Listening, a secret weapon

In 2009 I left corporate life with very little idea of what I wanted, or indeed would be able, to do next for a living. It was an uncertain and scary time for me, a core part of my previous identity – an executive in a large organisation – had been swept away and my new one was unknown to me. It was a liminal state; one which I did not enjoy. In theory it was a time of possibility and reinvention, of freedom, of the chance to try something new. All of which was well and good in theory but inner doubts – amplified every time well-meaning friends asked me ‘what are you going to do next?’ – provoked strong feelings of disquiet in practice. The one thing I could latch on to was the ambition to run a business from a shed in the garden. It was an appealing prospect to me – years of commuting to be replaced by a stroll down the garden path. I wanted the business (whatever it was) to be really small (‘almost insignificant’ was the mantra I had in mind) and agile, and yet to work with much larger entities. I did not know what the business would actually do, just that it would be run from a garden shed. Luckily, I had a shed in the garden; unfortunately, the shed was somewhat dilapidated, lacked the basic office comforts of heating, insulation, light, a desk, a roof that didn’t leak and many other things. However, this provided the opportunity for me to get stuck in to a renovation project, a project that at least provided something tangible as a goal and provided a stop-gap answer to that ‘what next?’ question I had begun to dread. The renovation began and much to my surprise, about 5 months later, it was completed. I was the proud owner (and builder) of a spruce, comfy shed-office with a floor, a roof, heating, lighting, insulation, a desk and (wonder of wonders at that time) WiFi! To anyone experienced in DIY or construction, I imagine the task would have seemed trivial; to me, every part of it felt daunting. I persisted, I sought advice, I made mistakes, I corrected mistakes. The project was complicated (for me) but I knew it was possible, evidenced by the fact that there was nothing unique about it and that if I got stuck I could ask someone with more expertise and I would find the answer I needed. I contrast that with the building of the business which is now run from the shed. Once I had overcome the initial hurdle of not knowing what the business was going to do, there was no guaranteed playbook I could draw on for bringing it to fruition. There were a multitude of opinions, at times an overwhelming number of choices and decisions, but nowhere was there the formula for making the business I wanted to work at the particular time I was trying to do it. The path involved experimentation, adapting to changing circumstances, making decisions in the absence of meaningful data, all of which often felt like a high-stakes guessing game. It has been a learning journey, rather than a planned and deterministic one. Looking back from the present, it all makes perfect sense, but repeating the same steps again would not necessarily result in success; the context is different, nothing ever stays exactly the same. The renovation of the shed and the building of the business have both required resilience, albeit in different forms; they both taxed me. But one fundamental difference between the two of them was that I knew if I persisted I would eventually complete the shed; there was no such certainty with the business venture. The weight of uncertainty was tiring at times, provoking anxiety and a yearning within me to ‘know’ it would be ok at a time when this just wasn’t possible. Through my work as an executive coach (the business which emerged in the shed) I frequently observe the reluctance to engage with complexity in the organisations I work with, a reflex to reduce a situation to a state that feels more manageable and controllable; a situation in which existing knowledge can be re-applied. Often this simplification is more to do with an unconscious desire to escape the anxiety caused by uncertainty rather than a purposeful attempt to tackle the situation effectively. Some situations by their very nature are complex: they lack cause and effect, they are entangled, they are unpredictable. I love the words attributed to Albert Einstein: ‘Everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler’. When simplicity is a form of avoidance it does nothing except to reduce fear at the expense of understanding; the understanding which might make all the difference to the effectiveness of what gets done. Renovating the shed showed me the power of a clear plan and steady progress. It also gave me the chance to reflect whilst at the same time feeling I was doing something productive. Building my business taught me the art of navigating through uncertainty. Both of these are necessary in the world of business, let alone life; perhaps the critical skill is choosing which approach should be applied to the situation being faced. As I sit in my shed-turned-office working with clients, it serves as a constant reminder of these distinct experiences, each valuable in its own right.

