Dear , Welcome to this edition of "To Be Clear..." - a refreshing sip of regular coaching clarity in your inbox where I share a couple of brief ideas which I hope that you can apply in your work life. Thanks for all your enquiries and encouragements on the ONION® book, I'm currently editing my outline draft and have had a couple of super helpful conversations with
potential editors (I'll keep you posted!). Thanks also for the great response to the last newsletter. The whole topic of decision denial seemed to really resonate. Once the newsletter went out, I realised that an even better term might be "faux-crastination" (many of you know how I love to coin a word so you heard it here first!) This issue of "To Be Clear..." addresses one common but often counterintuitive barrier to achieving greater clarity at work and offers an opportunity for you to make progress on your own work or business
over the next few months.
As regular readers of "To Be Clear..." know, I'm a keen reader; books deliver a high return on investment in my professional practice and I often share them with clients, colleagues and collaborators. I also love reading and sharing books in my personal life and, occasionally, the two cross over. I recently bought
a book as a gift for someone close to me which surprised me by addressing something which comes up a lot in my client work - "Beware 'busy'!" For those of you who haven't read it or (like me) can't remember it, here's a quick synopsis of the literary
classic, Mr Busy, by Roger Hargreaves. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!): Mr Busy decides to call (uninvited) on his neighbour, Mr Slow, and then proceeds (unasked) to clean Mr Slow's house, make Mr Slow breakfast and mow Mr Slow's lawn despite the fact that Mr Slow "doesn't like being rushed and fussed". Mr Busy then insists on a picnic with Mr Slow (even though Mr Slow expressly tells him he doesn't like picnics) and then
plans another picnic in the countryside for the next day. However, when Mr Busy arrives at Mr Slow's house at 6am the next morning, Mr Slow is nowhere to be found. It turns out that Mr Slow is hiding under his bed!** Every client I work with has a lot on their plate as they seek
to successfully build or launch a significant new project, venture, idea or direction. However, there is a difference between having a lot to achieve and being constantly "busy". In fact, one can very easily get in the way of the other. Busyness can be a badge of honour in many of the teams and organisations with whom I work. "I'm so busy" or "The team is so busy" are often a constant mantra when we start. One of the first things I do is to help those clients see how this outlook might be
getting in the way of getting what they want. Of course, everyone will have periods of intensive activity but constant manic busyness is not the sign of status and efficiency that people often think it is; it is, in fact, the opposite. Constant activity often impedes clarity and progress. Constant unreflective activity gets in the way of the necessary work needed to make
meaningful, needle-shifting progress; it replaces quality with quantity. Where this kind of busyness is the norm, it often amplifies unhelpful, unconstructive behaviours and prevents people from learning or trying out new approaches and behaviours which might bring greater success and improved results. In the short run, constant manic busyness can make you feel important or like you're doing something but, inevitably, it gets in the way of you doing the things that are most effective.
Perhaps the biggest problem with constant unreflective busyness (which Mr
Busy brilliantly shows) is that the sort of hamster wheel activity it drives, renders you too busy to listen - it creates not just blind spots but deaf spots.* If you and your team or organisation are replacing actionable clarity with constant activity and are therefore too busy to listen properly to your colleagues,
clients, customers or even to yourself, you will find that not only will you make no progress on meaningful objectives but that you are likely to lose sight of those objectives. In my experience with clients, this sort of busyness is also
likely to cause increasing frustration at the lack of meaningful progress, especially as compared with the time you and others are ploughing into the work. Every one of my clients, simply by choosing to work with me, is making the choice to replace frustrating, ultimately unfruitful activity with vital and actionable clarity. One of the first things I do with my clients, once we've clarified their desired Outcomes using ONION® , is to help them to review and categorise their current activity against those Outcomes. I think of one organisational client - a scale-up struggling to grow in a volatile market. We began to talk about how they might develop a product that made them less dependent on market conditions and client whims and would instead use their expertise to serve their clients in more stable, sustainable and lucrative ways. This client has great relationships with its core clients but, in the rush of constant, frantic activity, they had stopped
listening to those clients. Taking time to do that meant that, within weeks, my client had begun to develop a product which has increased revenue potential and value in significant ways. What about you? Where might you currently be too busy to listen, learn and
make real meaningful progress in your work or business? A couple of questions you might ask: "Where am I/ we replacing clarity with activity?" and "Who am I/ we not listening to as a result?". Last but not least, "What might I/ we
do about it?" The Ideas section of ONION® will be a help with the last question. Beware of "busy" and the kind of constant, unreflective activity which kills clarity and leads to frustration and dead ends for you and your work or business. Matt Lerner, the brilliant author of Growth Levers and How to Find Them,
a book I love to share with clients, talks of the value of "...doing fewer, bigger things". Making this shift isn't straightforward but it can make a really significant difference not only to the results you get but to the way you get them. It's a positive
change that I've seen many of my clients make and which you can experience as well. As always, let me know what it might look like for you to bust out of busy and do fewer, bigger things to greater effect (and less
exhaustion). Next up, a challenge and opportunity to get clear and get some results in your work or business over the coming months. Finding the One...
August is almost upon us and, while many will be bemoaning how rapidly the year is moving, there are still five full months left of 2024, plenty of time to get clearer and make progress on any key desired Outcomes you have for your work or
business. Off the back of Matt Lerner's suggestion to do "fewer, bigger things", why not take some time to think about One Big Thing you'd like to see change in your work or business by the end of the calendar
year? It could be something you had on your agenda earlier in the year but which has slipped off the radar in the busyness of day-to-day activity (see above!). Alternatively, it might be something which has emerged as a priority as the year has progressed. I often
find that, when they are facing or feeling overwhelm, helping my clients to focus on One Big Thing can help enormously. In a team context, working out a team One Big Thing and then helping each member of the team to work out their corresponding One Big Thing has helped
client projects get unstuck in highly effective ways. So why not ask, "What would I/ we like to see change in my/ our work or business by 31st December?" It's a great question to ask in a team context to help build alignment and motivation.
One tip from ONION® as you get going on clarifying your desired Outcome is to keep your Outcome (and any corresponding metrics) positive.
Doing this will ensure both that that your desired Outcome is more specific and that you can more effectively measure progress towards it. Once you've worked out your One Big Thing, you might want to ask, "What's one thing I/ we can do in the next week towards this Outcome?" The Next Steps layer of ONION® will be helpful here in terms of building momentum and ongoing, effective action. I think i've worked out my One Big Thing for the rest of this year; and if, you email me to let me know yours, I'll happily share mine with you! Using ONION® is helping me, as it's done for many
others, to get clearer and to get going.***
I'll be in touch before long to share more ideas for greater clarity at work. In the meantime, wishing you a clearer week ahead. As ever, Ranti * - I was going to say something about Mr Busy being drawn without ears but it turns out that very few of the Mr Men have ears (fun fact: Mr Quiet is one of the exceptions! ** - The synopsis is almost as long
as the book which - like all Mr Men books - is a classic of compressed narrative. *** - The more eagle-eyed of you might have spotted that the ONION® deck looks a little different - more on that in future editions...
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