Productivity – Page 9 – mardihumphreys.com

Assess Your Systems

This is part three of four in the series, Stop and Think. In part one, we talked about reflecting on how you spent your time during the first two quarters of this year. Last week we put some energy into applying the insights you gained to update your goals for the rest of 2024. This week, let’s take your newly iterated SMART goals and turn our attention to your systems for reaching them.

What is the Difference?

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals help you break down big ambitions into manageable tasks and set a timeline for reaching them. Goals are the results you want to attain. Developing systems focuses on your process to achieve those results. Now that you have updated your goals for 2024, you also need to update your systems. I’m thinking here of a quote from Atomic Habits:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
James Clear

Reflecting on the last six months, do you see where your current routine led you to where you are now? How far off target are you? Gradual improvement is key to reaching your SMART goals. The purpose of your habits should be to help you keep making incremental progress. Flexibility and adaptability ensure that your incremental progress is in the right direction. Adjust your habits so they give you both the consistency and direction you need. For example, let’s say you got reassigned to a new department in May and are getting acquainted with four new team mates. Having a system to build relationships with them so that you can get to know, like, and trust each other will not only enable your team to complete work assignments faster, but also increase the quality of your projects’ results. Your system for getting to know your four coworkers is asking them how their weekends went during your project status meetings, so progress is slow. To get to know them more efficiently, calendar a 30-minute coffee meeting at the beginning of the workday every Tuesday for a month with a different team member. If during one of these coffee talks you discover it’s going to take more than 30 minutes to get acquainted with a certain team member, then schedule another coffee for next month. Experiment with your systems and adjust them to serve your goals. This helps you remain agile and open to change. Adaptability is crucial to your success at work. It is essential for navigating the challenges of your current responsibilities. It is also a highly sought after power skill.

What’s Next?

Let your manager know you have updated your goals and systems in your next one-to-one meeting. Give them a brief summary of your reflection including what you noticed was not working well, your updated goal, and your new plan to reach the goal. Tell them you intend to implement this process through the end of Q3, then report the results back to them at the beginning of October. This not only helps you be accountable, it also lets your manager see you are self-motivated, take initiative, and are a leader.

What modifications can you make to your routine to improve the systems that support your goals? Please share in the comments.

Assess Your Alignment

This is part two of four in the series, Stop and Think. Last week we began our discussions on reflection. We talked about how you spent your time at work since January and how you can use that information to decide how to spend the rest of your year. Given that insight, let’s spend some energy thinking about why you should adjust your current work goals for the rest of 2024.

Everything Changes

Last week you saw how far you’ve come and how much farther you want to go. This reevaluation is crucial. Do not feel bad for rethinking your goals. They should not be static. They should progress as you do. If your reflection revealed that some of the goals you set in January for 2024 no longer align with your values or circumstances, then adjust them. Here are some things to think about.

Have your circumstances changed? For example, Did you get reassigned to a different department? If so, then it will take some time to acclimate to your new tasks and team.
Has what you accomplished in the last six months influenced what you want to do next? For example, did exceeding your key performance indicators every month for the last six months prompt your manager to give you a high visibility project? To do well on the new project you may have to push pause on other goals.
Have your priorities shifted? For example, have you taken on a caregiver role at home? This may require you to negotiate for a hybrid or remote work situation and flexible hours.

You Have Options

The answers to these questions do not mean you have to abandon your ambitions. They ensure your goals serve you instead of you serving your goals. For example, let’s say one of your goals in January was to complete a degree or certification by December. Here you are in June and your progress is slower than you expected. Are you going to rush through the material and accept barely-passing marks so you can graduate by your original deadline? Or are you going to extend your graduation timeline into 2025 so you can better learn and retain the material, pass the exams with flying colors, and make your completion both more meaningful and more useful?

You Are SMART

You can apply the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal framework to help you decide. Building on the above example, let’s say completing a certification was a goal in January then you got reassigned to a new department in April. You can ask yourself if completing the certification by December is a SMART goal. A SMART goal verifies why the goal you want to achieve is relevant, but it does not tell you how you are going to achieve that goal. For that you need a system of processes that support your SMART goals and help you address obstacles. Next week in part three of our series, we will talk about how to use your reflections to create a strategic plan for reaching your updated SMART goals.