Imagine the following seemingly impossible challenge: an organisation of 60,000 people, with no hierarchy, leadership, authority figures or plan, acting in a coordinated, synchronised manner, with large amounts of collaboration and adaptability, without any instructions in any form being issued at all. To make it worse, very few of the people involved know each other, many speak different languages, they come from diverse backgrounds and there is a very wide range of ages and physical abilities. Tough to imagine achieving it isn’t it? But while I was watching a sporting event last week (the St Louis Cardinals were playing the Chicago Cubs at baseball) this is exactly what happened in the form of a Mexican Wave which broke out at various points around the stadium and seemed to flow effortlessly around the crowd, transferring seamlessly between seating sections, moving in harmony between upper and lower tiers and hopping gangways with ease. It made me think about the way we might set about organising this task if we were asked to do so. I would instinctively want to create plans, a budget, a selection process, structure, briefing sessions, training etc. All the things I often associate with change and organisational life. The Mexican Wave demonstrated to me that there is something innately possible in groups that we often suppress or obstruct through the very things we believe will allow effective action. The desire to control, rather than encourage or harness what might naturally happen, is strong! A different mindset and approach that comes from complexity science, a school of thought which reflects the world as it is rather than what we would like it to be, (I will write more about complexity science in a later blog) is a richer way of seeing things. It is striking how often I hear people lament that their organisation is adept at coping in a crisis but how slow and rigid things are in ‘normal’ times. There is a longing for the mindsets and behaviours which are adopted naturally during a crisis – such as faster decision making, more direct conversations, a willingness to quickly adapt and learn, a tolerance for mistakes – to be harnessed all of the time. What is it about a crisis that allows this? Certainly there is often more focus around a single objective, the fog of competing priorities if often lifted and this alone has a significant impact. But I also think our mindsets about complexity, although not expressed in those terms, has an equally important part to play. There is a much greater level of acceptance for the need to self-organise (in the same way the crowd performing the Mexican Wave self-organised) and the bureaucracy of traditional hierarchical power is temporarily pushed aside – there often isn’t the time for it or the means to control things. We know in a crisis we are treading novel ground and we trust an ability to improvise (or make it up as we go along); there are no obvious answers, only tough dilemmas. In a crisis it is less clear what ‘good’ looks like; it’s usually a matter of noticing whether an action makes things better or worse and adapting accordingly. In reality, we improvise our way through every situation, crises simply remove the pretence that life can ever be any different from this. We know we can never predict exactly what will happen, denying ourselves this or believing it can be avoided, simply causes us to act in ways that are not helpful. In a crisis there is a tacit acknowledgement that ‘self-organising’ is essential and more latitude is given (usually quickly and informally) to enable this. Sometimes this is explicit, take for example the statement by the CEO of Walmart in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the storm which destroyed much of the infrastructure in huge swathes of New Orleans. He made it clear to all employees in the locality they were empowered to do what they felt it was right to do at the time and he would back them unreservedly with any action they took; acting in an unequivocal way to make the conditions for experimentation and improvisation safe. Walmart were able to assist the local community much more effectively than many of the government agencies, which were hidebound by process, control and quite possibly the fear of being criticised (which they received in any case because their response was so slow). The capacity for self-organising was demonstrated in abundance during the pandemic. Traditional command-and-control structures and processes were rapidly diminished yet organisations adapted at great speed to the evolving demands of working from home and the many other challenges faced. There was no overall master plan yet organisations, by and large, managed to provide the services they had been providing prior to the pandemic through lots of adjustments to working patterns, relationships and processes agreed at a local level at speed and which amounted to something large and relatively stable, rather like the Mexican Wave. It’s no surprise then that this seems to be the philosophy in the military where as much autonomy is given to local units and the role of the centre is to support what they need rather than tell them what to do. Relinquishing control to those closest to the day-to-day operations, who are in a much better position to assess the situation and make decisions, makes logical sense but challenges many traditional views of heroic leaders who think their role is to know what to do and issue commands to obedient followers. During a crisis we are much more likely to reduce our attachment to ‘the way things should be’ and are much more willing to accept and adjust to ‘the way things are’. The pomp, circumstance and trappings of organisational life are a luxury which cannot be afforded during crises and when stripped bare it’s surprising how an entirely new capacity for change can emerge. It’s also noticeable how quickly we forget this when the opportunity for business-as-usual returns.

