“I wasted time and now time doth waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes.”
— William Shakespeare, c. 1595
You’re in a hurry, I get it.
You want the three-bullet memo. Could this meeting have been an email? Could this email have been a Slack? Could this Slack have been telepathy?
You have 1,001 things to do — and you need to check your various feeds for updates, replies that need replies, and DMs — a newsletter? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Time is part of our modern lexicon: time travel, time zones, time enough at last, time warp, etc.
But it’s also how the industrial world measures its worth and dispenses rewards: time clock, overtime, time-and-a-half, downtime, time off.
“Tardiness is next to wickedness in a society relentless in its consumption of time as both a good and a service—as tweet and Instagram, film clip and sound bite, as sporting event, investment opportunity, Tinder hookup, and interest rate—its value measured not by its texture or its substance but by the speed of its delivery.” — Lewis H. Lapham, 2014
Productivity measures how effective employees are with their assignments, but executives hellbent on getting employees to return to the office seem more interested in measuring the amount of time employee spend in the office.
Never mind that productivity rose during the pandemic; certain employers would rather look over employees’ shoulders rather than trust them to do their jobs.
Owl Labs CEO Frank Weishaupt “actively encourages his employees to create schedules that work for them, in locations that make sense, he says — even if what makes sense is “coffee badging.”
His approach is sensible and refreshing:
“We hire people to do a job. I don’t hire people to watch them work. I do love the in-office participation when we get it, but I want it to be organic.” (CNBC)
“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” — François VI de la Rochefoucauld, 1678
In my work, I practice a similar philosophy: by slowing you down, I help you speed up.
That is, I give you a chance to step out of the frenetic pace of doomscrolling and email reply hell by asking you each week to focus with me on something a little deeper. By reflecting on a topic that connects to your wider work.
“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future...For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire.”— Seneca, 49 B.C.
Related to that, later today and tomorrow (Leap Day!), ActiveCampaign is running a free program designed to help you make more time (I’ll be one of the speakers — at 11:55 am ET on Thursday, February 29). You can register here. And even if you can’t make it, it’ll be available for the next month.
And with the shortening tenure of certain C-suite executives (particularly the CMO), time is of the essence. There’s less and less time to make an impact:
Average Fortune 500 C-Suite Tenure (Years)
These shorter tenures are a symptom of the quarterly mentality held by so many boards and investors. “What have you done for us lately?” they ask.
This is why a clear and compelling vision and relentless communication are so important. Every leader has a responsibility to set expectations and communicate about their progress.
If they want to focus on a longer-term strategy but fear it won’t be complete before their time is up, they ought to seek clear guidance and agreement from leadership, so that everyone is on board for this longer timeframe.
A high-functioning executive team will develop realistic timelines to determine how the ship is turning, particularly about things like morale, culture, and strategy. These are not measured with quarterly KPIs.
If you’re focused on the right things and are trying to make things easier, create value, and move in the same direction, then perhaps our greatest critics will have neither the time nor the need to check their calendars. Or even their watches.
I’d say it’s about time, wouldn’t you?
There’s so much to learn,
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Another winner here, Scott. How many times, in corporate contexts, as an employee, and especially as a consultant, have I been the ONLY (lonely) voice begging for people to make long terms goals—especially for product development and new areas of business?
The problem is not unique to business. In my 30 years of K-12 education work—in literally hundreds of schools nationwide and internationally (and even working on school startups and restarts)—not a single educational leader has engaged me seriously in the process of setting long term goals and road mapping the journey to achieve them.
Yet, and this is the compelling part, every “line level” employee has complained of the lack of direction from top brass.
Same goes for families.
And, tragically, for teens and post-teens as well—with the exception of those with extraordinary gifts in the arts or athletics.
This problem is endemic to contemporary culture. So much so that I am working now on a complementary fiction/nonfiction work called “In the Time of Possible Selves.”
There’s a line I use, in the voice of an “advising” character:
“Time dictates that the only directio is forward. Go carefully and with ourpose. This is a time for choice and commitment. For if you do not choose and commit, the choice will be made for you by a Universe indifferent to your genius. This is the lesson of the time of possible selves.”