Misplacing your management skills

Words: 677 Reading Time: 2 minutes 15 seconds

As a speaker I recently delivered a 10 minute coaching slot at the beginning of a network meeting. I selected a topic apparently much loved by those aspiring to coach – Time Management. When I entered the phrase into Google I got:

* 64.4 million listings for time management skills;
* 258 million listings for time management tools; and
* 140 million listings for time management training sessions.

Clearly, I was on the right track.

Regretfully, those so intent on learning about time management are doomed to a degree of disappointment. While purveyors of advice on time management may be as tightly packed as snake oil sellers at a health-food convention there are some inherent attributes of time that ought to be pointed out first.

1) Time just happens. If I kick off a stopwatch and then ask someone to ‘manage’ the time as I talk I am not quite sure how they would do that. Note that I am asking that they manage the time and only the time, not my talk. With so many courses and techniques I am sure there must be a way to make time stop, start, increase, diminish, reverse, multiple and turn left at the traffic lights; I just haven’t come across it yet.

2) The predictability of time - 24 hours in a day; 7 days in a week; 52 weeks in a year – should probably make managing it easier. But that predictability is an illusion. There’s really 24hrs and 59 seconds in a day – hence the Leap Year. In 1751 there was no January, February or March in England and Wales. Under Napoleon there were 10 days in a week (a decade) and each month had 3 decades. The year ended (on the old Sept 17th) with 5 supplementary days to bring it back to 365 days in a year, or 6 supplementary days in a Leap Year.

3) Besides messing about with the calendar it is possible genuinely to bend the space/time continuum under an intense gravitational field; time will run at different speeds and in different directions.

4) The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. If one of a pair of twins rockets off through space for a period of time, he would return younger than his sibling.

Probably time is a much more slippery subject than it at first appears.

One of the things that may prompt us to attempt to ‘manage’ time is that we view it as scarce, but there is actually loads of it. About 14 billion years have elapsed since the “Big Bang” and – as far as we can tell – time stretches for an infinite distance into the future. Whatever else may be scarce, it isn’t time.

And time is a bit like air - we have all the time that there is. We all have 24 hours and 59 seconds in a day. Nobody goes short, or is in any way deprived. There is no more to be had.

Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to stop thinking of time as a resource, like water, minerals or money. Time is not a resource, it’s a dimension like height, width and depth and like those other dimensions its gradations are just human inventions.

Time is not susceptible to management.

That leaves us with the one component in any situation that we are best placed to manage – ourselves.

Unless we are managing our own thoughts and feelings (and nobody else can) any organizational method that is superimposed will be fatally undermined. On the myriad of courses listed by Google you can learn about diaries, schedules, systems, tidying, delegating and dumping, but without first being in control of ourselves (to some degree) all the clever plans and procedures will be like dandelions parachutes in a windstorm.

There are two very simple (not easy) elements to managing ourselves:

* Clarity – knowing exactly what outcome we want.

* Desire – an overwhelming connection with that outcome.

With those two successfully addressed we can make the most of ourselves – whatever amount of time we think we may have.

Who cares if you're stressed?

Words: 708 Reading time: 2 minutes 22 seconds

The Health & Safety Executive have published figures showing that 6.7 million working days are lost each year due to the effects of stress. The cost to society is estimated to be in the region of £3.8 billion.

Stress is believed to be responsible for up to 40 per cent of all absences from work and can reduce employee performance by up to 70 per cent.

Now we have more labour-saving devices than at any time since the world began, why is it that?

When I ask ‘What is stress?’ I get different answers.

One set of answers is a list of symptoms, some of which are emotional, such as feeling irritable, frustration at having to wait for something, barely suppressed anger, generally feeling upset, lack of sense of humour, etc.

Other symptoms listed are physical, such as muscle tension, neck or shoulder pain, stomach upsets, 'pounding' or 'racing' heart, sweaty palms, 'butterflies', insomnia or excessive sleep, shortness of breath, etc.

Another set of answers list what people see as possible causes, such as job insecurity, heavy workload, infrequent rest breaks, poor communication in the organization, crowding, noise, insufficient leisure time, etc.

A third set of answers merely uses synonyms for stress, such as anxiety, hassle, pressure, strain, tension, worry.

But none of these actually tells me what stress is.

Aching joints and a runny nose might tell me I have influenza, but it is not influenza itself. Getting soaked in a downpour might make me susceptible to influenza, but it does not cause influenza. As we all now know, the true cause is viral.

So, what single root cause covers all of the above factors and manifestations of stress? What is the equivalent of the viral or bacterial agent where stress is concerned?

My suggestion is that stress only occurs when the situation, as we perceive it, demands more resources than we believe we have available at present to resolve it

Situation > Resources

As far as I can see that definition covers all cases and it helps by providing four different avenues of escape:

The situation can be avoid, vacated or mitigated.

Our perception of the situation can be revised, or reframed.

The resources required can be augmented, assembled, bought or borrowed.

Our beliefs about our resources can be challenged, replaced or adapted.

The other important point about this definition is that underlines the part played by perceptions and beliefs in the whole subject of stress. That is not to dismiss or denigrate the trauma reported by those experiencing stress, it merely points up the fact that we cannot isolate this stuff called stress and hold it in our hands. We cannot isolate it from the person directly concerned and measure it separately.

Because stress is not an objective reality, it is not equally experienced. Two individuals can be seated side by side in the same work environment, doing the same tasks and with the same demands place on them, in the same way, yet one individual will experience greater stress than the other.

This tells us that one other precondition is needed for someone to experience stress – the person concerned must actually care about the outcome. This is crucial, because unless you really care there will be no anxiety on your part about what may or may not transpire.

At the end of the football season, as various teams face demotion from one league to another, some fans become genuinely anguished. However, for those who do not follow football in general, or that team in particular, there is no concern one way or the other. Indeed, the whole organizational structure surrounding the sport could collapse and non-fans would be totally unaffected.

Stress is an internal phenomenon. We manufacture it ourselves. Sometimes we manufacture it inappropriately by caring about inconsequentials, or by caring too much about the wrong things. So when we are stress it is extremely useful to ask ourselves what is it that we care about so much, and is that sensible.

Who cares if you’re stressed?

You do!

As a parting thought, is it therefore nonsensical to blame employers for causing stress? And if stress arises because people care, how wise is it to work on increasing employee engagement? Isn’t this ultimately self-defeating?