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WhatsApp Groups for Employee Engagement

In today’s COVID era, local companies have seen a dramatic rise in the use of WhatsApp groups among staff. It’s been a love/hate relationship for most, but online groups have become a critical channel of communication. Is your organization boosting employee engagement via these groups, or sitting by hoping the fad will die off?

Remote work has made virtual, intra-company communication more important than ever. By replacing its digital sibling, email messaging, WhatsApp has become the popular default choice. Now, your official email updates are being ignored. Your employees’ habits have shifted; they are using the app over a hundred times per day.

Unfortunately, a number of poor practices have also arisen. In response, most executives and HR departments watch from the sidelines as the software shapes their organization’s culture. No-one knows what to do, or even whose responsibility it is to ensure this channel adds productivity. How should your company influence a change which is already underway?

  1. Accept WhatsApp’s power and limitations

Understand that you can only influence WhatsApp, not control it. Unlike email, the messages being shared aren’t sitting on IT’s servers, where management can observe and dispose of them at will.

Also, individual accounts don’t belong to you. Disgruntled ex-employees can continue their hourly gripe sessions with key workers for months to come.

As such, WhatsApp groups have a life of their own. For example, a small chat between friends can quickly grow to reach the limit of 256 users. Any hot topic can dominate the space and take over attention, including office gossip. Individuals can use it for self-promotion, or to attack others.

Unfortunately, the range of responses is limited. For example, when a group develops a nasty sub-culture, an administrator may only see a single course of action – to delete the group. However, this final act of desperation doesn’t prevent former members from forming a brand new chat to continue the discussion.

Yet, despite this danger, WhatsApp remains the most effective way to have a conversation within a small to medium-sized group of people. It’s already your employees’ most popular app. Some companies try to counter its power by launching their own app. If you try this tactic, “Good luck!” Be prepared for staff to bypass it. Instead, they’ll discuss your attempts to take over their chats in their groups.

Your best bet? Accept WhatsApp’s role as today’s trusted, and most frequently used, channel of corporate communication between staff.

  1. Play the Role of Coach

If the channel is already out of your control, the best option is to provide workers with skills to use the platform effectively. Essentially, this “if you-can’t-beat-them-join-them” strategy is your way of spreading sound WhatsApp principles to others. You hope that they’ll act in ways that support the well-being of your employees.

This means that someone needs to become versed in the apps’ best practices, such as:

  • realizing that group chats are not the same as individual chats – once the number of participants grows beyond 10, a unique space is created.
  • setting up a moderator and establishing guidelines or rules of engagement.
  • developing a strategy for large groups, such as splitting it when the number of members reaches 100.

Where do these come from? This short list is based on my experience in regional WhatsApp groups of all sizes. Your company needs to develop its own insights in keeping with your policies and strategy.

The sad fact is, most companies don’t train their employees to be productive in either meetings or electronic messages (email and WhatsApp). The net effect? A ton of waste, even as these activities take up a reported 25-50% of employee time.

  1. Encourage Exception Reporting

Unfortunately, WhatsApp’s design encourages users to think of themselves as individuals, not corporate citizens. Therefore, they act in their own interests, first and foremost.

However, there’s another dimension which you must consider: the impact of online discussions on the entire staff. For example, when an employee quits, but doesn’t exit a WhatsApp group discussing sensitive company matters, everyone is affected.

Your organization should act to introduce this broader perspective.

In cyber-space, employees need to ask a new question: “What is best for all concerned?” In this context, someone can act to protect a fellow employee, a department or their entire company by intervening and alerting others when trouble is brewing.

The truth is, these are uncharted waters. Executives who ignore the powerful immediacy of WhatsApp Group communication are putting their heads in the sand, hoping it will go away. It won’t. Gear yourself and your staff for the new reality of remote work dominated by digital messaging at scale.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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Why CEO’s Want HR to Transform Itself

Human Resource departments are facing an unprecedented demand to become analytic and data-driven. But few are answering the call. What should HR practitioners and consultants do to respond?

A few years ago, I substituted for a VP-HR of a major company who died suddenly. For four months, I attempted to pick up the pieces while seeking a replacement. I discovered that he didn’t leave much of a structure behind. Everything, it seemed, was in his head.

Fast forward to today, and HR organizations are under increasing pressure due to the COVID-era need to digitize functions. CEO’s have longed for HR Departments which look more like Finance, Operations and Sales, whose employees are digitally savvy.

Unfortunately, there are few HR teams I have worked with who have sufficient skillsets and mindsets to embrace technology, analyze data and provide dashboards. Case in point: after facilitating numerous strategic planning retreats, only a single presentation by HR stands out in these areas.

