Big questions for a new year
15 December 2023
Pause the hamster wheel and set a more thoughtful course for 2024.
One of the things I love about ending a year and looking forward to a new one is pausing to reflect on how the year has gone and thinking about what a good new year would look like for me and my business. It’s the ‘festive edition’ version of what I do at the end of every week, only with a longer view and a generously proportioned mince pie beside me. Asking some big questions now before the work hamster wheel starts spinning again helps us set a more thoughtful course for the year ahead.
When we talk about time management, we often focus on the day-to-day, week-to-week view. How efficiently can we get through our to-do list today? What days will we be working from home vs in the office? Who do we need to speak to or meet up with this week? Yet as I describe in The Future of Time, applying #timeintelligence means taking the long view too (check out my November blog for a 5 minute ‘all you need to know’ overview of what ‘time intelligence’ is and how we can use it). From the research I read and the conversations I have, it’s clear to me that asking the bigger questions benefits us as individuals, as teams and as whole organisations. Here are four ‘time intelligent’ questions that take the longer-term view that you can ask yourself, individuals you manage or mentor, or the team(s) you lead.
What do you want to have a shot at?
I was interviewing someone yesterday about their experiences of working at a former employer, and they told me ‘I wasn't there just for the salary, I came to learn and I had career dreams to achieve'. This echoed another comment from an investment professional while I was researching for my book, who told me the reason they chose to stay at their organisation was ‘You say where you want your career to go, what your ambitions are, what you want to achieve over the next five years and they’ll try and help you into those roles.’ Having this kind of conversation can be incredibly motivating for people as it lets them know that you’re interested in the answer and you’ll do what you can to help them realise their aspirations. Having the conversation with yourself gets you thinking differently about what you’re doing and can kick start your future ambitions now instead of kicking them down the road (again).
What doesn’t appear in your diary that you’d like to see in there?
This about the things we find hard to carve out time for but that really matter to us in some way. Outside of work it may be about exercise, a lapsed hobby you’re longing to pick up again or a ‘one day, I’m going to ….’ cherished ambition. Work-wise, it’s typically it’s the important proactive stuff that will help us advance in some way like longer-term planning, strategic thinking or creative work, but when it’s not deadline-driven it invariably ends up being squeezed out by more urgent, reactive activity. In a survey I did back in November 2020, I asked people exactly this. They said things like ‘analysis of work trends and customer data to plan work in a more targeted fashion’; ‘process and system development, testing & feedback, to identify and avoid problems before they reach customers’ and ‘deep thinking which benefits the company strategically’. Imagine how much an organisation and its customers would benefit if people found it easier to make time for these valuable activities.
What would you do differently next time?
Often during my Time Intelligence workshops, teams will say ‘we don’t get time to review how we’re working or debate better ways to do things’. People really want to have these conversations, to use the pause between sprints or deadlines to figure out how they can work more efficiently, resolve issues that cause delays and bottlenecks and to feel like they’re gaining the learning that will build their skills and expertise and help them advance in their career. In ‘Building Learning Organisations’, the management guru Peter Senge identifies how businesses that are successful over the longer term invest a huge proportion of their time in continuous learning. Not just formal training and development but this cultural habit of constantly reviewing our ways of working, the outcomes we’re seeing and what we’re learning from both.
Who do you talk to at work?
I mean this in the sense of ‘who do you confide in?’ and ‘who do you hang out with?’. We may be back in the office more regularly but this doesn’t mean we’re all bonding like mad and building close, rewarding friendships. On my free webinar ‘Make office time popular again’ last week (join my January free webinar on ‘Fewer, better meetings’ here), attendees were worrying most about the small number of people who are coming in but not interacting with others in any meaningful way. As Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research shows, having a close friend at work is a big driver of employee engagement, making people feel more motivated to stay and do their best work. Software company Atlassian’s ‘Team Anywhere’ research found that team connection grew by 27% after they invested time in bringing people together for social and ‘culture-building’ events. And on my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant, Professor Robin Dunbar explains why the best thing a CEO can do is design more opportunities for people to meet in person for ‘synchronised social activities’ like eating a meal, singing or playing a game. It sounds almost laughably simple and slightly old-fashioned, but it’s still powerful stuff.
Thinking about these 4 questions myself, on my ‘have a shot at’ list is getting invited onto TV or radio to give an expert point of view, applying for and getting accepted for a TEDx talk and collaborating on some research. What doesn’t appear in my diary, despite my best intentions every week? Time to update my website, finish my new online ‘time intelligence’ diagnostic and start planning book 2. Please ask me how these are going when we’re next in touch! I’m definitely going to be asking myself ‘what would I do differently next year’ as I ponder what I’ve learnt about this year’s efforts and I’m making a list of wise and wonderful people I want to catch up with again because it’s been too long since we last spoke.
