Long Term Thinking – Insights from Dorie Clark and The Long Game

The books I mention in this episode are:

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
• Sacred Earth Sacred Soul by John Philip Newell

4:08 – How do you pick your favorite drawing of a President?

7:00 – Defining the Long Game: the surest path to meaningful and lasting success in a world that so often prioritizes what’s easy, quick, and shallow

9:24 – The passion and experience that led Dorie to write The Long Game

11:40 – How long-term thinking and leading yourself first make you a better leader

13:31 – The need for white space and how our calendars are often prisons of our own making

15:53 – Why we tend to over-schedule

17:36 – One of the most simple ways to reclaim some white space and build margin for long-term thinking

20:05 – Responding to meeting requests and limiting your time in unproductive meetings

21:04 – The question to ask instead of “Can I do this?”

23:28 – Another question to ask yourself to determine if something is of long-term value to you

25:40 – Optimize for interesting – an awesome decision-making strategy to play the long game

29:52 – The power of leverage and how to make something count twice

33:42 – Why recognizing your constraints is a vital driver of creativity and better decision-making

36:07 – Small changes you can make to start reclaiming your time and long-term thinking

38:21 – The danger of baseline syndrome and how to overcome it

42:04 – Keeping the faith: staying motivated through obstacles, discouragement, and heartbreak

51:54 – Quiet, silence, and reflection.

Connect with Dorie

Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

Get Dorie’s Book

The post The Long Game with Dorie Clark appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

If you feel like you’re constantly reacting and don’t have a moment to think about what you’re doing, much less why you’re doing it, this episode is for you. Juliet Funt gives you practical suggestions (as well as the permission) to regain control of your workday, create the space you need in order to do your best work and lead your team well. It’s time to reclaim your energy, creativity, and brilliance – it all starts by finding your minute to think.

A Minute to Think

3:55 – The importance of self-awareness and progress in your leadership development.

5:20 – The permission to have time that doesn’t have a specific assignment. It’s like oxygen for a fire – without that sort of time, the fire of your productivity and creativity will go out.

7:52 – The challenges and negative side-effects of all the productivity short-cuts you might take.

8:50 – Why mindless busyness is counterproductive and illogical.

10:03 – Next, we look at the pervasive “culture of insatiability” and how it precludes us from doing the work that actually makes a difference.

12:18 – What is white space and why it is a competitive advantage for leaders who ensure it exists for themselves and their teams.

13:10 – Four ways that giving yourself unscheduled time will benefit your leadership, your team, your health, and your productivity.

16:38 – A practical example of an innovative team member who was innovative because he regularly had a minute to think. But he lost his creativity when he joined the innovation team. Why?

18:32 – Next, we look at how you can get started with a tool called “the wedge.”

22:29 – Then we look at meetings and how to ensure they are a good use of time for you and your team.

26:56 – Next you get another practical tip to avoid sucking away people’s time in meetings.

32:49 – Then, we take a look at the four most common thiefs of time. These are positive attributes of most leaders that have a shadow side. They’ll derail you if you’re not careful.

47:09 – Finally, we discuss how to say “no” elegantly – in ways that serve your leadership, your team, and even your boss.

Connect with Juliet

Website

LInkedIn

Twitter

Get Juliet’s Book

The post A Minute to Think with Juliet Funt appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

In this week’s episode of Asking for a Friend, we talk with Virg Palumbo, Regional President at Kforce. A former marine, Virg is an absolute expert in creating an operating cadence to build a high-performing team.

In this episode, we discuss

1. 1. What an operating cadence is (and why it matters)
   2. Best practices for establishing your own operating cadence
   3. How to build a high-performing team through an effective operating cadence
   4. And, how to expect the unexpected and get your team back on track

Virg Palumbo on Building an Operating Cadence of a High-Performing Team

“At some point, you need to give yourself personal grace and organizational grace.”

“More is not better, better is better.”

When establishing a cadence, “onboarding matters.”

“Keep half-hour meetings to 25 minutes …”

“Take care of the customer, take care of your family … if you get pulled away, just circle back.”

How do you help a supervisor who struggles with this? (see 21:54) Ask, “what are you seeing and what are you feeling?”

What are your best practices for building a high-performing team?

How do you establish a highly effective operating cadence?