Such was the situation before COVID. Now the pandemic has widened the gap. HR, with low tech skills, has stayed in the same position, watching others surge ahead with new capabilities. This observation is backed up by global research from the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR). Some 60% of HR Professionals say they are falling behind their more tech-savvy colleagues in terms of efficiency and impact.

What can local Human Resource Practitioners do to catch up and close the gap?

  1. Embrace the CEO’s Perspective

Perhaps what scares C-Suite leaders more than anything else is that the pandemic has made HR’s role more important than ever. But, it’s also annoying them at the same time. Why?

They don’t have visibility into staff-driven operations. While most agree they must make fresh investments in people to thrive in a new economy, they lack the data.

For example, while they are painfully aware of talent gaps, HR usually cannot predict what happens after key roles are filled. Will individuals stay? For how long? And should they be paid at the 25th or 75th percentile of the average wage? To what effect?

When such quantifiable questions can’t be answered, it’s easier for executives to invest in a new piece of equipment. After all, it usually comes with an easy-to-understand cost-benefit ratio.

Unfortunately, I only know a couple of CEO’s in the Caribbean who have HR backgrounds. As a result, most leaders don’t intuitively understand the invisible tradeoffs HR must make. And without data, no-one can offer a clear, numbers-driven explanation.

The solution is for HR to think like CEOs who need to implement big, fact-based decisions.

  1. Hire and Train

Maybe not surprisingly, the AIHR survey showed that the best place to develop such talent is at the bottom of the organization. Often, the newest and youngest employees in HR are the most digitally proficient. They are the ones who should drive improvements by picking up new capabilities and teaching them to others.

At the same time, hiring savvy mid-career HR professionals may help fill critical gaps – if they can be found. But the most difficult choices surround those HR team members who don’t have the capacity to grow fast enough. Their future might be grim as their lack of quantitative skills makes it hard for them to find employment.

All these changes add up to a major investment in talent acquisition and development within HR. However, most organizations have not recovered from the deep cuts made in training budgets during the 2008 recession. Arguably, this led to the problems we see today.

  1. Be Strategic

The fact is, most HR departments aren’t in a position to advocate for these investments on their own. They need the company’s entire strategic plan to call for a transformation in staff and talent in order to thrive in the future.

This kind of widespread change requires informed leadership from the top. Consequently, HR must focus on educating other executives using tools such as analytic reports and dashboards. This approach could ultimately lead to the game-changing decisions that can drive any or all other strategies the company pursues. As CEO’s know from painful experience, trying to make big changes with the wrong people in place will fail.

What would it be like to have a top class HR function in your organization? While the global standard has suddenly been raised without warning, take this as an opportunity rather than a rude surprise. Everyone will benefit when HR steps up to the challenge of transforming itself to use analytics. While it probably won’t be the first unit to do so, it has the potential to influence all company functions.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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Lessons from Virtual Conferences

If you have been asked to create a multi-day, online event, you may want it to be everything a live event should be. But you could also be wondering: should it try to mimic a face-to-face experience? And what does success even look like in this environment?

In the past two years, (but starting just before COVID), we added the ability to conduct online conferences to our company’s repertoire. After speaking and apprenticing at several virtual gatherings, we decided to offer our own…with some trepidation. Since then, 4,000 people have registered in four events.

What have we discovered that can be transferred to any business with a virtual audience?

  1. Quality Attention Counts

We have learned that our objective should be to create a unique online experience. While there is some overlap with live events, we don’t try to emulate them. Instead, we follow best practices from the finest virtual gatherings we can find from every corner of the world.

In that context, we compete for our audience’s attention against anyone who offers education, engagement or entertainment. Examples include webinars, Facebook and Netflix. Our job is to create a compelling alternative that keeps people’s focus whether they are in the office or working from home.

This definition has kept us on the edge of our seats, because the world is constantly changing. Internet providers of education, engagement and entertainment are highly sophisticated, with deep pockets. We consider them all to be unwelcome, but possible substitutes for our event: “competitors”. Even distractions are included.

As such, if you aren’t studying Facebook and Instagram to see what they are doing to capture attention, then you may not be in the know. Why? Your customers have become accustomed to attractive online experiences at a world-class level. They expect you to provide the same. Fail to do so and you’ll fall behind.

  1. Grow a Pipeline

Many companies aren’t interested in prospects until they are on the verge of making a purchase. The evidence lies in their processes. They blast advertisements to customers, driving them to interact directly with a salesperson, or sales page.