How does defining why you need to adjust your goals help you achieve them? Please share in the comments.

Assess Your Progress

As we quickly approach the end of the first half of 2024, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on how far you’ve come since January. This is part one of four in the series, Stop and Think. For the next four weeks, we will discuss taking a moment to assess your progress and set yourself up for a successful second half of the year in terms of the time, energy, attention, and money you spend on your work. First up, let’s look at how you spent your time.

What Did You Do?

If you are surprised 2024 is almost half over, then you are probably caught up in getting your daily life done. It’s time to stop and celebrate the milestones you reached so far. But reflecting on progress isn’t just about recognition. It’s also about understanding how you got it and using that insight to fuel future endeavors. Reflection should consist of both past and future. From where you are turn around and look behind you. What did you accomplish? Here are some prompts to help you think.

Did you reach a significant milestone? For example: Did you get a promotion? Win an industry award? Secure a significant client?
What was your biggest accomplishment? For example: Did you complete a degree or certification? Did a customer contact your manager and sing your praises? Did you fix an outdated process that saved the organization lots of money?
What lessons have you learned from setbacks? For example: How did your coworkers react when they were frustrated? What affirmations did you tell yourself to make the setback a push forward? What process did you use to analyze your result and pinpoint where the setback began?

What Will You Do?

Now turn back around and look ahead at the rest of the year and consider what more you want to achieve. Look at your answers to the prompts in the last section. How will you build on those insights? Let’s take milestones for example. If your most significant milestone was a promotion, what can you do in the next six months to make management feel really smart for giving it to you? If you won an industry award, how can you use that platform to bring awareness to the great things your organization does for the community? If you secured a significant client, how can you leverage that relationship to include mentoring a junior member of your team?

How Do You Do?

Daily reflections may seem excessive, but jotting down thoughts and feelings can provide immediate insights and allow for quick adjustments. For example: What one thing stressed you out the most at work today?

Weekly reflections help you notice patterns and trends both in your performance and your well-being. For example: What changes would improve your worklife integration next week?

Monthly reflections are good for in-depth analysis and strategic planning. For example: Over the last four weeks, what part of your job did you enjoy most? What were you good at, but did not particularly enjoy? What did you dread doing? How can you do more of the first two and less of the third?

Regardless of the frequency, the key is consistency. What frequency of reflection feels sustainable as well as beneficial for you? Please share what works for you in the comments.

Underwhelmed

I was introduced to the concept of boreout in Adam Grant’s book, Hidden Potential, and it’s fascinated me ever since. You’ve heard of, and probably experienced, burnout caused by your job. It’s when you are exhausted by too much emotional, physical, and mental fatigue for too long. Boreout is the same exhaustion, but the cause is different. Instead of being overwhelmed by the stimulation of your job, you are underwhelmed by it.

What It Looks Like

You arrive at work each morning facing the same tasks you mastered ages ago. You complete a monotonous routine that offers no room for growth or innovation while constantly checking the clock and counting down the minutes until you can leave. There’s no challenge and no sense of accomplishment. You go through the motions while your skills stagnate, your creativity dwindles, and your enthusiasm decreases with each passing day. You feel apathetic and frustrated. These emotions can spill over into other areas of your life, affecting your relationships and overall well-being. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you suspect you’re suffering from boreout.

Is your comfort zone too comfortable?
Are you running on empty energy-wise?
Do you procrastinate more often?
Are you disengaged with your work and coworkers?
Is your productivity slipping?
Do simple tasks feel burdensome?
Do you feel indifferent to meeting deadlines or achieving goals?
Are you questioning the purpose of your role within the organization?
Do you feel like a cog in a machine rather than a valued contributor?
Has your job performance suffered?
Are you progressing on your career path?
Are you increasingly irritable?
Do you feel detached from friends and family?

