QuietSpacing

Recently, we had occasion to hire a new part-time person at my kayaking business – Outdoorplay.  (See the footnote at the bottom for information on Outdoorplay.)  This is usually a difficult experience given that the labor pool in our small resort town is (a) limited and (b) largely populated by people who’ll abandon their posts at the drop of a hat if it’s a good powder day up on the ski hill.  (Note, I’m not that much of a curmudgeon, but things DO have to get done!)

Anyway, it was with trepidation that I posted the position on a local online classified ad website.  The results were unexpected, exhilarating and heart-breaking all at once.

Can WOW! be an understatement?

The job posting went live at 6:00 PM.  By 8:00 AM the next morning, we had 15 applications.  We immediately pulled the ad but still received over 30 applications.  Prior to the economic downturn, we could wait for weeks before getting even one application.

Sorting through the applications was an exercise in wonder.  People from all walks of life were applying.  The resumes contained heavy-equipment operators, construction laborers, office staff, first-time job seekers, the gambit.  Remember, this was a job that paid about $950 per month before taxes! 

We selected the six most qualified candidates to invite in for interviews.

A Straight Path Wanders

The morning of the interviews, we received another application. This was from a woman we knew.  She had worked for one of our vendors before being laid off in the downturn.  She had been out of work for six months and just wanted to get back to it, no matter the job.

Catherine (no, that’s not her real name) was not a fit for the position we were hiring, but we had a very high opinion of her from her last job.  So we fit her into our schedule to explore her background and skills.  We were considering … but back to the interviews for the warehouse position.

The first candidate set the bar very high.  He was just a year out of high school, was a local guy, had taken a year off to wander the earth, was considering starting school at the local community college in the fall, and was the son of an owner in another local business like ours.  And did I mention that he’d reviewed our web site and knew a great deal about our business?  And did I also mention that he walked into the interview with a copy of his resume in his hand … just in case?  We could not have scripted a better candidate and interview, but there were others to meet.

The next several candidates were qualified but unremarkable.  I think two of them had looked at our web site and knew the nature of our business.  Two years ago, we would have jumped to hire any one of them, but Candidate #1 had really impressed us with his preparation and alignment with our needs.

The last candidate to interview was the heart-breaker.  He was an out-of-work construction worker.  He was married with a young child, living in the basement of his in-laws house.  He hadn’t worked for 18 months and was just itching to do something to be of use and to support his family.  It pained me to see the commitment and earnestness in his face for a chance at our entry level part-time job.  He said we were the only company who’d even interviewed him in the last six months.  Ouch.

The Agony of Too Many Choices

As the last candidate left, we turned to the hard work of making a decision.  First, we discussed the warehouse position and agreed that Candidate #1 was the right person for the job.  We also all agreed that we’d hire the last candidate if we could even though we knew he’d leave for a higher paying job when the opportunity arose. Alas, there was only one warehouse position available – a part-time one at that.  Candidate #1 got the job.

Next, we took up conversation on Catherine.  Throughout the day, we had talked in snippets about her skill set and our longer term needs for the company. She clearly fit the bill for a core role in the administrative part of the business.  Another bonus was that she was known and liked by our current folks, which suggested an easy transition.

With her value established, we turned to affordability and the impact hiring Catherine would have the team’s salary increases over the short term.  When asked, our General Manager stated very clearly that the current team members were happy that their jobs had yet to be truly affected by the downturn and that they’d welcome the help Catherine would bring to the over-worked group.  (We’d frozen hiring 18 months earlier leaving the existing people to wrestle with the ongoing demands of the business.)  The decision was to offer Catherine a position as well, which she took.

Lessons Learned

Both of the new hires have settled nicely into their roles.  The team is thrilled to have the support, even with knowledge that salary increases are now clearly dependent on how quickly the economy recovers. 

