overcoming some of the systemic problems and mistrust that hindered part-time working and progression in the past.

5. Old mindsets have proven hard to break...

We’re still witnessing some laggards and ‘unreconstructed’ world views, where some people remain wedded to presenteeism and a narrative that labels people who don’t show up in the office as ‘unproductive’.
The economic pressure of unemployment and the fear of competition has driven us to yet more dysfunctional behaviour and attitudes in the world of work …. It’s all got worse.
Only ‘50% confidence’ that we haven’t crept back to the way things were: needing to be in the office a certain number of days per week and being penalised for working remotely.
Leaders erroneously thinking they need to ‘role model’ going back into the office when they’re not role-modelling anything, they’re simply worried about ‘losing control of people’.

6. ... But employees are pushing harder for what they want

People are less willing to compromise their time because they want more of a work-life balance. Not having to commute to work has given people back so much time, they are replacing this not with more work, but with personal time or family time, and living more balanced lives.
People are more selfish with their time, less compromising in their views and more courageous in challenging their employers around work-life balance and the hours that they work.
People are no longer prepared to waste time on meetings that aren't necessary.
Employees, particularly those with influence - those high value workers who everybody wants - are not accepting patterns that they find dysfunctional.
People are standing up more for what they want. And the more power you have, the more important it is now to do the right thing for others as well.

To me these feel, on balance, a hopeful set of predictions. What resonates for you? What changes are you expecting to see? Do you feel hopeful or pessimistic? Drop me an email or message me on Linked In or Twitter . In December I’ll look back at how many of these predictions have come true. One thing is certain - it’ll be another year to remember.

With thanks to everyone I spoke to for their generosity in sharing their time and perspectives with me.

Old Year resolutions

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 16:27:20 GMT

I've started my New Year resolutions early. Or is it late?

Why? Well, writing a business book about time in organisations means I’m reading other books about time. I’ve recently finished Time Smart , Off the Clock and Time to Think . Whilst my book is about our collective use of time at work, rather than personal time management, I’ve still been curious to try out some of the advice shared by other authors. I’m not looking for tips on how to work smarter or harder (been there, done that for far too many years), just the opposite. How to switch off better, how to create more downtime, how to feel more ‘time affluent’.

I confess I’ve got a love-hate relationship with time. I’ve never managed to achieve a harmonious balance between being busy and being delightfully idle. I’m definitely more of a ‘doing’ person than a ‘being’ person. As a Myers Briggs ‘Judging’ type, my preference is to play once work is done. I’m also a perfectionist (I wish I wasn’t) and like to make sure a job is done properly. All this means that taking time out for myself during the day and letting go of unfinished work does not come naturally (I wish it did).

So, in my quest for a better relationship with time, I recently started:

Running for half an hour every morning. Yes, every day. No I can’t believe it either. For the last 2 years since I ran the London Marathon, I’ve run 3 times a week and have felt proud of that. I’ve fallen into running daily by accident, after a friend suggested we run together the day after I’d run. Rather than cancel, I ran with her and was surprised to discover it felt better than I’d expected. Out of sheer curiosity, I ran again the next day and I’ve simply carried on from there.
Writing every morning for 20 minutes as soon as I get up. This practice of writing ‘Morning Pages’ is supposedly conducive to creativity and clarity and is recommended by many writers I admire. No-one reads the output except me. The writing has no purpose other than to write non-stop, about anything, and see what emerges. Sometimes a new idea or realisation lands on the page. Other times, nothing significant. I’ve come to view the process as simply opening the door to my mind and letting out the thoughts that are pressed up at the entrance so that there’s space for other thoughts to emerge. It reminds me of our chickens pressed up impatiently at the coop door each the morning.
Dividing up my day. Each morning I write a short list of the work tasks I want to achieve that day. I keep this as brief as possible, max five things. Or just one if it’s a biggie. Next to this, I write my list of home chores and personal admin. Again, top priorities only. I also include my downtime: reading, resting, calling friends and family, so these don’t get treated like afterthoughts but are woven into my day. Then I divide up my day into 30-60 minute chunks and allocate these chunks to the items on my combined lists. Unsurprisingly, there’s never enough time to accomplish everything. More on that shortly…

So what am I learning from these new habits?