In the virtual world, this approach doesn’t work. Common sense tells us that a buyer’s interest should be fostered over time. Companies which nurture prospects from the initial show of concern can bring them all the way to the point of purchase. The entire cycle may take minutes, or years, but the principle remains the same.

The magic of online conferences allows us to track people’s behavior from their very first click to actions taken even beyond the close of the event…at a minimal cost. In the face-to-face world, this is difficult to do. But the data is easy to gather for ecommerce. All you need to do is set up the right virtual infrastructure.

As such, if your company is still writing prospects’ names in a big, hardcover book, you may want to consider an upgrade.

The fact is, the customer relationship software used to manage a database of thousands of prospects costs relatively little. Unfortunately, the skills required to run it are in desperately short supply, but the sooner you make the investment, the better.

  1. Invest in Analytics

Even after you gain the attention and put in place the necessary software, your journey has just begun. Fortunately, even entry-level applications allow you to collect metrics.

Use them to predict the flow of your prospects from one phase to the next, the effectiveness of your messaging and the precise impact of the final results you produce. This knowledge means that you can make tweaks that have a positive effect.

While your company may have reached its current position without these capabilities, I assert that it has no future unless it masters them. Why? We live in a world in which every organization can be out-analyzed by a substitute or competitor.

Perhaps you think this to be an exaggeration, but as you read these words, consider the medium you are reading: paper or digital?

As you probably know, there is a major transformation underway in the newspaper industry. As a reader of this column, you’re involved. In fact, the Gleaner’s future depends on understanding your behaviors. Using the data it can gather from paper and digital customers, new strategies are being implemented. There simply is no choice.

The transitions taking place in the conference industry are also unavoidable. As new tools become available, the online versions have the means to get better, faster. This gives them a great advantage over traditional counterparts. It’s just an example of yet another business being disrupted by analytic technology.

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Are you a Tit-for-Tat Manager?

As a company leader, you are probably interested in employees doing their best work. But most new staff members quickly lose the inspiration they had on their first day. How can you intervene so that precious employee motivation doesn’t get lost so soon?

An old man woke up one morning to the sound of stones hitting his zinc roof. He ran out to see a bunch of kids running away, laughing as he shook his fist and shouted at them to leave him alone. After several episodes in a row, he drew them into a conversation, from a distance: “Come stone my roof tomorrow and I’ll give you each some money.”

The following morning, they each received J$100 for their antics. But he apologized. He could only afford J$50 to repeat their performance. Deciding it was still a bargain, they returned the next day and collected their payment from the obviously senile senior citizen.

Shaking his head, he said: “There’s so many of you…I can only pay you J$1 tomorrow.”

“That’s all? Cheapskate…Forget it!” they complained as they stalked away for good.

While the old man was a master manipulator, there are managers who unwittingly produce the same result. Their employees start out being “transcendent”, but end up stuck in a “tit-for-tat”. The only difference is that everyone is unhappy with the outcome. Here’s why this happens.

  1. A Transcendent Beginning

Most employees are naturally motivated at the outset of a new job. When asked to give discretionary time and effort, they are often quite willing to do so. They are inspired.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last, but it’s not because of the circumstances. The transcendent state they initially enjoyed is one they can’t manage for very long. In other words, they are unable to explain why they feel the way they do. Also, they don’t identify the drivers of their positivity, fail to intervene when it slips away, and sometimes even regret that initial burst of motivation.

And most company cultures are unhelpful.

They don’t foster transcendent ways of being, let alone act to keep them alive. Toxic employees attack them with open cynicism. Those who are “too happy” have obviously “drank the Kool-Ade” – a snide reference to the suicidal Jim Jones cult.

In other words, companies allow this precious resource to fritter away as if it weren’t important. However, it’s actually critical.

In fact, most organizations do a good job of promoting staff to the executive suite, where transcendence is the norm.

Unfortunately, top leaders take their own motivation for granted. They also don’t realize that as they rose in the corporate ranks, they left the de-motivated behind. They no longer had to contend with the most embittered. Their amnesia leaves them unaware of the battle new employees face, made worse by a lack of help from their direct managers.

2. Why Most Leaders Become Tit-for-Tat Managers

Even though leaders may be transcendent, few have the ability to inspire their troops to extraordinary actions. Instead, the average manager devolves into a Tit-for-Tat: “No-one does anything if they aren’t being paid”.

While there’s abundant evidence this thinking is flawed, they cling to this explanation. It’s the ultimate escape from responsibility because there isn’t a single organization on earth with enough Tit (i.e. cash) to induce a meaningful Tat (i.e. a transcendent culture.) Why? Research shows that apart from short, physical activities, more pay does not produce motivated behavior.