I worked for many years with someone who was the most powerful listener I have ever experienced. He possessed a rare combination of paying full attention to whatever you were saying and resisting the urge to add his own views and beliefs. He listened with the attention a cat gives when stalking its prey; in that moment nothing was more important, nothing was allowed to distract. The quality of his listening affected the quality of my speaking; my words felt important, each one treated as precious. It’s a small step to take from feeling your words are important to feeling you matter. Being made to feel you matter … what a wonderfully affirming act. He made me feel heard in a way that felt rare to me. It had the impact of saying much more than I intended. I found myself disclosing information I didn’t think I would; sometimes the information I disclosed was new to me. I found myself saying things I hadn’t voiced before, in the process learning something about myself. This was often enormously helpful; his listening allowed me to understand my own thinking much better than when it was trapped silently in the echo-chamber of my thoughts. Then when I thought I had said it all, when I didn’t think I had anything left to say, he would replay what he had heard or ask a simple question, validating my thinking, proving that he had listened, allowing me to change something (often important) in my views which had, until that point, felt so firm. You might be rolling your eyes at this point, the importance of listening is obvious isn’t it? Wasn’t it covered comprehensively on the first management training course anyone ever attended? Yes and no. It is obvious, we know it’s important but that does not necessarily mean we do it well. Common practice is not the same as common sense. How accurately do we evaluate our own capability as a listener? How strong is our belief in the immense value it can bring? Most of the time we assume we do it well, rather like our belief that we possess a good sense of humour and are above-average drivers; we tick the mental box and move on. There is a further step that can amplify the impact of listening in organisations – action. The evidence that our words are important to leaders is reinforced when we see something happen as a result. However, there is a twist best exemplified by a version of the following slogan I often see: ‘you said, we did’. In many ways this is powerful, an articulation of the importance of speaking up and being listened to. But the danger is that it reinforces the thing most modern organisational cultures want to escape – the parent-child relationship which is the antithesis of empowerment. Once my colleague demonstrated he really understood my perspective, his great skill was to resist the urge to resolve things for me. At first, I found this deeply frustrating; he was more senior, he had more power to change things, why didn’t he step in and sort things out? I guess because he understood that by doing so he would be limiting my development, my growth and my ability to create change. Isn’t this what we want? To feel empowered. Think how powerful it could have been if all my colleagues had shared a similar experience and the whole organisation was populated by people who felt as I did after being listened to. In the previous blog I wrote about the difficulty of bringing about cultural change in complex systems, i.e. organisations, and the value of disturbance as a catalyst for change. The form of listening I have described here is in itself a disturbance; it has the potential to be transformative individually and even more potential collectively. In many organisations, hierarchy, fear, our egos and general busyness are barriers to paying attention; the seemingly simple act of listening can take some doing. But who knows where it might lead? ‘Big doors swing on small hinges’.