How to Combat It at Work

Seek Challenges: Talk to your manager about taking on stretch assignments. Work with them to identify new projects or responsibilities that align with your capabilities. Ask where the skills gaps are on your team then volunteer to learn the competencies that are missing. Online courses, in-person workshops, and mentorship opportunities all broaden your skill set and keep you engaged. Increasing your knowledge base and your network both expands your comfort zone and breaks your cycle of boredom. Experimenting with new approaches to old challenges promotes continuous improvement, injects creativity into your work, and helps you build relationships. Host brainstorming sessions and collaborations with colleagues to spark fresh ideas and gather diverse perspectives. Explore unconventional paths to solutions together embracing failure as a learning opportunity rather than a setback. Everyone suffers from boreout at some point. Surround yourself with coworkers who inspire and motivate you so you can support and encourage each other when needed.

Set Goals: You don’t have to wait for your manager to give you something new to do. Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) personal development goals for yourself, both short-term and long-term, that align with your values and career aspirations. Having something to work towards gives you a sense of purpose and direction. Break down larger objectives into manageable tasks, track your progress, and celebrate every completed step.

Establish Boundaries: Strive for healthy work-life integration by prioritizing self-care. Take regular breaks throughout the day to recharge and refocus. Go for a walk or do whatever helps you clear your mind and boost your energy level. Set, communicate, and protect non-business hours so you can disconnect from work to do things you enjoy and be with people you enjoy. BTW, if the only person you want to be with is you, that is valid!

How do you fight boreout? Please share in the comments.

Sustainable Success

What happens when you compare your job performance to your coworkers’ and you are not flattered by the comparison? You feel like you can’t mess up. Ever. You fight to be #1, and discover how hard it is to stay #1. You stick to the routines that proved successful in the past instead of trying new things which stifles your creativity, experimentation, and innovation. Beating the competition becomes more important to you than your customer’s satisfaction. What can you do to turn things around?

Team of Rivals

It’s normal to see your coworkers’ job performance, notice your manager’s reaction to it, and gauge how you are doing. You feel good when you compare favorably and nervous when you don’t. This habit is probably most obvious, and even formalized, in a company’s sales department where top salespeople are rewarded more than bottom ones creating internal competition among the team. Instead of comparing yourself to colleagues, how about setting incremental goals for yourself? Make them flexible so you can embrace change, be open to new approaches, and bounce back after disappointments. For example, using our sales scenario, if you did not reach your quota last month, would another 10 cold calls a day help you reach it this month? Your capacity to adapt will not only set you apart, but also carry you through inevitable setbacks.

Abundance Over Scarcity

Instead of being threatened by your coworkers’ success, how about using it for motivation? Continuous learning is a cornerstone of professional development and identifies you as a leader. Seek opportunities for upskilling so you stay relevant in your ever-evolving market. Make resilience in the face of adversity one of your goals. Swap your fear of not being good enough for curiosity. For example, analyze the differences between you and a successful coworker to discover capabilities you should obtain. There will be enough opportunities for everyone because you will create them. Factor self-compassion into your goal setting. It will help you maintain a positive mindset and reduce self-criticism. Be kind to yourself by celebrating your achievements, no matter how small.

You Are Your Competition

Instead of focusing on competing with your colleagues, how about shifting your mindset to competing with yourself? Strive to become an expert in your field. Set goals focused on personal growth so you are not only valuable to your organization, but also to your profession. State your goals using phrases that describe process improvement. For example, improve on, get better at, grow in. You want to be better than YOU were yesterday not better than OTHERS are today. Set small, specific, easily-achievable goals to quickly boost your self-confidence. Maintain and refine your learning through regular practice. Whether it’s honing your presentation skills, becoming a more efficient project manager, or perfecting your coding techniques, steady progress helps you retain knowledge and discover new skills to learn next.

Measuring your self-worth by whether or not you meet monthly Key Performance Indicators (KPI) does not set you up for sustainable success. When some variables are not under your control, you can try your best and still fall short of the organization’s goal for you. Align your goals with your values and aspirations, not with external benchmarks or the achievements of your team. It’s surprising how often you meet monthly KPI when you set goals that are personally meaningful to you.

How do you prevent comparing yourself to your coworkers? Please share in the comments.