In other words, ineffective managers surrender, then blame their staff. But is there an alternative? Yes – the fact is that transcendent cultures do exist.

  1. Prevent the Slip into Tit-for-Tat Relationships

The best interventions take place before the slip begins. Organizations can train employees to work with their habits of thought that often turn a dip into a landslide.

Eastern philosophies teach that joy is inside all of us. Unfortunately, its presence fades as we pick up defects in our thinking patterns.

However, mystics also argue that transcendence is merely a transformation away. If taught, we can learn how to become like the old man in the story: someone who coaxes a change with the right dialogue. In other words, we can pick up the kind of self-talk which transforms and returns us to a transcendent experience at will.

There are a number of effective methods to try, including affirmations, meditation, and journaling. More advanced approaches require fresh mental models picked up from coaches, books and therapists. (For more than a decade, I have used The Work of Byron Katie.)

The startling realization is that most organizations offer nothing at all. If they were to start, they would probably see that the high motivation present in the probationary stages never goes away completely. They just need to invest in helping staff remove the obstacles.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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Stop Your Brainstorming for Better Innovations

Where should good ideas for new products and services come from? Does the customer know best or not? Answer these questions correctly and your company could launch a series of winning offerings.

Is the customer always right? Steve Jobs argued otherwise: “By the time you build what they say they want, they have moved on and want something new.”

At the other end of the spectrum, customers were demanding better buggy-whips when innovators wanted to sell them cars. A survey of their needs would have been trapped within the limits of their thinking.

Here in the Caribbean, researchers complain about the challenge of customer surveys: people will often default to telling you what you want to hear. They are afraid of rocking the boat, or making you feel bad, so they alter their responses.

But should you ignore your customers?

The fact is, there are more companies that have failed by following their instincts and intuitions than by doing surveys and focus groups. Fortunately, there’s some new thinking emerging that solves the dilemma. Here are the steps some of the best organizations are using to craft fresh offerings that win the hearts and minds of their audience.

1. Uncover Struggling Moments

A “struggling moment” is one which occurs when a customer can’t have your offering. It may not exist, or not be available to them. Some may complain loudly, but the ones you really need aren’t merely the unhappy and opinionated. Instead, you should focus on those who are so frustrated they are engaging in what Amy Jo Kim calls “Solution Seeking Behavior”.

In other words, they are actively trying to solve the problem by finding substitutes. For example, if you want to create a better car, find people who are already working to fill the void you have identified. You’ll know who they are because they are taking visible action.

They probably know more than you do about the problem, because they have been attempting to solve it for so long. Their actual experience of living at their wits’ end, praying for answers, is important information you can’t get elsewhere.

This discovery is a pivotal moment for you as a product or service innovator. You need to stop brainstorming internally, so you can hear real-life struggling moments from the outside. Unfortunately, most companies don’t reach this point and end up missing the mark. But yours could be different if it can be disciplined enough to make the switch.

  1. Find the Best Strugglers

But you are still faced with the problem of locating these rare people. This could be a matter of searching for them in social media communities, or making face-to-face invitations. Perhaps the most efficient way is to conduct a questionnaire or survey intended to weed out the least qualified. Do it well, and the most likely prospects will nominate themselves.

They will definitely be in the minority.

But once you have some prospects, conduct short interviews to select the few who will become your biggest fans. And they should be willing to participate. After all, they have been dreaming up solutions ever since they identified the problem, putting you in a coveted position.

And don’t worry if they add up to a motley crew which doesn’t represent the majority. Or if there aren’t enough of them to earn you a decent profit. That’s OK – their role is not to make you rich, but to teach you.

  1. Craft Strugglers into Co-Creators

While they won’t bring you lots of revenue, these high-quality strugglers will give you something more valuable: their energy and knowledge. Because they are highly motivated, they’ll work with you to craft the ideal offering that would solve their problems.

This small army of practical soldiers will also provide the impetus and inspiration you need to make your first wins. This sets you up to pivot. Next up? The group Geoffrey Moore calls the Early Majority. This is the segment of the mainstream audience that will adopt your offering.

But there’s a catch.

The product or service you eventually offer to the mainstream may not look like the one you crafted to win over the Strugglers/Co-Creators. That’s OK. Today, the average personal computer user looks nothing like young, mostly male nerds who fell in love with the technology in the late 1970s’.

Once you expect this to be the case, you can be patient. Working with customers is a must, but the entire journey requires a nuanced approach.

