Whatever happened to picking up the phone? While email and text messaging have grown more prevalent, it amazes me that people are so phone adverse when it comes to getting things done.
Sure, email and text are great ways to communicate. Fast, reliable, and share information quickly with many people at once.
But, as soon as it becomes a shield you’re hiding behind to avoid a candid or difficult conversation, email/text ceases to be an effective tool. Pick up the phone to deliver the message even if it might feel uncomfortable to do so.
When you’re dealing with a time sensitive issue or client escalation, pick up the phone. You can coordinate a response much faster.
When it’s clear the other party doesn’t understand what you’re saying after a couple emails, pick up the phone.
When urgency is a factor, pick up the phone.
Different situations call for different methods of communication. Don’t rely on just one.
In Zig Ziglar’s book, See You At The Top, he recounts a story about ham:
His wife sent him to the store for a ham. After he bought it, she asked him why he didn’t have the butcher cut off the end of the ham. “This old boy” asked his wife why she wanted the end cut off. She replied that her mother had always done it that way and that was reason enough for her. Since the wife’s mother was visiting, they asked her why she always cut off the end of the ham. Mother replied that this was the way her mother did it; Mother, daughter and “this old boy” then decided to call grandmother and solve this three-generation mystery. Grandmother promptly replied that she cut the end of the ham because her roaster was too small to cook it in one piece.
We can all relate to this story. There are usually many processes setup at work (and our personal lives) where things are done a certain way because that’s how they’ve always been done.
As a leader, before you decide to make changes, you first need to discover and understand the reasons why a process exists in the first place. There may be legitimate reasons (for example, compliance). In these cases, blindly barging in and ripping out processes may cause more harm than good. Understand first and change after.
If changing is the appropriate step, you might encounter some resistance. Like the Ziglar example, we’ve always done it this way, and sometimes it’s hard to see there might be a better way. This is the reason you need to have understanding of the background story – the why. To achieve buy-in, you’ll want to talk your team’s language. Help them understand your vision and how this will make their work easier. Even better, if it’s a complete or significant overhaul of a process, include the team in the brainstorming and subsequent follow-up steps. This will speed up the buy-in process since they will feel like they had a voice at the table.
Here are a few steps:
Have a desired outcome in mind. What are you looking to accomplish? What is your end goal?
Start asking why. Why do we do it this way? Don’t settle for the first response. Probe and continually asking why. Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 times asking why before you truly get to the root cause.
Is the process still required in its current state? Solicit feedback from those team members impacted. What do they think?
It’s easy to get stuck in our daily routines because we’re too busy to think there could be a better way. Every now and then, take a step back, and figure out exactly why you’re doing it. You could end up saving yourself (and your team) valuable time, effort, and money.
Procrastination is easy to fix. I’ll tell you how tomorrow…
*Rim Shot*
Ok, maybe not. A quick search on procrastination at Amazon yields over 2,000 results. You’d think with all these self-help books that it wouldn’t be such an epidemic. But it is and for a number of good reasons (or at least that’s what you tell yourself).
Too tired, too sick, just plain don’t feel like it – will do it later (no you won’t), I don’t have time (except you do have time to watch another episode of Law & Order: SVU), too busy reading just one more Facebook/Twitter update, etc.
There’s no instant fix but I’ll tell you the best solution I’ve ever found. Just do 5 minutes of whatever task you’re putting off. The sheer act of starting and getting past the resistance is usually all you need. Once you’re in motion, you magically keep going until it’s finished. If not, just keep doing small bits every day. They add up until one day you find yourself at the finish line.
Starting is the hard part but it’s amazing what can happen if you “just do it.”
I’m going to say this politely. If your “meeting” is reading every word on every PowerPoint slide, with no decisions needing to be made, please just send me the deck with a recap email and let me save my 30 or 60 minutes on work that truly matters.
Yesterday’s example was extremely painful. The setup:
Over 100 people invited at all different levels from Senior VP’s to front line managers.
Introducing the rollout of 2 new tools that will automate a lot of the heavy lifting we require clients to do today (reducing overall implementation timeline and greatly improving quality)
Great! Can’t wait! Except…
30 seconds into the presentation, we’re interrupted because apparently the conference bridge doesn’t have enough lines available and folks can’t get in.
Presenter talks to the operator and gets it fixed.
Presenter restarts the presentation, literally reading from a script, and with zero energy. Why am I here again?
3 minutes later, we’re interrupted again. People still can’t get in.
Presenter talks to the operator and gets it fixed. Again.
After spending 10 minutes on technical difficulties, he goes back to lifelessly reading the script again. Ugh.
30 minutes later we find out neither of the tools are even ready yet…
…which means another meeting to be scheduled in a couple weeks after everyone forgets what they heard on this call.
For as many people who claim to hate meetings, we certainly have no shortage of them.
Meetings with no purpose. No agenda.
Sent to attendees who don’t need to be there (we don’t want anyone to feel left out!).
With little to no preparation beforehand.
Too many people multitasking and missing major pieces of the discussion (although they checked out and don’t know it yet).
Too many people on the phone “forgetting” to take themselves off mute (they were multitasking and not listening).
Too many people not saying anything – why were you invited in the first place?
About a month ago, my wife and I celebrated an incredible moment in our household. No, she wasn’t pregnant. There wasn’t a new job, promotion, or any other life event. No, what tipped the scales that evening was me finally uninstalling Candy Crush on all devices.
I love puzzles. Love solving problems. It’s one of the main reasons that Candy Crush appealed to me. Each game made me think strategically and was a nice diversion from the stress of the daily routine. Frankly, I was good at it. I ‘finished’ the game faster than any of my friends, many of whom often gave me their phones to solve levels for them.
I wasn’t addicted by any stretch; I mainly played during downtime or small windows (like waiting in line). Nowhere near the stories you see online, such as this woman who stole money from her own mother to play. However, the probem with the game is there’s no reward for winning yet the social aspect of the game persuades you to keep playing, stoking your competitive fire to beat friends. The time spent playing, even small pockets, could be better utilized such as strategizing or fueling creativity on new business ideas.
I’ve used the time since I stopped playing to finally put this blog together, master WordPress, PHP, and a few other hard skills that will be important down the road.
There’s nothing wrong with playing games, watching TV, checking facebook, or sending out one more tweet. But if your long-term goals are not being met, it’s helpful to reassess where your time is currently going, and how it could be better spent to get you back on track.
Whatever happened to picking up the phone? While email and text messaging have grown more prevalent, it amazes me that people are so phone adverse when it comes to getting things done.