Getting Directions

Customer success became one of my passions during the pandemic. I wondered what our users’ experience was with us. So, I asked them. What are your expectations? Are we, at the very least, meeting them? How can we bring more value to the relationship? Their answers to these questions were as unique as they were. Each of their journeys to us was different, but had three major themes in common.

Awareness

Customer success begins when a stranger turns into an acquaintance. It involves multiple touch points across various channels, including online platforms, events, and other customer’s opinions of their experience with you. How did they first connect with you? Social media? Word of mouth? Networking event? You have to collect data at each interaction and analyze it so you can personalize communications, services, and outcomes to encourage your potential customer’s engagement. This is a relationship. It’s personal. It’s unique. They expect tailored experiences based on their preferences. For example, did they see a post on LinkedIn promoting your monthly newsletter, then click through to your website and subscribe? Then they are interested in the content you provide. This is a good time to find out how clear your message is. Does this potential customer easily see your value proposition?

Anticipation

Do you have a process for onboarding customers? During discovery conversations, can you identify potential hurdles? Do they look confused when you list your offerings? Is the language in your proposal clear? Have you given them three ways to contact you at their convenience with questions? By anticipating their needs and challenges you can proactively address issues before they escalate. Ask them what their preferences are. How do they want to be communicated with? What are their goals? What does success look like? Then ask yourself: How do they benefit from working with you? Are they excited for check in meetings or do they keep cancelling? Monitor your customers’ behavior. It’s feedback you can use to identify patterns of frustration then quickly course correct. Use conflict as an opportunity to strengthen the relationship. Whatever you promised to do for them over deliver on time and on budget.

Advocacy

As you move through a project for your customer, continuously optimize their experience by making notes of what works and what doesn’t. Regularly review and update their customer journey map based on feedback, data analysis, and their evolving expectations. This helps you not only stay responsive to their changing needs and preferences, it also makes them want to work with you again and again. You craft such a superior experience, they reward you with their loyalty. They organically become your champion in the community. They write good reviews and refer their friends to you. At this point in the journey, you come full circle for how a new customer becomes aware of you: word of mouth.

People need stuff and they assign value to those who can give them what they need. By understanding a customer’s journey from awareness to advocacy, you can move more confidently through the know, like, and trust process.

What do you do to understand your customer’s journey? Please share in the comments.

Want to Know

Last week we began Let’s Get Critical, a four-part series on critical thinking, by defining what it is. Here in part two, let’s discuss why critical thinking is essential to your job performance.

Relationships

Business moves at the speed of trust. Active listening combined with critical thinking and empathy is one of the fastest ways to build trust. When you communicate your ideas clearly to your teammates, attentively listen to them, and respectfully debate with them, then your meetings are more likely to generate positive results. Building a safe space for everyone to contribute ideas not only facilitates effective productivity within your team but also across the organization. When you repeatedly give your subject matter expertise to anyone who asks for it everyone wants to know you.

Decisions

Critical thinking prevents knee-jerk reactions while helping you make wiser choices faster. Testing your assumptions breeds confidence because either you get confirmation that you are right or you find out you are wrong before you go telling a bunch of people. Identifying the various factors, considering their impact on people, processes, and performance, and predicting potential consequences for each all help you excel at solving problems efficiently. Banish the phrase, “because we’ve always done it that way,” from your mind. It squelches the culture of transformation your organization needs to survive. Instead make it a habit to question existing processes, listen to your team’s ideas, and propose low-risk experiments. Using critical thinking this way enables you to quickly grasp new concepts and adjust your strategies accordingly. This capability becomes more crucial as technology like Artificial Intelligence speeds up the pace of business evolution. Adapting to new challenges, identifying the opportunities in crises, and devising original conclusions require you to possess strong critical thinking skills because you have to navigate ambiguity, normalize change, and address challenges with clarity and precision. It is an organization’s critical thinkers who identify inefficiencies, brainstorm new ways to correct them, and drive the mission forward.

