Read The Mobile MBA: 112 Skills to Take You Further, Faster (Richard Stout's Library) Online
Authors: Jo Owen
The Mobile MBA: 112 Skills to Take You Further, Faster (Richard Stout's Library) (23 page)
Beyond this, there are some standard and very useful techniques of time management.
Time management techniques
•
Get it right first time.
Rework is costly: you have to undo what you did, explain it all over again to everyone and restart.
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Deal with each piece of paper, each email, each phone call once.
Your choices are the five Ds:
– Decide it (and give your reply).
– Ditch it, drop it.
– Do it and do it now.
– Delegate it.
– Don’t defer it: it will just fester and get worse.
•
Schedule assertively.
Fix meetings to suit your timetable, not others. If you work to others’ timetables, your calendar will be a mess and you will have endless dead time.
•
Have a to-do list for today and for this week.
Clear the urgent stuff first so that you can create space to deal with the important stuff. Break the big tasks down into a sequence of small tasks which you can manage.
•
Be flexible.
Ignore the gurus who tell you to rigidly schedule your day, including a spare hour of thinking time. The reality of the management day is a rapid fire sequence of apparently unrelated events: you have to deal with that noise but have enough clarity of purpose to make progress on things that matter to you.
•
Find help.
Don’t try to do it all yourself.
Think back to when you have performed at your best. Was it when
• There was no pressure, everything was laid back, and you were living in easy street?
• When the pressure was on to achieve some challenging goals which stretched your ability and stamina to the limit?
Most people perform best under pressure. So we should not run from the tougher challenges: we should embrace them. They help us learn and grow. They build resilience and may give us a claim to fame when we succeed. Pressure, within limits, is good.
the difference between pressure and stress is control
Even if pressure is good, stress is not good. So what is the difference? The difference between pressure and stress is control. When we are in control we may feel under pressure, but we will not feel too much stress. But when we lose control, suddenly we feel stressed (even if we are not under pressure at the time). This guides us toward managing stress: find a way of getting in control. Here is how we can gain control and manage stress when times are tough:
•
Recognize the problem and deal with it early.
The longer you leave it, the worse it gets. Denial is often a good coping mechanism for dealing with past setbacks. It is not a good mechanism for dealing with current reality.
•
Find something you can control.
By definition, you cannot do anything about things outside your control other than worry. And worry gets you nowhere. So find what you can do and focus on that: it may be something small and simple like seeking advice from a friend, or finding out more about what is really going on. You may only have a small rock to hang on to, but find it. A small step is better than no step.
•
Get support.
This can be emotional support from friends and family but can also be advice and support from colleagues in finding a way forward. A problem shared is a problem halved.
•
Work on plan B.
This means even if plan B requires testing the job market and seeing if there are other opportunities inside or beyond your current organization. As long as you only have a plan A, you are both vulnerable and dependent on outside events and other people. As soon as you have a plan B, you have options, you have more power, and more control.
If you are consistently over-stressed in your work life, then you probably have the wrong boss, wrong role, or wrong company. Or possibly all three are wrong. At which point you need to take control and take responsibility for your destiny: go elsewhere or learn to live with what you have. We always have choices, even if the choices are uncomfortable.
Here are three ways of getting up in the morning. I have tried all three. Take your pick.
•
Option 1.
Wake in the middle of wars, natural and man-made disasters; lying politicians, greedy business people, doom mongering lobbyists and scientists, and scandals and corruption. That is called waking up to the news. Even the weather forecast may or may not cheer you up. Leave just enough time to get to work, so that each traffic delay, red light, or problem with public transport will send your anxiety and frustration soaring. I have tried this option for years: unlike wine, it does not improve with age.
•
Option 2.
Wake up with no radio, electricity, or running water. Your nearest water is 5 miles away in a muddy and crocodile infested river. By the time you have carried the water back, on your head, the temperature will be past 100° and your working day has yet to start. I spent seven years hanging out with tribes like this one in Africa, and started to develop a nostalgia for waking to news of war and cataclysm on the radio.
•
Option 3.
Wake up to your favorite music station. Go to the bathroom and discover a miracle: turn on the tap and fresh, cold, clean water comes out. Just like that. Turn on another tap and find another miracle: hot water comes out, without the need to collect firewood from the bush. After two miracles in two minutes it is pretty hard to have a bad day. Leave for work early, listen to an audio book or music. Feel fresh and relaxed, even if public transport has gone missing.
We can all choose how we feel. If we want to feel miserable, cynical, and stressed then that is our choice: option one will justify our decision. We have now become so used to the luxuries of modern life that we take them for granted. If any of the wonders of modern life go wrong, from traffic to plumbing, we get frustrated. But when we can stand back and admire the miracles of modern living, the world looks pretty amazing.
we can all choose how we feel
Each of us has our own routine and formula for starting the day, and we will all make our own choices about how we want to feel. Choose well.
Bad stuff happens in every life and every career. It will happen, but you do not know when or why or what exactly it will be. Deal with it poorly and it is terminal to your career. Deal with it well and you become more resilient and a better manager as a result.
