The Home Stretch

It’s the beginning of November, and in honor of the recent World Series, let’s call this the home stretch. It’s a good time to review what you wanted to achieve this year, your actual accomplishments, and a realistic assessment of what you can do in the next 45 days.

I’ve talked to a few people recently who are ready to “write off” their results for this year for various reasons. I’m always surprised to hear such comments but have no doubt that their results will reflect this attitude.

Bright Shiny Object Syndrome

I’ve worked with some very successful intelligent and creative people. I’ve also worked with intelligent and creative people who aspire to success, but don’t quite make it. One of the important things that differentiates the two groups is “the secret sauce,” that is, implementation.

The creative or entrepreneurial mind becomes excited and stimulated by bright, shiny objects, which often leads to new ideas and inspiration. Here’s the challenge: if new ideas distract your attention and you forget to implement what you’re already working on, overall, your results will be weaker.

May I Have Your Attention…Please?

Recently, CBS Sunday Morning featured a story on our shrinking attention span. Obviously, this is not a new topic; in fact I’ve been writing about it for years. That said, were a few takeaways and reminders worth highlighting.

Psychologist and attention span researcher, Dr. Gloria Mark, provided an interesting statistic. When her team researched attention spans two decades ago, on average the people in the study shifted attention every two and a half minutes.

Transcending Constant Change

Do you ever long for simpler times when change occurred only occasionally? Do you even remember times like that?

Those days are long gone, but strong managers need to know how to deal with tumultuous change for themselves as well as in leading their people.

The Power of One Strong Goal

It’s that time of the year where you’re wondering what the heck happened to the year…how did it go by so quickly…. and … how am I going to complete everything that I committed to do in 2023?

Well, there are about 80 days left in this year. The biggest challenge is falling into the trap of trying to do everything that you didn’t accomplish all year. If you turn into a whirlwind, you might make a little progress on several things, but may end up feeling dissatisfied because you didn’t get a great result on an important initiative.

What Has Happened to Civility?

Have you noticed that more people are behaving badly these days? I’m not going to speculate about the triggers, but how to deal with bad behavior has crept into many of my conversations with clients.

It seems that the offenders don’t hesitate to be contentious, whereas previously they would have been more patient or conciliatory to reach consensus. Here are a but a few of the examples that have surfaced recently.

Good Old-Fashioned Dialogue

How do you engage your people to be more involved in their work? The old cliché about the carrot and the stick comes to mind. Some managers feel that they need to be tough, demanding, or unrelenting in their approach.

Well, barking at your employees or dictating to them or condescending to them is usually more detrimental than effective. And if you randomly schmooze with them, people may feel good, but this doesn’t portend more engagement.

Can You Recognize Emotional Labor?

A recent article in The Washington Post discussed the concept of emotional labor. This is described as “the work someone does to regulate, modulate or manipulate their feelings to affect the emotions of people around them.”

The author, Rose Hackman, suggests that most emotional labor is provided by women. She contends that those who embrace emotional labor in the workplace are not being compensated for these behaviors.

Are You Prepared for Succession?

This topic has come up with clients several times in the past few weeks. For example, one executive who is preparing for retirement wants to hire someone to manage operational issues in the company. He hadn’t thought of this as succession, but that’s exactly what it is.

When you hire for succession, you’re not just thinking about hiring a competent person to fill a position. You’re considering a longer-term leader for key positions in your company or department.

Laser Focus

I received some great comments on last week’s column on “Think Time.” Although it’s a relatively simple concept, it isn’t that easy to implement consistently. Over time, tight schedules take over and people forget about it, schedule over it, or procrastinate doing it.

The comments triggered a good segue to a directly related theme. One of the factors that differentiates top performers from everyone else: they stay focused on the result. They think about how their work can have the greatest impact on the result. This is an example of think time in action.