Finesse Versus Force

What makes fly casting unique is that it’s the line that’s being cast, not the nearly weightless artificial fly tied to the end of it.  You see, the fly follows the line and the objective is to cast the line out so that the fly comes to rest on the water delicately.

Brute force has no place in this endeavor.  It’s about rhythm and finesse. The harder we try to drive the fly out to where the fish are, the less chance it will happen.  However, if we settle into the rhythm of the cast and work with the forces of nature, the more successful we are.

The Mechanics of Fly Casting

The point of beginning in fly casting is the “10 & 2″ rhythm.  Imagine you are standing inside a clock.  At your feet is 6:00 and directly overhead is 12:00.  The motion of moving the rod back and forth between 10:00 and 2:00 is the basic casting stroke.  The idea is for these movements to be smooth and rhythmic as the rod (with line extending out of it) travels its course.

Whenever I’m having an off day of casting, I return to this basic rhythm, focusing on how smoothly I’m moving the rod back and forth between those two imaginary points.  It’s amazing how that simple dynamic puts me in the right mental and physical place to regain the enjoyment I experience on the river.

The “10 & 2″ Rhythm of Productivity

What if we sliced the work day into three sections? What if we look at the slice between our arrival at work (8:00?) and 10:00 as one part of the day?  What if we called that the morning slice?

Next, we could call the slice of time between 10:00 and 2:00 the mid-day slice.  That leaves the last slice – between 2:00 and 5:00 – as the afternoon slice.

Now that we have the three sections of the day defined, what if we looked for a rhythm in our days that would maximize our productivity – not activity, but actually getting things done?  With three slices to each day, it’s possible to manage our time to focus on the behaviors that produce the best results given our particular work preferences.

Understand that we’re talking about guiding our days and focusing on certain behaviors during certain periods of the day to the extent we can control this.  It’s not always possible every day, but it’s generally possible many days.  That is, a little bit of improvement each day adds up to a lot of improvement over time.

Leveraging the Slices of Each Day

Try this model on for size, but feel free to swap things around to best fit your personal rhythms.

• Morning Slice = Production Time.  Don’t schedule calls or meetings for this period of the day.  Instead focus on organizing the workload and plowing through as much of it as possible.  Generally, people are most productive in the morning.  However, our modern work environments bombard us with interruptions from the opening bell to the closing bell.  The resulting reactionary behavior has caused us to lose the most productive time of the day. Change that by turning off message alerts, placing your phone on do-not-disturb, and mostly closing your door.  (Note, this last suggestion – mostly closing your door – allows people to see you are in your office working.  Thus, they’re less likely to interrupt you unless it’s necessary.  Persistent interruptors can be handled by asking the offender to schedule time with you during the Mid-Day Slice.)
• Mid-Day Slice = Collaboration Time.  Schedule as many meetings and phone calls for the middle of the day as you can.  Because a ton of work got down during the first couple of hours of the day, this is a terrific time to back away from the intense focus of individual effort, and work collectively with team members, customers, clients, etc. These periods often produce more deliverables and there’s still a number of hours left in the day to attend to those if they are urgent requests.
• Afternoon Slice = Big Picture & Administrative Time.  The last few hours of the day are perfect for engaging in big picture discussions – like strategic planning – and for completing administrative matters.  Recent brain science suggests that we become fatigued over the course of the day and even renewal periods become less effective as the work day nears it’s end.  The idea here is to take advantage of that by doing things that don’t require intense focus and, in fact, require broader thinking (big picture matters) or lowered effort (administrative tasks).

As mentioned above, these slices may not work exactly the same way for everyone.  However, directing your effort and actions to the matters best suited for the available level of attentiveness throughout the day logically makes sense.  It’s up to each person to find the mix of rhythm and finesse to make the most of their efforts.

Standing in a River Waiving a Stick

After years of practice and endless hours on the water, I often return to the basics of fly casting to settle back into the rhythm that transforms tossing a line above my head into the beautiful loop that unfolds in front of me and lays the fly down gently on the water at the spot I am hoping to find a hungry trout. The work day has similar rhythms that, once uncovered and leveraged, can result in higher productivity and a greater sense of achievement.

© 2012, Paul H. Burton. All rights reserved.

How’s your world—your VUCA world, that is?

VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, a term coined by the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the weeks before September 11, 2001. It’s a popular phrase with Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow and former president of the Institute for the Future.

According to Dr. Johansen, who shared his 2011-2021 forecast at theAssociation of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Global Conference in early April, our VUCA world is not going away. In fact it’s just going to spin faster during the next decade.

In his talk “External Future Forces That Will Disrupt the Practice of Change Management,” Dr. Johansen noted that VUCA is not necessarily doom and gloom. While VUCA can provide threats, it also can offer opportunities, especially if you translate VUCA as “vision, understanding, clarity and agility.”

As for his two big predictions for 2022 for organizational change agents, they are:  

1. “The digital natives (now 16 years or younger) will create new practices to make change through gaming.” (The other key phrase besides gaming in this sentence is “make.” Dr. Johansen predicts that a culture of makers will drive the next generation of change. And as a result, leaders need to show the “maker instinct” trait.)  
 

2. “Reciprocity-based innovation will focus on the economic, social and psychological value of reciprocity.” (Two important traits for leaders are smart-mob organizing and commons creating. Think Creative Commons.)

Dr. Johansen challenged the 825 of us in attendance to figure out how to help people and organizations adapt to these changes and others. To do this, we should watch our terms and our questions.

For example, one of the questions we should be asking is not, “What’s new?” but “What’s ready to take off?” Quoting author William Gibson, who coined the term “cyberspace,” Johansen said Gibson was absolutely right when he said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Both gaming and reciprocity-based innovation are here already. If you use or are familiar with Dropbox, Evernote, Doodle or any of the other cloud-based tools that offer free basic levels, you know about reciprocity-based innovation. The companies and others like them are giving away free services and products in the faith that they will get back even more in return. (And yes, they also are collecting our data….)

