Too busy to Think – Thinking Faster

Does this sound like anyone or anywhere you know:

Working with a number of senior managers and executives from some Fortune 500 firms, I increasingly find that all of them seem to be measured with a new statistic – meeting minutes consumed.  Often, the only valuable time you can acquire from these folks is in the hallway between meetings.  They are overworked, overscheduled, multi-tasking and reacting to what’s going on around them rather than taking control of their work and their results.

Where is it written that we have to attend every meeting that we are invited to?  Where was the law laid down that we HAVE to be busy all of the time?  If these concepts are true, when does anyone have time to think about the consequences of being busy all the time, and the missed opportunities?

Jeffrey Philips of Thinking Faster then goes on to explain five reasons why he thinks that this might be:

1. Most firms place a high value on busyness, not necessarily results.  If a person seems very busy, then they must be doing something valuable.
2. However, if someone is successful at something, we have even more incentive to ask them to take on more work – of the type they are good at and often work they aren’t so good at.  It is very difficult to say “no”
3. Many firms have lack good, clear objectives and strategic communication, so it is hard to tell what initiatives are really important.  When there’s a lack of clarity, everything is important.
4. We’ve lost the ability to determine who needs to know what.  In a recent meeting I was asked to lead, many of the participants brought others who weren’t originally invited, and who did not have a clear role to play in the meeting.
5. The pressure of making the quarter.  Speaking recently with a gentleman who was highly placed in a Fortune 500 firm, the frustration of constantly short changing the future to “make” the quarter was evident.

I’d subscribe to all of these, but I thought I would add to and expand a few of them:

1. Many places don’t allow for good delegation. I work with a number of senior people who are constantly dragged into the trivial. They get pulled so often that they no longer put up a resistance.
2. Information sicknesses causing destructive behaviours. Everyone feels like they need to know everything, and react to it instantaneously. The BlackBerry is an addiction for many.
3. Lack of good administrative support. Administrators are devalued in many organisations, as such senior people are dealing with administrative activities.
4. Poor meeting etiquette. I’ve been in many poorly managed meetings where people have phased out rather than fix, or cancel, the meeting.

Just a few ideas, and many of them are interlinked.

Many of these issues cause terrible negative spirals. Last weekend I was sent an email at 10:20 at night on Sunday and then again at 5:30 on Monday morning, but the same person. This person is more senior than me. My initial reaction to this was to question whether I was putting in enough effort to be “impressive”. I only thought about it for a few seconds, because I’ve been around long enough not to get caught. Once caught, though, it’s really difficult to get off the hook.