I thought I’d have given up on them after the novelty wore off, but I haven’t. Stubborn? Yes! But there’s more to it than that.
It’s been eye-opening to discover I can discard long-held assumptions about myself quite quickly, for example…
… I’d always believed I could never run daily. I can. Not only that, I feel healthier, I have more energy and I’m sleeping better.
After my Morning Pages my mind feels rested and clear. No more ‘washing machine head’ with my mental load stuck on a fast spin cycle. Just an open door.
My daily time planning forces me to make some trade offs and - gasp - even take some things off my to-do lists. Delegating is rarely an option, although I’m training my 9 year old up as fast as I can.
I don’t manage to stick to my time plan every day; afternoons tend to go awry. But I’ve got better at focusing on the important stuff and cutting down on the procrastination and self-imposed distractions. Moving my office upstairs and further from the fridge has also helped.

I haven’t cracked it completely; I definitely still wrestle with time. But I’m slowly getting better at balancing ‘doing’ with ‘being’. I hope it’s making me a bit more patient and up for spontaneous family fun. Mostly, it’s helping me cope with these dark winter days and limited social interactions. What works for you may be very different. Do let me know , I’d love to hear. And why not set some Old Year resolutions yourself? At least you'll start the New Year feeling like you're already ahead.

Deep thinking is an essential luxury

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 10:52:55 GMT

How often do you set aside 2 days a week for deep thinking?

I’m guessing the answer is ‘not often’. Yet in my recent survey asking people about how they spent their time at work, most respondents said they needed up to 15 hours a week - each week - for deep thinking in order to do their best work. That’s 1.5 to 2 days.

The bad news is that, unsurprisingly, we rarely manage to achieve this. People generally manage 2, 3 or maybe 5 hours a week at best.

Why is this?

1.    Our time freedom is often limited (59% of respondents agreed). Non-negotiable meetings and other people’s demands on our time severely impacts our sense of free time.
2.    Common ‘time drains’ suck up our productive working time. These include: unfocused meetings with many attendees in listening mode only; feeding into business processes that don’t benefit me; and routine admin and diary management.
3.    Deep thinking is a luxury that comes last. We spend most of our time dealing with incoming demands and participating in calls and meetings. After that, we’re busy planning ahead or reflecting back and learning.
4.    It’s hard to make it happen during the working day. Even if we diarise it, ‘it is hard to protect’. Many say they have to ‘go off grid’, using up personal time early in the morning or late at night, at weekends, on holidays.

What does this tell me about our culture around time?

1.    We’re not questioning what we’re collectively spending our time on - we’re too busy filling it with activity.
2.    Consequently we’re being reactive not strategic with our time choices.
3.    We’re not creating the right conditions for people to do their most creative, value-adding work that will benefit the organisation strategically.
4.    It feels hard - often impossible - for the individual to push back against the organisational tide of meetings, processes, and non-stop communications.

Five ways to start changing our time culture for the better:

1.    Treat time as a finite strategic asset. Because that’s what it is. How? By looking at our collective working time and deciding at the macro level how we want to invest this.
2.    Recognise publicly how valuable our - and other people’s - time is. Weigh up every demand on our time carefully as if it is an investment. Look in our diaries for those regular meetings that we no longer question and reconsider them.
3.    Make it culturally ok to free up the diary. Be open about setting aside time each working day/week that is free of calls and meetings and ask others to help protect this time.
4.    Recognise that our own time choices impact other people. Ask others what we can do to help them improve their time freedom. It might be something very small that costs us nothing to do.
5.    Bring back boundaries. Reclaim the commute and use it for exercise, headspace or reading. Get a conversation going about taking regular breaks and fixing a hard stop at the end of the day.

I’ll be sharing some positive time strategies and ways to create change over the coming weeks. Interested to hear more? Keep in touch here . Find out about the book I'm writing on The Future of Time . And if you think you’ve got a good time culture in your organisation, I’d love to hear from you .

Frogs, celebrities and Gina Ford

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 06:59:00 GMT

What do you notice when you reflect back on your career? Where might this lead you?