A question I have frequently been asking leaders over recent months is to describe how they see their role. Specifically, do they see themselves as a protector or a connector?* The distinction being that a protector is concerned about shielding others from the world out there with all its itinerant uncertainties and mess, whilst a connector is concerned with exposing others to it and connecting them as widely and deeply as possible. The first assumes (tacitly) others are not capable of navigating it; the second, that unless they learn to navigate it the organisation will fail. When the pandemic barged its way into all our lives in 2020 it proved conclusively to me that our ability to cope is far greater than might have been inferred previously. People innovated, made local decisions, juggled priorities and generally responded in ways that could never have been imagined. So why do I frequently experience leaders who are stopped in their tracks by the question, pausing and then responding in a way that indicates a desire for post-pandemic ‘real-life’ to resume, which naturally invites them to fulfil the role of protectors. It is interesting to ask at what level of seniority, pay or age do we assume others are just as capable of handling reality as we are? A protector mindset might, for some, be founded in an ‘information-is-power’ mentality but in my experience it is much more frequently driven from a very positive motive of care or an assumption that ‘this is what leaders are paid to do’; keep it simple and orderly or people will become confused, or they might lose focus or perhaps worry too much or be downright paralysed by fear. But if you can cope why can’t they? What gave you the capability they lack? Possibly it was the simple act of exposure. On the other hand, isn’t the position of connector irresponsible and lazy? Doesn’t it transgress the fundamental role of leaders in providing clarity and reassurance. Shouldn’t leaders have the answers? Yes, there is truth in this and yet we all know every time we see the news that the world is inherently unstable and complex, and pretending the organisations we work in are immune is optimistic thinking at best and a delusional at worst; a delusion that means we cling to practices that no longer serve us. The middle ground is the interesting space, where beliefs and values get tested. What sort of information do we withhold and what do we share? What principles do we apply in making that decision? Who do we typically protect and who do we typically connect? Fruitful territory for understanding more about our opaque inner-worlds. When you add up all these protector mindsets you get the very thing most organisations declare themselves as not wanting … a parent-child culture. Empowerment is recognised as a necessity in organisations that want to be agile and customer focused, but empowerment without transparency is like Ernie without Eric, it just doesn’t work. (I imagine this is a meaningless metaphor for anyone in gen y or z so here is a link which might explain it). We bemoan a lack of accountability, insufficient agility, lukewarm innovation, decisions forever being escalated. So how do you see yourself, protector or connector? ____________________________________________________________________________ * My mental image of a protector is that they slam the office door behind them as they enter the room, breathe a sigh of relief and hope their words of calm authority distract us from those glimpses of the chaos out there.

I will start at the intended ending of this blog and dive straight into the final sentence... to the 50 or so people who have trusted me enough to participate in Agile Leadership I’m deeply grateful. You have taught me a lot and brought great fun into my life. Thank you! Now back to the beginning. During the first lockdown in 2020 I decided to create a training course (which I later described as a reflective programme) to explore the questions which have fuelled much of my work over the last 15 years or so: how do strategy, culture and leadership fit together and why are they so often a bad fit with each other? And I wanted to do this in the context of complex, uncertain and ambiguous environments, otherwise known as reality. I had noticed the same issues and themes in much of my work and saw common pitfalls and helpful ways to address them, this is what I wanted to bring to a broader group of people. As the maxim says ‘we teach what we need to learn’ and I was keen to learn more. In no particular order, here are five things which come readily to mind in terms of my learning: 1. The joy of Product development. I have never developed a product before, in fact at the beginning I didn’t realise this was what I was setting out to do. There were so many questions I couldn’t answer and so many things I had no experience of doing. I didn’t know whether what I was thinking about doing (which was very vague) would be of interest or value to anyone else. There were three things that helped me progress through this period of uncertainty. Firstly, trying to describe what I was intending to do to other people. As I talked about it my thinking developed, other people’s reactions honed my ideas both through encouragement and discouragement. Secondly, I was lucky to have the constraint of lockdown which meant that I knew the programme had to run virtually thereby removing a host of choices. This also brought an unanticipated benefit which I cover in the next section. Finally, there was nothing like my decision to run a pilot which forced me to convert broad ideas into tangible things which people could experience and I could learn from. I was neither fully ready or it or completely convinced it would be well received, but as Reid Hoffman (the founder of LinkedIn) said, ‘sometimes you have to throw yourself off a cliff and build the plane on the way down’. 