It’s just not as simple as asking people what they want or trusting your gut instincts. Dig deeper into the reason the Strugglers are so fired up and you’ll find the seeds of solutions that may take you to success.

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Personal Productivity Scorecard

What can you do in short periods which demand that you get a lot done, sometimes with overlapping deadlines? They are especially bothersome if your calendar is full and you feel as if you are already giving 100%. In those moments, you can’t defy time: you must ramp up your productivity.

As a Jamaican manager, January and September are probably a couple of your busiest months. Why? Both represent traditional returns from days spent away from the office. Projects which have been paused need to be resumed with gusto, energized by your downtime.

Some professionals fear or hate these two busy seasons, and others. They are forced to increase their productivity by several notches, but face a problem. They lack the methods. Believing their plates are full, they are actually mistaken. Here are some solutions the most effective people apply during their crunch times.

1) Tracking Personal Progress

What indicators of success do you use from one week to the next? While your company and department may have no problem measuring financial and operational metrics, there are few professionals who employ a personal scorecard.

If you’re like most, you probably have a vague sense of your performance, but it probably will not be enough. Certainly, those who perform at the highest level of any sport don’t rely on fuzzy feelings. But few professionals know how to create a scorecard showing their measurable accomplishments. And if they track one or two goals like sales or expenses, they almost never have a “balanced” scorecard covering the critical parts of their lives.

Consequently, even if they set ambitious goals such as a promotion or placement on a key project, they get lost. Instead of making progress, the daily grind buries them. A short-term focus driven by emergencies dominates.

Over time, their inattention leads to personal problems: unwanted pounds get added, technology skills wane and close friends drift away. Then, life intervenes with a dramatic, unexpected wake-up call. For example, the big plan for a relaxed retirement turns into a series of medical crises initiated by a heart attack. You failed to maintain your health at a younger age.

The remedy is simple: treat your entire life as if it were a precious resource whose well-being must be actively fostered. Pull out a spreadsheet and begin tracking. The cost? $0.

2) Creating a daily start-up routine

Most professionals who start personal tracking eventually stumble across another powerful technique: the morning ritual. Each single practice, which is a component of the ritual, may be ordinary, but the power lies in completing them as a group, over and over again.

Follow this habit and you’ll find it easy to scale to weekly, monthly and annual rituals. They all serve a similar purpose: at the beginning of a time period, you simply follow your own instructions.

But this is more than a convenience. Research shows that your mind requires a great deal of cognitive energy to innovate a brand new activity. However, when there is an existing script or checklist to follow, you can execute without pausing to re-think. So a periodic ritual saves precious time and effort.

You’ll also find that adding data to a scorecard is easy when it’s part of your daily ritual. The two practices are perfect complements.

3) Recognize Your Own Progress

New recruits from school to most companies often have a difficult time making the transition. The reason? Their former learning environments are highly gamified, but the new one isn’t. What do they find instead? Poor feedback, vague performance reviews, unclear goals and internal politics, which trump objective standards. Disillusionment sets in, blamed on the opaque, unfair nature of corporate life.

If you want to become more effective, you must learn to be content with self-recognition. This may take some maturity to achieve, but it’s the key to accomplishing important goals, even when others may not understand or approve.

This doesn’t mean you should be a hermit: it’s just that outside feedback is just one input, not a final judgment. Retain that ultimate power: as the decision-maker, you can ride far above circumstances and opinions.

Now, you’ll be playing an entirely different game of your own creation. You won’t be relying on the ones other people try to enforce using society’s popular yardsticks. With your scorecard and rituals, you’ll determine success, especially in those moments when your workload spikes upwards.

This should leave you confident. You’ll never be stuck wondering how to respond to a situation that demands more from you than ever before. For you, it will be a matter of adjusting your tracking and rituals before proceeding.

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The unending new-tech learning curve

What can you do in short periods which demand that you get a lot done, sometimes with overlapping deadlines? They are especially bothersome if your calendar is full and you feel as if you are already giving 100%. In those moments, you can’t defy time: you must ramp up your productivity.

As a Jamaican manager, January and September are probably a couple of your busiest months. Why? Both represent traditional returns from days spent away from the office. Projects which have been paused need to be resumed with gusto, energized by your downtime.

Some professionals fear or hate these two busy seasons, and others. They are forced to increase their productivity by several notches, but face a problem. They lack the methods. Believing their plates are full, they are actually mistaken. Here are some solutions the most effective people apply during their crunch times.