My lasting impressions from the experience are:

• Americans Love to Work.  When the economy was soaring, there was a lot focus on work-life balance.  The underlying premise was that people wanted to work less.  Though downturns are never pleasant, nor do I wish financial hardship on anyone, my view is that people are hungry to get back to work.  In fact, the perspective on work-life balance may have balanced itself out a bit.  Work is a part of life, a good part.  The sense of entitlement that was developing over the last decade was destructive to the very people forming those opinions.
• Productivity is a Good Thing.  Turning away from the media-hyped stories of corporate greed and the too-big-to-fail bleating by politicians and CEOs alike, it’s good to have Americans at work.  The sense of accomplishment and belonging are hugely valuable, not to mention the ability to provide for your loved ones.  These basic tenets get lost today in all the hysterics and finger pointing.  I was reminded of it during those interviews.  People just want to matter again.
• Hire for the Long Term Even if it Hurts a Little Now.  Dennis Snow, 25-year veteran at Disney, talks about recruiting all the time so that when you have a need, you’ve already identified a good pool of candidates.  Most companies hire out of emergency – when someone leaves or something similar.  Admittedly, that’s what we were doing.  However, I would like to pat ourselves on the back for engaging in another good hiring practice:  Hire the right people, even if you have to create the position early.  Both Candidate # 1 and Catherine are great people.  We had a job for one of them and we accelerated an opening for the other.  They’ve been a terrific fit and we’re seeing the benefits of the decision already.

My expectations at the outset of this hiring adventure were that we were rolling the dice.  My experience was that there are a tremendous number of able and willing people looking to get the American productivity engine back to a steady purr. 

(Footnote:  I am a co-founder in Outdoorplay, an online retailer that sells kayaking gear.  It’s been 12 years in the making and we have a fantastic team of people who make it happen.  My greatest source of pride is to have been a part of its success.)

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I called my Nanna today.  It’s the first time I’ve talked with her in months and the only time in years I’ve called her voluntarily.  That is, usually my Mom waits until I’m visiting her, then she dials Nanna up and hands me the phone. 

Actually, today was only semi-voluntarily since my Mom left a message on my voice mail this morning “reminding” me it was Grandpa’s birthday.  Mom’s good like that, I’m not.  You see, my Grandpa doesn’t know he’s 92 today.  Hell, he doesn’t even know it’s Wednesday.  So this was my Mom’s way of asking me to reach out to my Nanna who cares for him even though she’s half-blind, walks with the aid of cane, and is no spring chicken herself at 89.

The World Spins at Different Speeds

Don’t consider me an ass, at least not a complete ass.  My relationship with my grandparents has never been close.  We live on opposite coasts and I haven’t seen them in at least five years.  Those are not excuses.  They are facts.  But regardless of the details, they’re my kin and I need to do more.

Back to the conversation.  After inquiring into Grandpa’s state (not good) and hers (looking up with the weather getting better), I nearly wept when she said, “Honey, you’ve just made my day!”  The tears welling up were of shame, not joy.  Here was this woman who had been with her husband for seventy-three years (73!).  She’s house-bound with a grown child, rarely getting out and never getting to just relax.  The world revolves slowly in a very tight circle for her.

Conversely, I’m constantly racing around in my hyper-kinetic professional world.  There’s always another e-mail coming in and another phone call going out.  There are flights to catch, dinners to enjoy, and friends to meet at the first tee.  And I don’t have two minutes in all that to stop and call my Nanna?  How did I let that happen?

How Mattering Matters

It was so easy to sit and talk with her on this voluntary basis.  Maybe not having the phone thrust into my face took the heat off the moment.  But, just as I was settling into a nice conversation, my poor Nanna lobbed “You’re Aunty Carol is a lifesaver to me.” over the fence!  Now I felt like a true heel.  Aunt Carol lives a scant three miles away compared to my three thousand.  She’s the one who’s really shouldering the burden.  And you don’t even want to know when the last time I talked to her was.

Though my Mom flies back to New England regulary to help her, Carol’s definitely been the leader and care provider to both my Nanna and Grandpa these last few years.  I’m sure it’s arduous, but I rest comfortable knowing that at least my Nanna routinely tells her how grateful she is for the assistance.  (For those of you wondering why they’re not in assisted care, read the part about 73 years above.  There’s a whole article on commitment in that one number.)

Making the Call

A good friend of mine truly believes that people don’t change, at least not much.  The weight of the evidence is on his side I’m afraid. My slant on change is that it occurs when a simple trifecta occurs:  Think, Feel, Do. 

Most people Think about making a change.  They gather all the intellectual reasons together and make a reasoned decision that change is good.  And that’s where the effort to change usually ends. 

