Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It by Jody Thompson & Jody Thompson

Author:Jody Thompson & Jody Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

1Yes, there are several definitions of S.M.A.R.T., but this is most commonly used.

Chapter 4

24/7 Kicks 9–5’s Ass

If you’re going to have a team that functions well together, everyone has to communicate effectively. It’s a word that we throw around a lot, right? Communicate is defined as “to express oneself in such a way that one is readily and clearly understood.” And these days, we have a plethora of tools that enable us to communicate anytime and from anywhere. But despite all the wonderful things this lets us do, it’s this “always-on” mentality that can cause people to feel overwhelmed and never able to “unplug.” The people in organizations with which we work express this need to unplug as one of their biggest challenges. Many aren’t sure how to manage the flow of communication bombarding them while still maintaining some semblance of a life.

We’ll tackle that very challenge in this chapter.

Keeping traditional office hours is one method people use to manage the flow of information. This approach says that you can stop working when you leave the office. You have an acceptable reason for leaving those pesky e-mails and voice mails until the next business day. Even if an emergency was to present itself, you could tap into the golden nugget of excuses: “I always unplug after hours. I cherish this time with my family.” Okay. That’s understandable.

However, this widely held belief that work has—and should have—a certain beginning and end point not only bogs down the flow of communication but causes us to do things we wouldn’t normally do to keep the wolves (the organization) from taking over our lives. You saw this in Chapter 2 when Cali clearly described how, as managers, we think it’s our job to protect people’s off hours even when unknowingly sabotaging that ourselves by saying things like, “Let’s give it up for Jill! She gave up time with her family to take care of that customer issue.”

“In 2009, we set out to double our business by the end of 2014. We needed a tool to help us communicate and motivate the entire JL Buchanan team to embrace change, think differently, and engage in the mission,” says Susan Hoaby, president of JL Buchanan, a Minneapolis-based retail consulting company. She adds,

When we launched [a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)] with CultureRx in May of that year with a team of 22 employees, we laid out the long-term objective and, together, established the short-term objectives to deliver. Our message was simple and clear: we wanted everyone to concentrate on driving smart and healthy growth for the organization that would allow us to navigate the [current] economic shifts and thrive in the future. We didn’t tell everyone specifically what to do, or how to accomplish the goal; we simply made clear the results we wanted to achieve.

The first year of our journey was exciting and challenging. Everyone was thrilled to have the ability to work where and when they wanted. We didn’t really understand how important increasing our communication and being clear about our expectations of each other would be.

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