Related Articles:

Leadership Skills: 6 Concepts You Can’t Lead Without

6 Habits of Highly Effective Hybrid and Virtual Teams

The post How Do I Build a High-Performing Team (with Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Last-minute fire drills, interruptions, and real emergencies can become a permanent way of life. Get your team back on track by planning ahead with these five steps.

It’s a common lament: “It’s so crazy around here. We never know what’s going to happen and there are so many priorities. We’ll be working on something then that gets blown up and we have to focus on the new emergency.”

Distractions and interruptions are a part of life and they can make you crazy if you let them.

5 Steps to Get Your Team Back on Track

If your day seems to be a series of distractions and your team can’t make progress on the strategic priorities that matter most, here are five steps that can help you get your team back on track.

1. Clarify what matters most.

Does your team know the Most Important Thing (M.I.T.)? What strategic priorities matter most? What are the daily and weekly behaviors that will lead to success?

Without the North Star of clearly defined M.I.T.s, your team will always be reactive and distracted by the unexpected and urgent. The first step to get your team back on track is to define clearly what “on track” looks like.

2. Expect the unexpected.

You probably know more about your emergencies, fire drills, and interruptions than you might think. We’ve worked with so many leaders who feel out of control, but when you sit down and talk through the distractions, there are usually just a few causing the majority of the problems.

Take 15 minutes with your team and you can quickly figure out how to expect the unexpected. Start by listing out your most common distractions. Once you have the list, you can map them onto this graph by asking two questions: How commonly does this happen? How disruptive is it?

The items in Quadrant I are the distractions you want to address first. You know they will happen. You know they cost you the most time, money, and energy. (And if you have more time and effort to devote, then move to Quadrant II, then III.  You can usually safely ignore IV.)

3. Plan your response.

Now that you know the interruptions and emergencies that cause you the most trouble, it’s time to plan your response.

You have ways of doing your core work, processes that you know work. Build the same processes to handle distractions and return to the MIT. This shortens the time it takes to get your team back on track.

Let’s start with an analogy: a fumbled football.

As soon as that football hits the ground, everyone nearby knows that it’s their job to either pick it up and run or else jump on it and wrap it up in their arms. That’s the plan. Once you have possession of the ball, you get back to your game plan.

Let’s say one of your common, yet important disruptive distractions is a customer who is escalating to your executive office. It’s important and needs to be handled with urgency and care. How can you and your team build a standard way of responding so you minimize the time spent addressing the situation?

Without a process, it’s easy for this urgent situation to involve more people than necessary frenetically working to address the issue, updating their bosses, and duplicating effort.

Maybe your planned response looks like this:

1. The executive receives the call and sends it to a designated “on-call” manager who will coordinate response efforts.
2. After understanding the situation, the on-call manager contacts the customer and informs them they are working on the situation, and collects any additional information needed.
3. The on-call manager also informs the social media team and any other customer communication channels in case the customer is escalating there as well, so all communication is coordinated.
4. The on-call manager coordinates the response, contacts the customer, and closes the loop with the executive office.

4. Maintain margin.

One of the most overlooked ways to prevent distractions from overwhelming your day is to plan for them.

If you scheduled your team every day with wall-to-wall meetings and deadlines that must happen today, you have a fragile system with no margin for error. Any interruption will knock over that house of cards and (predictably) ruin your results.

You’ve mapped out your interruptions and how frequently they happen. Besides planning your response, give yourself margin in your calendar to respond. You may not know what will come up, but you know it’s coming.

And if you have one of those magical days where there aren’t any emergencies, fire drills, or interruptions – fantastic! That’s more time to work on your M.I.T. or build relationships with your team.

5. Eliminate causes.

Finally, as you examine your most common and disruptive distractions, ask how you can eliminate them. Is there a problem in your user experience that you can fix? Will a new process prevent those errors? Is there a frequent communication breakdown you can address?

You don’t have to have all the answers. Bring the team together, show them what a successful idea will achieve, and then ask them for their thoughts on how to solve the issue.

How to Get Your Team Back on Track

1. Clarify what matters most.
2. Expect the unexpected.
3. Plan your response.
4. Maintain margin.
5. Eliminate causes.

It’s easy to let exceptions become the rule and turn your days into whirlwinds of frantic reactivity. Taking a few minutes to identify your most common distractions and building a routine response will save you time, energy, and help get your team back on track, focused on what matters most.

