The power of saying No

Ah No! That little word we learn around when we are 2 years old and are told by our parents that we are just a terrible 2.

Yet it’s such a powerful word despite having negative connotations and one we need to re-learn how to use all over again. Go in front of the mirror and practice with me: No. Not a but, not a maybe, just a No.

But why is it so hard to say no?

Let’s face it, we are people pleasers. We evolved by being next to others, having each others backs against predators or other enemies. Belonging to a community was part of our survival, it’s wired in our brains. So it’s not easy. Worst of them all is to say no when everyone around you says yes.

Say you get a request on a friday night to work over the weekend, if the first person of the team says yes, that’s it, the rest of you will feel cornered into pulling one for the team. You don’t want to be the one saying no, unless it’s something really major like a family funeral or your kids birthday. All of you will be upset about it, because who loves being called last minute to work when you were planning to rest? Even if you had no plans at all, well there’s one you didn’t had: work!

We avoid hard conversations – and that includes saying no – because we don’t like conflict. It’s not comfortable and we want to belong. Many of us all assume – with some evidence – that if you say no you are limiting yourself in your career growth. What if it’s not quite like that? What if you might end up being respected for it?

Establishing boundaries

The first step is to recognize what your boundaries are. What are your non compromisable slots / actions? Is it that you want to take the kids to school or want to start your day with some exercise? Or rather that after 17h30 you really need to spend time with your family, cook dinner and eventually unwind yourself? Just identify what those are and a) add them in your calendar and b) communicate to those that could impact them what they are.

The more specific you are the better, e.g. every weekday I want to run from 07h to 08h and that includes any prep time before / after running. Or maybe it’s not every day and just tuesdays and thursdays.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Trust me, you cannot rely on common sense for people to know what your boundaries are. I guess whereas everyone can accept that being called at 03a.m, 07a.m might be ok for some but not for others. So the key here is to communicate. Be as clear and assertive as you can regarding your boundaries. This is valid with your family, friends and at work too.

Work wise, this would be a really good topic for your 1 on 1 with your line manager. If you don’t have them, then start to schedule them. If you receive requests which you don’t like, the fault is not only on the requestor but also on you for not making it clear what’s acceptable and what’s not. Most companies will have a code of conduct, and in some countries even specific laws (like in France, where it’s against the law to call employees after hours (here) – we seriously have a lot to learn from them). But as we are all unique, so our boundaries. So if you want to avoid disappointment and high levels of stress I would make them all clear.

I would go as far as also share them with your colleagues, in the coffee break you can say how taking your kids to school really makes you happy and it’s a non compromisable slot for you, or playing football with your friends thursday night. If you are willing to share them, you will find others will too, in turn making it easier for you guys to protect each other. Ah I won’t book that call with Steve as it’s thursday and he’s going to football, lets do friday morning instead.

Don’t be afraid to say No

For every yes you say, it’s a sequence of No’s you are saying. If you stay late in the office you will miss dinner with your family and your rest. Is it something you are willing to “sacrifice”? Yes it’s nice to say yes to people, it feels good as just discussed but how bad does it feel when you compromise your boundaries and over time, might end up with burnout due to saying yeses to everyone but to yourself?

So don’t be afraid to say no.

Say No is one of the best tools for self-care. Is it against one of your boundaries? Then say No. If you’ve invested the time in communicating what is not compromisable, then saying no should be a lot easier. Yes there might be the odd exception when you might end up saying yes, but it can’t be the rule.

Someone who has the courage to say no will be respected, because we ALL struggle with it after all. Your line manager has the same problem too, believe me. We all do. So if you say no and it’s clear you are doing so to protect your boundaries, you will be respected. If they still argue that you have to do x, y and z and don’t respect you, then it’s really time for you to find some other place. Most people though, would understand and be able to find a compromise somewhere.

I have to admit I’m really with Gen Z on this one. We just keep on saying yes again and again, and in turn we are boiling like our friend the frog in the pan. It’s hard, it’s itchy but if you don’t protect yourself no one will. There will always more work, more to do’s that demand your time and attention. How much are you willing to sacrifice from your mental health just so you don’t have to say no?

I do believe in the power of every single no. It will protect you and others will be encourage to do the same. Maybe it will shift organizations to understand that we are not robots and if they expect excellence and delivery they have to respect the employees too. If you are exhausted and in burnout you cannot give your best self nor resolve problems. You might break to the point of no return and might not even get a thank you back. So yes give your best, feel proud of your achievements every day but don’t forget to take care of yourself, even if that means using a good old fashioned: NO.

