The Procrastination Equation (20 page)

“If cleaning includes laundry, I'll shake on it,” said Eddie.

“Done and done.”

A sensible pair, they have now allocated the tasks of child-rearing and housekeeping according to their differing tastes and talents. So Eddie does the cooking and shopping for groceries. He goes to the supermarket on Saturday or Sunday and stocks up for the week. This is easy for him because he loves shopping and the peace and quiet of chopping. Valerie, who never cared much about food, watches the baby when Eddie is doing the cooking. She cleans up after him, and she does the never-ending batches of laundry. Constance goes to daycare during the week, and they trade off taking her there early in the morning and picking her up after work. Life is getting better. Not insanely better. Not perfect. Just noticeably better. Valerie and Eddie are beginning to live life in harmony with who they are and what motivates them.

TIME-SENSITIVE TOM

On his journey back home from his disastrous vacation in the Dominican Republic, time-sensitive Tom was delayed at the airport for most of the day. It was hurricane season, which he had not thought about when he planned the trip. Sitting in the lounge, Tom reflected on his life. He was never much of a student, and constantly struggled with deadlines. But he knew that his friends at the fraternity were always glad to see him. An upbeat kind of guy, Tom always had a word of encouragement for the freshmen who were having trouble adjusting to college and being away from home for the first time; he enjoyed helping out. How did he get stuck in such a terrible rut? Without anything else to do, for hours he reflected on how much his procrastination had detracted from his own success, aspirations, and happiness. He thought about how it had affected not only his work life but also his home life. He realized that even if his vacation hadn’t been such a mess, much of his leisure time would still have been focused on all the work waiting for him back at the office. He desperately yearned for that childhood feeling of unfettered time and guiltless play unpolluted by pressing obligations. His mind primed, he couldn’t help but notice a title in one of the airport bookstores, a book that promised help. After buying it, he read it in its entirety during his wait and then on his flight home. Excited about the book’s possibilities, he couldn’t wait to put the techniques to use—this time his impulsiveness worked for him rather than against him.

On his first day back at work, Tom purged his office of temptations. He loaded software to keep track of his productivity, and he started setting specific, timely, and challenging goals. The results were immediate. Instead of being constantly behind, Tom found extra time to help others with their projects. “All the better,” he thought; he always enjoyed talking and helping the people he worked with. Happy with the results, on a whim he went hardcore and used precommitment, promising to his boss that if he didn’t get his next report finished in seven days, they could keep his upcoming year-end bonus. This got his boss’s attention. When he handed the report in a day earlier than promised, people were amazed. What had happened to Tom in the Dominican Republic, they wondered. Over time Tom’s interest in helping his colleagues and his fidelity to deadlines made his superiors think that he was showing leadership potential, and so they promoted him.

As the excitement of the promotion started to fade, Tom shared the news with his older brother Tim. After a few congratulatory drinks, Tom confessed it wasn’t all good, “What did I get myself into? What do I know about leadership? I'm not a leader. I just barely learned how to get myself in shape. You know about these things. You took that leadership course back in college. What should I do?”
^10b

Tim laughed, “Well, I guess it’s too late to say 'don’t panic.' But you have a right to be worried. No one who knew you a year ago would have expected you to be doing so well.”

“Thanks for taking the pressure off, Tim,” Tom replied sarcastically. “I guess you forgot all that leadership material anyway.”

Rising to the bait, Tim put down his drink and focused. “Sorry. You're right; you do need to know this stuff. Leadership is important and not just for your organization’s success. Most employees rate their relationship with their boss as their top concern. If you screw up, it can make your employees more miserable than if you took away a huge chunk of their paycheck. You now have the power to crush a considerable number of people’s spirits.”
¹

“And that’s why I'm talking to you,” said Tom.

“Well, I'm happy to help,” Tim replied. “I've been thumbing through that book you lent me and most of the basic leadership techniques are already laid out—you just need to apply them to other people, just the way you did when you applied them to yourself. You can practice leadership along with self-leadership.”