What would your answers be? Pop me an email at hello@helenbeedham.com, I’d love to hear and I promise to respond. While I’m reaching unashamedly for another mince pie….
When we talk about time management, we often focus on the day-to-day, week-to-week view. How efficiently can we get through our to-do list today? What days will we be working from home vs in the office? Who do we need to speak to or meet up with this week? Yet as I describe in The Future of Time, applying #timeintelligence means taking the long view too (check out my November blog for a 5 minute ‘all you need to know’ overview of what ‘time intelligence’ is and how we can use it). From the research I read and the conversations I have, it’s clear to me that asking the bigger questions benefits us as individuals, as teams and as whole organisations. Here are four ‘time intelligent’ questions that take the longer-term view that you can ask yourself, individuals you manage or mentor, or the team(s) you lead.
What do you want to have a shot at?
I was interviewing someone yesterday about their experiences of working at a former employer, and they told me ‘I wasn't there just for the salary, I came to learn and I had career dreams to achieve'. This echoed another comment from an investment professional while I was researching for my book, who told me the reason they chose to stay at their organisation was ‘You say where you want your career to go, what your ambitions are, what you want to achieve over the next five years and they’ll try and help you into those roles.’ Having this kind of conversation can be incredibly motivating for people as it lets them know that you’re interested in the answer and you’ll do what you can to help them realise their aspirations. Having the conversation with yourself gets you thinking differently about what you’re doing and can kick start your future ambitions now instead of kicking them down the road (again).
What doesn’t appear in your diary that you’d like to see in there?
This about the things we find hard to carve out time for but that really matter to us in some way. Outside of work it may be about exercise, a lapsed hobby you’re longing to pick up again or a ‘one day, I’m going to ….’ cherished ambition. Work-wise, it’s typically it’s the important proactive stuff that will help us advance in some way like longer-term planning, strategic thinking or creative work, but when it’s not deadline-driven it invariably ends up being squeezed out by more urgent, reactive activity. In a survey I did back in November 2020, I asked people exactly this. They said things like ‘analysis of work trends and customer data to plan work in a more targeted fashion’; ‘process and system development, testing & feedback, to identify and avoid problems before they reach customers’ and ‘deep thinking which benefits the company strategically’. Imagine how much an organisation and its customers would benefit if people found it easier to make time for these valuable activities.
What would you do differently next time?
Often during my Time Intelligence workshops, teams will say ‘we don’t get time to review how we’re working or debate better ways to do things’. People really want to have these conversations, to use the pause between sprints or deadlines to figure out how they can work more efficiently, resolve issues that cause delays and bottlenecks and to feel like they’re gaining the learning that will build their skills and expertise and help them advance in their career. In ‘Building Learning Organisations’, the management guru Peter Senge identifies how businesses that are successful over the longer term invest a huge proportion of their time in continuous learning. Not just formal training and development but this cultural habit of constantly reviewing our ways of working, the outcomes we’re seeing and what we’re learning from both.
Who do you talk to at work?
I mean this in the sense of ‘who do you confide in?’ and ‘who do you hang out with?’. We may be back in the office more regularly but this doesn’t mean we’re all bonding like mad and building close, rewarding friendships. On my free webinar ‘Make office time popular again’ last week (join my January free webinar on ‘Fewer, better meetings’ here), attendees were worrying most about the small number of people who are coming in but not interacting with others in any meaningful way. As Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research shows, having a close friend at work is a big driver of employee engagement, making people feel more motivated to stay and do their best work. Software company Atlassian’s ‘Team Anywhere’ research found that team connection grew by 27% after they invested time in bringing people together for social and ‘culture-building’ events. And on my podcast The Business of Being Brilliant, Professor Robin Dunbar explains why the best thing a CEO can do is design more opportunities for people to meet in person for ‘synchronised social activities’ like eating a meal, singing or playing a game. It sounds almost laughably simple and slightly old-fashioned, but it’s still powerful stuff.
Thinking about these 4 questions myself, on my ‘have a shot at’ list is getting invited onto TV or radio to give an expert point of view, applying for and getting accepted for a TEDx talk and collaborating on some research. What doesn’t appear in my diary, despite my best intentions every week? Time to update my website, finish my new online ‘time intelligence’ diagnostic and start planning book 2. Please ask me how these are going when we’re next in touch! I’m definitely going to be asking myself ‘what would I do differently next year’ as I ponder what I’ve learnt about this year’s efforts and I’m making a list of wise and wonderful people I want to catch up with again because it’s been too long since we last spoke.