Your Turn

We’d love to hear from you – what would you add? Leave us a comment and share: How do you help your team stay focused despite the inevitable distractions?

You Might Also Like:

Download a FREE first chapter of Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results-Without Losing Your Soul.

5 Ways Leaders Can Focus When Everything Is Important

How to Focus Your Time and Energy for Maximum Results

How to Unlock Your Team’s Best Ideas

The post Get Your Team Back on Track – Leading Through Distractions appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Sheila raised her hand and asked for the microphone. We were near the end of a powerful leadership development program where the participants had worked hard on culture-transformation. She took a deep breath and said, “I love everything we’ve received today. But realistically, there’s not enough time. My manager doesn’t care about this stuff – so I don’t know what to do.”

Specifically, Sheila was struggling with how to spend 10 minutes each week with each team member to support them, ensure they had what they needed to succeed, and maintain goal alignment.

Can you relate? Sheila isn’t alone. Over the past few months, we’ve heard many managers say, “I want to, but there’s not enough time.”

Let’s be real: many managers receive responsibility for their teams on top of their job responsibilities. Nothing goes away. They’re leading AND doing their old job.

This isn’t ideal, but it happens. If this is your scene, the good news is that you can still lead well.

Four Steps to Take When There’s Not Enough Time

Leading when time is tight requires you to make choices about how you approach your work. With a few shifts in your mindset, you can significantly improve the quality of your leadership.

1. Redefine Success

Leading when there’s not enough time begins with reframing your job.

As a leader, your number one job isn’t to “get the job done” yourself. It’s to get the job done well, through the team. When you take on too much because “everyone else is busy too” the work gets done, but you’re not tapping into the diversity of strengths or helping your team to grow.

We’ve heard the objections, “But Karin and David, my boss doesn’t see it that way. I’ve got to do the job they want. And no one does it better than me.”

Yes, you need to achieve the results you’re accountable for. But if you’re always the best person for the job, you’re in trouble. It’s not an either/or choice. It’s a matter of you choosing how you will get results.

No one makes that choice for you. It’s up to you.

2. Commit to Leadership (Even in a Crisis)

There is an insightful scene in the original Men In Black movie where Jay (Will Smith) tries to shoot an alien in plain sight of civilians. Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) confronts him and emphasizes the need to stay focused on what matters most:

Kay: We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public!

Jay: We don’t got time for this cover-up bull-. Look, I don’t know if you forgot, but there’s an Arquillian Battle…

Kay: There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they “do not know about it!”

There will always be a new crisis, another change of the strategic objective, and thirty-seven other tasks you could do today. If you want an excuse to not lead, they are plentiful.

As with the Men in Black, “the only way” it works is to stay focused on what matters most. Treat those urgent moments as opportunities to lead.

3. Recognize the Time You Have

You’re right. You don’t have time to do everything you’d like to do (and that will always be true). But that’s not the question.

The real question is: What is the most important leadership action you need to do next?

Maybe you need to focus on developing your people. Or you want to get everyone organized around key strategic outcomes. Maybe there is a new initiative you haven’t implemented well and need to improve.

You may not have time for everything, but you have time for that. And, sometimes you may need to get creative.

When Karin was in her sales executive role with fourteen remote direct reports, she would often get up early and do a bit of yoga to ground herself for the day. During the last half hour, she would concentrate for a minute or two on each of her direct reports to consider what they needed most and how she might help. She would prioritize her thoughts and make touch-base calls on her drive time between stores.

When you focus on the one leadership behavior that will make the most difference, it’s amazing what you can achieve in a small amount of time. You can help people grow through short exchanges (and it’s often more effective than a long conversation).

4. Choose Progress Over Perfect

Three minutes spent with a team member or a ten-minute huddle with your team may not feel like the comprehensive work you want to do, but we promise: it works.

Small moments of daily progress lead to significant results. Don’t allow your desire for perfection to keep you from doing what you can do today.

If you don’t see how you might meet with each team member for 10 minutes each week, then try meeting with half of them this week and the other half next week. Still too much to ask? How about one person each day for 10 minutes?