“Good, because I am not planning to go back to college,” said Tom. “Let’s get down to it.”

Tim looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember the details. “There are two basic leadership styles:
transformational,
a people-oriented approach, and
transactional,
a task-oriented approach.
²
Since you're a people person, Tom, start using your people skills—go transformational!”

“So buddy up to them?” asked Tom.

“Nope,” said Tim. “The first thing to do is to focus on creating confidence. What you need is an early success, to help them build faith in you and their ability to succeed under you. It’s a basic principle, that you create achievable goals to recognize and celebrate. Later, this will help give everyone the confidence to persevere and hit the harder milestones.”

“Ah, create a success spiral!” exclaimed Tom, making the connection.

“Exactly!” said Tim. “I knew a teacher who did this. She built confidence in us by starting off the semester with a few simple quizzes before proceeding into more difficult assignments. I really had a crush on her. One time after class, I remember . . .”

“ . . . you're going off topic,” interrupted Tom.

“Where was I?” said Tim, finishing his drink. “Well, you can also use the vicarious victory principle by setting the tone. Confidently and clearly articulate a vision of where you want to be, exude optimism, provide pep-talks and in general be the role model. It’s textbook.”

“Me? Be the role model? What are you thinking?” Tom complained.

“Heavy is the crown . . . Of course, you could always quit or just take their money and wait for them to fire you. To me, that sounds a little bit like stealing, but I guess you have your own moral compass . . .”

Tim looked expectantly at Tom, letting the point linger.

“All right, all right, I'll do it,” said Tom. “I was just thinking it through.”

So on Tom’s first day in charge, he gathered his staff together and gave them a prepared speech about what he intended to accomplish. He told them that though there were areas of excellence in what they had been doing, they were taking too long to finish financial reports despite logging tons of overtime. He then set that first achievable goal. “For starters,” he enthusiastically told them, “I want us to cut the average time we take to compile our reports by a day this month. I think we can do it. In fact, I know we can do it.” And Tom did know; it was a pretty easy goal. Still, he stayed on message at their weekly meeting, realizing that enthusiasm can be contagious. And at the end of the month, he found that indeed they did cut their production time by a day, precisely one day. “That’s a start,” he thought to himself, “but really we need to cut our production time by a week.” He phoned Tim about his success and his situation.

“Well, that’s great news,” said Tim. “It’s one thing for you to ask for advice but for you to actually follow through is impressive.”

“Well, it was good advice to begin with,” said Tom, “but enough of this love-fest. I'm not sure the team will keep this up despite the fact that they could easily do much more. What else have you got for me?”

Thinking about it, Tim replied, “Let’s think about the value variable. What can you give them that they value? How can you reward them?”

“Do you mean pay them more?” asked Tom.

“Can you do that?”

“Well, no,” admitted Tom. “Not unless I want to drain my own bank account.”

“Then don’t bring it up,” said Tim, “but no worries. Money does talk, but it’s not the only speaker in this conversation. There’s something out there that most people value more than cash—recognition. Simply be aware when they do something right and recognize it in a timely manner—not next month or next week but that day. A person’s pride can feed off a sincere 'awesome' or 'job well done' for a long time, while a cup emblazoned with the company logo or even a certified check doesn’t provide the same bang for your buck.”

“That’s an awesome point, Tim.”

“Thanks,” Tim said warmly, oblivious to the immediate use of the strategy he had just recommended.

“I really like it,” said Tom. “If it gets me out of my own office a little more, that’s great. I like one-on-one conversations more than those weekly meetings anyway.”

“You're lucky. Many managers are promoted solely on technical skills and find the interpersonal part of the job difficult. Since you are so good at it, start using the Games and Goals strategy too. You know the story of the bricklayer, right?”

“Umm, remind me,” said Tom, not willing to admit he hadn’t heard of it at all.