Future

Critical thinking is a power skill. It equips you with the tools and mindset necessary to thrive in today’s competitive job market. You help maintain a positive work environment conducive to productivity and innovation when you can:

Demonstrate your creative resourcefulness at problem solving
Think strategically and align your actions with your organization’s goals
Communicate complex concepts concisely and in easy-to-understand terms
Recognize when it is time to pivot, embrace change, and quickly learn new skills
Empathetically challenge both yours and others’ assumptions and welcome alternative perspectives
Actively seek feedback and regularly reflect on your experiences
De-escalate tensions, constructively resolve conflicts by seeking common ground, and facilitate meaningful dialogue to foster collaboration

For example, let’s say you are on a software development team troubleshooting a critical bug in a new application. Instead of resorting to quick fixes or assuming you know what is wrong, your team applies critical thinking skills to systematically diagnose the root cause of the issue. You conduct thorough analysis, dig through code repositories, and interview stakeholders to gather relevant information. Through rigorous testing and experimentation, you identify the underlying flaw, implement a sustainable solution, and document it to prevent similar issues from happening in the future.

Next week let’s talk about how you can demonstrate critical thinking skills to further your career. How does thinking critically help you do your job? Please share in the comments.

Enquiring Minds

I help people make decisions, but I do not give advice. (Does that qualify as irony?) Everyone’s circumstances are different and you have to do what makes sense for you. One of the most useful tools for figuring that out is learning how to think critically. For the next four weeks, we will explore both what critical thinking is and how you can use it to make wise choices regarding your time, energy, attention, and money. Here in part one of this four-part series titled, “Let’s Get Critical,” we take a minute to define it.

What Is It?

Critical thinking is your ability to analyze, objectively interpret, systematically evaluate, and integrate information to form reasoned judgments.
It’s like being a detective. You ask lots of questions, look for clues, and figure out the best solutions.
Acquiring knowledge is part of critical thinking, but you also have to be able to think logically, organize data, consider alternative perspectives, and discern between fact and opinion.
Critical thinkers are adept at dissecting complex problems, uncovering hidden variables, and making choices based on evidence.
Critical thinking requires you to recognize your assumptions, double check them with reliable sources, and test them to see if they are still valid.
It’s not about being skeptical. It’s about identifying the one great decision among all the good decisions and rethinking your opinion in light of new information.

What Can it Include?

Analysis: To solve a challenge using critical thinking, first organize the facts you gathered into categories like people, processes, and performance. Examine how the data impacts those categories and ask yourself if you’ve collected all the information necessary to draw a conclusion. If you are unsure, ask your team, “What am I missing?”

Interpretation: Based on the accumulated available information, clearly articulate, preferably in writing, both your decision and the reasoning behind how you reached it. You don’t know what you think until you see what you say.

Evaluation: Share your conclusion with leaders in the affected categories and let them ask you the hard questions. Does your conclusion hold up under their scrutiny?

Testing: Take your colleagues feedback and use it to iterate your conclusion. Test your theory on a sample before rolling it out to the whole.

What Could It Look Like?

Let’s say you are on your company’s marketing team and you are launching a new product in a competitive market. It’s not enough to come up with flashy slogans and eye-catching graphics. Team members must parse market data, research consumer trends, and study competitor strategies. You may have to question your client’s assumptions, challenge biases (both theirs and yours), and weigh alternative solutions in order to design a comprehensive marketing strategy. You have to ask questions. Who is the target audience? What other similar products already exist? Why would our target audience like ours better? When you gather enough data you can do a limited roll out in a test market.

Next week we’ll explore how you can use critical thinking to improve your job performance. In the meantime, what process do you use to think critically? Please share in the comments.

Under the Influence

Coworkers and managers influence your decisions. They have plans for you, but do their expectations align with your values, skills, and goals? Influence is a powerful tool that shapes your organization’s decisions, strategies, and culture. As a leader, it’s essential to intentionally decide whom you allow to influence you, but how?

Who You Are Looking For

Stay away from influencers who are negative, office politicians, cynical, and toxic. Look for people who ooze credibility, integrity, and reliability. Seek out people whose life experiences and ideas are different from yours. Surround yourself with individuals who encourage, inspire, and interact with everyone; not just those who can help them get ahead. You want to follow leaders who are committed to building a healthy and productive workplace environment. These may be colleagues with seniority, peers with specialized knowledge, or direct reports whose work ethic you admire.