Great Expectations

How great expectations are leading to great disappointment and it’s all our fault.

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with the book from Charles Dickens (or maybe it does).

Let’s face it, we live in a world with unprecedently great expectations. Everyone expects something out of you, you expect a great deal of those around you and on yourself as well. With all the technology around us, we just expect more more and more.

You are expected to be a great parent, the best employee your company can have, the best partner at home and be extremely fit – both physically and mentally. Although we always had expectations – it’s part of being human after all – the imbalance started to come when suddendly work expectations just kept on growing as if not even the sky is a limit.

In a post-covid world, companies got hooked to the long hours we were doing when working from home while at the same time they started to demand all employees to be back at the office, some the full 5 days others some kind of hybrid in between.

The concept is a lot older really, but did indeed accelerate with technology and the rise of the smart phones. You can have emails and internal messaging 24/7 so you are expected to pick up on those email and messages all the time. Bit by bit we started to do so. We wake up in the morning and check emails and work messages (not just instangrams and tik-toks). In the evening, while you are doing dinner, you end up checking emails too and after dinner might even be back to your desk – now that we all know we can work from home – and continue just to catch up on a few things.

Then weekend comes and because the week was so crazy we end up doing some work over the week too. What was meant to be just a quick scroll through the emails and to dos, easily becomes a few hours which are not eating from your personal and rest time. Little by little we do more and more.

This keeps getting encouraged when celebrating success at your organisation. How many individual or team awards will contain something in the lines of: “This team or individual worked weekends and really long hours to get this work done! Amazing, well done!”. I can’t but roll my eyes at this as I know it keeps on fueling the expectation that we need to carry on to do more.

If you see your whole team logging late and sending emails over the weekend you will end up – unconsciously – feeling guilty and also wanting to be there for the team. But the more everyone does, the more management expects you to do.

The reward for good work is always more work.

Now breaking news, it’s all our fault as well.

Gen Z has a point here (Good summary from Deloitte on Gen Z here). All other generations believe they are lazy, spoiled and don’t want to commit to anything. But what if they have a point? They want to do meaningful work and want to feel connected and don’t seem to be willing to accept workism. I say they do have a point and we should try to see the world from their point of view.

If we all continue to fueling the constant rising expectations how can we expect they will become realistic? It’s everyone’s role to bring them down to earth.

Protect your boundaries

We all have the same 24h, but if you want to avoid burnout or end up consumed by work (workism) then you have to protect your boundaries. Yes there will be cases where indeed you have to do more work. There are major milestones and it’s really critical you are there. But then you need to be able to step down when it’s no longer critical.

A lot of the work that comes late – including requests to work late evenings and weekends – comes down to bad planning. If we don’t challenge those asks, the people responsible for articulate the plans will never step back and revisit what they are doing, they will just continue to use your personal time (and all your team’s time) as contigency to get work done.

Always start by asking: is this really critical? Is someone dying? Will the organization go down or could this result in a major reputational risk? Or does it come down to someone doing bad planning and now you don’t want to say no to the leadership team? If it’s the latter, I’m afraid to say it, but step up to your mistakes. A lot comes due to missing communications between those responsible for planning and the team actually doing the work.

I would never expect someone to be able to plan everything in isolation, you need the experts to tell you how long it takes. With experience, the ones responsible for planning can judge if the estimates are being conservative or not, but that dialogue needs to exist. Just don’t come and ask for your team to work every weekend (or quite a big number of them).

Don’t be afraid to challenge the asks by having a constructive dialogue with your line manager, you might find both learn quite a lot along the way.

As for the organisation’s point of view – as I’ve written quite often – a well rested brain is more efficient at resolving difficult situations and bringing up creative to either resolve big problems or keep on adding more value to clients and stakeholders alike.

The age of burnout

“Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.” – Michael Gungor

Welcome to the age of burnout

Isn’t it funny that in the age of AI we totally forgot how to be human? Let’s go back to the basics and lets look at the pyramid of the human needs. If work is everything, we start to compromise even the most basic needs. Burnout is a way of your body to tell you to stop and to callibrate yourself before it’s too late.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships. From Psychology today

Why so many of us and at such young ages are getting burnt out?

1 – Social media and the age of “you can have it all”.

Spoiler alert: no you can’t! We all have 24h and as per the basic pyramid of needs, we need rest. The brain doesn’t function properly without proper rest. If you go to bed thinking about work and the kids and all the things you haven’t done, you are not allowing yourself to decompress and actually rest.

We see all this self-made millionaires in silicon valley who advocate just a few hours sleep if you want to be successful. Well, what does success mean to you? If it’s burn out, you are on the right path.