1) Tracking Personal Progress

What indicators of success do you use from one week to the next? While your company and department may have no problem measuring financial and operational metrics, there are few professionals who employ a personal scorecard.

If you’re like most, you probably have a vague sense of your performance, but it probably will not be enough. Certainly, those who perform at the highest level of any sport don’t rely on fuzzy feelings. But few professionals know how to create a scorecard showing their measurable accomplishments. And if they track one or two goals like sales or expenses, they almost never have a “balanced” scorecard covering the critical parts of their lives.

Consequently, even if they set ambitious goals such as a promotion or placement on a key project, they get lost. Instead of making progress, the daily grind buries them. A short-term focus driven by emergencies dominates.

Over time, their inattention leads to personal problems: unwanted pounds get added, technology skills wane and close friends drift away. Then, life intervenes with a dramatic, unexpected wake-up call. For example, the big plan for a relaxed retirement turns into a series of medical crises initiated by a heart attack. You failed to maintain your health at a younger age.

The remedy is simple: treat your entire life as if it were a precious resource whose well-being must be actively fostered. Pull out a spreadsheet and begin tracking. The cost? $0.

2) Creating a daily start-up routine

Most professionals who start personal tracking eventually stumble across another powerful technique: the morning ritual. Each single practice, which is a component of the ritual, may be ordinary, but the power lies in completing them as a group, over and over again.

Follow this habit and you’ll find it easy to scale to weekly, monthly and annual rituals. They all serve a similar purpose: at the beginning of a time period, you simply follow your own instructions.

But this is more than a convenience. Research shows that your mind requires a great deal of cognitive energy to innovate a brand new activity. However, when there is an existing script or checklist to follow, you can execute without pausing to re-think. So a periodic ritual saves precious time and effort.

You’ll also find that adding data to a scorecard is easy when it’s part of your daily ritual. The two practices are perfect complements.

3) Recognize Your Own Progress

New recruits from school to most companies often have a difficult time making the transition. The reason? Their former learning environments are highly gamified, but the new one isn’t. What do they find instead? Poor feedback, vague performance reviews, unclear goals and internal politics, which trump objective standards. Disillusionment sets in, blamed on the opaque, unfair nature of corporate life.

If you want to become more effective, you must learn to be content with self-recognition. This may take some maturity to achieve, but it’s the key to accomplishing important goals, even when others may not understand or approve.

This doesn’t mean you should be a hermit: it’s just that outside feedback is just one input, not a final judgment. Retain that ultimate power: as the decision-maker, you can ride far above circumstances and opinions.

Now, you’ll be playing an entirely different game of your own creation. You won’t be relying on the ones other people try to enforce using society’s popular yardsticks. With your scorecard and rituals, you’ll determine success, especially in those moments when your workload spikes upwards.

This should leave you confident. You’ll never be stuck wondering how to respond to a situation that demands more from you than ever before. For you, it will be a matter of adjusting your tracking and rituals before proceeding.

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The Perfect Work Day

How do you design an inspiring day’s work? Is it a matter of luck, or chance? Or can it be engineered and turned on like a switch?

Let’s begin by defining what your “ideal” work day looks like. It probably doesn’t mean sitting in meetings dominated by others. Neither does it involve hours responding to electronic messages that should never have been sent in the first place.

Some employees don’t even try: they have resigned themselves to deliver a half-hearted effort. It’s the very opposite of a great days’ work.

Instead of following their example, let’s imagine that you have set a personal standard for top quality performance. In your best moments, you are solving unique problems using your finest abilities.

However, you can’t be successful without committing a major portion of your attention. In peak episodes, you tackle challenges which cannot be solved while watching television, or browsing YouTube.

But the structure of the modern office does not lend you much help, and this carries over to working from home. As such, these miracle days need to be consciously created, and may benefit from the following three elements according to the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and other experts.

  1. Uninterrupted Time to Hit the Flow State

It takes about 20 minutes to “get into the groove” and achieve the high-performing Flow State. In this mode, time flies as you give a challenging task your complete attention.

You have blocked all human, audible, visual or other interruptions to stop you from staying in a deep problem-solving mode. Here, you are using all the expertise you can muster to create a unique solution.

Your mind should also be free of distracting concerns that threaten to take you away. Handle them by scheduling time to deal with them later in your calendar and you’ll be shielded from their intrusion.

Given the priority nature of this work, your time in the Flow State must be pre-scheduled. This protects it against other activities which may crop up.

  1. Condition Your Environment

Unfortunately, your boss may not agree. Some of the worst managers believe they have a right to impose their priority-of-the-moment on you at a whim, disrupting whatever plans you had.