Unless you’re in the middle of a rare conflagration, you can find 10 minutes today. That’s all it takes.

Your Turn

Ultimately, leading when you don’t have enough time is a choice. It’s a choice to recognize that you influence your team with everything you do.

Leave us a comment and share your best practice for being a healthy leader – even when time is tight.

The post How to Lead When There’s Not Enough Time appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You don’t have enough time and energy for everything on your list – and you never will. Your ability to focus your time and energy is key to your success.

Focusing time and energy isn’t about managing time or the latest productivity system. It starts with your beliefs and one simple daily practice you can start today.

The post How to Focus Your Time and Energy for Maximum Results appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You want to be a productive leader, but your to-do list has more tasks, projects, and goals than you can possibly achieve.

The never-ending list can feel overwhelming. Leadership means a continual stream of information, problems, decisions, interruptions from email, texts, phone calls, apps—and that doesn’t include the strategic investments in people and projects that will help you build a better future.

It can seem like you’ll never get ahead.

Two Mindsets to Be a More Productive Leader

There are two mental shifts that will help you end the overwhelm and achieve the results you want.

There’s So Much

It’s not your imagination. There really is more on that list than you can possibly get done.

What do you do with that reality? Does it stress you and paralyze you?

If so, the problem isn’t with your list. It’s with your perspective.

Here’s the reality productive leaders embrace: there is always more to do than you can do. It’s a fact of life.

Right now you could check in with your boss, answer your emails, build a spreadsheet, talk to an underperforming team member, make a to-do list, help your child with her homework, work on your most strategic project, listen carefully to a peer, call a customer, hold a developmental conversation with a mentee, take a luxurious bath, go to yoga, read this article, call a dear friend, check your social media, adopt a cat, clean out the stale food from your refrigerator, and a thousand other tasks.

The list is endless. It always is and it always will be.

When you’re stressed and overwhelmed, the difference is that you’re more aware of your choices. When you’re relaxed on a beach, there are still a thousand other things you could do with that moment – you’re just not thinking about them.

To turn the problem into power, embrace the fact that you can’t possibly do everything.

You never could and you never will. The list is always infinite.

When you surrender the unrealistic hope that the list will somehow go away and acknowledge that it is always there, always has been, and always will be, it frees you to focus.

You’ve Got Serious Limits

Our son loves to multitask. He’ll watch a YouTube documentary while trying to clean his room. Inevitably, one of these tasks wins (and it’s usually not the room.)

The problem is that multitasking is a myth. He’s shifting his attention back and forth between each activity (or not shifting it at all).

It’s another tough reality for most of us to accept: in addition to the fact that there will always be an infinite list, there’s a very limited amount of you to go around.

The second mindset shift that will help you be a more productive leader is that you can only do one thing at a time.

From that long list, you get to choose one task.

That’s it. One.

Finish that one. Or move it forward as much as you can, then move to the next.

This is the secret of every time management and productivity system: There’s always more than you can do and that you can only do one thing at a time.

So how do you choose what to do?

Mind the M.I.T.

There are many sophisticated systems to answer this question.

We prefer to keep it straightforward:  What’s your M.I.T. (Most Important Thing)?

• What is the most important strategic outcome your team will achieve this year?
• Today, what is the most important thing you will do?
• What are the two or three critical behaviors that will produce the best outcomes for you and your team?

As a productive leader, your M.I.T. often shifts from day to day. Today, it may be to clarify your strategy for the year. Tomorrow, it may be to address an underperforming team member. The next day, your M.I.T. may be a coaching conversation or working with a colleague and your boss to get alignment on their M.I.T. It may be to ensure you finish what you’ve started.

Mind the M.I.T. means that you know what’s most important and do it first, if at all possible. Do it before the inevitable rush of interruptions, problems, and fire drills.

Simple? Yes.

Easy? Not always.

It takes courage to say no. It also takes courage to uncover your M.I.T. when it’s not clear.

It takes humility to accept your limitations and choose excellence somewhere over presence everywhere.

It takes self-awareness and confidence to acknowledge that today’s M.I.T. might be a walk in the woods or time with loved ones.

It takes determination to ignore what’s easy and do what matters most.

When you focus on your daily M.I.T., help your team understand the strategic M.I.T., and know their daily M.I.T. behaviors, you will unleash your team’s energy and transform your results.