2 – High expectations

Expectations have never been higher than before, not just those from society on you, but those you hold on yourself (oh boy, am I guilty of this one!). You have to be the acing your career, you have to be the best husband / wife, the best parent and attend everything your kids do at school and volunteer at school and in your local community and and and.

I remember my parents going to work and never bringing any work home. They did what was in the contract, no more, no less. Then we were told if you go to university you will get a good job and feel something you feel proud of. We mold our identity on the job title we have. Our ego’s feel amazing about it. You continuously compare yourself to others and your expectations keep on going higher and higher.

3 – The biggest lie of the century: multi-tasking

We have devices all over, 24/7 notifications demanding our attention, at the same time as emails keep on coming at the speed of light, and meetings because we have teams around the globe, and the kids can’t open the cooking jar and your other half doesn’t know where the car keys are. Our brains are not geared for this. If you keep on jumping from one task to the next and back again you are just burning yourself. There is nothing more restorative than a few hours of mindful focus. Focus on 1 thing and get it done. Is this how we function? Hell no.

I could add so many other reasons, so many in fact I could write a whole book about it.

What can we do about it?

Spoiler: The below lines are just a bunch of common sense but I still feel like adding them to remind ourselves.

Just say no

Practice with me: No. Not maybe, No. If your kid wants the 10th chocolate what do you say? No. That’s the no I’m after. No

Say no to everything which is not priority for you. Say no to your boss, say no to your colleagues, say no to your partners, say no to your kids. Prioritize where you say yes. And the first yes you need to use is for yourself. Yes am I going to take care of myself. Yes my rest is priority and I’m going to drop everything else during this slot which is not rest. (I wrote quite a lot about this in the “frog & the pan“)

Let the small fires burn, someone else can deal with them or they will burn and not need any action on them. You might even be more respected for having said No.

If you burn out there is no going back to your old self. What will you get from work? A pat in your back? They will move on without you, but you ruined your life. These days there are some leaders who really believe that the work you do is the reward you seek, that you feel fulfilled in doing what you do. And a lot of us might actually believe it! Remember this, if you get seriously ill there will be no going back.

Find ways to decompress

We are not made to be sitting with our butts for 12h in a row. We need to keep active and in contact with nature. So get out there and go for a quick walk in your local park. Join a class, whatever rocks your boat and works for you! There is a point where the brain is not productive anymore, so you will just be spending more hours to do something you could do in less than 1h if you had a well-rested mind. Stress is also a killer of creativity, which all companies need anyway (I wrote about it here). Find a slot that works for you and use it to restore some energy back in your brain. Book a meeting with yourself and do what you need to do.

Connect with others

We evolved close to others, it’s core to our survival throughout history. So you need to prioritize meaningful connections, either with your family, your friends, or those that you relate to (e.g. common interests). Talk with someone on how you feel, this might help you gain the clarity of mind to understand how deep in a hole you actually are (others might see it more clearly than ourselves).

Be the example you seek

Well someone has to stop it, especially if you have at least 1 person you are responsible for in your job, be the example. Lead with empathy, encourage others to turn off and unplug when they need to unplug and have their back. Wouldn’t it be amazing if at least every 1 person looked after just another person in the company?

Further reading:

Burnout

https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/mental-health-issues/stress/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/08/a-career-change-saved-my-life-the-people-who-built-better-lives-after-burnout

And before I end, a great video that sums it all.

Quiet quitting

After the last 1 year ish of great resignation, we are reaching the phase of quiet quitting.

What is quiet quitting?

Well in few words is doing just the bare minimum expected of your role to keep afloat. No more chasing the carrot and no putting of extra hours.

sourced from: https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/slang/what-does-quiet-quitting-mean

Is quiet quitting good or bad?

Well, as everything in life depends on the perspective.

From the employee angle

Again depends on the perspective. What is the reason behind it? Is it to search a more balanced life and be able to focus on other important milestones outside work? I don’t think this would be a bad thing. In fact I do believe we should all search for a more balanced life. In the last few years most of us were unable to really turn off from work as work and home merged together as under the same roof. We tended to work much longer hours and reach a special burnout, where we felt overwhelmed by the whole circunstances, not knowing when it would be allowed or safe to have “normal life” again, plus ending up longer meetings, longer hours. Is it bad to reassess that maybe enough is enough and establish some boundaries? I personally don’t think so.