This is often little more than a power play.

Over time, you must make it your duty to train your boss to get what he/she wants in a different manner. In other words, there should always be a conversation to discuss the outcome wanted and its priority relative to other commitments.

The sooner you both realize that an unthinking habit of random switching won’t work, the better off you’ll both be. Your top quality work will give him/her improved results.

Consider the case of an employee I met who is managed this way. In a class she reported that she doesn’t make plans – she just does whatever her boss tells her to do that day. She arrives at work each morning as a blank slate.

Unfortunately, this kind of staff member is the first to be fired when budgets are cut. Why? She brings nothing unique or distinctive to the workplace, and learns little over time. Anyone can replace her.

If you work from home, you must be even more careful, as you should also turn off disruptive technologies and train family members to leave you alone when you’re doing your best work. But the principle remains the same. People in your life need to know when you are deeply engaged.

  1. Coffee and Stimulants

I never grew up a coffee drinker and only tried the stuff for the first time a few years ago. After some experimentation, I learned that it helps me do my best work, but there’s a caveat: like many good things in life, it needs to be carefully rationed.

As such, I drink only a single cup every one to two weeks, just when I need to enter the Flow State. In these rare instances, it does its job very well, allowing me to continue focused work for three times as long.

I’m not addicted, and my body is not accustomed to a daily dose. In addition, I only use it on weekends where I have more control, due to the fact that most offices are closed. This reduces the chance of emergencies and interruptions.

COVID-19 hasn’t changed the need for us to do great, inspiring work, but most agree that a traditional office isn’t required. In many cases, it only makes things worse.

However, there are principles which you can’t violate wherever you pull out your laptop. Customize them for your emerging hybrid situation and you can be more productive than even ever before in any environment.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

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Why “We’re Number One!” Goals Have Become Useless

In times past it was fashionable for corporate leaders to craft vision statements with commitments to be “number one” and “world class”. Lately, these have become less popular, with good reason. They are a sign of lackluster thinking which signals a lack of detailed planning.

Corporate leaders tend to fit a particular profile. They show strong Type A tendencies: energetic over-achievers who are time-sensitive and impatient. They drive themselves hard to accomplish great things, often bringing others behind them for the ride, ready or not.

However, if you have this trait, there may be an added one which gets you in trouble: your tendency to be competitive. If you get a lot of juice from beating other people, this approach works when goals are simple. It stirs up lots of extra effort and leads to reliable, continuous improvements.

Most CEO’s use this characteristic to grab the corner office ahead of others, at which point they often shift their focus to defeating other companies. This compulsion to be the captain of a winning team creates three kinds of problems.

Challenge #1 – CEO’s Play Games Employees Find Irrelevant

Part of being an effective executive involves learning the language of the C-Suite. Over time, this new lingo separates leaders from lower-level employees.

But the big problem is that what excites you, a Type A executive, is unlikely to inspire others. While staff knows there is a connection between EBITDA and their job security, it’s all a theory. Certainly, they feel no emotional bond.

As such, when you conduct a town hall you’re likely to speak glowingly of achievements in words that don’t resonate. You staffs’ needs are far more human, and it’s easy to lose track of them.

To build engagement, you’ll need to uncover employees’ actual aspirations, in order to satisfy them. For example, if getting their kids a decent education and making ends meet is a major part of their lives, you must start there.

Challenge #2 – CEO’s Craft Imaginary Competitions

The world is changing so rapidly that the old ways of thinking about competitors have become stale. In the past it was easier: ultra-competitive CEOs would find similar companies to compare themselves against. Then, they’d choose metrics such as profitability, stock price or revenue to be their yard-stick of accomplishment.

However, in a fast-changing landscape, your “competitors” are actually imaginary: made up. As industries and circumstances evolve, it becomes impossible to find other companies which are just like yours. There may be some overlap, but no perfect fit. Your orange ends up racing to a make-believe finish line against their apple.

As such, your claims to be (or plans to become) “Number One” are increasingly empty. They are a simplistic way to motivate yourself that may suit you, as a Type A executive, but no-one else.

Even aspirations to claim a “World-Class” standard look silly in today’s world. Anyone who cares can achieve this goal by defining a narrow standard. But even then, customers don’t care about such claims.

Challenge #3 – CEO’s Forsake Customers

While most MBA programmes are built around competition, that approach is becoming a distraction…at best a sideshow. It’s far better to develop a sharper focus on meeting customer’s unmet needs.

But this is no solid target. Customers’ needs are evolving due to new technologies so it’s become harder than ever to discover a customer’s “Job-to-be-Done”. (The term refers to the actions a customer takes to meet their unmet needs.)