What would your answers be? Pop me an email at hello@helenbeedham.com, I’d love to hear and I promise to respond. While I’m reaching unashamedly for another mince pie….
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How often do you get the luxury of extended, undisturbed time? Is there a quiet space or magical place you retreat to? I’m writing this in a silent house, up early before the rest of the family. All I can hear is the scratching of my ink pen on the paper and the cooing and chirruping of garden birds outside my window. No voices, machines, traffic, notifications or interruptions. I can hear myself think, there’s no-one calling for my attention and the jobs can wait. But at any minute, this brief lull will crumble. It's hard to get extended, undisturbed time. Many of us are spending less time in our home offices now more organisations have encouraged – or mandated – more in-office working. The majority of people still work a structured hybrid patterns, but likely 1-2 days per week at most at home. Not that home-working is typically quieter – diaries are still largely stuff with calls, messaging channels ping continously and the home distractions of pets demanding attention, chatty home-working partners, texts from teenagers at school or – my pet peeve – couriers knocking on the door, dropping the parcel outside and driving straight off while I’m halfway down the stairs thinking I’m needed. Our focus time is bounded by each interruption or intrusion into our attention. Some people I know say they need background noise to help them concentrate. At least 2 CEO’s I’ve spoken to prefer doing calls and emails in cafés and their office’s buzzy atrium where the constant hum of voices and hissing and thumping of coffee macines provide a cloack of anonymity around even sensitive conversations. Whatever your preference environment-wise, it turns out that noisy ones are actually damaging to our health; anything above the maximum recommended noise level of 53 decibels is described as a ‘ silent killer ’. A quiet library falls under this, your average office above it. Quiet time isn’t just about the decibel level, it’s also about freedom from distraction and interruptions. As I was telling over 200 sixth-form students at an Enterprise and Innovation conference a week ago, our brains prefer to focus on one task at a time and maintain an extended attention set – to get into ‘flow’, in other words. In terms of cognitive functioning, that’s when we are at peak performance. Every time our attention is tugged away from the task at hand, research has shown that it takes us over 2 seconds to reorient back to the task at hand. Known as the toggling tax, this happens on average up to 1,200 times per day, costing us 4 hours a week or 5 full weeks per year of lost attention, wasted time and reduced productivity. Ouch. So there’s a strong case for designing work environments that allow people to concentrate in quiet spaces and office design today is increasingly factoring this in. Co-working hubs and corporate offices now offer quiet zones where calls and conversations are not permitted; individual work spaces that look like padded, high-wall cubicles block out the rustling or key board tapping of workers either side; and individual sound-proofed call booths that keep noise leakage to a minimum. I’ve learnt the hard way to be more selfish with my quiet time when I’m writing, silencing notifications on my phone, putting noise cancelling headphones on and shutting the door to our companionable, aka needy, cat (and my companionable but not needy husband). I’ve been reminded this week of the power of quiet time and a restorative environment: I was fortunate to spend 2 nights at the UK’s only privately-owned national nature reserve in a luxury eco-cabin (hot shower and log burner included) overlooking 3,300 acres of marshland, big skies and an incredible array of wildlife. Having discovered it last year, I’d booked myself in again as a reward for getting to the ¾ milestone in writing People Glue and an incentive to crack on with the last 12,500 words as the manuscript deadline looms. In the magical peace and quiet, I wrote close to 3,000 words there – my average weekly output in just over a day – in long, undisturbed stretches punctuated only by my daily run, short walks to clear my head and the arrival of delicious dinners brought to my door. The biggest distraction was the wildlife outside the cabin’s huge glass windows: a mesmerisingly beautiful, shadowy-eyed short-eared owl did its utmost to persuade me to look up from my writing with its swooping, gliding and head-swivelling display. Hares bounded around playfully as buzzards, marsh- and hen-harriers patrolled hungrily overhead. A tiny wren skipped across my patio, tapping its beak on the glass doors, tail cocked up jauntily. No school runs, no pets to feed, no work calls, no washing macines to load, not unattended chores in sight nagging me reproachfully - I am very grateful to my wonderful husband for holding the fort at home so I could steal away. Perhaps you would prefer the cosmopolitan buzz of a city or a sunlounger beside a gleaming hotel pool - I wouldn’t say no to either at a different time. But soaking up this solitude, my time felt unbounded and that felt the biggest luxury of all. It has reminded me of the importance of consciously planned quiet time, ideally somewhere magical, for our wellbeing, our creativity and the quality of our thinking. I’m just wondering how soon I can book a return visit….