However, if this is coming from an angle of disappointment in one’s role or career, well not so good. The reality is we need motivation to pack those hours, even the expected 8h. For most of us, there is a really high insecurity about the next few years ahead and don’t even attempt to look into your energy bill. For those that didn’t took advantage of the great resignation now it’s starts to become too late. Too late to risk to go into a new role when security is all that matters: can I pay my mortagage? Can I afford to warm up my house? Can I buy the food we need for the family? In the balance of it all, people will be more willing to face another Monday (or dragging through it) than risk becoming unemployed.

From the companies point of view

Why is your team quiet quitting? Why don’t they feel energized to come to work? Are you giving them opportunities for development and growth? Do you actually care if they succeed? The reality is while there were a lot of people moving about, it’s quite expensive to train new people and get them up to speed. If your existing team on the ground is just ticking the boxes just to go by another day, you will soon enough face a loss in terms of creativity and new ideas which you will need to face upcoming times of uncertainty. The cost of not doing anything will be much higher than try to fix the problems at the source. You might not win the first battle, but you might be able to win the war.

Food for thought

Ultimately I’m a firm believes that most companies would benefit of a good “Marie Kondo” round of decluttering. There are processes and technologies which could be improved, meetings that could be cut. With people returning to the office – at least on a hybrid basis – there is also opportunity to foster those energizing opportunities and get them to think about ways to improve the team’s performance. Leave them room to think and raise their ideas.

Also revisit how accomplishments are being done at your company. Raise your hand if there’s always an element of: “these team was amazing because they worked every single weekend to get this done.”

Why did they had to work on the weekend to get it done? What’s failing? Those are the pressing questions to be asked. It should be: “this team did an amazing job and they managed to logoff at 17h00 to be with their families.”

Whereas some positive stress is needed I think we’ve passed beyond all of that. There is quite something quiet quitting is telling us, and that is perhaps is time to think once and for all how we work together. As leaders you are responsible to ensure you have a healthy team that feels energized to contribute their best ideas for the company to continue to develop. After all, companies are nothing more than a collective of employees, if all of them start to quiet quit there will be no bonus for anyone either. Long term we’re all dead.

Here’s a good article: https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/working-less-more-productive

The frog and the pan

If you’ve read my original posts on this space you know I have a good friend, the frog. So this is the story about the frog in the pan and how it has followed me all my working life.

Like the frog, if we are thrown into a pan of boiling water we would jump straight out. We know it’s too much, we know it will kill us immediately.

But, if every day we warm up the pan a little bit, almost unnoticeable, then the frog starts to cook slowly but doesn’t realise as he adapts to the new temperature. The frog will end up cooked but won’t even realise it was time to jump a while back.

We are intelligent people, we think, there’s no way I would allow myself to “cook” (aka burn out). Let me bring you some stats: 79% of the UK workers will end up facing burn out (article here) especially if we consider the environment for more than 2 years. Personal life and office life become blurred and like the frog in the pan we are starting to boil without noticing. Though I do believe we actually notice but we end up without knowing what to do. It’s not so simple to jump out (even though we are in the midst of the great resignation).

Don’t be fooled, change in itself also adds to stress. Will you like your new job? Will you be able to adapt quickly? Will you like your new colleagues? Is it the company for you? What about your boss? Of course all of that would be thought through before you actually say yes but there’s nothing like being there to truly find out what it means for you. Many of us end up preferring to stay “with the evil you know” than jump into the unknown. So you stay.

You try to think about ways you can make the solution better, but before you realise your normal routines kick in and you’re not really changing until you really boil. 

Also there is something else that plays quite a big factor here. In some cases yes you are in the wrong company and your values don’t align with the company, your team could be the worst out there or your boss could be an ass. In those cases, by all means, face the jump and get out.

But… hands up if you believe the enemy is actually yourself. You can keep on changing companies but a few months on and you realise you are exactly following the same patterns of your old company. We are our worst enemy. Having the right boss – and I prefer to say line manager – will keep you grounded and challenge you to think about your ways of working so you can indeed make changes that help you long term. But mostly it’s actually self-inflicted.

• We like to be busy – or put another way – no one likes to say I have a lot of free time. It feels you are doing something wrong, that you are not making enough, that mind you, that you’re not cool because everyone else around you is super busy. It’s addictive. Yes, yes it is.
• Ego – I wrote a few times already but ego plays a big unconscious role. You compare yourself, you want to come out on top even if that means working until you boil.
• We don’t have enough examples when we start that show us there is another way. That if you work just smarter and focus on your priorities – without jeopardising your health and your valued relationships that you can still be successful. That feels unachievable, so you follow all the examples you see. 

The scary part is, all of what’s driving you to boil – or most of it – is unconscious. It’s routine, it’s in your working DNA.