My first experience of the world of work started with clocking in. As a management trainee at Harrods, I had to swipe in and out at the start and end of each day with my employee ID card. Our daily time records were scrutinised weekly by our line managers, despite giving no indication of how productively we spent our hours in between. That largely depended on whether we worked in a bustling, high-footfall department like the Food Halls or a sleepier outpost such as Lighting, or whether an A-list celebrity was in the store distracting us all with their glorious presence.

Goodbye swipe machines, hello timesheets.

Fast forward 2 years and as a management consultant, not having to clock in or out felt very grown up. Instead, our contributions at work were assessed via that staple of professional service firms, the timesheet. We had to account for every minute of our working day in 6 minute increments, logging these to various time codes. One of the biggest time drains of my early consulting career was the time I spent trying to figure out the right code to charge my time to. Part art, part science, this baffling activity merited a timecode to itself. Sometimes submitting a well-crafted timesheet seemed at least as important as delivering good quality work.

I quickly learned the unspoken truth that there were ‘good’ time codes to use and other time codes to avoid. Billable codes (for client work) trumped all others. But if you weren’t 100% resourced on a project, caution was needed. The ‘admin’ time code could squash any promotion chances if it appeared too often on your timesheet. Far better to demonstrate that your time had been busily devoted to the more purposeful-sounding ‘marketing’ time code or better still, to the loftier timecode for ‘developing new intellectual capital’. Selecting time codes that would send the right signals about my contributions and ambitions honed my resourcefulness and creativity in my early career.

Old habits, new life
After accounting for my time on a daily basis at work for 17 years, this proved a hard habit to break. As a new mother, I enthusiastically embraced Gina Ford’s structured (and divisive) approach to looking after our daughter. I happily wrote out Gina’s daily routines broken down into 15 minute segments and stuck to these religiously. Our daughter thrived and we stayed sane (just). I loved the order that the routines brought to the chaos of those early months. As well as creating space for me to breathe, they enabled me to carve out small chunks of time when I could resume my professional identity and do some freelance work .

Fridges and frogs.
When I returned to work more fully, running professional networks in London, my experience of time changed again. I discovered that surreal phenomenon whereby child-free time ticks by twice as fast as time spent with your child(ren). “ Seriously? Pick-up time already? ”   With this new two-speed time, success meant completing the most important tasks in the short fragments of time between daily travel, calls and meetings. Without being seduced by more urgent or easier tasks. Or knocks on the door. Or our fridge contents.

‘Eating the frog’ is an expression usually attributed to Mark Twain which advocates doing the most important and hardest task(s) first thing in our working day. This is far better for our cognitive functioning and our daily productivity than deferring it until later in the day or tomorrow. I’ve found it tough to stick to but like going out for a run in bad weather, I bask in my sense of achievement (and the warm glow of self-virtue) afterwards.

A new direction.
Reflecting back on the many organisations I've worked in and with, I’ve become fascinated by our attitudes and habits in relation to our time at work. Why are our working hours so much longer than in other European nations and yet our productivity is so much lower? Why are we fixated on measuring time as an input instead of valuing what we actually achieve? What drives our collective frenzy of cramming ever-increasing amounts of activity into our working hours? Surely there’s a better way of managing our time. Exploring these questions has led me, to my surprise, into a new career chapter.

I’m researching and writing a business book titled The Future of Time . In it, I’m explaining how our culture of time at work needs to change. We can find better ways of designing organisations and collectively managing our time that enable us to be more productive, make the most of our diverse talents and live healthier, happier work lives. It’s a complex challenge with no single, quick solution. But it’s achievable. Covid 19 has already proved that we can radically transform the way we work in a very short space of time.

Maybe we can finally ditch those time stamps and timesheets too.

It's time for active inclusion

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 06:59:00 GMT

It’s a hugely challenging time for businesses. Active inclusion will help them thrive.

Businesses are facing multiple pressures: the impact of Covid 19, the economic downturn, the rise of sustainable investing and stakeholder capitalism and public calls to take a stronger stand against racial injustice and inequalities, to name just a few. Employers are having to re-think their entire operating models - fast. Lockdown’s enforced remote-working has led to a massive upheaval of traditional working practices that is being described as ‘the next industrial revolution’. Furloughing, pay cuts and redundancies are widespread. Business leaders are having to re-consider the purpose of their offices and prioritise wellbeing, collaboration and flexibility. In parallel, employers’ actions are being scrutinised more than ever before. Well-intentioned public statements aren’t enough: organisations are having to demonstrate that the way they operate is meeting the needs and interests of all their stakeholders, not just their shareholders.