2. Rich dialogues through working with diverse groups. A benefit of delivering the programme virtually was that it allowed people from different geographies to participate. This was enriching in itself, as was the fact that diverse enterprises were represented in terms of scale and sector (profit, not for profit and social enterprise where all represented). The mix of people who were thrown together created lively dialogue. There are few mirrors for ourselves that are as helpful as hearing other people’s experience. You can’t help but compare with your own which encourages a deeper look at yourself, revealing things which have become so familiar they are invisible or new things you would never have noticed. 3. A reminder of universal human truths. The diversity of the people on the programme alongside the commonality of challenges reinforced how many of the things which trouble, excite or perplex us in organisations are really about our own frailties and flaws as human beings. This is something we can’t escape although we often pretend to in the mistaken belief that we will be more successful by doing so. Certainty and confidence are over-valued attributes which are often used as a shield. We can’t escape our vulnerability and the more we expose it, the stronger we become. 4. The power of stories. We are our stories, our organisations are a collection of stories, we can’t help translating what we see and experience into a narrative so that it makes sense to us. We learn through stories, we teach through stories, we remember through stories. The participants on the programme have been generous in sharing their stories and an environment such as this one which invited doubt, allowed many stories of failure and mistakes to be aired; from these we learned so much more than we would have done from stories of success, the prevailing mood-music of many organisations. 5. The benefit of time spent watching, listening and reading. The act of giving myself permission to be lost in research and suspending the judge in me from pointing out ‘you should be working’ paid dividends in terms of the wonderful range of materials I was able to find. Is there anything quite as productive as allowing oneself to follow the trail from a starting point and enjoying the many side-routes which are encountered? Far more background material has been unearthed in this way than could possibly fit into a single programme, it’s a wonderful resource which I will draw on for years to come. Having used up my last sentence in the opening paragraph I will close by saying to anyone interested in coming along to the programme in the future please do get in touch. I don’t think any of the participants so far have any regret about attending and I still have a hunger to learn.

One of the chapters in Thinking Fast and Slow is called ‘A machine for jumping to conclusions’. It describes the fact that we are simply unable to resist making meaning from the things we see and experience, even though they might be random or completely unconnected. It is an automatic process over which we have no control and is deeply embedded within all of us. Our desire for consistent narrative and coherence overrides doubts, missing information and uncertainty. We fill in the gaps, join the dots and make up anything we don’t know and then we get attached to the story we have created, looking for evidence that supports it and discarding anything which contradicts it. It really doesn’t matter to us whether the meaning we create is accurate, it’s just that it is clear. I had an experience of this yesterday when engaged in a Neurographic drawing session, which quite apart from being a wonderfully relaxing, safe and rewarding experience, reinforced my understanding of how our minds work, a subject that continues to bring me great interest and surprise. The session (facilitated expertly by Vanessa ) led us through a process to create an abstract artwork. I won’t say any more about it here but do encourage you to find out for yourself; as an incentive, I will reveal that it helped me (somewhat mysteriously) with the problem which had been occupying my mind for months and allowed me hours later to see it in a different way. It was an act of letting go, silencing the babble in my head (not through control but through distraction) and gave the space for my conscious actions to connect with unconscious thoughts. This, coupled with doing it in a social setting, was a delightful way to spend a morning. It was only when I had completed my artwork that I immediately saw an image of ET, and one of the other people in the session pointed out they could see a running man. Just to repeat, these were not something I had actively created; they were merely random shapes and colours thrown together, something that our brains immediately wanted to make sense of and fit to something familiar in order I suppose to explain what it was and how to respond to it, perhaps thereby allowing us to ignore it because of its familiarity. Having seen ET and ‘running man’ it then became impossible for me to unsee them. The interpretation (mine and my colleagues) was etched into my suggestable brain and despite the logic of knowing these were a haphazard arrangement of lines and shading, my reading of them did not shift from the story I had created for myself about what they were. Back to the book Thinking Fast and Slow; it offers practical advice which encourages us to make meaning for ourselves prior to becoming influenced (infected might be a better word) by anyone else’s interpretation: ‘The principle of independent judgments (and decorrelated errors) has immediate applications for the conduct of meetings, an activity in which executives in organisations spend a great deal of their working days. A simple rule can help: before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This procedure makes good use of the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing others to line up behind them.’ I can’t wait to try it out, nor to produce another Neurographic art work.