What You Want From Them

You need influencers who will offer guidance, provide valuable insights, and exert a positive influence on your leadership style. These are not people who tell you what you want to hear. They both challenge and uplift you. They are accountability partners who spark your mutual growth. Align yourself with individuals who tell you the truth in love. You can identify them by the way they ask you questions then allow you space to rethink your opinions. These types of leaders are busy people. Relentlessly respect their time and find ways to bring value to the relationship.

Boundaries

It’s tricky to collaborate as a member of a team and complete your own assignments and avoid becoming a doormat. To maintain this delicate balance, you have to diplomatically manage both your supervisors’ and coworkers’ influence.

Set: Do you have time to complete your report and help your coworker prep for their client meeting? Be realistic about your own workload and deadlines. Does your team share calendars? Can they see when you are busy and vice versa? It is better to be unexpectedly available than to withdraw the help you said you’d give.

Communicate: As Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” When you receive requests for help, first express your willingness to collaborate then email your manager and copy the requestor. Ask for clarity on whose project has priority in terms of what is best for the organization. If your manager decides your input is crucial to the project your teammate is working on, and that means you will miss a deadline on your own work, then ask what the new deadline for your own work is.

Protect: When prioritizing someone else’s project benefits you, your teammate, and your company, then it makes sense to move your boundary. But there is always that one person (let’s call them: TOP) who repeatedly asks for help until that task you do for them becomes part of your job description. Every time TOP asks for help, ask yourself: What is TOP’s track record for getting their own work done? Does what TOP wants me to do directly impact our organization’s bottom line? Will this project make me more visible to management and/or clients? Politely decline TOP’s invitation to do their work when the additional task conflicts with your current commitments or if it’s outside the scope of your responsibilities. It’s okay to offer guidance, share your expertise, and encourage problem-solving, but avoid taking on TOP’s tasks. For example, if TOP asks you for prospects, invite them to look at your LinkedIn contacts, filter for their target, and find people they want introductions to. If TOP persists, redirect them to your manager.

What criteria do you use to decide whom you allow to influence you? Please share in the comments.

How Do You Know?

A few weeks ago, we talked about how valuable it is to tolerate being bad at something long enough to get good at it. Since then, I’ve been asked a few questions. I’ll address three of them here.

The answer to all three is: It depends.

Q: How can you tell if you will eventually be good at a skill or if you will always be bad at it and are just wasting your time?

A: It depends on your attitude. For example, let’s say you are learning to program in Python. Are you so into it that you lose track of time while debugging your code? When you receive constructive feedback on your work, are you excited to try the suggested fixes? After studying the language for a month, do you feel good about how far you have come even if it is not very far? If you answered yes to these questions, then you have enough evidence to safely predict you will eventually be good at programming in Python.

Q: Doesn’t getting good at a skill just take hard work?

A: It depends on your mindset. Someone running on a treadmill and someone running on the street are both working hard, but the runner on the treadmill doesn’t go anywhere. Getting good at something depends more on how you learn rather than on how hard you work. Going back to the Python example, you can learn the language by putting in long hours every day, memorizing syntax, and struggling through coding exercises without seeking help or feedback. Using this approach you will hit plateaus and your progress will be slow because you are just repeating tasks without understanding them. Instead, if you focus on unlearning the outdated language you are currently writing in, understanding the underlying principles of Python, seeking guidance from experienced programmers, and participating in projects at work to apply what you are learning, then you will grasp concepts faster, troubleshoot more efficiently, and advance more quickly in mastering Python.

Q: Is it ever too late to acquire new skills?

A: It depends on your character. Are you naturally curious? If not, are you willing to grow that trait? Are you self-disciplined and resilient? Continuing the Python example, to be good at it you not only have to hone your technical skills you must also develop emotional intelligence, perseverance, and teamwork skills to use it at your job. Also, what motivates you? Do you set achievable short-term goals for yourself? Do you schedule time to learn Python on your calendar? Do you view difficulties as opportunities to learn? Determining if you will be good at Python, or any skill, requires self-awareness, feedback, and adaptability.

How do you stay motivated to be a life-long learner? Please share in the comments.