Your employer may appear to care, but most do not. You can take time off, but all your colleagues and bosses will see you as damaged goods when you eventually come back (unless it was for a few days which you take as part of your PTO anyway). It can be very lonely and very disheartening when the bad stuff happens to you. So how can you cope? There is no easy way out. But here are 10 things that will help.
Ten ways of coping with the bad stuff
1. Recognize the problem for what it is.
You may well go into a personal valley of death: denial followed by anger and then resignation and giving up. This is natural and human. There is a road out of the valley of death. Others have been where you are and others have found a way out. Work through the inevitably emotional early stages and find the road out of your troubles.
2. Take control.
Work out what choices you have, however awkward they may be. Identify a few things you can do, even small things, so that you can start to make progress. Move from being a victim of an uncaring world to having some mastery over your own destiny. This is the road out of the valley of death.
3. Wear the mask.
Leaders learn to wear the mask of leadership: stay positive and action focused. This can be very hard if you are feeling bitter, unhappy, and disappointed inside. But projecting bitterness and anger only makes things worse.
4. Find some support, ideally outside the organization.
If you confide in your most trusted colleague, you confide in the whole firm. Public confessions are not good. If family and work do not mix, hire a good coach who will provide an emotional outlet and will help you look at your situation more impartially and productively than perhaps you can.
5. Don’t rush.
Act in haste and you may well live to regret it. Email is especially dangerous: one bad email will turn a crisis into a drama.
6. Always have a plan B.
If your only plan is to work with one boss in one firm in one role, you become a slave. If you have options, inside and beyond your firm, you have more power and more control. And as you work out your road map for recovery, think about your plan B road map. Plan B gives you freedom and flexibility.
7. Take responsibility.
This is a hard lesson. No matter how outrageously fortune or colleagues have treated you, the only person who is responsible for your fate is you. Somehow, you managed to put yourself in a position where bad stuff could happen to you: you are the solution to your problem. We are also ultimately responsible for how we feel. We can choose to feel miserable; we can choose to feel happy. Our feelings are our choice: do not let others impose feelings on you.
8. Remember who you are.
The more your identity is based on your work, the more vulnerable you are. But you are far more than an employee: you have your strengths. Build on those.
9. You are not alone, even though you may be lonely.
You are not the only person to go through hard times. Others find a way through. And if they can survive, so can you.
10. Count your blessings.
Others have lives that are far harder than anything we care to imagine in the relative luxury of the corporate world. Focus on the good things in your life and remember that happiness is the ultimate revenge. If you are happy, then all the miserable Machiavellian misers who spread mischief will always be miserable and you can always be happy.
If the headhunters promise you greener pastures elsewhere, remind them that it is greenest where it rains most. Other firms may look better from the outside, but behind the impressive glass and steel facade and the fancy PR, most firms are the same: internal politics and competition, inefficiency, occasional chaos, and intense pressure.
You will never find out the truth about the new organization until you start work there, which is too late. They will always put their best face on to attract talent, once inside you will discover their normal face.
Here are three good reasons for
not
moving:
1. You do not get along with your boss.
People do not leave their firm; they leave their boss. This is often a mistake. The corporate carousel keeps on turning and your nightmare boss will not be around forever. Equally, the dream boss you think you saw in the other firm will move when that firm’s corporate carousel turns again.
2. You will get more money at the next place.
There are three problems with this.
a.
There is no point in earning more money if you end up hating your life.
b.
If you are overpaid, you will find you become a slave to the new firm: your family will adjust to the champagne lifestyle, and you will not be able to return to beer wages.
c.
Ask yourself where you can increase your earnings tenfold in 10 years, rather than focus on 20% or 30% today, which will seem trivial if you succeed with the bigger ambition
3.
You will lose all your networks and power when you move. Your informal power is what makes you effective in your current role: you have track record, credibility, and you know who to call when you need to make things happen. And they will answer your call positively. In your new firm, you have none of these advantages.
Here are three good reasons for moving:
•
You are about to be fired from your current role:
you are far more attractive as a job candidate if you are still employed than if you are a hungry jobless person on the street.
•
You hate your job:
you get up in the morning and your heart sinks at the prospect of the day. You may be in the wrong career, not just the wrong firm.
•
You have genuinely hit a career dead end:
you cannot see sensible progression within your current role and you need to find new opportunities.
If you decide to move, be aware that there are several one-way leaps which you cannot reverse when you have taken them:
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Stepping off the gold standard.
There are a few gold standard firms that define excellence in their industries: McKinsey in consulting, Goldman Sachs in investment banking and P&G in marketing, for instance. Once you leave these gold standard firms, you cannot get back to that level. So make sure you cash in at the right time for a truly exceptional opportunity.
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Becoming an entrepreneur.
Once you have tasted the joys and perils of freedom, you will never be able to go back to being an employee. Working for a wage slave who you do not respect becomes impossible. If your first enterprise fails, you will simply have to pick yourself up and start another business, until you finally make something work.
•
Becoming the CEO.
As with entrepreneurs, there is no going back to reporting to other people again. But at least if you fail, your pockets will be stuffed with gold as your reward for failure and you can float off into charity and commission land.
An MBA should teach you to think strategically about your business. Use the same mindset to think strategically about your career.