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How to encourage this in a way that works for your business. There is a real and urgent need to address the creeping norm of employees working all hours, being contactable and available all the time. But Labour’s recent abandoning of a legal ‘right to disconnect’ in favour of a voluntary code of practice is probably the right move, in my humble opinion. Here are 5 reasons why, 5 ways to make switching off a win/win for you and your organisation, and 5 positive actions to put into practice now. Why legislation is too blunt a tool: Heavy-handed legislation will probably antagonise businesses, not secure their support. There's more to do first to spotlight organisations that are managing the boundaries well between working & non-working time well and proving the business benefits. It’s too early to say confidently how well similar legislation has worked abroad. Australia only adopted this last month; the longer-standing fine-based approach in France and Portugal isn't proven as an effective deterrent. Human-centred organisations are probably already paying attention to this, being creative about work boundaries and using their approach to enhance their employer brand. They'll be the ones who proactively adopt the code of practice and make it genuinely part of ‘the way we work here’ - and they'll win at attracting and retaining talented people longer-term as a result. ‘But clients will go elsewhere’. This is the defence I often hear in rejection of proposals like the right to disconnect. No, client won't IF you engage them in the change and show them that it means they get to access your sharpest minds working at their best,. When organisations see their early-adopter competitors living the code and still winning & keeping desirable clients - and nabbing theirs - they’ll swiftly follow suit. Let’s be clear: some people will continue to say yes to high pay/exciting work in return for ‘you’ll work whenever when we need you ‘. But it’ll be a transactional relationship lasting for as long as it benefits the individual (or employer) and no longer. Easy come, easy go. If that’s your philosophy as an employer: own it and be transparent. Don’t sign the code and pay it lip service. If yours IS an organisation that wants to do better at encouraging employees to switch off, try: 1. Using Labour’s shift to open up conversations at work about pressures to communicate or be available after hours. 2. Adding ‘we support the right to disconnect’ in your recruitment material and having examples to share with candidates during interviews. 3. Supporting selected managers and their teams to trial different experiments around switching off. 4. Asking people ‘how can we help you do to your best work within your normal working hours?’. ‘What gets in the way of this?’. 5. Setting up an industry-wide collaboration to trial different ways of achieving the same outcome. Asynchronous and flexible working are here to stay and bring many benefits to individuals and their employers. But they can make it a challenge to co-ordinate and communicate within teams and across time zones. Here's what you can do personally to uphold the right to switch off and respect other people's non-working time: Add an email footer like: 'I'm sending this now because it suits me but I'm not expecting a response outside of normal working hours'. Work offline if you're working late evenings or weekends, so you're not visible on Teams/whatever channels you use, and schedule your emails to send the next day to avoid the ripple effect of people responding immediately. If people on your team have repeatedly worked late or sacrificed home lives to help reach a deadline, then give them some time back straight afterwards. It's simple and effective. If you're a manager, find out people's preferences around being contacted - or not - during out of hours or when on leave. Everyone's different, so make it your job to know. See annual leave as an opportunity for a colleague to step up and have some stretch experience by covering for you, with support beforehand. Then switch off properly and don't muddy the water by dipping in and out unasked. Listen to my podcast conversation with Ben Higgins, Global CHRO of Wholesale Banking at Societe Generale, about how he does this. These examples are about applying #timeintelligence. If you want to know more about my #timeintelligence sessions for leaders, teams and individuals, get in touch . And if you're making good progress in your organisation on switching off - or at least trialling a few changes - then I'd love to hear more. During normal working hours, of course.
Managing the school holiday juggle and announcing book 2!
What does it cost us to be always rushing ahead? What are we missing by not pausing to look back?
When sticking stops. A barn owl perched observantly on a post in front of me, a heron gliding by like a feathered Concorde with its wings tucked in. Just two of the birds I’ve spotted today whilst working at UK’s only family-owned and managed National Nature Reserve, at Elmley in Kent. I’m not working in the sense of checking on wildlife and mending fences, I’m working in the sense of enjoying an indulgent writing retreat in glorious isolation, tucked away in a definitely-not-roughing-it wooden cabin complete with outdoor tub overlooking meadows and marshes (more pics here ). This retreat is both a long-anticipated birthday gift from my family and the official starting point for writing my second business book. It’s been brewing in my head for months and is now begging loudly to be given some proper love and attention. So here I am, off-grid in every sense with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do for 24 hours than plan and write. Write what? I hear you ask…