When my good friend and colleague Nick introduced me to the ideas of Daniel Kahneman more than a decade ago the significance of his work completely eluded me. It seemed peripheral to the work I do; whereas now, with a deeper understanding and more thought from me (ironic I know!), I see Kahneman’s work and the work of Amy Edmondson (about which more later in this blog) as central to it. Kahneman’s research (which was done largely in partnership with Amos Tversky) resulted in the best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow and a Nobel Prize. Until Kahneman and Tversky examined the way we make judgements and decisions in uncertain situations, the prevailing scientific belief was that human beings were essentially logical and rational. Their revelations of our unconscious biases and ‘heuristics’ (the unconscious simplifying rules of thumb we apply in order to come to a decision) were controversial and unpopular amongst many psychologists and economists until the point was proven in so many different ways it could no longer be denied. Often the way we make judgements through heuristics is helpful, but equally they demonstrated that it can lead to systematic, predictable and significant errors. As an aside, quite apart from the brilliance of their work, their collaboration and ways of working together (‘I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos’) is a fascinating story in itself, brilliantly told by Michael Lewis in The Undoing Project. Their characters were entirely different (Tversky believed his own ideas were always right; Kahneman believed his own ideas were always wrong) and the way they created new ideas beyond which neither could have produced individually, is an inspirational example of harnessing difference. Kahneman described the way they worked as ‘a conversation … a shared mind that was superior to our individual minds’. One example of their work, which might well feel obvious now, was to test the impact the framing of statements and questions has on our decisions (something which nudge theory exploits). For example, surgeons who describe an operation as having a 90% survival rate have a far higher consent rate from prospective patients than if the operation is described as having a 10% fatality rate. We jump to conclusions, make judgements and know the answer without noticing we’ve done this. This is often helpful; it keeps us safe and allows us to do things quickly. But it also limits us and stops us seeing things, like alternative approaches, fresh interpretations or a better understanding. Kahneman described our thinking as having two different modes, System 1 and System 2. He points out that both of them are fallible and both are useful. System 1 is our fast-thinking automatic response; our thoughts appear without us going through the effort of thinking. System 2 is slower and takes more energy; we subconsciously conserve our use of it for just that reason. We don’t like to invoke System 2 unless it is necessary to do so, such as when we encounter danger. There are many differences between these two modes, one of the most important being that System 1 fits what we experience into the simplest narrative we can find; in that mode we look for certainty and coherence. It is common for us to answer a question we know how to answer rather than the actual question we need to address; or to downgrade or dismiss information that contradicts our story. System 2 on the other hand can cope with nuance, and crucially can ask the question ‘what am I missing?’. System 2 doesn’t have to be right. Our individual thinking is subject to distortion and influence that sit largely outside our awareness. Unless we actively guard against this (sometimes by involving other people in our thinking processes) we fall prey to it again and again. So perhaps the answer is simply to work at problems together in groups? However, the social pressure and norms in groups make it unlikely our conversations will be as unfiltered and undistorted as we would like. This is where the work of Amy Edmondson on psychological safety (which stemmed from looking at death rates in hospitals) is revealing in terms of the impact a lack of psychological safety can have, particularly in groups with a mix of hierarchy. She memorably talks about the ‘need to reduce the cost of speaking up and increase the cost of keeping quiet’ in groups which are working on complex problems. The movie mogul Sam Goldwyn expressed the difficulty brilliantly when he said, ‘I don’t want to be surrounded by yes men. I want everyone to speak up ... even if it costs them their job’. I argue that the most important task of leadership is to create psychologically safe environments, without which the flow of information and ideas is hampered. There is however, a paradox to consider. Without sufficient cognitive strain, it’s likely that System 1 will prevail; there is no need to wake-up lazy System 2 in situations that do not merit it. We are naturally drawn towards cognitive ease and are biologically programmed not to waste our energy exerting System 2 when System 1 can handle the situation perfectly well. It follows therefore that it’s possible for situations to feel too safe and easy; if there is no grit in the oyster, the risk becomes one of ‘System 1 group think’. Psychologically safe environments have to include sufficient challenge to invoke our System 2. Our cognitive