To help him be a more productive leader, one Winning Well reader told us that he posted these words from the book on his office wall so he can see them every day:

Infinite Need.

Finite Me.

Focus On the MIT.

Your Turn

To be a more productive leader, embrace the infinite need, remember that you can only do one thing at a time, and focus on the behaviors that will make the most difference for you, your team, and the results you want to achieve.

Leave us a comment and share: What is your best secret to maintaining your focus and productivity?

The post 3 Ways to Be a More Productive Leader appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

And then, hearkening back to chapter 7 (accountability), I laughed and said, “If I were really a good co-author I would have done ________ .” (it really doesn’t matter what this is, as I will here pull a Scarlett Ohara, and be sure to worry about that tomorrow).

David didn’t miss a beat, and said, “Oh I get it. It’s on your ‘I don’t wanna list.'”

Deep pause. It was. The next vital question was, ‘Why? Why was it there? What was the resistance? Why did I agree to do something I was avoiding?

5 Reasons You’re Avoiding Your “I Don’t Wanna” List (and what to do about it).

“The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.” – Steven Pressfield

In my experience there are five big reasons something ends up on our “I Don’t Wanna List.” I’d love to hear what you would add.

1. It’s a Damn Stupid Idea: You hate the idea and everything around it. You’re against it at a core values level. The only thing dumber than putting this on your permanent avoid list, would be to actually cave.
   Next Step: Time to person-up. Use your words. Share your feelings. Before you do anything stupid, say what you mean– chances are any stupid idea attracts a swarm of naysayers just ready to buzz. Speak up. Others will follow.
2. Your Values Say NO!!!! It’s a good idea in theory, but something about your values say “no.”
   Next Step: Listen to your heart… with an open mind. If it’s a real values clash– say so, and then be open to further explaining your rationale or removing yourself from the scene.
3. You’re Annoyed: But it’s got to be done. We all have tasks that drive us crazy, but sometimes you’ve just got to do them.
   Next Step: Resist the urge to save them all for later. Knock out a few such tasks early in the day while you’re fresh.
4. You’re Scared: Perhaps you’re afraid of screwing it up. Or maybe you’re worried about what others will think.
   Next Step: Consider what’s the worst thing that could happen. Chances are it’s not as bad as you think.
5. You’re Stuck: You really don’t know what to do next
   Next Step: Ask yourself the Winning Well secret bonus question, “What would you do if you did know?” Let go of the pressure and brainstorm possible solutions with confidence.

We all have tasks we would rather avoid…. but when you can develop the discipline to know what must be done, and make it happen, you boost your energy and confidence for your Winning Well mission.

Have you taken our FREE Winning Well self-assessment? If not, click here. You can also download our FREE Winning Well toolkit.

If you’ve enjoyed Winning Well, we would appreciate your help in spreading the word through referrals and an Amazon review.

The post 5 Reasons You’re Avoiding Your "I Don’t Wanna" List (and what to do about it) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Helping your team prioritize their focus and work is one of the toughest roles of a manager.

You’re still required to meet all your targets and objectives, so teaching your team to place an item on the bottom of the list is scary.

What if they really don’t get to it? There are no easy trade-offs in this “and” culture (we need this AND that).

Prioritizing work and balancing competing priorities are vital leadership skills (see also Leadership Skills: 6 Competencies You Can’t Lead Without).

Knowing what to move to the top of the list when, and how to keep the other plates spinning at the same time takes practice. Help your team recognize the common traps that are sabotaging their ability to prioritize well.

Common Prioritization Traps

Perhaps you have some of these characters on your team who struggle to prioritize work.

Windshield Watchers

Windshield Watchers look deceptively productive. They’re moving fast and getting a lot done. They’re often the first ones to respond to any task because they’re taking the Nike, “just do it” approach to whatever hits their windshield.

The adrenaline brings a familiar rush to their day.

Windshield Watchers actually attract more urgent work because people know they’ll drop everything and get on it. The biggest problem with the Windshield Watcher is that they have no real basis to prioritize work.

The urgent always trumps important in such team members, so although they’re getting a lot done, but not necessarily making progress toward bigger goals.

Windshield Watchers often struggle with feedback because they know they’re busier than everyone else. They resent having to talk about it right now, with all the emails coming in that require attention.