The pandemic has led to shifts in many customers’ Jobs-to-be-Done, as they adopted new behavior patterns. Many companies unwittingly fell out of touch, and haven’t re-established a unique understanding. They run the risk of missing the mark.

Just observe the way Uber and AirBnB disrupted their respective industries before the pandemic. They used modern technology to tap into idle, low-cost resources (i.e. people’s cars and rooms). Now, they are shifting their processes to accommodate the new customer need for sanitized environments.

In short, they have been adjusting their companies’ business models, in concert with changes in their customers’ needs.

There are other ways your company can meet unmet needs, but when it happens, don’t be confused by your success. Definitely don’t claim it as proof of being “Number One” or “World Class” to start a new round of chest-beating.

Instead, use it as fuel to fire up a fresh cycle of customer research which, in the end, is the best insurance policy against disruptions of all kinds.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

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Why New Employees Need to be Gamified, or Else

What’s happening in the workplace to young employees? They seem to operate by a different set of values, showing little interest in company events.

Yet, they willingly give time and energy to off-the-job pursuits. How can executives create an environment in which they direct some of that discretionary effort towards their work?

“The company’s culture was good enough for me, why isn’t it good enough for them?” If your organization’s leaders are asking this question about engagement, consider the presumption: young employees need not receive any special privileges. After all, the argument goes, “I had less than they do and I made do with what I had!”

At first glance, this seems to be a fair statement.

Yet, the result of such thinking is disengagement. Whereas, in past generations, a paycheck was enough to guarantee a certain level of staff engagement, those days are over. Today, the young, post-COVID employee isn’t interested in merely trading time for money. (The only exceptions might be those who stand to earn a windfall which allows them to retire early, and those who are desperate.)

This state of affairs is hardly a sustainable recipe for fostering a new generation of leaders. In fact, if the status quo is maintained, it’s likely to repel the most creative talent, which is neither greedy nor desperate. If this rings true for your company, it might be time to call for a transformation. Here are some guidelines to use.

1. Young Employees Expect High Engagement

Consider that most of their lives before joining your organization were highly gamified. As achievers of better-than-average grades in school, they accepted the default structure and became winners. They filled their spare time with apps specifically engineered to grab their attention for long periods.

The resulting heightened states became the norm. Constant, high-quality feedback followed intense efforts, helping them make clear, undeniable, prize-winning progress. Whether it was CSEC/CAPE, Schools’ Challenge, Facebook or World of Warcraft (an online game), they benefited from great gamification.

Now, consider all of these to be powerful competitors to your company’s best attempts to engage staff. They are formidable: not even our Parliamentarians can resist Instagram or email during speeches at Gordon House.

And if your employees are spending their spare time starting new companies, or hustling side-gigs for extra income, consider that to be more of the same. Some of their interest in becoming entrepreneurs is to compensate for a lack of engagement in a disappointing job.

2. Your Company is Allowing Bad Games

If your leaders aren’t using game mechanics to deliberately engage staff, they do them a disservice. Some may go start new companies, but most will remain in your employment, falling into games which are harmful.

One of my summer jobs as a teenager with a government agency revealed a game of “Cat and Mouse”. Employees waited until the manager left the office to bring out cards, dominoes, and radios. When the appointed lookout spotted her return to the parking lot, shouts of “She ah come!” sent staff scurrying to remove the evidence, and resume the pretense of work being done.

According to one conspirator, “Sometimes she tries to trick us by not pulling up in her usual spot!”

Unfortunately, most Jamaican companies are infected with a cabal of the most disengaged. They make fun of new employees who work too hard (at best) and may even ostracize those who persist in making them look bad with high performance.

Eventually, the average new hire surrenders, dropping their standards (and expectations) just to fit in. This game of “Do as Little As Possible” can last an entire career, even though it may never be formally named.

The point is that these negative games (and innumerable others just like them) are at play in all companies. The only question is one of popularity. Call it a version of “The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands” if you will.

3. Transforming a Dysfunctional Culture

What’s a way to prevent a culture of nasty games? Get leaders to explicitly create better ones. By so doing, you can scoop up new employees before they fall prey.

If your organization is already overrun by people playing destructive games, start by teaching your managers the principles of gamification. Then, use these same principles to give them a great first-hand experience as they apply them to their departments.

Continue by setting up programmes which place young, new employees in high engagement activities from the moment they join. Don’t let them lapse into the boredom which invites mischief. Just help them experience the reality of positive games which ultimately give them more of what they want in life.