This is directly impacting inclusion and diversity efforts.
In some organisations, D&I is receding as a strategic priority as attention is focused instead on technology capability, employee wellbeing and future estate and workforce planning. In May, 27% of D&I leaders reported that ‘all of most of their D&I initiatives were on hold’. Yet the need for inclusion is greater than ever. Pre-Covid and #BLM, many employers focused predominantly on women, working parents and LGBTQ+ employees. Today, they are having to take a much more nuanced approach and consider the needs and experiences of previously under-acknowledged groups of employees such as those living alone, those starting out in their careers, those with inadequate working space or broadband at home, and those silently coping with fertility challenges or domestic abuse. They are also having to urgently address the low representation of black and ethnic minority colleagues at senior levels and on boards.

Despite budgetary pressures, employers can no longer afford to take a passive approach to inclusion. The risks are numerous and highly damaging: losing diverse talent; erosion of company culture and identity; and plummeting employee morale over the longer-term as remote-working continues.

So what does active inclusion look like?
It’s about putting inclusion front and centre of your current business plans and activities. How? By gathering and mining your diversity data to identify impacts and trends and to constructively challenge decision-making. By tailoring policies and working practices to the individual and allowing local discretion in how these are applied. By constantly listening - in different ways - to your employees’ experiences and needs and responding swiftly to what you hear. And by taking targeted, sustained action to address bias. Businesses can no longer afford to delegate these responsibilities to an individual in HR or the CSR function. Active inclusion requires shared accountability and a systemic approach where inclusion is woven into all leadership and people programmes and day-to-day working practices.

Actively inclusive organisations are focusing on these 5 things right now:

Time: how they are collectively managing working time and what they are investing time in
Togetherness: how to create the social ‘glue’ by fostering collaboration and connectivity, and collaborating with clients, suppliers and competitors for mutual benefit and greater impact
Testing: drawing on diversity of thought and multiple perspectives to re-design their organisations in an inclusive way
Targeted action: setting specific goals around black representation, diverse hiring, closing pay gaps, and motivating employees over the long term.
Transparency: mining diversity data, auditing the impact of organisational changes on different employee groups and publicly sharing progress.

This is a real opportunity for employers to invest in an actively inclusive approach.
Those that do will create more adaptive, efficient teams and more creative, resilient businesses that are better positioned for growth and - just as importantly - able to pivot faster in the uncertain times that lie ahead.

Why it’s time to redesign work

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 05:59:00 GMT

Now is the time to ambitiously re-design workplaces and the way work gets done. It’s long overdue.

What’s wrong with the way we work?
I read recently that the 2010-19 decade of productivity growth in the UK was the lowest for the past couple of centuries. This is despite the fact that UK employees work the longest hours in Europe. And work has made our wellbeing worse over the past two years, according to CIPD’s latest annual benchmark of job quality, their 2020 Good Work Index.
Employers are losing £33 billion - £42 billion per year through presenteeism and poor mental health. And that’s before the impact of the coronavirus, meaning our economy is facing a huge challenge and businesses are under pressure to maintain income and deliver results. All of this calls urgently for a more sustainable, adaptable approach to working, for individuals and organisations.

What’s broken in the corporate world?
I’m particularly interested in corporate workplaces and careers. From past research that I’ve conducted and countless seminars and workshops that I’ve led over the past 20+ years, I’ve heard employees in the corporate world list those aspects of their work lives that they value: stimulating work, opportunities to gain new skills and experiences and/or progress in their careers, highly competitive pay and benefits, to name a few.

The issues have remained the same too: unsustainable workloads and demanding schedules; working environments and practices that hamper productivity; poor job design; a high-speed, ‘always on’ culture favouring those who can be visible, available and responsive at short notice and disadvantaging those who can’t. These issues mean that time and again, professionals are too often making sacrifices at the expense of their home lives, relationships and their wellbeing. These systemic issues aren’t in the best long-term interests of any organisation, especially those whose primary asset is their people.