Help Windshield Watchers by creating a focus on what matters most, scheduling the finish for each deliverable (see prioritize work resources below).

Work Harders

Bless their hearts, work harders will do everything they can to get it all done, no matter how many hours it takes, or how little they’ve slept.

The problem with these hard workers is that they often are so busy doing the work, they don’t take time to consider the best way to get it done.

They overlook possible support from others or more efficient ways because they’re so lost in the doing.

Help Work Harders to step back and consider the best approach to prioritize work and eliminate less important tasks. Help them build some white space into their day to think more strategically about what matters most.

Wheel Greasers

Wheel greasers hate conflict and are particularly sensitive to pressure from above.

They prioritize based on whoever’s screaming the loudest (or on who has the bigger title).

.Which means, the problem may be hard for you to detect (after all, you appreciate how seriously they take your requests to prioritize work, since you’re the boss).

Wheel Greasers often feel overwhelmed by the stress of trying to please all the people all the time. They feel like they can never do enough because there’s no objective measure of success.

Help Wheel Greasers by defining objective criteria on which to prioritize their work. Recognize if they have a tendency to drop other work to do what you need because you’re the boss. Explain and role model how you differentiate noisy requests from urgent issues. (See prioritize work resources below).

Whack-A-Molers

These well-intentioned folks care deeply about the outcomes.

They pour their heart and soul into the most important work. It’s hard to argue with their priorities. The challenge is that their laser focus on the emergency of the day causes them to miss the consequences caused in the aftermath.

Sure customer service metrics improve, but financials suffer. Or, the financials look great, but employees are miserable.

Help Whack-A-Molers by encouraging them to see the big picture and brainstorm downstream impacts. Invite them to pilot their ideas before spending significant energy on large-scale implementation.

Help Your Team Prioritize With a Great One-On-One

How Do You Prioritize Your Work? Articles That Can Help

Productivity at Work: How to Lead Highly Productive Teams (helpful for all of these folks)

How to Provide More Meaningful Performance Feedback (how to point out the behaviors impacting productivity in a way that enhances results and relationships).

How to Improve Your Results: The Score Isn’t The Game (helping your team identify the key behaviors that will most lead to success)

Getting Your Team Back on Track: Leading Through Distractions (how to refocus your team)

Image credit: ©Gary Hider/123RF.COM

The post Helping Your Team To Prioritize When Everything Is Important appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

And yet, at other times, lots of stuff seems to get in the way. And we look at each other with the common question, “how can I get more done?”

We Use The Time We Have

 

It’s human nature. When we have time,, we use it.

Most projects take at least the time allotted. Most conference calls finish just-in-time. When is the last time you saw a BAU project expedited–because it was possible?

We know this as Parkinson’s law, work expands to fill the time allotted. Nothing is expedited when things are moving along as planned, because it doesn’t need to be.

What Can We Learn from a Crises?

One the other hand, in a time of crises, the time allotted is zero, so everything is expedited. There is something urgent that must be fixed. Suddenly, the normal protocols disappear and work happens fast.

There’s a lot to be learned about execution from a crises. At times of natural disasters, blackouts, and other unthinkable crises, teams pull together and execute in ways they never thought possible. Creative solutions emerge from seemingly nowhere, “impossible” deadlines are exceeded, and competitors collaborate for the greater good, Organizations and teams execute with an efficiency they never thought possible.

Why? What good can we learn from these undesired times?

Here’s a list of what I’ve seen first hand over the years, and observed and followed in other people’s fantastic stories of execution in a time of crises.

How They Get More Done

• Everyone becomes energized around a common mission
• Decisions normally made by committee, are made on the fly
• People work extraordinary hours, and feel enlivened by their contribution
• IT and other complex projects that normally require substantial planning are expedited and done in Herculean time frames
• Communication becomes paramount: people talk frequently
• Decision makers roll-up their sleeves to help, and the experts rise to positions of power
• Standard protocols soften, and people support one another
• Companies collaborate for the greater good
• No one touches Powerpoint until the post-mortem
• …???

Of course, we can’t live on an adrenaline rush all the time. And, fast decisions can also have downsides. On the other hand

The post Get More Done in Less Time: Learning From Crises appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.