LEADERSHIP LIBRARY
The Way We're Working Isn't Working
Tony Schwartz
IN BRIEF
“The relentless urgency that characterizes most corporate cultures undermines creativity, quality, engagement, thoughtful deliberation, productivity, and, ultimately, performance.” (p. 3)
Key Concepts
Implementing new habits requires diligence
“The first key to building rituals is undertaking no more than one or two at a time.” (p. 38)
“The second and perhaps most important key to building rituals is precision and specificity. Automaticity researchers have discovered the power of something they call ‘implementation intentions.’” (p. 38)
“The third key to building rituals is to focus on something we do rather than something we continually try to resist doing.” (p. 40)
“...we next encourage our clients to ask themselves a simple question: ‘How can I design this ritual so I enjoy its intended benefits but also minimize the costs I fear it will prompt?’” (p. 43)
“The final key to building effective rituals is not to let them become so automatic that you lose track of whether they’re still serving your intended goals. That requires a delicate dance between awareness and automaticity, another set of entailed opposites. Without ongoing self-awareness, the risk is that rituals eventually grow stale and become obsolete.” (p. 44)
Sleep is a keystone behavior, though organizations don’t always support midday renewal
No single behavior, we’ve come to believe, more fundamentally influences our effectiveness in waking life than sleep. (p. 57)
Another obstacle to renewing intermittently is that it isn’t culturally acceptable in many organizations, and in some cases it’s explicitly discouraged. Even then, it’s possible to find ways to rest under the radar. (p. 71)
When we’re in good physical shape, we free up energy for our minds
“We have one overall energy reservoir, and the more energy we expend physically just to accomplish everyday activities, the more fatigued we become, and the less energy we have available for everything else we do.” (p. 87)
Steady consumption of healthy foods throughout the day supports energy better than just three big meals
“We should never allow ourselves to get too hungry, not just because it makes us less effective but also because it makes us more likely to eventually eat too much.” (p. 94)
“The prescription that best serves sustainable energy is to eat something at least every three hours, which effectively means five to six times a day.” (p. 95)
“In addition, the more energy we expend resisting tempting foods, the less we have left over for the more important tasks in our lives.” (p. 103)
Leaders create the environment in which people can work with high energy and engagement
“What’s less obvious is that we can’t perform at our best when we’re not in the Performance Zone. Put another way, any time you’re not feeling optimistic, engaged, upbeat, focused, enthusiastic, and committed, you’re suboptimal.” (p. 124)
“We think of leaders as “chief energy officers.” The core challenge for leaders, we believe, is to recruit, mobilize, inspire, focus, and regularly refuel the energy of those they lead—to nudge them toward high positive.” (p. 129)
“To really take in and process critical feedback, it must be delivered by someone who makes us feel safe and who we truly believe has our best interests at heart. We’re far less likely to feel inspired by someone who says ‘Here’s what’s wrong with what you did’ than we are by a more forward-looking ‘Here’s what works so far, and here’s what I think you need to do to take this to the next level.’” (p. 139)
Attention is our most valuable resource, as we should cultivate our skills at focusing
“Rather than setting and sticking to an agenda of our own, we cede our attention to the most urgent request or demand of the moment.” (p. 181)
“The single most effective mental ritual we’ve discovered is one we call ‘Doing the most important thing first.’” (p. 196)
“Many of us associate meditation with spiritual practice, but at a more practical level, it’s simply attentional practice. The most basic form is often referred to as ‘concentration’ meditation.” (p. 199)
Reflecting on the larger picture is as critical as focus on the near term in optimizing performance
“We can’t march relentlessly toward a near-term goal and adopt a reflective, big-picture perspective at the same time. Far too often, we choose to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. Both are crucial to the highest levels of performance.” (p. 211)
The busier and more rushed we are, the less likely we are to ask ourselves questions such as, “What is the right thing to do here?” “Did I act from my deepest values in this situation?” and, “Am I serving something beyond just myself?” (p. 239)
Example Strategies for Greater Energy
Arbitrarily short meetings—“He reduced the length of most meetings he called from an hour to thirty minutes, and he also let participants know that all his meetings would start and end right on time.” (p. 40)
Less alcohol for better sleep—“In simple terms, the less alcohol you drink and the earlier you drink it, the more deeply you’re likely to sleep through the night.” (p. 64)
Park anxieties for better sleep—“This simple technique involves writing down what you’re worrying about in a notebook or on a piece of paper.” (p. 64)
Napping—The most powerful nap of all is one taken for ninety minutes between 1 and 3 P.M.—traditional siesta time—which is when the body most craves sleep. (p. 74)
First things first—”The first step is to decide in advance the most important thing to do on any given day. Typically, that means reflecting on it the night before or, if it’s a longer project, at the beginning of a week…. It’s also helpful to allot no less than forty-five minutes to the task. (pp. 196-7)
Individual email hours—“... he added an away message explaining that he answered only at designated times but that if anyone had a more urgent need to reach him, to simply reach him on his cell phone. He also called each of his most important clients to explain what he was doing and why.” (p. 195)
Group email hours—“At Sony Pictures, for example, the senior executive team wrestled with alternatives before deciding to set an 8-A.M.-to-8-P.M. limit on the times during which they would be expected to respond to internal e-mail.” (p. 222)
No email during meetings—“We’ve worked with a number of companies to institute an organizational ritual banning e-mailing altogether during meetings. (p. 222)
Quotables
“Perhaps no human need is more neglected in the workplace than to feel valued.” (p. 13)
“Meaning and significance may seem like luxuries, but they’re a unique source of energy that ignites passion, focus, and perseverance.” (p. 17)
“Seng-ts’an, a Chinese Zen master, put it this way: ‘If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.’” (p. 31)
“For better and for worse, we are deeply creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behavior occurs out of habit, either unconsciously or in reaction to external demands.” (p. 35)
Maintenance and refueling are as critical to victory as racing itself. That’s because the higher the demand, the greater and more frequent the need for renewal. (p. 51)
“If you are a leader or a manager, creating a new way of working begins with recognizing that renewal serves performance.” (p. 108)
“If you spend too much time in the Survival Zone, you’ll eventually end up in the Burnout Zone, which is plainly the worst place from which to perform.” (p. 130)
“The vast majority of people tell us that they prefer depth to breadth and quality to quantity. But that’s scarcely the way we live our lives.” (p. 179)
“Answering e-mail is also a way to avoid the pain of mobilizing the sustained focus that more challenging tasks require.” (p. 191)
“More, bigger, faster is the province of the left hemisphere. Richer, deeper, slower is the opposing but complementary strength of the right hemisphere.” (p. 211)
“When Zen Buddhists talk about ‘beginner’s mind,’ they’re referring to an openness to every experience, unfettered by preconceptions, agendas, or expectations. The same stance facilitates absorbed listening, a capacity notably absent in many leaders we meet.” (p. 215)
“Knowing what you stand for is also a powerful source of energy.” (p. 238)
Drew Gilpin Faust: “Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t.” (p. 250)
“No career automatically provides a purpose, but no job precludes our finding a purpose in it, either. It isn’t the role we fill that prompts a sense of purpose but how we choose to approach whatever work we do.” (p. 256)
Clients, please email to request the full notes from this book.