Hang up that "busy" hat: It's time for a change.
Many wear a badge of honor touting "busyness" as a metaphor for producing copious amounts of work, regardless of the quality. The busier you are, the better you are. Sort of like the notion bigger is better (which we all know is not always the case). But what if we took the focus off of the individual person, and focus on the structure and culture of the organization itself? If we want to create change, it cannot always come from one person, when there is an entire operation that has created this culture.
In a recent article on Harvard Business Review, "Preventing Busyness from Becoming Burnout" by Brigid Schulte, they outline three interventions that are designed with the foundation of behavioral science in mind, which maintains that decision making is shaped by the environment, and not necesarry the person themselves.
These three interventions are:
Recognize the power of social signals: It's all about how things appear (think your friends fabulous social life that they show on instagram, but in reality they are sitting at home on the couch posting #tbts from 2 years ago. But this also comes through in the timing of emails, postings on social media, and even water cooler talk.
Build in slack for important work: Schedule some time in your weekly schedule for those random things that tend to pop up, or for a project that takes a bit longer to do than expected. Here is the bonus, if you end up not needing it, use that time to get ahead for the week to come!
Increase transparency into everyone’s workload: This especially goes for reporting chains so that supervisors know how much their staff is managing and those that report to them know what their boss's calendar looks like. Be mindful of one another's time.
Going beyond this article, in order for this change to occur, the first step as a leader is to acknowledge the need that something needs to change. Once that happens, you can react to the realization, move forward with strategizing and executing the change implementation, and then be sure to investigate and assess to help understand the impact that this change has had.
By allowing for this potential change, the organization stands to:
Enable the group’s creativity, collaboration, and innovation
Increase teamwork and cooperation
Improve interpersonal communication and understanding
Avoid conflicts and reduce unproductive meeting time
Overall it's time to hang up our busy hat, and instead focus on maintaining a healthier lifestyle where team members are productive, energized, and feeling supported by their organization.
Interested in learning more about Change Management? Email me at: thea@corporateeducator.com or visit http://corporateeducator.com
Read more about busyness here: https://hbr.org/2019/04/preventing-busyness-from-becoming-burnout