It will require a lot of strength to break the cycle and implement incremental changes that will lower the temperature of your pan.

Before I dive into what can be done. I will quote something my husband keeps on repeating to me as a mantra:

“My boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, this is why I poop on company time.”

Maybe it’s a bit extreme, but there’s something to think about for sure.

At the end of the day, work is just work. It’s in your hands to make it more enjoyable and bearable. 

So what can you do?

• Learn to say no. Not just to others, but to yourself too. Every yes you say, it’s a lot of no’s you are also saying. If I accept this, it means I can’t have dinner with my family. It means I won’t have time to exercise. You get the picture. Saying no is hard. It is (unless your kids are asking you for the 1000th snack in the last 5 minutes). It requires practice. You can start with small steps. Say no to peers who ask your help and when you believe that will jeopardise your goals for the day. Then start by accessing your “yeses” and thinking about what you will lose in that time slot. Can you really fit it in your day? 
• Start your day by writing down your priorities. That’s to write, your top 3 things you really need to achieve that day which can be both work or personal. You need to have something measurable at the end of the day.
• Protect your calendar – I wrote at length here (show your calendar who’s the boss) but now you know what are your priorities you need to find slots for them. Ideally they would be done in the morning when your brain is fueled by coffee (unless you’re a tea drinker). Are there meetings in the middle that would get in the way of having a good 2h slot of uninterrupted work? Can you move them or even better do you really really need to go? Cancel them. Have a go, cancel them. See if anyone dies.
• At the end of the day assess what you’ve accomplished. I find myself always doing a stretch of work at the end of the day because I feel I achieved nothing during the day (just meetings). It’s a trap I keep on falling into. Probably if I had the time to retrospect about my day I would find I had already achieved more than I can think of by the end of the day. Really take a few minutes to think of what you’ve achieved and what you can do next day to achieve your top priorities. What failed? What was in the way? Did you need more uninterrupted time to get them done? With this in mind prepare your next day. 
• Think about your boundaries. What can you compromise and what can you not? As an example, except if I have to go to the office – I need to either drop my daughter at school or pick her up. It’s really important for her that I’m present and it’s important for me too. I get to chit chat with the other parents and establish relationships which help her as well make friends. I need to show my face. So if any meetings fall on those slots I say no to them. No matter who the requester is, senior or not. Same is valid with the bedtime routine. The answer is no. I’m not willing to compromise that. Maybe for you it’s a slot for daily exercise. Whatever it is and it can be multiple things. Think about them as they will act as your compass as to when you are taking too much.
• Once in a while (monthly, quarterly, even daily) assess how it’s going. How do you feel? How many days of utter stress and feeling out of control did you have? What are the things you can do to help you out? Do you need a day off away from work and family to think about what you can do to feel more grounded and healthier? Then take it! It might feel like 1 day’s loss and you’ll be even more behind where you wanted to be, but you’ll gain so much more. Maybe you’ve reverted back to saying too many “yeses”. Maybe you are not delegating enough. 
• Setting time aside for the things you really enjoy. We all have hobbies and things we really enjoy doing. Whatever those are, save time to do them. Ideally you would have time for them even during the week too. Even if it’s 15m, it can be totally refreshing for your mind. Sometimes I get 15m aside to read during my quick lunch break and those 15m give me a lot of energy to face the rest of the afternoon, not to mention they lift my mood (I obviously don’t read the news).
• Work out what works for you. There’s no one rule that fits all. You need to find what are the things you can do to help you live a more balanced life. Can well be asking for help – either for home commitments or work. We are not machines and it’s ok to slow down. If you are not boiling down you will be more productive at work and home. One single fresh idea is worth many tired ones. Try one of your ideas and see how it works. If it doesn’t work, go back to the drawing board and think of what could work. Finding what doesn’t work in itself is quite powerful too.

4 days a week, what’s the hype?

If you are like me, you start your Thursday completely heartbroken because despite being Friday it still isn’t. Well, for some lucky ones in the UK, it can be. (Please don’t mess it up for the rest of us)

In the past, it was common that some people would work a reduced schedule (e.g. 4 days a week) but with less pay as well. From my side I never wanted a 4 days week until now precisely because of the point of the pay. I knew I would end up doing 5 days in 4 but getting the pay of 4 days only. Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

So the new deal is now that employees would work 4 days a week but with 100% of the pay. Yap, 100%. The principle being that if employees are given flexibility they will meet their goals without impacting company’s productivity despite having “less days” working.

