Managing the Challenges of a 24/7 World
by David Peter Stroh and Marilyn Paul
Are you and your organization struggling to do more with less? Have people’s effectiveness and satisfaction dropped as workloads have skyrocketed? More and more of us are overloaded by trying to meet the challenges of a 24/7 world. You might wonder what you can do to manage your time and yourself in ways that are more productive and sustainable. As a leader, you might also want to know what you can do to help your entire organization combat the destructive dynamics that cause your collective workload to spin out of control even as you attempt to reel it in.
To meet these kinds of individual and organizational challenges, it helps to begin by developing the case for change. On a personal level, ask what overload is costing you in your career, your most important relationships, and your sense of well-being. Consider what you really want to do—ways in which you would realize your passions and aspirations if you only had more time.
At the organizational level, the costs of overload range from spiraling health expenses and burned out employees to tense working relationships, missed deadlines, poor quality work, and angry customers. Organizations also lose sight of and fail to implement strategic priorities because they spend too much time fighting fires and moving from crisis to crisis.
What Do You Want to Create?
The first step in building the foundation for sustainable productivity is to have a clear and compelling vision of what you want to create. As an individual, you develop a vision of where you want to be in five or 10 years, and also picture your ideal working day and week. At the organizational level, build a vision that integrates high performance and the characteristics of a great workplace (see, for example, the high-commitment, high-performance organizations cited in Russell Eisenstat, et al., “The Uncompromising Leader,” Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2008).
Identifying where you and your organization are now in relation to the vision establishes the creative tension vital to change. A critical part of describing your current reality is to understand how you, individually and at the collective level, unwittingly increase time pressure in your efforts to alleviate it. It is too easy to blame external factors—an unreasonable boss, the competitive environment, or the 24/7 accessibility provided by “time-saving” technology—for the overload you experience.
However, such explanations not only miss the many ways in which you contribute to overload, but also undermine your power to change how you work. The more you can see how your well-intentioned actions add to the problem, the more control you have over reducing your overall workload and increasing your effectiveness at the same time.
Another key factor is to cultivate support for the changes you want to make. Studies such as the well-known heart research conducted by Dean Ornish demonstrate that it is much easier to change deeply ingrained habits by reaching out to others. At the organizational level, you can analyze important stakeholders and mobilize a coalition for change.
Strategies for Increasing Effectiveness
Once you build the foundation for change, you are ready to target specific strategies for reducing workload and increasing effectiveness. At the individual level, this might mean ensuring that you make a realistic plan for what you can accomplish each day before opening email, and tackling your most important and challenging tasks early. At the organizational level, it can mean reducing incentives for firefighting, digging deeper to solve recurring issues by focusing on systemic versus individual causes of these problems, and holding firmly to strategic priorities in the face of distractions and urgent yet relatively unimportant concerns.
Implementing your strategies requires not only careful planning, but also ways to reinforce new commitments over time. This involves recognizing that change requires not only patience, persistence, and incentives to stay the course but also an appreciation that, in every moment, you must make a choice in favor of your new way of work instead of your habitual responses.
However well you plan and execute these strategies, it is also important to recognize that conditions change as you change. Adapting to changing conditions means learning from experience, i.e., drawing strength and wisdom from your successes and failures as well as adapting to new and evolving circumstances.
Finally, realize that you cannot save time, only spend it more or less wisely. Look instead to develop and sustain resources that are expandable, in particular your energy and ability to focus. Sound time management strategies such as clarifying a limited number of priorities and taking meaningful breaks enable you to cultivate these valuable skills.
David Peter Stroh and Marilyn Paul, Ph.D., co-founders of Bridgeway Partners, are internationally recognized systems thinking and organizational learning experts committed to helping organizations, individuals, and communities solve chronic, complex problems. David was previously a co-founder of Innovation Associates, the consulting firm whose pioneering work formed the foundation for fellow co-founder Peter Senge’s management classic The Fifth Discipline. Marilyn is a speaker, author, and coach whose best-selling book It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys has sold over 160,000 copies worldwide.
David and Marilyn will be offering a two-part webinar series: Managing Your Time as a Leader and Overcoming Organizational Overload.