“It’s short. When two bricklayers were asked what they were doing, the first bricklayer replied, 'Building a wall.' The second took his time and, after some thoughtful reflection, responded, 'Building a cathedral.' You want to instill the bigger picture, why what they do matters, because if you do . . .”

“ . . . all my dreams will come true,” said Tom. “I see what you're doing—giving me the bigger picture. Got it. Timely recognition and frame the picture—communicate why what they do is important.”

Tom allocated an hour a day to walk around the office, checking in on people to see how they were doing. If they impressed him, he told them so and sometimes did a little bit more; when one of his employees did a brilliant job presenting, he spontaneously offered to buy her lunch that day. Explaining the significance of the work was a little bit harder. He found that his employees needed the bigger picture to be framed in different ways. For some, how it would help their career made sense; for others, it was positioning an assignment as a symbol of responsibility; and for still others, it was about how their work affected their colleagues. Finding the right frame for the right person was a bit of a puzzle, but he got it correct more often than not. With one difficult employee, he explained it this way: “When you are done with your piece, it passes on to Suzanne. If you are late, she has to stay here late, which means scrabbling to find someone to pick up her kids from daycare, feed them, and put them into bed. You finish early, you make Suzanne’s life easy. You finish late, you make her life hell.” He never had trouble with that employee again. For good measure, he also tried to respect his employees' chronobiology and energy levels by instituting some
flextime.
Looking up some research, he found that just as students improved by a letter grade when allowed to sleep in by an hour, corporations that enabled flextime, allowing their employees to show up later but stay later in return, saw a nice bump in work performance.
³

One night after work, Tim picked up Tom for dinner at a favorite restaurant. After they were seated and had ordered their food, Tim asked, “How’s the leadership thing going?”

“Great,” bragged Tom. “This transformer leadership is a snap.”

“That’s transformational leadership,” said Tim. “Transformer is a type of robot, like Megatron or Optimus Prime.”

Tom had been joking, but he corrected himself, “That’s right, transformational and transactional.” Then, he quickly changed the topic. “Speaking of which, you never told me about transactional leadership.”

“Well, most people tend to favor one style or the other,” said Tim, “but the best leaders have a combination of both. Transactional leaders excel at making plans, assigning tasks,
and
goal setting.”

“Aah! This makes so much sense,” said Tom. “I never knew what a pain my procrastination was to other people until I had to deal with procrastinators myself. Goal setting worked for me and it'll work for them too.”

“Yup. That’s what transactional leaders do. They divide distant deadlines into a series of short-term, specific, and realistic goals for their employees. Of course, too many goals and you become a micro-manager, also known as a control freak.”

“I'm in no danger of becoming that. But still, how many goals do I need to set?” asked Tom.

“There’s no firm answer on that,” admitted Tim. “Essentially, people work hardest as the clock runs out, so you want to set as many deadlines as practical. At least have regular meetings, where you review people’s progress and set new milestones. Keep in mind that some are already self-motivated and don’t need much, while others need a lot.”

“Yeah, I'm thinking of a few people who could benefit from minute-to-minute goals,” said Tom.

“Just don’t do what I have seen your company do,” said Tom, as he began mimicking a pompous corporate voice: “'We want to raise revenue by 20% by year end!' That never works. I don’t even know why they bother.”

“I know what you mean. It’s so distant and abstract, nobody can get motivated by it. Also, I don’t know if anyone thinks it’s even realistically achievable, especially with the downturn in the economy.”

While looking over Tom’s shoulder to see if their food would be arriving, Tim said, “Last year, your company made the goal too easy. When it’s too easy, people do what they do when they cross any finish line—they coast, leaving extra performance on the table.”

“Just like my initial goal,” said Tom, “where everyone beat my schedule by
exactly
one day. I thought it was suspicious. I guess it’s time for me to set the bar a little higher.”

“When you do—and if I know you, you are going to love this—try partying,” said Tim.

“You've got my attention. Go on.”