I’m quite curious as this would work out, as for some people they might prefer to do the same 5 days, but stop earlier / or start later to meet their own personal demands at home (taking care of young children, take care of elderly parents, you name it), whereas for others they might just really want to have a day to deal with everything else which is impossible over the weekend (like dentist, doctor, or just purely decompress).

PROS

So let’s talk about the pros. Overall, it’s the flexibility. It’s about allowing people to get the work done and work around their own personal needs (yes we are not robots) and making everyone to rethink about the current ways of working. Not everyone’s productivity peak is the same, some prefer to start earlier in the morning (like me), others prefer to work after dinner (my brain is long dead by then). Also to fit multiple geographies teams have to cover already a multitude of timezones, so I can see this helping a lot in such cases.

Honestely it should be about meeting goals, how you get there individually or with your team shouldn’t have to matter as much, as long as you fulfill them. Time-boxing our work might even force employees to cut the fat even further – yeah useless meeting without an agenda I’m looking at you – and just prioritizing anything which indeed drives value.

We’ve all been students, we know the hype, if you know you have a few days you won’t stress about it until it’s Friday afternoon and you have a deadline to meet. With less days you are telling your brain this needs to get done now or else you won’t meet your goals. That can be quite powerful.

The main pro for me really is flexibility works both ways. The employee gets flexibility and the companies will end up with more productivity per hour.

CONS

If the working from home has shown anything is that people will end up overworking and reaching burn out. The 4 days might end up becoming really long and 3 days might not feel enough to recover. Still I would be willing to try, anyway I’m pretty sure by the end of day 4 I have already done way more than 5 days, so at least cutting a full day of any useless meetings and emails would feel like holiday.

If not all employees take it, the ones that are “more visible” might end up getting better opportunities that those that don’t. And here’s the word might, as I know some people didn’t had such issues with a compressed work-week.

Additional idea

No meetings during certain times – We had this over summer period and I wish it could be kept forever. A rule of no meetings during at least 1 day to enable employees to focus on productive work. I would say other than a quick 15m scrum meeting in the morning there should be no meetings until after lunch.

Other good article here

Let’s throw bodies at a problem

Ah my beloved management falacy: let’s throw bodies at a problem.

Let’s face it, nobody likes problems even small ones and if they are bigger even worst. The bigger or the more complex the problem the harder it is to find an obvious solution. If you’re lucky you’ll get the team members to work together to brainstorm some ideas that can work and resolve it and apply “trial and error”, which might or might not work as per desired timelines.

So what’s the “easiest” way out?

Let’s throw bodies at a problem.

I’ve lost count as to how many times different levels in the organization come up with let’s get more people, because more people the faster it is to resolve something right?

No!

Just because you get 9 mothers it doesn’t mean you’ll get the baby delivered in a month. Would be good, but that’s not how it works.

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-throwing-money-business-cartoon-people-problem-image71736617

Every time I hear this answer to any given problem this song plays straight into my head

It’s very easy to believe that the more people you get the more problems / tasks they can achieve. The problem which is easily forgotten is that the more people you need the stronger the communication needs to be to be able to split a big piece of work in smaller parts, distribute the workload and all still fit together. The more people, the more management and if they happen to not have the right skillset for the problem it might end up having the undesired impact.

When you have a problem to tackle you need different ideas. Having 1 or 2 people from outside helping to brainstorm on how it can be tackled can indeed be quite helpful, but ultimately you need to be able to know how to distribute the work among all the “new joiners”. You’ll also have to spend some time explaining what the problem statement is so the additional resources can help to tackle it. I suppose if you have a big problem in the hands of a given team, the last thing the team will want is to have to do knowledge transfer to someone new. You’ll easily end up with a spaghetti monster of communication when no one knows who needs to do what.

Good article here

So what can you do instead?

Well, I’m a firm believer in the power of small teams. Hence, if you have a big problem to tackle, whereas you might benefit from some specific help (1 or 2 people), I would say it needs to come down to priority. What can be dropped from the team’s plate to tackle “the problem”. Get the team to brainstorm what could be done, split the work and let them try to achieve it.

Add into the backlog all the other items which are being paused, in priority item so they can start to be addressed as the resources become free from tackling the bigger issue.

Define quick wins that will booste the morale of the team and ensure they can indeed resolve this massive problem in front of them.

Empower them to make the right decisions within the team, which will reduce the time required to get all the buy in from the different stakeholders and let them present their findings and progress.

I went back to the office and here’s what I found

Yap, after 19 months I went back to the office. Luckily for me it was my choice to actually return as opposed of being imposed to be back 2 or 3 days a week (or even the full week!).