load is influenced by many factors including the way information is presented, the familiarity of the topic, our mood and the social setting. Cognitive ease allows our System 1 thinking to prevail without any need for the intervention of System 2. When we are in a state of cognitive ease our intuition and creativity are more readily expressed but we run the risk of failing to spot our own errors and biases. Conversely, when we experience cognitive strain which invokes System 2, we benefit from applying more diligence to our thinking and are more likely to question our assumptions and beliefs. However, the cost of this can be a loss of ‘flow’, something which is often the hallmark of a great conversation. When we combine our individual thinking errors with the additional implications of working in a group, then it isn’t surprising that working on really difficult (by which I mean uncertain and complex) problems like strategy is so tough and (in my experience) so frequently disappointing in terms of outcome. Too often strategy is treated as a technical problem which can ignore the communal and individual thinking processes involved. Unless we pay more attention to our own thinking and the social conditions in which the work is taking place, we are likely to fall a long way short of what might be possible; if we paid active attention to both these factors and established approaches to compensate for them, we could produce far better results. For important decisions, it’s imperative we design processes which contain discipline and rigour to counteract the flaws in our intuitive thought and establish environments which feel safe enough for uninhibited dialogue, but not so cosy that System 2 thinking is avoided. Strategy is challenging enough without us tripping ourselves up and in Kahneman’s words ‘being blind to our own blindness’.

In the last 18 months I have noticed busy-ness in organisations reaching epidemic proportions. I see the cost of excess busy-ness everywhere. From poor quality work, to enormous amounts of re-work, to diminished levels of engagement (how long can one stay motivated when your 1:1 is re-scheduled for the 5 th time?). And at times there is the extreme cost of burnout and stress when the body and mind down tools and declare ‘enough!’ As an outside observer I am caught between empathy and amazement as I see work being attempted in a way that is frenzied and unproductive; actually, at times it is downright counter-productive. ‘Thinking time’ has been squeezed out of the diary at the expense of ‘doing time’ which is more readily justified. Busy-ness has become a badge of honour and despite all evidence to the contrary, is mistakenly viewed as a temporary state which will end once the current transformation is completed or new strategy is implemented or a supply-chain crisis is resolved (take your pick or substitute a convenient reason of your own). To some extent it’s easy to pin organisational ‘over-busy-ness’ on an absence of effective strategy; an inability to make choices and say ‘no’ is understandable in a desire not to cut off any possibilities just in case they prove valuable. Or maybe it’s an attempt to fool ourselves we have the capacity to undertake far more than is really possible. A lack of strategy certainly exacerbates the propensity for busy-ness and justifies our behaviour although I believe the roots of it are more connected with our individual insecurities rather than any organisational failing. Oliver Burkeman’s brilliant book 4000 weeks (so called because that is the frighteningly short average human life span) suggests that busy-ness can be a way of us avoiding bigger questions about our lives and our priorities. He suggests that productivity advice is based on the false premise that we should be able to fit it all in and not have to miss out on any of it, thus we don’t necessarily make the choices we need to; primarily because they are difficult. I have been experimenting over the past few months with making myself less busy. I acknowledge the position of luxury I’m in that allows me this choice but far from it being the enjoyable experience I expected, I have found it surprisingly uncomfortable and ironically, at times, stressful. This doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing to do; there have been many benefits but it does indicate how habituated I have become to busy-ness and how awkward it is to break free. I’m deeply conditioned to expect to be busy and am surrounded by people whose reply to ‘how are you?’ is some version of ‘extremely busy’, thereby, inadvertently emphasising the need to be busy if I want to comply with the norm. At some point in my life I conflated busy-ness and self-worth and it is difficult to untangle them again in a world which reinforces the association in so many ways. Manic busy-ness is a self-inflicted threat to productivity and yet it is completely accepted. Dealing with it would force us to take responsibility and admit that at least in part we are architects of our own busy-ness and we are doing this to ourselves. If we want to change the situation it will take courage to step out of the status quo and experience the unfamiliar discomfort of saying ‘life’s great, I’ve created a lot of gaps in my diary’. It is challenging to actively do less when the world around you is encouraging you to do more but it is only then that we can contribute our best.