As for games, their value is that “they present obstacles we volunteer to overcome” Dr. Johansen explained. Gaming experiences are a powerful way to learn. 

In thinking about terms, Dr. Johansen observed that change management is an outdated term. Nobody wants to be managed anymore. And change is everywhere all the time. 

Yes! But what is that new term?

As I continue to mull that over, I will commit to these three actions to help myself and others better adapt to our ever evolving VUCA world:

• Get fit. According to Dr. Johansen, this is the age of the corporate athlete. We need to be organizationally, mentally and physically fit. This supports what Tony Schwartz has been advising with The Energy Project. The mental fitness also reinforces what Dr. David Rock of theNeuroLeadership Group teaches about the importance of keeping people in a “toward” state. Otherwise, it’s too easy to hijack people’s brains, which makes them want to fight or flee.  
  

• Do peripheral learning to enhance peripheral vision. To look for people, insights and resources that will help us fine-tune and invigorate our ways of working, we need exposure to things outside our regular stomping grounds. This means hanging out with different people from a variety of different disciplines than our own and becoming aware of what they’re doing and thinking. Exposure to cross-cultural experiences is also helpful. Breaking out of our echo chamber is more important than ever.
  

• Refresh language frequently. This involves more than updating our obsolete language, as I recently wrote about. It’s also tracking signals to see what people are thinking and talking about, and making sure you’re using words, symbols and visuals that resonate with them. 
  

For example, the phrase “executive presentation skills” is so last century. Instead, people want leaders with conversation skills who can build rapport, not just share reports. These leaders—and others too—need to convey complex ideas simply, not simplistically, and listen to what we say.     

What other actions do we need to take? And can you help me find a more up-to-date, accurate phrase for “change management”?   

Note: Please join us next week to get more of Liz’s insights at her lunch & learn webinar: Communicate in a more brain-friendly way

Unbox a toy for a toddler and as often as not, the child will play with the box instead of the toy!

Why?  Because the box is more fun!  It can be anything – a hat, a fort, a cup, a ship.  On the other hand, modern toys are typically activity specific, which allows for little imaginative input by its recipient.

Lessons Learned

This doesn’t mean toys are bad. It means boxes are good!  Specifically, Jay Heinrich, author of the “It’s Called Play” article noted above, cites the following lessons we can learn from playing with the box;

• Fancy toys, programmed activities, and “enrichment” don’t hold a candle to a kid’s own improvising.
• Unsupervised activity of the kind that terrifies modern, safety-obsessed parents can be good for developing brains and bodies.
• Outdoor trumps indoors, fitness-wise.
• Adults can benefit from the same sort of pointless, stupid activity [as playing with a box].

Heinrich cites two recent studies that support the theory that play is good for adults too.  The first is Stuart Brown’s co-authored book Play, which states play “makes us more flexible and adaptable.”  We’ve long known that exercise is healthy, but Brown and his colleagues are going a step further.  They’re finding that joining exercise with fun allows us to make new cognitive connections.  The result is that we’re happier, more alert, and healthier.

This conclusion is supported by UCLA professor Toni Yancey, whose book Instant Recess proposes that that short 10-minute bursts of play-like activity boosted her subject’s performance, “psychosocial factors,” and health.

The Point of Pointless

As we mature into adults we stop playing for many reasons.  The demands on our time grow and we (unfortunately) develop the notion that playing is unproductive and pointless.  Au contraire, is what Brown and Yancey counter.  They point to the positive benefits of play to make their point.

• Laughing.  Laughter releases feel-good endorphins while suppressing stress hormones.  It also strengthens the immune system.
• Moving. Most of us live a sedentary lifestyle and we could all stand more exercise.  Playing makes exercise fun.
• Imagining.  As adults, it seems the more we know the less we can imagine.  Playing promotes the imaginative side of our brain – the right side – giving greater support to the left side.

Unstructured activity is apparently a panacea of positive for everyone willing to step back in time and loosen up a little.

The Most Important Benefit

One of the most compelling reasons to engage in playing is it’s restorative effects.  Numerous studies have found that people who take short, unstructured breaks throughout the day remain more focused and more productive when they get back to their desk.  Moreover, they enjoy their work more, which makes it a win-win for employer and employee alike.  (A full review of these studies can be found in Tony Schwartz’s book The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working.)

Scheduling Play Breaks

Most of us can’t step all the way back to sun drenched summer afternoons playing stickball.  But we can get some of that carefree activity back.  For example, parents schedule their kids for play dates.  Why can’t we – the parents – schedule ourselves for play breaks?  Instead of consuming hours of time at play, we can encapsulate these renewal periods in short, 15-minute breaks.

But what to do with this new unstructured time?  Here are some activities that work inside or outside and in or in near proximity to the office:

• Nerf Basketball or Nerf Football.  Both are easy to play and require only one (basketball) or two (football) people.
• Paper Triangle Football.  This grade school lunch table game is easily reincarnated using a desk or conference room table.
• Treasure/Scavenger Hunt.  An enterprising individual can engage a whole group of people either inside or outside the office.
• Cloud Characters.  Lying on the ground just imagining shapes into animals and objects just sounds relaxing, doesn’t it?

Making the Most of the Time We Have

In the trek up to adulthood, we discarded playing as childish.  As fun as it was, it just didn’t fit into our world any longer.  Now, there appears to be some solid science behind the idea that reintroducing some playtime into our frantic schedules can have positive mental and physical consequences.

Besides, who doesn’t want to be a kid again?

© 2012, Paul H. Burton. All rights reserved.