What should I say 'no' to today?
Around 44% of employers report a decline in productivity between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to an American Management Association survey. While out-of-office messages during the holidays are inevitable, adopting a wartime mindset from here until end of year can enable your organization to maximize its output despite minimal staffing.
Wartime leaders are akin to a general in battle: laser-focused on the next short-term goal. A lack of time and resources requires them to make quick decisions and take swift action. Through the process of writing Why Simple Wins, I interviewed and studied leaders known for steady productivity in wartime as well as peacetime.
During tough times, these leaders actually found the path forward to be simpler than in seasons of prosperity. Why? When survival is your main objective, you typically have fewer choices — and the pressure to succeed can drive you to overcome any obstacle.
To shift your org (and yourself) into an agile mindset on-demand, start by answering a series of questions. The five questions below are designed to reveal immediate areas of opportunity for improving productivity in most industries.
1. To whom could I delegate this project right now? When you have unlimited time and money, ownership is an admirable trait. But if it’s December 22 and you’re the project lead on multiple deliverables? That’s when detachment is a virtue. Review your to-do list and your roster of available teams/employees: which one has the adequate skillset or experience to complete each deliverable? Hand it off now and resist the urge to micro-manage.
2. What should I say “no” to today? Apple’s former creative director Jony Ive recalls the daily frequency with which the late Steve Jobs asked him this question. Ive grew to understand that if he said “no” to irrelevant things every day, he could spend more time on work that really mattered. In wartime and peacetime, leaders must say “no” to low-value and unproductive activities so they have bandwidth for valuable work.
3. Can I/we create a template for this task/process that other employees can access and use? From reports and presentations to proof-of-concept documents and daily standup updates, any organizational task that’s completed at least once a month by more than one person is worthy of standardization. Not only does quality improve when everyone uses the same template, efficiency increases too. Yes, even during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
4. Can I/we reduce this document/proposal/contract to one page? Excepting the legal department, audiences aren’t likely to read a 10-page document word-for-word. One-pagers, on the other hand, drastically reduce the clutter and help your audience focus on the bite-sized information you’ve presented. In my experience, one-pagers provide clarity and often lead to faster decisions. The next time you’re up against the clock, pilot-test the one-page approach. If it produces a favorable outcome, make it the new standard.
5. If I had to deliver this project in half the time, what would I do differently? What’s stopping me from taking this approach now? During times of prosperity, we tend to think about our products, tools and resources within the boundaries of their prescribed functions. (Or what psychologists call functional fixedness.) But under constraints, we’re more likely to be flexible and creative in our thinking.
Case in point: Southwest Airlines’ idea of unassigned seating only emerged when it was down one plane and facing bankruptcy. This December, embrace the absence of your research assistant or principal engineer and the scarcity of time to devote to a single project. Chase solutions that reduce delivery time, and when you find one, consider establishing it as an official workaround.
As leaders, I believe we have an obligation to work efficiently and effectively — and urge others to do the same. And while it’s tough to carve out time for improving productivity, the workplace challenges that come with the holidays offer opportunities for us to experiment in this area. Embracing a wartime mindset during the most wonderful time of the year may actually produce the best gift of all: several hours of newly freed-up time every month.