Reeking of wood smoke, I returned home on Saturday night feeling replenished by the evening I had had with my old friends Robert and Tim, sitting around a campfire, talking through the story of our lives in the 10 or so years since we had seen each other last. Our conversation was driven by a basic desire to know more and share more, to hear each of us describe our interior worlds and our interpretation of the wider world. We made sense of things together, from Brexit, Covid and parenting to personal dreams and failures. We covered a lot of ground; through nothing more than chatting, we re-established bonds and (in my case at least) felt nourished by the experience. Would this type of conversation be of value or even possible in corporate life? A version of it certainly would be although of course a social setting is very different from the workplace in many ways, including our expectations of each other and the norms of behaviour. It’s also challenging during the pandemic to have this free-wheeling interaction virtually rather than in person; although I suspect many of us have been surprised by our ability to talk on a video call in ways we had thought unthinkable. It is challenging but certainly not impossible. The process of collective sense-making is a critical and easily overlooked component of the health of any team. Even more so with the pandemic, which has heightened the propensity for teams to become fragmentated and their members isolated. I hasten to add this isn’t universal, some teams have become more cohesive, inclusive and connected during this period as they have recognised and invested in the importance of this; however, in my experience they have very much been the exception. What do I mean by collective sense-making? For me, it’s the time and space to pause, share stories, hear each other’s views, reflect and break away from ‘task time’. It could be described as just hanging out with each other, no set agenda, no purposeful intent, no action points at the end of it. Collective sense-making is a readily available way of building resilience (one of the most sought-after capabilities in organisational life at the moment, judging by the number of requests I have been dealing with on this topic). When time is money, ‘stopping the clock’ – for long enough to hear from each other, listen deeply (beyond the words themselves to the meaning and the feelings), to express doubts, fears and uncertainties, to show vulnerability, to reserve judgement, to not need to discover who is accountable or what went wrong – is a difficult feat which takes a surprising amount of faith, courage and commitment. As an external coach, I sometimes see my role as simply giving permission to a group to engage in this activity without them feeling guilty or rushed, something they find difficult to grant themselves. I provide a semi-colon in the flow of their days. Collective sense-making allows: Connection: experiencing the human being and not only the role. Reflection: the single most important capability needed in order to learn at the speed required in our changing, unpredictable and emergent world. Perspective: through hearing the views of others, we are able to get less entangled in the ‘correctness’ of our own thoughts and see there are other possibilities. Collective sense-making also allows us to understand our values; not through a direct description of them, but something more effective – the stories we tell which demonstrate the choices we make and the priorities we have. When we understand our values and those of others, we have the roots to help us withstand difficulties. As someone said at the end of a recent sense-making session: ‘ I’ve come to realise that we have all been on something of a roller-coaster for the past year. It’s really important that we had this quality time together. We needed the chance to pause, reflect and find out where we were and where we were going to go next. We have learned so much about what we know and what we don’t know; it has helped us to see things that were hidden in plain sight. At times the conversation has been fascinating, stimulating and at times very moving and even uncomfortable … but I feel much more aligned with everyone else now. The good news is it’s been inspiring and I feel energised and reassured when in reality I came into the conversation feeling exhausted and worried and in no state to lead my team .’