Here’s what I found:

1 – I did enjoy my morning commute despite an uber early start. I left the house at 06h15 and walked the 20m to the station and even managed to arrive 10m before the train. It was busier than I was expecting for a 06h40 train, but still quite manageable. I didn’t read much like I used to as I just wanted to watch through the windows.

2 – The best part of the day was actually the experience of being in the office (despite me battling the whole day to try to connect to the headset as no one could hear me in the meetings – seems sound quality is better at home). In my “section” I was the only one, the only people passing by was the cleaning staff or the coffee staff. I managed to get a desk with window view and could watch people passing by downstairs as if it was a normal day. I even had my first face to face meeting! I think quite a lot of people are really missing those face to face interactions, even the introvers like myself. I almost went lunch outside with another colleague but given the business of meetings just managed a panini at my desk. (Did anyone notice the prices going up by quite a lot or was I the only one???)

3 – On the way back home though was a different story. It really felt almost proper rush hour. The trains were quite busy, you had people running to the door and that’s when I’ve realized that actually I’m not ready to be back on a regular basis. Yes I’m craving after work pub as much as everyone else, but am I really ready? Don’t think I am. If I bring the virus home and my daughter is off-school I would really struggle to work big time. If I will be back? Probably, but not regularly – not while I can avoid it.

Which now brings me to the point of: why are people being forced to be back?

And I’m referring to groups of people that can do their work remotely (and are not mandated by any regulator to physically be in the office) – for a lot of people work from home is definitely not a choice. But for those that is….

Why?

Why can’t leaders recognize that if you want flexibility you have to give flexibility back. The employees with a good transfereable (and sellable) skillset will jump to whichever company allows them flexibility. Do you really want to loose your best resources because you can’t trust them to work from home? Were they actually rolling their fingers for the last 18 months or were people in general working a lot more? (I wrote about it here on “I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you“)

Is it because leaders tend to be extroverts and therefore do not recognize there are a lot of introverts out there that feel a lot better and more productive being at home without all the social exposure in the office? (good article about it here)

Seriously it should be a choice and leaders should have try to find the best solution for their team, not just what’s better for them as individuals!

I find that it’s up to us the younger generations to show there are so many other alternatives that work for the company. Going to the office should be an experience by itself, for team bonding and for specific reasons like a dynamic workshop and removing people from the day to day activities and discuss specific topics together (my views on the new office here).

Just because it’s the way things were done before it doesn’t mean they need to go back exactly as they were!

When you don’t break, you break

I receive this article a few times this week (from different colleagues) and I guess it probably says a lot of what almost 99.9% of us are feeling.

If you haven’t read it already please do. As a short summary it highlights the importance of taking breaks (which we all should already know about), or in essence you’re the one who breaks.

In the world of covid, all of us are working from home and with that it meant 5 minute coffee chats were replaced by 1h meetings. We are simply having meeting overload. And if you end up with far too many your brain can’t really have the necessary breaks to recharge. Here’s the picture from the article:

My personal story

Given I’m a project manager working with people accross multiple locations I do end up having a ton of meetings. On average I’m between 10 to 14 meetings a day! I end up being dragged in a lot of meetings in the capacity of SME as well. Whereas I’m protecting my team from too many meetings, I’m not protecting myself at all. I have huge meeting fatigue (despite me implementing all the rules I shared under show your calendar who’s the boss).

Also I am in a really stressful project at the moment, and what the meeting fatigue above is adding to is that I am just exploding in meetings where I feel incredibly frustrated that the right things are not being followed. This Friday I received a ridiculous email which took my stress levels throught the roof. Given I had blocked my calendar I went for a walk (and also to get my daughter’s school uniform). On the way in I was still fuming and feeling really stressed out, but on the way back I was feeling a lot better.

I have also tried to go back to mid day meditation. When I was pregnant (and due to the stressful nature of my work), I ended up using one of those meditation apps and during 3 years I did it every single day, so now trying to incorporate quick breaks to just breathe in and out.

My take on the breaks

The article advises for breaks in between meetings, but I would rather plug all the meetings together and then manage to get a 2h slot of uninterrupted work. I find that on the few occasions I manage to sit down and focus on a piece of work and complete it, my brain feels happy and I feel good about it. 45 minutes and 15m break allow you for a comfort break but I would never get any work done. Although, this is really specific to my own case I guess.

My ideal day would be something like this: start by looking at my calendar, scan through the emails to see if I received anything critical overnight, then get 2h uninterrupted work (after breakfast), plug in a few meetings. Lunch break with a quick walk outside, come back for more meetings and then another 2h of completing work and preparing for the next day.

