“Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” – Thomas Carlyle
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Responsibility
“The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to and the last duty done.” – George MacDonald
You own the problems that create problems for your customers. They might not be your fault, but they are your problem.
For more about your relationship with customers, read "Customer Feedback."
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant.” -Max De Pree, former CEO of Herman Miller
Amazon must be a huge consumer of kraft cardboard. We have a model in which product is shipped in cardboard and then, in most communities, is picked up at the curb for recycling. Why don’t we turn this around?
Why aren’t the deliveries made in something akin to a mailbox, but for packages. With limited packaging (ie, soft packaging, reusable totes, etc) and then we have curbside or community drop off of goods?
Today the brick and mortar retail world relies on customers picking up goods from a store and trashing the packaging at home. What if it was the opposite? The goods were delivered to the home and we dropped off the packaging (on our own schedule). As tools like Amazon become more ubiquitous, the infrastructure for curbside reusable pick-up is a natural next step.
Remain an artist - Picasso
Remain a beginner - Jobs
Remain calm and carry on - Churchill
"Be the person your dog thinks you are." - Bert Jacobs, founder of Life is Good
In his book, Art’s Principles, the founder of Gensler, Art Gensler recounts how important it is for employees to wash their own dirty dishes in the company cafeteria.
“It sends four key messages,” he wrote.
- “You respect each other as teammates.”
- “You check your ego at the door when you come to work.” No one is above doing the dishes.
- It reinforces the start-to-finish mindset required for great service (important in all enterprises, especially service businesses).
- “Every experience comes together to create what a potential or current clients thanks about your brand. Your office is one big brand environment.”
These same principles apply to other things you might do at work. If you volunteer for a committee to benefit employees (even though you aren’t in HR). If you help straighten up a conference room at the end of the meeting (even if you are not whomever might do this if you didn’t and if you don’t know, find out) If you take the time to write up some company success to share with employees so that they can learn about it and feel proud (even though you aren’t in marketing). Taking the time to get to know everyone in the office and being interested in their careers (even though you aren’t the manager). Introducing people you meet to your company and what makes you all great (even though you are not in sales).
If everyone does things that aren't their job for the good of the group, then the group is good.
It is the 23rd of December and all over the US, holiday shoppers are out buying last minute gifts. It reminds me again of the pervasiveness of procrastination.
I recently watched Ted Urban’s TED talk on procrastination (and highly recommend it). He describes that master procrastinators have in their brain a “rational decision maker” who would make logical time management decisions if it wasn’t for his pesky shipmate the “instant gratification monkey.” The Monkey finds endless distractions and is only frightened by one thing: the “panic monster.” The monster that reminds of looming deadlines or the impact of poor performance. His description of procrastination sounds like laziness, lame excuse making, or even attention deficit disorder. He ends his talk recounting the misery that is caused by procrastination, in his own life and that in people that he encounters around the shared topic of procrastination.
And this negative view of procrastination is as prevalent as procrastination. We say “Now or Never” or “Time is Money.” Even the prolific Ben Franklin is said to have penned the popular proverb “Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” Practical advice from an over-achiever, we think. We idolize those who save, plan ahead, and are prepared. We fear missing out or missing the train with slow decision making. There is a general view that people who are operating at higher levels of performance or efficiency avoid procrastinating. I have been taught in my personal and professional life that making fast decisions (and course correcting, if necessary) is infinitely better than acting slowly.
But, is that true?
Is procrastination a vice or is it a virtue?
Here are three reasons why procrastination could be the best approach.
1. Tomorrow you will be smarter than you are today
Whether through more life experience, through the solicited advice of others, or with the revealing of new facts and information related to the decision, it is safe to assume that you will know more tomorrow than you do today and that might lead to a better decision. Of course, we can get stuck in the cleverly titled “analysis paralysis” loop where we never make a decision, but perhaps that is a risk you take when trying to be as prepared as possible to make the right decision.
2. Tomorrow new options exist
When I see holiday shoppers out on Christmas Eve (and I see them because, well, I am often with them), I wonder why they procrastinated. They could be horrible at keeping secrets or perhaps they have been extremely busy. Or, they could have been waiting until payday or until a particular item they wanted was on sale. In other words, the options they would have had yesterday are not the same or as favorable as the ones they will have tomorrow. Tomorrow they will have money to spend and their dollars go further. Sometimes making decisions too early, like shopping ahead, can actually lead to worse decisions. In business, the new options available tomorrow might be access to capital, people to work on projects that are currently occupied elsewhere, or even the mind space to explore more creative alternatives that might not exist today. Waiting until tomorrow keeps your options open.
3. Tomorrow you can implement better
Even if the direction you are heading or the decision you intend to make doesn’t change from day to day, the extra time might allow you to get more people involved or on-board with the decision. You can take time to solicit more feedback (see #1), and that has advantages beyond just getting more information. It can get key stakeholders aligned with the plan and committed to implement it. Not only that, fast decision makers rely heavily on mid-stream course correction to respond to new information or feedback. This can lead to rework, the need to communicate new directions, the whiplash that can happen in the organization of changing directions or priorities, and can lead to waste. “Haste makes waste” is often forgotten in the wake of our desire to move forward.
Overall, I am impatient when it comes to making decisions. I would rather decide, communicate a decision, and wring out the ambiguity in the organization (and risk acting hastily) than risk missing an opportunity or the productivity hits that come from delaying decisions. It requires a great deal of discipline for me to wait.
But sometimes waiting is best. Sometimes instead of making excuses to justify why we didn’t take action, we should coin some new proverbs like “tomorrow is option-filled” or “I will be smarter tomorrow” and stop making excuses. Sometimes procrastination is wise.
Or perhaps I am just trying to justify the fact that I waited until right before the holiday to publish my monthly article for LinkedIn Pulse?
Have a warm and wonderful holiday season and as you think about setting goals for the new year, I hope you give yourself permission to procrastinate.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse.
"You've got to be demanding, otherwise you'll be blamed." - Grace Coddington, Creative Director, Vogue
"Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting not at the beginning." - Art Gensler
Seth Godin sited a survey in a presentation on which students were asked if they wanted to be a CEO of a global company, president of a non-profit, or the personal assistant to a famous singer or actor. And over 40% of the respondents said “personal assistant.” He described that the role of a personal assistant is close enough to the action to have bragging rights and to be part of the fun, but far enough away as to avoid the responsibility and vulnerability that comes with being in charge.
Are you afraid of responsibility? Do you select roles where you are supporting others, implementing their ideas, or working their priorities? Teamwork is critical and collaboration important, but do you work on teams to avoid personal accountability for the results of your actions? Are you quick to blame others when things are not successful? Are you comfortable and confident enough in your skills and opinions to advocate for them?
As Theodore Roosevelt said in his speech “Citizenship in a Republic” given in France in 1910, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
See you in the arena!