The Feel part of change is much more significant.  It’s where the motivation is generated that effects change.  In today’s example, the motivation to make a change did not come from the shame I felt at being the hero of the day over my Aunt Carol’s tireless efforts.  The motivation came from how easy it was to just voluntarily chat with my Nanna for a couple of minutes on the phone.  It was just so easy!

Now for the Do part.  How do you make it happen on a “regular” basis?  You could make it a routine.  For example, my sister calls our Dad every Thursday afternoon.  It’s a routine.  That doesn’t work so well with my traveling all the time.  However, I’m a process guy.  That’s what I do for a living, so I created a monthly recurring reminder on my Nanna’s contact record in Outlook that’ll pop her into my Reminder box each month to prompt me to give her a call.  The solution was easy once the motivation existed.

The Value of Action

There are a lot of things we know we should do.  There are a number of things we probably will do.  But whenever you’re in the throws of trying to evaluate the true benefits of making a change to improve the “balance” in your life, ask yourself this one question:  When you’ve reached the end of your life, will you wish you’d made that change?

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I am continually amazed by the fascination with Gen Y. Having just downloaded the 60-page OXGENZ report entitled Generation Y and the Workplace – 2010, I believe it’s mostly Boomers who are fascinated. (Note, I’m a Boomer.) My take is that this pre-occupation is our continuing desire to be integrally involved in the lives of our children. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it might work out well for the Gen Y folks in general.

What’s In a Generation Anyway?

Having said that, my personal opinion is that the Gen Ys value what most of us value: Family, Good Working and Living Environments, Flexibility (though probably more than we did), Recognition (maybe too much given their relative accomplishment as yet?), Security, and Comfort. All worthy, but certainly not earth shatteringly different.

What’s really changed is the measure of those values. The best example I have is the desire to work remotely. This was simply not possible 30 years ago when I entered the work force. E-mail and the Internet existed, but only in the scientific world. Our bread was buttered with phone calls, meetings, faxes and large word-processing systems. Working remotely only worked for individual contributors (artists, athletes, authors, etc., to cover the “a”s).

Conversely, I work from two different homes today. I run two entirely separate businesses, one of which is completely virtual. All this is because of technological advance, not generational change. I’m still a Boomer, but I’m leveraging what’s available to me.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

Maybe the real issue isn’t that the Gen Ys want something different than the older generations. Maybe it’s that the older generations need to shed the “I did it that way, so they should too.” attitude? Or maybe we should just let our children live their own lives and work it out for themselves?

Enough of my running on at the keyboard…

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“Multi-tasking” is part of the modern-day lexicon.  In spite of scientific evidence to the contrary, people who multi-task “well” continue to be applauded as truly accomplished magicians by those of us who struggle whenever too many things compete for our attention.

The Proof’s in the Pudding

The reality is that no one multi-tasks well. Of course, some are better at it than others, but everyone is always less effective when trying to accomplish more than one thing at a time.  There are plenty of readers who will object to this position and begin citing examples of multi-tasking efficiency.  To prove my point, try this simple exercise that I learned from David Crenshaw’s terrific book “The Myth of Multi-Tasking.”

• Take out a piece of paper and a pencil or pen.
•  Think of a longer word, like “impossible” which has 10 letters.
•  On your paper create two lines of 10 dashes each, one over the other, like this:

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• Find someone to time you or time yourself.
• When your timer says “Go!,” begin spelling the word “impossible” out on the top row while alternately indicating the number that letter represents in the word in the bottom row.  It’ll look like this mid-stream:

  I      M      P    ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____ ____

  1      2   ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• When you’re done with the exercise on this first pass, jot down how many seconds it took you to perform it.
• Now, setup the exercise exactly the same way as you did the first time, thus:

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

• This time just write the word “impossible” out straight through sequentially on the top line, then write the corresponding numbers each letter represents straight through on the bottom line, so that mid-stream it looks like this:

  I      M      P      O      S     S    ____  ____  ____

____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____  ____

This is a fairly simple example of doing two things at once – spelling and numbering.  In the dozens of situations I’ve used this exercise it routinely takes people about twice as long to complete the first pass as it takes to complete the second pass through.  The reason is simple enough, you have to refocus your mind on a different activity each time you switch between spelling and numbering in the first pass, but you don’t incur that “switch cost” in the second pass.