So really, find what works for you but ensure you get good quality breaks in your day, otherwise you’re the one who breaks and no one will thank you for it.

When less is more

I will never forget the words of a friend of mine when he told me: “Don’t work harder, work smarter”. I think this is a mantra that has stayed with me despite me struggling to follow it.

On this note I was having a chat with my husband around how we couldn’t see ourselves going back to south europe (me spefically) because I can’t tollerate their ways of working. As we can’t travel right now, how about a cultural travel to the different ways of working and use them as a debate if longer hours represent more productivity: spoiler alert, they don’t.

I guess most people’s diagrams will be similar to the one below (you can notice my lack of drawing skills):

For most of us at least (I still can’t compreenhed the vampires out there who are very productive in the evening. At some point at uni that’s the only point I could focus not because I was more productive but because the looming deadlines would trigger an adrenaline to finish), the most productive slot is actually the morning. As per my “how to show your calendar who’s the boss” post, that’s the slot you should reserve for your most important tasks.

Then there’s lunch and we all know after lunch all energy is in trying to diggest so it’s not a very productivy slot anyway, then you focus on the last few activities and after a while there’s a point where if you continue to work longer there is a big risk you’ll do mistakes (negative productivity) and next morning you’ll want to slap yourself because you’ll have to rush to fix the mistakes you didn’t even notice you were making.

I remember once I was doing something in excel and I was so tired I was not even thinking of the best way to get it done, my husband asked me what I was doing and he proposed a much faster way of completing what I wanted (using formulas vs doing something totally manual). If I had not been so tired I could have thought about it too.

So how about a little travel?

Disclaimer: I’m using only the examples of the places I’ve worked from or where I’m familiar with, I’m sure there are many more that could be added here.

South Europe

Not productive at all! I started my career in south Europe and a normal day goes like this (for private workers, for state workers it’s probably closer to the Swedish model ahahahaha):

• Arrive to the office around 09h, turn on the coffee and go for breakfast
• Around 10h get together in the coffee machine and do a break for coffee (and coffee chat)
• Around 11h30 most people are thinking where to go for lunch
• From at least 13h to 14h people are out for lunch – except if there are critical meetings or deadlines (not uncommon to have a 2h lunch break). Lunch is always sitting down with your colleagues
• Then another coffee break in the afternoon
• At 17 something that’s when your line managers will remember something you need to deliver next day
• Leave the office between 19h to 20h if not later
• Arriving late means something 30m later (I had meetings who were delayed for like 1h30)
• Until covid there was no such thing as working from home, if the “boss” doesn’t see you, no one believes you are delivering work

London (or any UK big city)

• Most people arrive to the office around 8h30 (I was in the office at 07h because I need silence to start my day)
• Between 9h to 10h most people will do a 15m break to get a coffee and have a chat with some colleagues. It’s not uncommon to use this slot to have mini meetings to discuss more confidential topics which can’t be discussed with the wither team
• Lunch is mostly at the desks with a quick break outside for a quick walk or some people manage to squeeze going to the gymn. Most people only spend like 30m in total with a lunch break
• Most people leave between 17h to 18h given there is a long commute home
• Arriving late means 5m delay and people will appologize
• Work from home was already quite common before covid

Germany / Paris (Can’t really say about the rest of France)

Similar to UK but lunch is sitting down with your colleagues. It tends to be around 30 to 45m. Work from home was not very common either

North America

Also similar except people will work much longer hours, especially in US

I’ve never worked in North Europe, but would love to, in order to have hands on experience with the swedish model, whereby people work a much shorter work week and parental leave is properly shared between women & men.

Why less is more

If you know you have less hours to achieve your goals you will cut the crap and focus on what you need to do. Unlike south europe where the million breaks and the volume of chit chat would mean every hour @ work was not productive and meetings would be delayed you had no control over your calendar. I remember having colleagues teasing me if I was leaving at 18h! Then there is this culture that you need to stay longer to show to your “boss” that you are very committed and if you know you stay late you will try to squeeze in as many breaks as you want. Then people wonder why they are burnt out!

If you can discuss with the team all the key priorities for the day, then reserve morning to get most of the work done and afternoon for all the other team meetings I’m sure most of us would be able to leave much earlier, spend time with the families and have time for hobbies, which in turn will probably contribute to more creativity at work.

If you are tired and burn out, the longer you work, you will be stressing out that it’s getting late and late and sooner or later you will do mistakes. Sooner or later you will end up burnt out. Is it worth it? Absolutely not.

Do you have any specific cultural views which different from those I’ve shared?