What’s changed with the coronavirus?
During the coronavirus, many professionals I’ve spoken to who haven’t been furloughed have welcomed the opportunity to work from home and avoid the time-drain of a daily commute. They’ve also been able to tailor (to varying degrees) their working day (still long and pressurised) to better accommodate their home lives and build in pauses to clear busy heads or do exercise. In saying this, I fully recognise that the lockdown has been a very challenging time for many of us, and experiences vary enormously by individual depending on each person’s particular circumstances. Many have found the past 3 months a less positive or indeed, an extremely difficult time for a whole variety of reasons.
Whatever the experience, I’m hearing that it has prompted people to evaluate their personal values and priorities, considering questions such as: ‘Do I want to return to the way things were pre-lockdown?’ and ‘Is this a sustainable, fulfilling way to work and live?’.

What are employers doing?
In recent years, corporate employers in and outside of the City have been investing substantial time and resources in supporting employees by enhancing HR policies and employee benefits, putting in place mental health awareness programmes and providing wellbeing support, offering access to mentoring and coaching and more. These are all good and valuable things which forward-thinking employers should indeed be offering. However these initiatives won’t, on their own, fix the root causes - the collective work overload and inefficiencies embedded in so many workplaces.

At present, employers are busy figuring out how to safely bring back their employees to workplace and how work will be done in future. The general consensus appears to be that a full return of the workforce to office-based working is highly unlikely in the short-term, and may never happen. The current mass enforced home-working has blown away long-entrenched assumptions and beliefs that ‘it can’t be done here’ or ‘in our industry’. Even functions and professions such as trading, wealth management and the law - which all previously relied strongly on office-based professions for various reasons - have adapted successfully to virtual working. In addition to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their employees, the other challenge now for employers is to figure out how to blend the office-based working with greater remote- and flexible- working without lapsing back into a presenteeism culture that continually disadvantages those not physically in the office or available at short notice. Or whether an office will even feature at all in their future world of work.

What do we do now?
We have a window of opportunity to properly redesign work and how it is done. Let’s look at what’s broken and needs fixing. I don’t mean tinkering at the edges, or rolling out some well-designed, unhurried initiatives that somehow fail to tackle the root causes or make a difference to day-to-day working lives. It’s time to be bold and to act now. Here are my ideas for how.

1. Ask the big questions.
Many employers are rightly consulting employees on their plans for returning as safely as possible to more office-based working; a few are going further and asking the bigger questions with the aim of creating a new working culture. The law firm Slater and Gordon is one example. I’d love to hear from other organisations who are doing this too.

If you’re not yet doing this, now is a great time to ask these kinds of questions of your employees:
What are you so busy doing? What does ‘productive’ really mean here? What would your most productive working day look like? What gets in the way of contributing positively to client service, developing intellectual capital, developing colleagues? How can we work better together? How can our organisation make greater use of genuine flexible working (as opposed to enforced remote working) in a way that wins for everyone? How can we help you to do your best work in a way that leaves you energised not exhausted?

2. Design it collaboratively.
Ask the big questions of employees at all levels, from different ethnic and social backgrounds, at different life stages, with different homes lives, with different travel needs. And not just employees, but clients, partners, and providers too. Listen to their experiences and invite them to shape the future together. So that you’re designing a new world of work that works for all, not just the few. Another example of this is how Lloyds of London are designing their Virtual Underwriting room.

3. Do it quickly.
It needn’t (and shouldn’t) be a long-drawn out affair. Mass conversations are happening everywhere with our widespread use of technology. The important points will emerge quickly if you ask the right questions. Create a sense of urgency to help with momentum; after all, we’ve seen entire workforces quickly adapt to working in new ways and find myriad solutions to hurdles along the way. Bring together all these examples of creative thinking and as much recent learning as you can. These are all positives to build on, they give concrete substance to and imbue confidence in the future you’re aiming for.

4. Consider the unimaginable.
Develop a number of different possibilities, however improbable they seem and however sceptical you feel about them. Then look at what you can be doing now to make those futures possible.

After all, as recent experiences tell us, the unimaginable can actually happen. And we can make changes happen fast when we fully commit to doing so.