Through Clarity Comes Focus

With the urban myth about multi-tasking debunked, we can now get down to business.  And that business is how to truly increase your productivity and, in so doing, increase your command over your workload and your sense of success when getting more done.  We all feel better when we get something done, so why not benefit from that result on the career side as well?

Attempts to multi-task negatively affect our ability to focus.  Focus is at the core of productivity and accomplishment.  The more we can focus, the more we get done. 

Achieving and maintaining a high level of focus in the modern workplace is difficult indeed.  Distractions and interruptions abound, many of them self-imposed.  My work with clients often starts with unlearning numerous bad work habits that actually reduce focus and productivity even though they were promoted as more efficient!  Let’s focus on those, if you’ll pardon the pun.

One is not the Loneliest Number

The exercise above points out that focusing on a singular task is more productive than trying to alternate focus between two tasks.  If you have fallen prey to the multi-tasking myth but are now ready to move to a higher level of productivity and success, these suggestions will help:

• Identify TODAY’S One Thing.  Most of us have dozens of things on our to-do list with more coming in each day.  Of course, everything is an “emergency” with an “ASAP” deadline.  (Note, I have yet to find ASAP on any calendar, so I’m not sure how it can be a deadline, but that’s for another time.)  A simple way to retake command of your workload is to identify the ONE thing that you WILL get done TODAY.  You are determining that this is the very most important thing in your world for today.  Hold yourself to that commitment and start knocking things off your list that you’ve been “meaning to get to” now for days, weeks, and months.
• One Thing At A Time.  This may be obvious, but if you want to increase your focus, then focus on only one thing at a time.  You can accomplish this by doing several things to your workspace.  First, clear a space on your desk (your whole desktop?) into which nothing but your one thing will reside while you work on it.   Move your computer monitor away from this space so that it’s not a distraction or, if your one thing is on your computer, minimize all other screens and turn OFF your new e-mail alert.  Finally, place your phone on Do Not Disturb and close your door.  Now, you can actually DO one thing at a time!  Of course, return voice mails and e-mails as soon as you come back online, but I’ll guarantee you that you’ll get that one thing done faster if you follow this simple procedure.
• One More Thing.  At the end of each day right before you close everything up to go home do One More Thing.  One little thing – return an e-mail (ONE), a voice mail, put something away, send out a quick instruction.  If you do that every work day of the year, you will do over 200 more things this year than last!

Recalibrate Your Behavior to Regain Command

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the pace at which we receive information has grown in orders of magnitude.  The notion of multi-tasking arose as a method for handling all these inputs.  Unfortunately, we’re just not wired that way and attempts to accomplish more than one thing at a time actually reduce our productivity and increase our stress levels. 

Finding ways to increase our focus will not only increase our productivity, but it will return us to sense of command over our work and careers.  Give the suggestions above a try and I wish you the best of luck!

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It is my humble opinion that much of the woes we suffer locally and globally today come from one simple fact – the abdication of personal responsibility.  Color me a pessimist (I prefer “realist”), but no matter what woe befalls us, it always seems to be someone else’s fault or responsibility.  Of course, when catastrophe strikes, such as the earthquakes in Haiti, we all seem to band together. 

What I’m addressing is the less obvious and certainly more insidious – like our economic situation or efforts at social reform.  For example, when times are good we don’t want anyone interfering with our success.  But as soon as the applecart is upset, we all start pointing figures with our right hand and reaching out with our left, palm up.

The purpose of these short missives is not to chastise people or remedy faults in human nature.  It is to ask you to stop and consider a single thought about how we choose to use the limited and fixed time we have together.  The thought for today is that personal responsibility is a lifestyle choice.  By taking the position that the results and consequences of the decisions we each make and the actions we take are our own personal responsibility, I believe we will experience two things:

• How much value we can create.  Taking personal responsibility generally causes people to slow down their thinking and acting.  More thoughtful behaviors tend to generate better results.  Value is either inherent or added.  Someone who views their actions as their own tends to more clearly recognize inherent value and find ways to further the value that already exists.
• How rewarding our life can feel.  The sense of command and direction people feel who take ownership of their lives is empowering.  Whether they follow their existing path or venture down a new one, those who take charge of things always get to drive.

The next time you launch into a diatribe about how the government is doing “X’ or big business is doing “Y,” ask yourself what you’re doing to change that fact.  I posit that you’ll be surprised at what you might decide to do.

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