Chapter 24
After All, We're Here to Work
My friend Dan is a true genius. After graduating from John Hopkins University with a degree in mechanical engineering, he got what he thought would be a dream job working for a defense contractor. In reality, the only dream involved would have been the ones during the naps he could have taken at his desk because he was so bored. But rather than nap (as fulfilling as that would have been), Dan used his immense amount of free time at work to get his master's while sitting at his desk. Most folks aren't as industrious as Dan. They just watch YouTube videos…or actually nap.
Much of this book has been about distractions luring our people away from accomplishing focused work. In the last chapter, we exhorted you to inspire them.
Now they're leaving the pep rally and going back to work. And if their work bores them, you can be a combination of Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek, and Mark Zuckerberg, and it won't matter. They'll just become distracted again. So how do you keep your employees focused and driven when they can watch YouTube videos or take naps at their desk?
Surprisingly, the solution is simple.
Make their work harder.
It sounds counterintuitive. My people feel overwhelmed and distracted…and the solution is to give them more work?
Yes. More work, and more challenging work.
Your People Are Bored
Almost half the workforce in America is bored out of their minds. No wonder they're so easily swayed by distractions.
When asked in a survey whether their work excited them, just under half of respondents said no.1 How would your employees answer?
At one company I worked with, half the team was watching Netflix while doing work. It was apparently the only way for them to keep awake. The sad but intriguing part is that most of them didn't want to be watching movies (even Better Call Saul gets boring after the sixth episode…before 2 PM). They just didn't feel challenged.
No one wants to browse social media all day. People want to do meaningful work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks to this in his influential book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:
Take up the challenge of providing that work. The greater the challenge, the less waste.
Paychex human resources examined which industry's workers waste the most time.3 Construction workers, it turns out, were most likely to stay on task. In fact, 61 percent of respondents in construction said they squander less than an hour each workday. On the other hand, the results were not as kind to workers from utilities, telecom, and government sectors.
The reason is simple: they have to. The industry already faces a lack of qualified labor, tight deadlines, and constant delays.
Ah, good old-fashioned urgency. Wouldn't it be great if all workers had this kind of drive?
Increase Your Expectations
The employees who feel overworked are actually burdened with wasteful tasks instead of the focused work that drives things forward. People fill the space they have. They complain about not having enough time because they feel busy. And they are busy—doing the wrong things.
The solution is to increase your expectations.
Teach your people new skills, then give them projects that use those skills. Eighty percent of U.S. office workers say that learning new skills would increase their engagement.4
Don't be afraid to make the work challenging.
Here, in fact, is the crux of it all: Make the work so challenging that it requires you to put the person who can actually excel at it into the role. Think about this for a moment. It's a good way to ensure you have the right person in the right role.
One of my employees just couldn't do his job. It wasn't a matter of integrity or effort. But his effort was wasted because he wasn't the right fit.
Sometimes a person is right for the job but the time frame doesn't match the project. Resist giving someone three weeks to accomplish a one-week project because you're afraid of pushback.
Expect more.
Impose tighter deadlines. Your people will actually work more efficiently and feel greater job satisfaction.
These are ways to get better performance. But you'll never know if you don't measure.
The Right Way to Measure
Someone I know in a financial group works all the time, including nights, but none of his colleagues has a clue what he's doing. He's not turning out more work because his production doesn't exceed anyone else's.
Other workers I know seem to be available 24/7. They complain-brag about the 14-hour days they put in, even posting about it (tweeting about working isn't working, by the way).
More, in these cases, definitely isn't more.
Never rely on time and presence as measures of employee productivity. The hidden cost to the “butts in seats” mindset is that we become patient and forgiving of poor quality output as long as we perceive high effort.
The point of work is to produce high-quality work. Effort might make for a great movie script about a Notre Dame walk-on, but output is what our customers are buying (or not buying). Instead, agree on the expected deliverables, the quality they should entail, and when you can expect them. Also, make sure you're not the one slowing everything down. Be the conduit, not the bottleneck.
Sometimes bosses sabotage the process, a more-than-common problem in midlevel management. For example, a lower-level employee is finishing work too quickly. Her manager, wanting to ease his own workload, tells her to slow down.
Two problems stand out: bad management and excess staff. But the boss doesn't want to lose headcount, so he clogs the workflow.
Great. Bureaucracy and bloated budget intact, complete with a bored employee who's ready to quit.
And against all apparent reason, the company retains the bad manager.
Measurement needs to occur at all levels so that everyone is accomplishing work that matters.
This book is dedicated to eliminating the distractions that prevent people from doing focused work. That also means they need enough work and work that challenges them. It's your job to provide it.
But There Just Isn't Enough Work
What if there's simply not enough work to do? Start by keeping a notebook of “Things that would make the team better.” (I use Evernote; see Chapter 12 or more on this.) Then assign tasks as they occur to you.
- Ad Hoc Projects. This is work that would improve your team or organization. It's not urgent or part of anyone's job description, but it could yield amazing dividends.
- Culture Builders. Select a capable person to head a monthly lunch in which colleagues enjoy great food and learn about each other.
- Training. Let people create videos or programs on a new management technique, technology that could help, or maybe even vital soft skills for today's workplace.
- Research. Pick someone to examine the competition, TED Talks that would benefit the team, or efficiency tools and techniques. I like to joke that one of the best ways to improve your tech is to consult whoever wears a Star Wars T-shirt (though Star Trek and Dr. Who fans will also do). The person will love the assignment, and the results will save you time and money.
Each of these tasks will also showcase strengths and skills that you, and maybe even your people themselves, didn't know they had. It might even encourage them to develop new ones.
The best job descriptions are elastic, not fixed. Who knows where new sources of inspiration will carry your team?
Now That I have Your Attention…
For Section 7 reflection questions, summary video, and next step resources, please visit focuswise.com/book